Welcome to the Sixth Grade

By TAD BARTIMUS

Once in a while, a guest with something important to say visits Among Friends. This week, teacher Dean Wariner shares a letter he sent home with 40 sixth-graders on their first day in middle school. In it, he tries to allay the 11-year-olds' trepidation about moving up to a higher educational level in a different building. He also wants them to have a roadmap of their journey of discovery together over the next 10 months. Wariner hopes that by asking parents to read and sign the letter, they'll know he wants to work with them in a cooperative partnership that always puts their child's best interest first.

Dear Student,

I need to teach you how to read and spell better, do higher math, examine more closely the physical world around you, express yourself in complete paragraphs using hypotheses and conclusions based on evidence, and discuss these subjects intelligently with each other.

In the coming months, you will stretch your muscles and vocal chords, study the origin of mankind and learn more about yourself. You will go through the motions of job hunting. You will discover how to open and maintain a checking account at the Dean Wariner Bank, rent an apartment, pay for life insurance, fill out income tax returns, and vote for candidates of your choice, based on their political platforms. Hopefully, these lessons will help you learn a little of what your parents go through every day.

You'll develop a fictitious stock portfolio and compete with one another for a real prize -- a free lunch. Together, you and I will discover how the shape of our world makes it possible to set off in one direction and return by another, all the while following a course dictated by the stars and planets overhead. We'll explore the world of the atom, to which all things owe allegiance and harmony. We will see how to use mathematics in real-life situations. You will come to understand how volume, surface and distance can be calculated by simple rules.

You will read many books that will broaden your emotional experiences and expand your horizons. You will begin to think in terms of complex sentences that follow a logical course to a conclusion. You will add at least 500 new words to your vocabulary and create stories from your own life as well as your imagination. Besides required assignments, you will design your own reading list.

By the time sixth grade is finished, we will have watched seeds germinate, mapped a field, marveled at the characteristics of floating objects, created colors, kneaded bread dough and watched it rise, memorized songs, built a parade float, learned ancient games, told tales, prepared meals, learned how to properly set a table and refined the art of polite conversation.

Your grades will help show how well you have achieved these goals. However, often a growth in intelligence cannot be measured by grades alone. You will get out of the sixth grade what you put into it. This year will be added to your first five years of schooling, and will form the platform for the years to come.

Your parents and I will do our best for you and we expect you to do your best for yourself.

During the next 10 months, I will issue a big box of Band-Aids, comfort the afflicted, scold the afflicters and encourage all of you to think about the consequences of your actions as you interpret your own emotions and their impact on the feelings of others.

You will grow as much as 4 inches taller and become a few pounds heavier. You will have ample opportunity to demonstrate your poise, artistic and academic ability. You will make me laugh and make me cry. I hope I won't make you cry, but if I do, let's work it out and go forward to more achievement. Come June 2003, I will sadly wave goodbye to you and watch you run off into a summer full of fun and a life full of hope and promise.

Please pass this letter along to your parents and have them initial it at the bottom, then return it to me tomorrow. Thank you for becoming my seventh class of sixth graders. I hope you will enjoy this year as much as I will.

Sincerely,

Dean Wariner

© 2002 The Women Syndicate

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