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by Dana Marcus
Admissions & Communications Director

We miss last year's graduates. What an incredible group they were. Nine out of 10* of them started out at SRV in preschool together! I have the pleasure of hearing from several of them regularly and would love to catch you all up. . .

Breanna is enjoying Friends' Central School. Her adjustment was "easy." Breanna gets mostly A's, played soccer on the school team in the fall, and is now participating in dance. She plows through approximately 2 hours of homework a night, which she diligently tackles as soon as she gets home from school. Breanna is doing especially well in math, where she was placed at the top of her class. While Breanna reports that FC is not as good as SRV (she misses school being "interesting"), she has segued into her new community seamlessly.

Jake attends Strath Haven Middle School. In his last email communication with us he wrote, "I love middle school!" Have those words ever appeared in the same sentence before? Jake is on the football team, and reports that his best subjects are math and social studies. He receives A's, a couple of C's and says his average grade is a B+. He recently had a poem accepted to be published as a part of a language arts competition that included schools from all over the area.

Maude is also doing well at Strath Haven Middle School. She excels in Math and especially enjoys the Passport program, an integrated social studies, language arts, history and current events class. She has found a group of friends she is comfortable with after spending time in the beginning of the year getting to know several different groups. She is also taking French and has been adamant about handling her homework load independently (although it was difficult for Meg when Maude chose to do it alone!). Maude reports that while at first it may seem that middle school will be "daunting," in reality, it's quite manageable and easy to adjust to.

Jackie is at E.T. Richardson Middle School in Springfield School District. Again, we hear from Jackie that, "I love my new school!" She is in the band and continues to play the clarinet. Earlier in the year in social studies, she enjoyed impressing her new classmates with her extensive knowledge of Latin America (SRV did an all school thematic study of Central America last year – good timing.). Academically, she's excelling. She has A's in every subject and got a 98 on her very first math test. Jackie plans on trying out for basketball and softball and is involved in lots of other activities, too. She's also made a lot of new friends.

According to Sanj and Anup, who both attend Springton Lake Middle School, the most difficult part of their transition to middle school was finding their way around the building. They both get mostly A's and one or two B's. Anup and Sanj both played soccer in the fall and plan on going out for tennis in the spring. Playing sports made it very easy for them to reconnect with old friends and make new ones. They report that they have about 30 minutes of homework per night, because unlike some of their peers, they choose to do it as soon as they get home and don't do it in front of the television or in the midst of other distractions. They like their classes, although Sanj says that liking a class often depends on whether or not he likes the teacher. Earlier in the year, Spanish was somewhat challenging as they had not had it before, but Anup reports that they caught up quickly and now find it easy.

Maggie attends the Westtown School. She says it's going "really well," that her homework is "really easy" and that she usually finishes it before she gets home. Maggie particularly likes history and says it's been "really easy" (do I detect a theme?) making new friends because everyone is so nice. She says it took some time to get used to homework and tests but that after a few weeks, she felt comfortable with both.

Jamie is also at Westtown. The largest adjustment for him has been the homework load. He has one teacher in particular who really piles it on and Jamie usually ends up doing 2+ hours per night. In addition, he is participating in soccer and basketball and taking guitar lessons. In order to prepare for tests, Jamie finds it easier to study a little each night as opposed to waiting until the last minute. Like Sanj and Anup, Jamie found it easy to make friends through sports. He is a solid B student.

Yassmin is at Media Providence Friends School. She chose bowling as her required sport in the fall and is now playing basketball, although she said she was nervous at first on game days. Her favorite classes are computers and science and although she finds Spanish challenging, she really likes it. At first, Yassmin needed help with her homework but now finds it much easier. She typically gets about one hour per night. The easiest part of her transition was making new friends. She reports that she gets along with everybody! On an interesting note, Yassmin says that at first testing was hard for her but that she is still glad that SRV didn't emphasize it too much because she figured it out on her own within 2 or 3 weeks and was grateful she was spared prior to that. Yass gets mostly A's and B's.