7th-Graders Teeter on a Pivotal Point in Life

With only a few days left in the school year, Principal Helena Reaves rounded up her seventh-graders at Balboa Middle School for a farewell assembly intended to launch them into summer and prime them for next fall.

Talk about a tough crowd. The kids had already taken their final exams. They had turned in their school books and emptied their lockers.

And now, with only the final bell separating them from summer vacation, they were flying high, burning a brand of year-end energy that made it hard to sit still, let alone pay attention.

Teachers patrolled the aisles, doing their best to dial down the volume. It was a losing cause. The tide of middle school madness is never higher than at the end of the year.

And for these seventh-grade students--squirming and squealing, more than 400 strong--that current was lifted by the realization that at long last they stood atop the middle school heap.

Undaunted, Reaves leaped on stage determined to deliver a message. It’s easy to talk about what’s wrong with education, Reaves knows, to focus on kids who aren’t making the grade.

She wanted to say something to the students who haven’t given up, to those who struggle to get by and those who show up every day, work hard and excel.

“I wanted to speak to this seventh-grade class specifically because it is such an outstanding class,” said the second-year principal, her words temporarily quieting the year-end din.

“Your work this year has been exceptional,” she said. “And we know that you will continue to work to make Balboa a better place. You have been one of our best classes, and we look forward to seeing great things from you in the fall.”

If schools are a reflection of our communities, then take a good look at Balboa and take stock.

It was a year of record class sizes, with one seventh-grade science class topping 40 students for a stretch. It was a year rocked by a shift in school boundaries, a historic move that means the middle school now will feed students to both Ventura high schools.

It was a year in which mounting social pressures--the rise of gangs and drugs, the erosion of families and school funding--continued to fray the middle school net, further challenging the staff at the sprawling east Ventura campus.

And yet, despite the difficulties, the lessons of middle school played on.

The year brought seventh-grade workshops on battling discrimination and the school’s first peer mediation program, designed to train students to settle conflicts before they turn violent.

It brought an academic world dominated by advanced mathematics and classic literature and the study of ancient civilizations.

Most importantly it brought a coming of age, a watershed time when students start to decide whether school, or anything else for that matter, holds any promise for them.

Everyone passes through the seventh grade, from the children of civic leaders to those of poor immigrants. There, they embark on a journey of great physical and emotional change, a pivotal period that could set a course for a lifetime of success or a lifelong series of failures.

“It’s the year when everyone stops treating you like a kid,” explained Katie Scroggins, who turned 13 on Friday, the day after her seventh-grade year came to a close. “They start holding you accountable, so you have to work your hardest. It’s the time when you do a lot of growing up.”

Day of Reckoning

In teacher Beth Pallares’ seventh-grade class earlier this month, the school year ended the same way it started. Wide-eyed students, rattled by what lay in store, shuffled into Room 14.

It was the day of reckoning known as the final exam.

Perhaps no two words hold more fear for middle school students. And Pallares did little to ease the anxiety of her pupils. She told stories of how the final had in the past reduced some students to tears.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, this test is an 11,” said Pallares, who in her 14th year at Balboa has taught seventh-grade longer than any other teacher at the school. She is one of seven, seventh-grade core teachers at Balboa. As a core teacher, she has three groups of students for two periods a day: English and world geography.

“If you have prepared for the test and done the work necessary, it will end up seeming easier than that,” she told the class before the three-day test began.

The students were quieter than they had been all year, all eyes fixed on her.

“What grade do you think the majority of students will get?” asked Jennie Trego, one of her best students.

“There are people who will earn As,” the teacher said. “Most people will get Bs and Cs. And I have some students who will fail.”

The room erupted in groans. A couple of kids dropped their heads in their hands.

“You are being tested on information that has taken nine weeks to study,” she added. “I expect you to know it backward and forward.”

With that, she strode to the back of the room, wound a kitchen timer and set her kids to work.

Since the opening bell last September, the school year had been building to this point.

For nine months, the 48-year-old Santa Paula resident challenged her charges, pushing them to get excited about learning and to prepare for eighth grade and beyond.

During the year, the veteran educator served as friend and mother, counselor and confidant. She added nurse to the list on the day of the final.

Clutching his stomach, 12-year-old Ricky Matthews asked to be excused from class. He later explained that the ache in the pit of his belly probably came from junk food he had consumed the night before. But he admitted that the big test might also have something to do with it.

“The test was hard,” he said, still doubled-over half an hour later. “Really hard.”

The degree of difficulty should have been no surprise. Pallares had been tough and demanding all year. And she was especially hard on this group, which she considers one of the brightest classes of her career.

“My kids leave my classroom able to walk into anybody’s eighth-grade class and function and succeed,” she said. “I am demanding, yes. But, by golly, I am not one of the ones they forget. And what we do in here is not forgotten.”

The truth is, however, these kids would have walked into the eighth grade with or without her guidance. No one fails the seventh grade. It is district policy not to hold students back for fear of bruising their fragile self-esteem.

That said, the bulk of students in Pallares’ class--and at Balboa--excel in their studies.

Nearly one-third of the school’s 428 seventh-graders made the honor roll last quarter, more than in the sixth- and eighth-grade classes. The seventh grade produced 24 straight-A students and 91 students who have made the honor roll the entire year.

Then there are the other measures of academic success. Nothing matches the excitement of the final exam in wood shop, where Vice Principal Lane Jackson makes a guest appearance to test the strength of student-produced folding chairs.

“I climb on and if they hold steady, the kids get an A,” Jackson said. “If they creak, it’s an A minus. If they break and I fall, they fail.”

In music instructor Julie Werth’s band class, the final served two purposes. It helped set final grades and determined whether the seventh-graders would earn a seat next year in Balboa’s concert band.

One by one, they lugged their instruments into a practice room for the audition. Some emerged holding their heads and their instruments high.

Diana Miller, 13, was among the triumphant: “She said I was one of the best ones.”

“Which pieces did you excel at?” asked Jennie Trego, battling a bad case of nerves as she fingered her baritone horn.

“I didn’t think any of them,” Diana answered. “But she said I did good.”

Music is among the many interests Diana cultivated during the year. But it is something she will drop next year to pursue other electives, such as Spanish and helping out in the school office.

“I can’t believe I’m going to be in high school the year after next,” she said. “I’m just nervous about having to get out of the house and having to pay my own bills. I want to grow up and move out; I just don’t want to pay for it.”

Finally, near the end of the period, Jennie Trego got her shot. The test was easy, a chair in the concert band reserved. Her musicianship was so good, in fact, that she was awarded a certificate of outstanding achievement during the seventh grade’s year-end assembly.

A Magic Day

Toward the end of the year, Balboa’s highest achievers earned recognition of their own. Students who had made the honor roll all year won a daylong excursion to Magic Mountain, the amusement park of choice for the iron-stomached set.

They never worked this hard in school. Running from one whirling machine to the next, Balboa kids spun and twirled on rides named Viper, Ninja and Jet Stream.

These souped-up, super-speed contraptions are designed to make riders weak and woozy. Others spin so violently that pregnant women and the weak-hearted aren’t allowed to ride.

But for the younger generation, they are child’s play.

Half a dozen eighth-graders had the ultimate middle school experience, anteing up their extra cash for a turn on a high-tech bungee jump. It is advertised as an opportunity to experience flight, to soar from 150 feet at speeds of more than 50 mph.

“That’s slower than my mom drives,” said 13-year-old Julia Cox, moments before making the heart-stopping descent. “I wish she were here to see this.”

A group of 13-year-old seventh-graders--Katie Phillippe, Iresha Lee, Maureen Villegas and Tina Farley--scurried through the park, breaking into a trot every now and then, intent on boarding every ride in the place.

One minute, they were erupting in screams, pinned deep in their seats by gravitational force. The next minute, they were spinning end over end on white knucklers built to scramble their equilibrium.

“I couldn’t go to sleep last night, I was so excited,” said Maureen, a straight-A student in Beth Pallares’ first- and fourth-period classes. “I’ve been looking forward to this all year.”

Indeed, the Magic Mountain trip was the culmination of a long, hard year. To make the honor roll, students must maintain better than a B average. Teachers figure that anyone who can do that the entire year deserves a day to romp and play.

But after lunch, Iresha Lee was ready to sit out a ride. The trip to Magic Mountain was only a minor incentive for doing well this year.

“This trip is fun and all,” she said, “but I didn’t do my best just to come here. I did it for myself.’

Boundary Shift

With 1,230 students, Balboa is the largest of the four middle schools in the Ventura Unified School District.

Bordered on the east by a spectacular windrow of trees, the sprawling campus is tucked behind a row of condominium complexes and a tract of single-family homes just east of Buena High School.

The school draws students from a small portion of the neighborhood adjacent to the school, from the recently incorporated enclave of Cabrillo Village and from the unincorporated community of Saticoy.

But mostly it draws students from Ventura’s east end, a sea of single-family homes that have sprouted over the past three decades in an area stretching from Victoria Avenue to Wells Road.

That is also the area of the city where schools are most crowded, a reality that brought a controversial midyear plan to shift school boundaries.

For some seventh-graders at Balboa, who believed when school started that they eventually would head to Buena High, the new plan means they will attend Ventura High after next year.

“It’s a bit of an inconvenience, but I think it will be OK,” said 13-year-old Ben Hall, who will break a family tradition of older siblings who attended Balboa and Buena. “It might be hard for me to make friends, but it’s always hard when you change schools.”

Hang around Balboa long enough and there can be no doubt that the pressures are mounting. Fourteen classes were added after the school year started, to deal with crowding at the middle school. Physical education classes and science labs overflowed with students like never before.

A summertime construction program will help ease the pain. But it won’t take it away completely.

“I’m concerned about the numbers; they can’t get too high,” Vice Principal Jackson said. “But if anyone can handle it, it’s the teachers here at Balboa.”

At the end of a long, hard year, Balboa’s teachers weren’t thinking that far ahead. Piling into the school library for the final staff meeting of the year, they were harried but still in good humor.

Math teacher Jim Darling asked them all to close their eyes and imagine where they would be in two weeks. He then filled the room with the strains of opera.

“If this doesn’t help you,” he said, “then I’m sorry.”

Community volunteers were honored for their service to Balboa and received a standing ovation from the staff. A couple of teachers, leaving Balboa for assignments elsewhere, were sent off with best wishes.

The warmest send-off, however, was reserved for math teacher Robert Quiroz, retiring after 32 years at the school and 37 years in education. Office staff members estimate that he has taught more than 100,000 students during his career.

“Thirty-seven years is a long time,” Quiroz said later, surrounded by students asking him to sign their yearbooks. “It’s time to move on to something else.”

At Balboa Middle School, it is also time for the seventh-graders to move on.

Next year, they will be the oldest and biggest kids on campus. And they will be a year away from making the giant leap to high school. It is a prospect exciting, if not a bit unsettling, for parents.

“We just want him to keep his grades up and have a good, fun year,” said Lynn Coert, whose son, Lance, collected year-end achievement awards in math, science and home economics.

“I’m just really pleased with his seventh-grade year,” she added. “I just know he’s going to do well.”

Added Chris Castellanos, Katie Scroggins’ mom: “It doesn’t get any easier. She made it through this year OK. Let’s just hope she makes it through the next one OK.”

By the last day of school, Beth Pallares has done all she can to make sure that Lance, Katie and all the rest have a measure of confidence and momentum to propel them into the eighth grade and beyond.

She knows she could not have tried any harder to motivate her students and that each will take away something valuable from this school year. Still, always the teacher, she took the last 10 minutes of class to hammer home the message one last time.

“I want you to go into the eighth grade knowing that you can do anything you set your minds to,” she told them. “You have the ability. Every one of you in here has the ability to set goals and accomplish those goals. Look me in the eyes. I mean it. Do not fool yourselves into setting low goals. Set your sights high.

“Your lives are going to take you way beyond this room and way beyond this school. And I can’t wait to hear about all of the things that you will go on to accomplish.”

superintendent of schools

About This Series: “Coming of Age: Learning the Lessons of Middle School,” is an occasional series tracing the progress of a group of students at Balboa Middle School in Ventura through their seventh-grade year. Previous articles have tracked the scholastic and social challenges facing the seventh-grade class. Now, with summer at hand, students are eager for vacation. And, teachers hope, they are ready for their final year in middle school.