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71 C H A P T E R 3 Lakeview—Journey’s End The night after Hillside’s sixth grade promotion, I went to promotion night at Lakeview Elementary School. The difference is so remarkable , it is hard to imagine that the students are the same age and attending schools only twenty miles apart. I hurry toward the entrance with small groups of parents and students and I am immediately aware that the dress seems more formal. Once in the auditorium, a look around confirms this observation; jeans, caps, and T-shirts are nowhere in sight. A few men and women are dressed in suits, perhaps having stopped here directly from work. This is only the second sixth grade group to be promoted from the two-year-old school, which houses grades four to six. Generous playing fields separate Lakeview Elementary School from the main road. Big windows look out from this handsome, redbrick one-story building to surrounding woods and fields. The school is on a campus that also includes the high school, vocational center, and the middle school, and it is a mile south of the center of town. For Lakeview Elementary School students, transition to seventh grade means going to school just a few hundred yards away from their old school. The promotion takes place in the school’s auditorium/gym, larger and better equipped than Hillside’s. Just before the program begins, all ninety sixth-graders clamor up the stage tiers to their places. Clearly, they, and not the teachers, are the main attraction tonight. Unlike promotion night in Hillside where teachers played a prominent role, handing out T-shirts and certificates to officially pass each student on to the middle school, Lakeview’s teachers are part of the audience and have no role in the program. The principal is an articulate and confident master of ceremonies from a podium on the floor in front. The event is a finely tuned performance. Students play music, sing songs, and almost all of them give brief “I remember when . . .” snap shots in clear, sure voices. The principal delivers a short but rousing motivational speech reminding students of the importance of this educational milestone, “As you move toward the middle school, nervously and excitedly, dream it and you can do it,” he encourages them. “One never fails until he or she quits.” The band director announces that the songs they are performing are at the seventh grade level of difficulty. One song has lyrics about anticipated adventures at the middle school—lockers, changing classes, new friends, and more homework—and is sung to the tune, Ob-la-di, Obla -da. The band and the chorus are very good and I am moved by the effort that is evident in being able to accomplish a piece of music that is slightly beyond their reach, despite an occasional off-key instrument or a complicated phrase sung by only a handful of students. As I listen, I wonder if high expectations, hard work, and determined involvement are characteristic of everyday culture in this elementary school. Here are twelve-year-olds with an already well-developed sense of a public self. They are poised for action, aware of being watched, and seem familiar with being the focus of attention. In both promotion ceremonies , there is an atmosphere of hope, enthusiasm, promise, and possibility , but tonight I observe a confident reach toward the future—a demeanor that was not evident in Hillside. In the last fifteen minutes of the hour-long program, there is a slide presentation of the annual end-of-the-year overnight trip to an urban area and science museum. The presentation is accompanied to music from the futuristic movie Star Trek. There is no such overnight field trip for Hillside students. The program in Lakeview is a brief, appreciative look back and a long, spirited look forward—ready to take on new adventures and locations. After the program, everyone is welcomed to the cafeteria for refreshments. Immediately, the students, who have maintained a reserved, good-natured stage presence for most of the program, make a noisy, hasty retreat toward the refreshments; public decorum for an adult audience quickly changes as students rush to connect with their friends. Unlike the previous evening in Hillside, most of these students make no attempt to find their parents after the program. I receive cool responses when I say hello to otherwise friendly and receptive students. “This is our celebration; it is not a time...

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