Carl Sandburg Principal To Impending Fifth Graders: ‘The Fun Has Just Begun’

The debate has continued over the last year or so whether impending Neshaminy School District fifth graders were ready for the perils, stress, and maturity of moving to the district middle schools; but as new Carl Sandburg middle schoolers, and yes, fifth graders, are discovering, the fun has just begun.

Carl Sandburg Middle School, which just a few years ago served Levittown area students in sixth through ninth grade – has undergone many changes throughout the years, first with the sendoff of it’s ninth graders to the recently renovated district high school and next with the acceptance of area fifth graders.

Parents from across the district stressed their worry over the school board decision, fearing that fifth grade students, 10 and 11 year olds, just weren’t ready for the peer pressure and the sense of discovery that comes with junior high.

“I know the parents were nervous,” said veteran Principal Dawn Kelly, who has served as the school’s head for 13 years. “But the kids are really doing great.”

Kelly, who operates the school Facebook page, spent much of the day checking in with fifth and sixth grade students and publishing photos and statuses to the social media page – keeping parents at ease. The kids worked an entire day in the school without seventh and eighth graders.

“I was nervous about pulling this off,” Kelly told LevittownNow.com Wednesday afternoon. “But we’ve spent an entire year developing these schedules and developing this plan.”

Kelly even moved teachers to new classrooms last year to accommodate the transition before it was officially approved – leaving fifth and sixth graders in a hallway by themselves – separated from the school’s older children.

According to Kelly, standards upheld for the fifth graders differ from those required of middle education. While fifth graders are required to have 120 minute blocks of instruction, classes at Sandburg are only 50 minutes long. “It worked out kind of perfectly,” said Kelly. The difference in required instruction time leaves fifth grade students with an entirely different bell schedule – a schedule that leaves them out of the paths of older middleschoolers,

As Kelly traveled throughout the fifth and sixth grade hallway, she took the time to stop in each of the classrooms – questioning students about their schedules and keeping them comfortable about their impending middle school experience.

Kelly even organized for students to travel throughout the building on their own on Wednesday, practicing their schedule, meeting their teachers, unlocking and organizing individual lockers, and finding their way to each of their classes.

The students, by an overwhelming majority, said the entire process was “exciting”.

“See these kids are all used to being followed around and led through the hallways by teachers,” said Kelly. “This process has helped them learn their schedules best, since they are the one doing the searching.”

While some students had trouble with opening locks, or finding the right classroom, Kelly’s “Power of Yet” encouraged them to keep trying.

“Whenever a student says they can’t do something or they don’t know how, we’re finishing their sentence with ‘yet…’,” said Kelly.

Students, who worried their teachers would be mean or strict, were greeted at the middle school with warm welcomes, open arms and a sense of new found maturity and freedom.

“I think they envisioned middle school as the fun being gone,” said Kelly. “But really the fun has just begun.”