By Jaden Baker
(Continued from Going into Middle School, part one)
Now we had to introduce ourselves. I was nervous to meet the people in this new school. Luckily, I already had friends here; friends from elementary school, that were fun to hang out with. But we were put into different groups, so we couldn’t talk most of the time. I still tried to make some nice new friends.
We started to do something called libation, where they told us we were to use it to keep our ancestors and unhealthy members of our community with us. A few people went up and wanted to do it, but I was feeling a bit salty to speak to the crowd. Also, I did not know anyone who was not well in my community. When we finished libation, we had to go to our classes. The first class I went to, we had to make a circle with the tables. We were each given M&M’s, then we had to take out our papers and pencils. We were given topics on the board. The questions were based on what color of M&M we had gotten, and we had to share what we wrote. I really did not want to get up and do that, speech we have to do before we share something, but they really forced us to say it. I was nervous to talk to everyone out loud, but we had to. I forgot what I wrote, but I think I wrote an average amount.
When we got to math class, I thought I would have one of those mad teachers. We went into the classroom, and the teacher greeted us. She told us to be silent, so I started to believe that she wasn’t a good teacher. She gave us work to do. I thought “it was easy” to myself, and then I thought that this school would be easy work. We did many activities in the class, including group activities. Then we had another class, where we had to learn about our school. I thought it would be E.L.A. but then I noticed we were just talking about the school. The teacher discussed how we are supposed to introduce ourselves before we respond to any question. That got me confused and mad, that we had to do that for every response. We started to do photography. I thought that we were gonna just take pictures the first day but…we just had to take notes about the camera.
After that, we headed to lunch. I was guessing that nobody even wanted to eat. The food was so frozen that you could see ice on it. We had frozen food every day. Often I thought that I could get through this program by cheating, but I knew that would be wrong. Also I knew I wouldn’t learn anything that way.
At the end of the day, we had to sign up for a class. We were only allowed to choose two classes, so I chose two common classes: hip-hop and dance, and martial arts. The first day going to those classes, I took hip hop and dance first. I thought it was fun. When we finished, I went to my next class: martial arts. I liked the class, and was happy I was in it. The master told me that martial arts is about defending yourself.
We started to learn the middle school pledge, and we got put into classes based on what house we were in. I was in X-house, which meant the Malcolm X house. There are also other houses, the Obama house, Che Guevara house, and Roberto Clemente house. Now we started to have to know the school pledge. We spent every single day working on the pledge. They told us we needed to know the pledge to get into the school, so we studied the pledge every day before we went to lunch. There were many people who wanted to show off that they knew the pledge.
Summer Bridge was about to end, and I already knew the whole pledge. We needed to complete the whole pledge to graduate summer bridge. Also we had to do a task they asked us to write. I accidentally made some mistakes, so I wrote the whole task all over again. I was able to complete the task and hand it in on time. We came to the day where they chose who will graduate from Summer Bridge. We went into a room that looked like a judge’s courtroom. We saw a skit performed about a guy who gets into people’s heads and makes them fail. When the skit ended, the teacher told us he was going to give us our last assignment. If he gave us our assignment on an index card, that meant we passed and went on to the graduation. If he didn’t give you an index card, that meant you were not allowed to go. Almost everybody was out f the room, and I was almost the last person left. Finally, they called me up and he gave me an index card.
I stayed up all night to do the assignment, and then the day came. I was graduating from Summer Bridge. We had to get there early, and when we got there not everyone was there. Some people had forgotten to do the task, so they had to do it quickly. We started to walk into the room, and I saw my mom and my sister. We sang the pledge, and called out our houses. I felt happy, and my mom took me out afterwards. And that was the last day of Summer Bridge.
Now I am a full fledged Eagle, and I am (awesome, obviously) cool. I am passing all my classes, and I am now going on trips for good behavior. There are many more activities, and I want to do them all! I will be the biggest, smartest, coolest kid in this school. Well, that’s a maybe.
The Eagle Express 