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High school. It’s the point in life where students are so close to the educational finish line they can taste the ending. And they all come from the same place: middle school. But, at the same time, students from different middle schools adapt differently to that next step. High school.
At Highland Middle School a student can stand on the top of the stairs coming from the 6th grade Maroon hallway and not even see the ground. All they are able to view is a sea of students going all the way to the opposite end of the school.
There are at least 100 people per grade at Highland, and every year students get grouped with different students, as there are two teams per grade, forcing each student to meet at least three new people a year. This vast number of kids is nothing compared to how many people are at LHS, but as true as this is, Highland still has way more 8th grade students than Oak Grove, Roundout or St. Joes. Therefore, Highlanders rule the halls at LHS which warrants head-nods, waves, and shouts of hello when going to their next class. It also allows them to walk around in confidence, with their chin up, head held high, and chest puffed out because they are the ones getting hellos from not only people in their own grade but upperclassmen too who share common ground with them.
This is good for the Highland student who has confidence walking through the crowded hallways and going to class. It helps them win elections and get votes from fellow students.
And some might also say that since Highland offers so many extracurricular activities they could be a tad more used to the stress of being in a sport, band and the musical, while still juggling homework, friends and family. This could be unfair to the students who went to smaller schools because it forces them to try to adapt quicker to doing more activities, and it might force them to more quickly break out of their shell in an effort to meet more people and in order to get the coveted signs of hello in the hallways of LHS.
At Oak Grove everyone knows everyone else, and everyone’s family knows everyone else’s family. This causes for some pretty tight ties within the student environment. Even the student-faculty relationships could be tighter since the faculty can spend more time getting to know each student, unlike at a school such as Highland where there are too many students to get to know each and every one of them.
So even though Grovers don’t necessarily ‘rule’ the hallways like Highlanders, in a sense, they do because they have had at least one class with every person who was in their grade back at Oak Grove. At Highland, a kid might not know fifteen people who came from their school because they never had a class with them.
Also, Oak Grovers are ahead of most students their age academically because Oak Grove focuses a lot of attention on curriculum and academics in general. One can look at any year of the Top Ten students at LHS, and at least three of them are usually from Oak Grove. Freshmen from Oak Grove who take French can sometimes be seen in French 3 honors. Being so far ahead academically causes students from Oak Grove to be vocal in many classes.
So between tight relationships with most other kids in their grade and excelling in academics, Grovers can be considers just as big ‘rulers of the hall’ as Highland or St. Joes.
To say that kids from smaller schools have a tougher time adjusting to the vast halls of Libertyville High School is an understatement. Kids at St. Joes, one of the more popular small schools represented at LHS, walk into the high school, and the first thought that enters their mind is HUGE. Walking into the crowded sea of students running through the hallways is not quite the same experience as ambling down the one hallway that contains every classroom visited throughout the average school day at St. Joes.
The socialization is also automatically harder for the minority because freshmen don’t tend to break away from their friends, and with all of the Highlanders sticking together and all the Grovers sticking together, the St. Joes kids are left to fend for themselves along with the rest of small-school kids.
St. Joes only offers four sports: track, basketball, volleyball and cheerleading. So one thing small school students look forward to in high school? Extracurricular activities. The curriculum is also much different. While St. Joes puts emphasis on classes like religion and none on P.E., LHS does a thorough job of making their students participate in P.E. and doesn’t even offer religion as a mandatory class.
So overall, while smaller school kids have more of a disadvantage when it comes to entering the colossal halls of LHS, they definitely have way more to look forward to in terms of newer and bigger things than any kid from Highland or Oak Grove.
graphic illustation by Gina Smith and Aubrey Clement