When going in to my internship, I have the pleasure of being there at 7:00 in the morning, bright and early. The classes I sit through are the two earliest classes of the day, and so it is much easier for me to see how physically exhausted they are and the differences between all of the kids in my internship. In order to compare all the differences I could between middle-schoolers and ensure that I covered all of the physical developments that I could, I referenced an article from understood.org that lists physical developments that largely happen during middle school.
Height and Weight:
When someone says that “everyone hits their growth spurt at different times,” they are certainly right. A crazy thing about the middle schoolers that I noticed the first day was that some of them were inches taller than me, while others were inches shorter, leaving a lot of distance between them as well. As far as weight goes, I don’t think I have seen serious weight gain from any of them in the past couple of weeks, however they eat so much. One of the kids pulls out at least half his lunch in the class, and it is literally his first class of the day! He will eat a burger, string cheese, and chips, and still have a whole other meal in his lunchbox, so his mom must know he eats a lot. I haven’t physically seen the weight gain but I imagine if they keep eating like that they most likely will.
Clumsiness:
One thing I think they are all starting to notice as they start playing sports is that they are much more agile and strong, and you can physically see them walking around the hallways. They are constantly messing with other people while they walk around and half of them don’t even seem to walk, but instead run or race through the halls. With this though there’s a lot of instances of people tripping and falling or running into other people, I mean people run into other people all the time at that school I swear. I mean just the other day one of the kids came into the second hour class with a broken foot and Noltie asked him what he did to it, and he said that he fractured “the place where all his foot bones met” and cut his toe open and had to get stitches. I was thinking to myself he must of been doing something crazy to have that happen but when she asked how, he said, “someone ran into me in the hallway and kicked my foot and it broke.” I was just in shock because these kids had to have been so clumsy to do that.
Tiredness:
I have actually been really surprised at the energy level the kids have in class since its the first and second hours of the morning. They are always really talkative and lively when they come in and most of the time Noltie has trouble getting the first hour to stop talking. That really surprised me because high school starts at 9 in the morning and we are 10x quieter than the middle schoolers who start at 7:30 in the morning. Besides even talking the kids are always wanting to move around and if the lounge (her reading area complete with pillows, blankets and a futon) is open for the day, the can’t hardly keep themselves contained in their chairs and are racing to get their first. I know they need a lot of sleep during this stage of development so I have been very surprised at the amount of energy they actually have.
Fine / Gross Motor Movements:
Because of where they are in their developmental stages, the eighth grade boys have finally had the opportunity to try to play football (I believe all the other sports are available the year before). I think almost everyday I am there I see them wearing their football jersey’s around because they have another game. They definitely all believe they should play football and that they have the skills to do, thus every boy having a jersey on it seems like. The kids and their coaches are more confident in the ability to use fine and gross motor skills that are essential for team sports and so football has been one of the biggest parts of middle school life right now. I want to go out and watch one of their games sometime to see how they are on the feel and if all that talk is just talk or they can really play. Regardless, they love it and are the point in physical development where they feel they can do it and I love watching them get so excited about it.
Differences:
As far as maturation, the girls are most certainly more mature than most of the boys, though the boys physically have matured quite a bit. It is crazy how one looks like they could be in fifth grade still and another looks as if they could be in a senior here at Rock Bridge. However, they definitely show many differences in how they think vs. how they are growing. The boys still make all those immature jokes that my first graders made this summer, but they do it looking like an 18-year-old. It just has amazed me as I have observed the past couple of weeks how different each and every individual is in each class that I am there for, and how their developmental stages play a vital role in that.
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