Rattling the rules does not always make sense even when the “why” is very clear. Growing up in a small town in rural America I remember the anxiety and fear of that long awaited rite-of-passage from junior high to high school. The anxiety and fear in this incredible new journey into high school came from the initiation that took place in our local high school. The school administrators and teachers and any other adult on a campus just seemed to turn and look the other way when the freshman class was harassed and even hazed by the upperclassman. Any junior or senior could walk up to a freshman student and tell them to “drop them or lose them.” If you did not comply your pants could end up flying from the campus flagpole or tossed out onto the middle of the gymnasium floor during the girls PE class. I was not very popular in junior high and thinking about going to the high school campus made me feel I was quite alone and fearful. This transition time was made easier for me by having friends already in high school. One of my neighbors and best friends was already a junior so I came to high school with an ally.
I feel I rattled the rules when I took a position as a youth pastor in rural America with one of the first changes I incorporated. I shifted the promotion ages a bit. I wanted to create a junior high youth group that began with 6th grade and a high school group beginning with 8th grade. The way our schools are set up in my town is fourth through sixth graders are on a campus, junior high is seventh through eighth grade, and high school is the normal ninth through twelfth. Our church Bible study classrooms were set up with fourth through sixth grades being a part of children's ministry, and junior high Bible class was seventh through eighth graders who didn't really belong to children's ministry or youth ministry. Youth ministry was only considered ninth through twelfth grades.
In making the shift of classroom age divisions I created a new youth group for junior high (6-7) and a part of youth ministry and moved the eighth grade in with the high school. My logic behind this was to mix the grades so that a student at a lower level campus would already have built friendships with an upper level campus student so as to help relieve some of the anxiety for the younger student knowing they had an older student that would look out for them when they moved up, especially the eighth graders going into high school.
This was a move that parents and students alike did not agree with or understand until they saw it in action through their own students and in their personal experiences.
