Sixth Grade

Lest anyone think there's only one child in the house...

Sarah's first day of sixth grade was "amazing, stupendous, awesome," and several other glowing adjectives.  She's starting her fourth year in AAP, and by dint of being in sixth grade, she starts switching classes for science and maths.  However, she really likes her homeroom teacher, Mr Tagert, despite his being a Michigan Wolverines fan, because unlike her previous experience with a male teacher, Mr Tagert doesn't yell.  She sits in class with her friends Kassandra, Emma, and Christina; this is the first time all four of them have been in the same classroom, and but for a late-summer snafu, her BFF Giselle would have been in the room as well.

As a sixth grader, Sarah now thoroughly, completely, and finally o-w-n-s the school.  She has registered for Girls On The Run for the fall; she hopes to hear soon that she has been accepted to the team.  She serves this year as a hallway patrol (B/D pod staircase, east end, middle of the stairs) and has learned already that adding the polite touch of "please don't run" tends to achieve more than just ordering kids around.  But all the more, you can truly see the self-confidence, the self-assurance of a sixth grader who has arrived. 

Come the spring, there will be difficult times as she prepares to leave the only school she's ever known. There may be difficult choices ahead, depending on what she wants to do with her gifts in AAP and, crucially, where her friends go.  There will be tears, there will be awkward pain, but for now, the late-summer sun bears down warmly on a girl in her prime at the beginning of the awesomeness that is sixth grade.