This was more like 4th and 5th grade for me--do I still get to count as a good and interesting person? (By 7th and 8th grade, I'd found cool teachers who didn't mind that I hung out in their classrooms after school and a handful of friends who helped me forget that I was otherwise a social misfit.)

I taught 7/8 for years and I found those kids are dying for someone to talk about real life with. My literacy lessons were good, but start talking about drinking, drugs, consequences-rapt attention.

Verily

True story. It's the period of my life where everything seemed to go sideways.

Jr High was a mixed bag for me- was treated pretty badly by a clique of mean girls. I’ve been teaching 7th and 8th for the last twenty years and the caliber of students/humans has really deteriorated. While we always have a handful of absolute gems, the majority of the kids are rude, disrespectful, unmotivated, entitled and racist. The racism is new- really didn’t see it prior to last year- we loop with the same kids for two years. This group is just awful to each other and to the adults.

You betcha. In spades. On steroids. And in effing Topeka, Kansas, as a “new student” no less. Hell + double hell.