Middle School-- was it bad?

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A friend of mine is writing a paper for a scholarship, and using the paper she wants to improve how middle schools handle Aspies. How was middle school for you? Were you pulled out, dropped out, or did you manage, or even enjoy it? Please vote, and then give your feedback.

It was hell.

The solution is to go back to the small, K thru 8 elementary school and allow lots of multi-age activities. The culture becomes toxic with that age group because they are all dumped in together in a huge group and isolated. It's like a barrel of rotting apples.

My kids' tiny charter school (K-8th) uses the "Positive Discipline" system and doesn't have that toxic culture. People are actually nice to each other. My kids have both graduated, but I'm still on the Board of Trustees because it just feels good to be there.

If you're anywhere near here, your friend can visit. Would that help in writing the paper?

I hated middle school with a passion. I was regularly picked on for not being 'normal' and the faculty did nothing effective to stop it. Eventually I would lose all my cool and get in a fight. Only then would the administrators do any thing even remotely meaningful. I often said in middle school that the rules were engineered to screw every one over. If the district ever demolishes the building I will ask them if they need any help.

Hi, I am the one with the research paper. My son's in 5th grade and this year has been short of being hell. So, I am doing the paper for two reasons, to improve my son's chances to survive as well as to promote a better way for future little aspies. Any kind of suggestions on how to improve school's approach, what's the worst they can do and stories of drop-outs that could have been prevented, how homeschooling might have helped and why, etc. would be helpful. I got two years to complete the paper, but need lots and lots of help with info.
Thanks all!! !

Middle school was the worst experience of my life.
We were practically forced to socialize. No one could go to the library during lunch, we all had to either outside or in the cafeteria, where it was impossible to read/study because of the lack of light and the noise.
There was a public library nearby, but it was closed at lunchtime.
I usually spent my lunch wandering around the school and waiting for it to be over, avoiding any encounters with people.
Plus, there was drama and P.E., the two subjects I absolutely dreaded. In the classroom, we didn't have separate desks, but tables where people ended up facing each other. I didn't feel comfortable at all, and resorted to my special interests (computer games) every day to relieve stress instead of doing school work, which reminded me of these negative experiences. This is probably why I suddenly quit academic work - it reminded me of the stress that the classroom environment was causing me. The teachers weren't too fond of me either. I was rejected the French award, even though my French mark was extremely high, most likely because I've complained too much to my homeroom (French) teacher about the stress in my life. He always put my problem solving skills as being "satisfactory" or "needing improvement" because of this.
I want to forget. But I cannot forget. I remember every second of that awful time.

Yeah, it sucks, nothing anyone can do except home school, which my parents dont have time for. People are complete as*holes and will verbally attack anyone with any slight difference than them.

I didn't have a particularly hard time in middle school. 8th Grade was probably my favorite year of school. After that education was a nigtmare. I hated high school. I hated all the students. I hated most of the teachers. By the time it was over I hated both my parents and step-parents.

Never went since theres no such thing as middle school in England.

Lots of problems for me. To be fair, nobody knew of AS back then. I also went to school with a group of kids that even my teachers commented were the most vicious kids they had ever seen.

I was awkward about my body, shy, and middle school had PE classes that mandated taking a shower after class. The whole communal shower issue created a horror story for my life that nicely traumatized me for years to come. I don't have issues with it now, but IMHO, making kids shower together in a society that has issues with public nudity just makes no sense. The idea of skinny dipping at the swimming hole is ancient history since before my generation, so expecting kids to go from constant modesty to baring all before their peers is pretty stupid.

The trauma of one thing fingered me as a weak link, so everyone started in on me. I struggled with suicidal desires well into high school.

Not that I can say that communal showers were the "cause" of this horror, but given the overall circumstances, it made things a lot worse for me.

It was sheer hell for me, with the worst being 8th grade. Between grades 5-8, I went to 4 different schools. Grade 5 was my second year in a terrible school. All they cared about, at least for the boys, was sports. I was neither good at nor interested in sports and never understood the big deal about it, so I was an outcast. At one point, they all started saying I was gay because boys are supposed to like sports. Fortunately, I got out of there at the end of the year, but where I went wasn't much better.

After a terrible summer of being forced to for the first time in my life, spend just about every day in the family swimming pool, I was sent to Catholic school for 6th grade. Alot of the kids picked on me just because I was new. Some did lighten up, but others did not. In addition, the school administration was very biased towards certain kids, mostly kids from money families, politicians' families, and so on, so I was pretty much treated as a second class citizen.

After another summer of forced swimmming, I started grade 7. In grade 7, I ended up in a private school in a class full of kids who had been kicked out of other schools, so of course I didn't fit in. I was constantly bullied not only by the kids in my class, but my sister and her friends as well, since she often told lies about me and got others to pick on me. I also think the school was biased against boys, since I often witnessed boys and girls do identical things and nothing wsa done to the girls, but the boys were usually given detentions. Case in point, my sister got into an argument with a kid and hit him, in front of a whole class and a teacher. He was sent to the office and nothing happened to her and even our parents praised her. I did the same thing, I had to serve detention, and caught hell from our parents. When I asked why it was OK for her and wrong for me, I just got yelled at more for mouthing off. My parents seemed to think punishing girls was wrong, so they thought that unfair and discriminatory treatment was perfectly OK.

After yet another summer of forced swimming, I went to public school for 8th grade. That was the worst school year of my life. Some kid decided my voice was too deep, so he started a campaign to make fun of it, by making deep voice and grunting sounds at me all the time. They also made harassing phone calls to my home daily. Of course, my parents didn't care, they just told me to ignore at and insisted it was my fault. I became miserable, depressed, my grades dropped, and I just couldn't handle it anymore. My parents punished me for the whole summer which meant no music, TV, radio, or anything I enjoyed. All I could do was sit around and wait for my sister to tell me it was time to go swimming. They thought taking everything out of my life but swimming would fix me and make me behave right, but of course all it did was make me miserable and show me they were screwing me over. During that summer in 5th grade, they decided they had an issue with my disisterest in swimming, so they decided to cram it down my throat which they thought would force me to love it so I could be like everyone else. It didn't work.

They then told me about this high school they were sending me to that didn't tolerate any foolishness, had high standards, etc., which they thought I wouldn't survive in if I didn't straighten out. I actually wanted to be in a school like that, because, at least in my mind, schools like that hang the kids who did what had been done to me the year before out to dry, instead of just ignoring it. Not only wasn't it like that at all, had a total lack of discipline and pushed this idea that high school wasn't about learning, but about having fun. Of course, my parents didn't want to go to the trouble of finding me another school, so I stayed miserable there for 4 years.

I know I've gone beyond middle school, but I think I've driven my point across it was shear hell for me and I'm glad I never have to go back.

For me, it was pretty terrible. I was bullied the entire time, but I went into detail about that in the bullying thread.

I hated middle school the first few weeks, but as the first year went on I got used to it. My teachers were pretty nice to me, high school has been the worst time for me. I have to take so many pointless classes this year, so there is no reason to be there.