Adaline E. Kent Middle School

We are very impressed with this school and the amazing faculty it retains year over year. The teachers are incredibly dedicated to their discipline and are so passionate about their subject and students. We feel fortunate to have our children get taught by them each and every day. It's cool to study and get good grades here which is a powerful environment for kids to be in and around. They seem to elevate each other and really help each other through study groups. There are also super extra-curricular activities that go own during lunch and after school. Because it's a smaller class size then surrounding middle schools, there's a closeness with the classes that is evident. It is a gem of a community that feels safe, positive and a place to call home for such formidable years.

PART 1: My experience at this school was not that great. The school year is almost to an end and it is only getting worse. Ever since around September of 2016, I got really engaged with politics. How does this matter you might ask? Well, I am a republican born in Texas and as you know, California and Texas are near opposites. I bought a Donald Trump sweater to show my support for this election, and yes I wore it to school. The reactions from teachers are horrible. I get dirty looks very often from teachers and few actually respect me as a student or person. If you are working at a school with children you should be treating them like children, not a political rival. Beside from that, now that it is the end of the school year, teachers have became a lot worse. Kids are really exited to get out of school, especially Kent. The teachers response to this was them telling us that as our excitement goes up their patience goes down. If you are a teacher you should have patience, a very important and simple skill to have. Why become a teacher if you cannot stand students? Now I will move on to School Lunches. I personally do not eat the school lunches because they are overpriced, and disgusting. My friends have showed me and let me try their lunches that the cafeteria gives them, and they are wretched meals. The pieces looks like a stiff piece of cardboard with frozen cheese put on top of it. Half the time the food isn't even properly prepared of heated. If you are going to put your child in this school, avoid the school provided lunches. Now lets move on to something the staff seem to care about more than learning, which is punishment. I see even the nicest of kids getting detentions for the stupidest reasons. Most of the time, running in the halls. This would make sense if this was a indoor school with slim halls being very crouded, but this school is completely outdoors, besides the rooms, obviously. Something that has happened to me before is that my next class is all the way across the school and I only have around a minute to get there. So I jog my way over just so I don't get a detention for being late. A teacher sees me running through a near empty pathway and makes me walk back to where I started, then walk all the way to the next class, making me late, giving me a detention for being late, and running. How silly is that?

Kent Middle is an interesting type of school. This year, out of all of my 4 years being a student, this is the worst. Bullying:Most people proclaim that there is a small amount to no bully activity on campus, but this is false. Most of the harassment and bullying is done discreetly and in todays social media. 2 months in to 2016, one student in the 8th grade changed schools because of the negative attention toward him. Most children that get bullied with out physical harassment don't show it as much as kids do that are physically hurt, but these kids can be more tormented than with physical bullying. Teachers:The teachers on this campus are quite nice, but lacking in teaching skills. They do not have the capability to provide the full learning experience to all of the children. Most students are left out, and unaccounted for. Math is very lacking in this area. To the contrary, then Spanish taught at Kent is quite good, and is probably the best taught subject of all. Homework:The homework quantity is a problem. Most students always complain about the excessive amounts of homework, but it is different here. Most teachers don't even bother to consider that we HAVE OTHER CLASSES with different homework. Factoring in all of that, it, at least for me, sometimes leads to 2 hours of homework. In our agenda which they give us it states that in the 8th grade there should be a maximum of about 1 hour of homework. Conclusion: Unless you want your child to be (slightly) harassed, ill taught, and unprepared for high school, you might want to pick a different secondary school.

I go to Kent Middle School at the moment, and this year and throughout the years, its been horrible. The kids are snobby and all teachers except for a few (Mrs. Ward and a couple others understand) don't understand what the children are going through. For example, I have after school activities that take up most of the day, and the homework that the teachers assign will keep me up too at least 11:00, which is an hour past my bed time. What the teachers don't understand is that we have lives outside of school, and we don't have time to spend an hour on math and an hour on science both, with another hour and a half of history, language arts, and spanish combined. I honestly believe that the academics are great at this school, they get you ready for highschool, but with the social pressures and excessive amount of homework it makes it hard to focus. I wake up before 7:00 every day, and going to bed late because of homework doesn't make my mornings any brighter. Children my age are supposed to get 8-9 hours of sleep every night, but at Kent Middle School, that won't happen. You'll be getting 6-7 hours. Back on the topic of the snobby kids, they gossip like CRAZY. Don't trust anyone.