Berkley Middle School - Yearbook (Berkley, MA)

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Class History Prelude Don ' t walk behind me, I may not lead. Don ' t walk ahead of me, I may not follow. Walk beside me and just be my friend. We, the graduating class of 1980, began our first year of junior high following meekly in the shadows of seventh and eighth grade students. The first trimester was our beginning. Our first day at B.J H. was chaotic, and most of us were petrified, but wasn ' t bedlam and mass confusion to be expected the natural order of things on the first day of school, especially as sixth graders? The other half of our split class was at the Elemental y School not suffering a bit because they were the highest class in the school. Actu- ally they came out on the short end of the stick when they were new to B.J H. during the seventh grade, and we al- ready knew what the J unior High and the teachers were like. It was somewhat of a comfort to take the bus. Since seventh, eighth and high school students has seniority, we The beginning was a time for making friends, getting teachers ' names straight, and learning to make a quick trip to the lavatory and into the next class without being late or forgetting a book. It was not uncommon during those weeks to walk into Mr. Lussier ' s math class with our geography homework. the puny little sixth graders got whatever seats were left. Dur- ing lunch, our favor- ite period of all, we stuck together (much as lepers do). Again we faced the first day of school, finding it less terrifying and a bit amusing to look down at the sixth graders who were as frightened as we had been the pre- vious year. Between classes, we groaned about the quizzes in Geography or History and the mass of homework we were bogged down with. Though we cringed at the very thought of dissecting a frog, not one of us could think of a truly convincing excuse which might have excluded even one student from this experience, when Ms. Medeiros subtly informed us that she had heard enough whining and moaning, we manned our probes and strangely enough we did a fine job of exploring the delicate insides of our little Ker- mits . After that we were prepared to probe anything and everything preserved in formaldehyde. During this same year, we were all saddened by the loss of our dear Smitty , Jimmy Smith who moved to Rehoboth. If anything went wrong, we could no longer yell Smitty did it. For the last time, we began another first day at B.J .H. unintentionally remarking about the puny sixth graders. We all swore to ourselves and to each other, that we were never that small when we entered the sixth grade. After a while, we got used to them looking so small, and they in turn got used to us and became indifferent to our remarks. The years had passed so quickly, too quickly, though we must admit that for a while we enjoyed a sense of superiority. The younger students were looking up to us as we set new trends in wardrobe, hairstyles and slang. Even the braces on our teeth were stylish. 16