New faces, new lockers at Washington middle school night

Washington Middle School hosted its back-to-school night on Wednesday, bringing hundreds of families into the building to meet new teachers, find new classrooms and open new lockers.

Many students struggled through their first attempts at opening rotary combination locks on their lockers, surrounded by family members offering advice.

Sixth-grader Noah Sweethe said the experience was a big change in his academic experience.

“It’s kind of scary, it’s an entirely new building,” he said. “I was at a school with only one floor, and now I’ve moved up to three, and I’ve got a bunch of classes, so it’s just different.”

Choir teacher Cailee Wenger said the mix of excitement and anxiety was normal on back-to-school night.

“A lot of them are very nervous, and a lot of them are very excited for something different,” she said. “It’s exciting to have them all here. I think Monday will be even more of a sign of whether they’re ready or not.”

Erik Buchholz, the former Washington High School principal, now a middle school life skills teacher, said the new post was a big change for him as well, despite starting his career as a middle school teacher.

“Honestly, I don’t know that I can remember back 20 years ago when I first started,” he said. “I will tell you, I like to have everything well planned out to begin with, and at this point I don’t have all that complete, but I have a couple of days to do it yet, too. From that point, I think it’s just going to be fun, I look forward to being with the kids.”

Middle school Principal Curt Mayer said the exciting evening was noticeably different from last year’s.

“No. 1, you can see faces, you can meet kids,” he said. “We didn’t get an opportunity to do the computer rollout last year. We did do a video so they could learn how to use properly their computers and stuff, but we really didn’t get that chance last year.”

Still, the ripple effects of disruptions last year could still be felt.

“You’ve got to do things a little bit differently,” Mayer said. “Usually you’re just trying to acclimate your sixth-graders, but you’ve got people that were in a remote situation. We didn’t use our lockers at all last year, so we had to put the signs on all the lockers about how to open them.”