The (School) Year in Review

In the 2023-24 school year, many people accomplished awesome things, learned laboriously, and hopefully had a great year! In this article, I will go into the major achievements, statistics, and overall interesting facts about this school year. I hope you take some time to recognize some of the great things that middle schoolers have done and the ways we’ve all changed over this year.

There were 289 students at Lakeside Middle School this year, and 85 of them were new. New 5th-grader Tara M. said, “Getting into Lakeside was a really surprising and exciting moment, and I was really glad to come to Lakeside.” All of these students took many classes, spent many hours perfecting their writing, learned many new concepts, and changed a lot over the course of the year. Some student highlights were dissections in 7th-grade biology, playing the fun piece Night Shift in 6th-grade orchestra, and making videos of important historical figures in 5th-grade Digital Life.

This year, the library was very popular among students. From August 30 to April 22, 4,023 books were checked out. 393 were nonfiction, and 2,110 were fiction. This total also includes 1,491 graphic novels, 25 picture books, and 4 story collections.

The top three checked-out books were Drama by Raina Telgemeier, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and Big Nate Stays Classy by Lincoln Peirce. These are all still available in the library, so if you’re looking for some popular books, check these out! 

Right next door in the Makerspace, the Makerspace Ambassadors debuted, inspired by our Admissions Ambassadors. They organized many sessions to teach students about different tools in the Makerspace and how to create interesting projects. These included building snowmen and snow globes to celebrate the winter season. Lots of different students used the Makerspace to learn how to use LED lights, the 3D printer, a laser cutter, and more. Classes also used the Makerspace to create some very interesting projects, such as the fifth-grade topographic map project and the sixth-grade house project, where the sixth-graders worked in groups to laser-cut and design a house for a randomly assigned fictional character. Personally, I learned how to use the laser cutter templates, about the world of interior design, and many more cool things through our great Makerspace programs.

Many students got to pursue one or more of their interests in one of our 26 clubs, 13 of which were new this year. Many of these clubs received many prestigious awards, so here are a few highlights. One of the fifth- and sixth-grade Math Club teams of four people got first place at the championship level of the prestigious Math is Cool competition. A different team with the highest individual scores also got first place in the masters level (yes, that is a higher level than the championships). Our seventh- and eighth-grade Math Club won first place in the chapter division of MathCounts (another prestigious math competition), qualified for state, and two students from Lakeside went to the national competition in mid-May. Debate Club won 5th place overall for two of its three very long tournaments, with many members finishing in the top 10 for individual speaker points throughout the year. 

Students Taking Action (STA) worked very hard to organize many engaging events, like creating cards for military members and elders, and, of course, the March Mystery buddies and reveal party. Student Council brought many new proposals for our school into reality, and the student admissions ambassadors welcomed 85 new students for the next school year. Finally, the amazing Lakeside Leo put out four outstanding issues including all sorts of articles covering all sorts of topics, from groundbreaking world news to drawing tutorials. If your club didn’t get highlighted here (sorry), then great job to that club!

Lakesiders also did many notable things in the sports realm this year. Many sports teams made it to the CYO playoffs: 5th and 6th grade soccer, 6th grade varsity girls basketball, all of our 7th and 8th grade basketball teams, the 5th/6th grade gold volleyball team, and some others as well. Other sports like cross-country, track, and crew had many impressive finishes as well. Everyone who played a sport this year did an awesome job, worked really hard, and hopefully had lots of fun! 

For many people, another highlight of this year was art. The fifth-graders learned how to use clay for the first time and made giant zentangles. The sixth-graders created envelopes with symbolic messages to send to themselves in the future and painted a big mural. The seventh-graders explored surrealist-inspired lanterns and watercolor landscapes, and the eighth-graders created tic-tac-toe boards out of clay and learned how to create a marble effect with paint. 

One of the significant projects that the sixth-graders did to make the world a better place was the Memory Project. We partnered with the Memory Project organization to send portraits to refugee children across the world in hopes of making their lives a little bit happier. It was a great experience for me to cheer up people across the world, and I learned a lot about portrait art as well.

Relating to making the world a better place, service learning was also an important highlight this year. Through four days, the fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-graders traveled to places in the Pacific Northwest and helped out, from packing tea bags to pulling weeds to volunteering at an assisted living center. They helped out locals and local communities, showing that even the smallest actions have a big impact. It was an impactful experience learning how to work as a team, help others, and develop a service-oriented mindset. 

The 8th-graders combined their outdoor trip and service learning into Global Service Learning (GSL). They go all around the state for a week and enjoy the great outdoors while helping out others in many different ways. If you want to hear some more student perspectives on service learning, go check out Keira G.’s article here on service learning interviews!

During the 2023-2024 school year, everyone did something notable. Maybe you tried a new activity, or you learned a new skill, or you took leadership in a sport. Whatever you did this year, I’m sure that you accomplished great things and grew a lot throughout the year. Hopefully, this year was a great year, and next year will be even better!