 On behalf of myself and Senator Friedman and Representative Rogers it was an honor to present this resolution celebrating 100 years of outstanding education to the town of Arlington and to the young people. Exactly 100 years and one day ago on December 8th 1921 the recently completed junior high west was dedicated. At the time the Arlington school board was one of the first school committees in the state to adopt the recommendations of a newly founded national education association that young adolescents have distinct social emotional and academic needs. This is a very special building it is rare in one's career that they get to celebrate the 100th anniversary it's even more rare today that we get to celebrate the 100th anniversary of a junior high school or middle school and as a former teacher of eighth grade I can say that this is a very special time in students lives. What are some of your favorite memories of Audison? I remember Mr. Audison he was a respected man someone you look up to and he lived in the top of the woods there where I used to cut through each day. The homeroom teacher would take attendance we'd do the pledge of allegiance and then Mr. Audison would come on with announcements and he had a deep deep voice and he would go good morning boys and girls and it was you know it was you know it was him. We had a whole class for penmanship can you imagine that and we we stopped stopped using the ink well we had to do the penmanship with a pen with pen and ink. Someone from lock school or you stayed in the same room all day and had one teacher all day being able to do a class and then walking to the next class that sort of was scary initially because we thought we would get lost. School was pretty big we didn't have contact with each other much like clusters of groups clusters to work on a project things like that never happened we were more individual and didn't have the closeness to the other kids. Well we didn't have a cafeteria there wasn't that time that we could get together make friends. I taught in Allington let's say 36 years. And how long at what age did you join Audison? As a staff member I joined the Audison at 20, 24. And when you're a student how old were you? When I was a student it was seventh eighth and ninth grade so I was 12 when I started. What were your favorite memory or memories? Favorite memories probably the musicals. What were the musicals like? Very very simple compared to today. I mean we did the background built the sets and so what? What were the lunches like? Well that's an interesting question. I'm one of 11 all of us went here and my sis I was telling my sisters yesterday it was coming and they said make sure you talk about the turkey dinner. Being one of 11 we didn't buy our lunches too often but the one lunch who mother wanted us to make sure we had was the turkey dinner and it was they cooked the turkeys in the ovens and in fact that wall there I think is the back of where the ovens were because the kitchen the lunch room was your tech room back over as you come in the building. Oh there were school rules. Girls had to wear skirts. The boys had to wear pants no dungarees. Added wear a tie and a shirt. We the girls we had a little thing that we used to do and well I don't know whether it was Christmas time we would put bells on our sneakers that was an oh no we had to we'd get caught right away. For teachers it was just as for students. Now I had kool odds on that and you could not tell it wasn't a skirt. Mr. Odyssey came up to me I was in the gym came up to me and said Marie I know this doesn't apply to you but the school committee has said no pants no add any form in school. Now I'm standing there. Technically I had on pants so I'm standing there not moving so that he wouldn't see the legs and oh that's okay thank you and needless to say my wardrobe changed. Oh no they were always in the cafeteria and the girls sat one end of the cafeteria and the boys sat at the other end of the cafeteria never the tween shall meet. After the challenger the NASA set up a contest around the country to name the replacement orbit up and was set out to the schools for the kids to come up with a project and it had to be a multitask thing. In other words it couldn't just be oh this is the name it will write a little story you had to have something to go with it and the class here at the Autism which was my class along with Mrs Crasko we worked with the kids on it and we won for the state out of all of the high schools and junior highs in the state we won for the state and from the letters I got from other schools around the country we actually probably did very well as far as the rest of the country and there's a book somewhere in the library we haven't been able to find it yet with the NASA published that has the whole thing that the kids wrote in a description of the project and it was a quilt and that's another thing somewhere in the building there's a quilt or somebody has it but this is the plaque I was sent because it was my students that did it and that now we've walked single file between classes I know in some teachers classrooms when we walk by between classes we had to be silent it was a need to to toughen us up to discipline us whereas I saw by the time I came back 10 years later to teach there was much more investment in the individual developing the social and emotional development to kids very consciously and it was from that desire that the the grouping system the clusters first started entering into middle school you could choose did you want to be in the open cluster or the closed cluster so it gave us some ownership and to be in a closed cluster it was more traditional you know it was more structured whereas the open you had to be able to learn um you know with a lot of distractions having those teams that was really a middle school mentality before we were actually ever a middle school and I think that kind of it was way ahead of its time both the Gibbs and the Ottison junior high you have any memories of any of your favorite teachers that you could share so my academic support teacher she helped me a lot she helped me get through middle school because without her I don't know if I would have made it through me you know as far as studying and personal life but it was a class that I looked forward to whether it was a real class or not to me it was a fake class but I learned more there than I did sitting in a classroom with 20 other kids like I remember enjoying all of my classes you know as I got older I remember people saying well no one really remembers middle school because it's not the best time and I always remembered all of my teachers names um and and how much I enjoyed it here it's probably why I became a middle school teacher teachers were okay but I think with so much socially going on in my life I wasn't as focused as I could have been and I do remember my teachers being patient but just had a lot of friend drama for some reason this girl wanted to beat me up who was a tough girl there so we were in the back of the oddison and they said she's coming out to beat you up petrified because I wasn't a fighter I said I don't know what I did wrong or if I did something wrong I apologize but I'd rather be friends and we were friends since then and we still are what did you like about being a meco student so I got to experience for me it felt like another family probably closer to ninth grade so maybe the end of eighth grade um I had two friends Jesse Jesse and Jessica their moms and their parents family like took me in when I couldn't go home or I missed the bus or if I wasn't a meco student I probably wouldn't have had that experience and unfortunately the meco students at the time I went to school in Arlington were the only black and brown students there was that struggle of walking the line um you know like getting flak from my friends at in the city and then also getting that like you know those racist undertones and things from some of the kids in Arlington there any other memories that you have that you know haven't touched on well um one thing right beside the gym if you could see the old uh the way the land was in front of the junior high west there was all big uh hills and we used to go sledding there a lot we used to get like 15 to 20 students sitting on one of those unfolded boxes and we would push off just lie down it was amazing we never broke a bone we're still living I'm so proud of the fact that we created one of the best six seventh and eighth grade middle schools around it was that that genuine respect for one another everybody cared and it was not just students and adults that were looking at each other like you're the teacher you're the kid no I saw teachers giving so much to students and students just being so happy and pleased that they were being respected and also enjoyed if there was something that you wish they would still do today would you bring back I think what we've done is we've incorporated you know the best strategies that we've learned from you know the previous decade so I don't feel like my grandchildren are going to be cheated um I just hope they have as positive experiences I did so as all of us look forward to another century of educational excellence at the Autism Middle School I just wanted to thank once again many of the teachers who come through these doors every day to help our students learn I'd like to thank the students here and I'd like to thank our families who entrust their children to get a great educational experience here at the Autism Middle School so thank you very much for tuning in today and good afternoon happy rest of your school life so make the most of it it's a good time in life