Freshman Expectations from Clarion on Vimeo.

“Degrassi”? “Glee”? “High School Musical”? No, this is Riverside Brookfield High School. Everyone knows that the transition from middle school to high school is different for everyone, but it’s nothing like the movies. Clarion went out and interviewed students and teachers to see what their expectations and realities of high school were.

“I expected to go into teaching in the inner city and I was going to change the world,” said science teacher Kyle Boyd.

Although Boyd expected to teach in the inner city, he enjoys teaching at RBHS. He’s been teaching at RBHS for two years. This is his first year as a full time teacher.

“I’m not in the CPS school, but the students here need me just as much as the students in the city would,” said Boyd.

Boyd explained how teaching at different schools brought on new challenges. At one school he had students swear at him to the point where he had to call security and then at a different school students would thank him before leaving.

“I realize I’m not going to change the world as much as I wanted too. It’s just a different way of going about it as I originally thought,” said Boyd.

English teacher Thomas Dignan has been teaching for 17 years, the past eight at RBHS. He went into teaching with no experience. He explained that teaching high school started off rough.

“I expected high school to be impossible. I thought it was going to be the most difficult, crazy experience I’ll ever have,” said Dignan.

Dignan believes everyone is so worried about the social aspects of school instead of school aspects. He went to Marist High School which is an all-boys school, so his transition was a little easier than others because he played football. He wasn’t too worried about being alone.

Sophomore Zach Vaia explained how high school wasn’t really what he thought it would be like. He thought it would be way more difficult and that the students wouldn’t be nice.

“I heard a bunch of people saying Riverside Brookfield is not that great of a school and I highly disagree with that,” said sophomore Vaia.

Vaia believed in rumors about typical high school behaviors, like freshmen getting pennied, for example, because it had happened to him.

“I heard freshman always got pennied, so I was a little nervous that would happen to me,” said Vaia.

Sophomore Shea Connelly also explained how high school was way better than she thought. She said that meeting more people really helped with the transition.

“High school was more than I expected. It’s way more fun because you meet so many more people. People expect upperclassmen to be mean, but they’re actually not,” said Connelly.

Even though Shea did not have upperclassmen friends before school started, it was way easier after she joined swim and made new friends. She also explained how different high school was from middle school because of all the new faces and new classes.

“When I was a freshman I heard about secret tunnels in the cafeteria and about being pennied,” said senior Andrea Armenta.

Andrea would tell her younger siblings and younger cousins to try their hardest freshman year, and not to blow it off.

“Do the whole school spirit thing because once high school is over, it’s over,” Andrea said.