By Alex Kirshner ’18
THE ROUNDUP
Brophy is a melting pot of students from all over the Valley, and this has led to a wide variety of middle schools being represented on campus.
These schools all have different teaching styles, as well as different curriculums and varying levels of homework.
Each school tries to prepare their students for the more rigorous curriculum that they will face in high school.
Certain schools, such as the BASIS schools that are located throughout the Valley, challenge their students by teaching high school math and science classes while students are in the seventh and eighth grade.
Freshman Daniel Kelly ’19, who came to Brophy from BASIS Ahwatukee, said that taking AP classes in middle school set him up for success at the high school level.
“They set me up with the AP classes. I already took all the sciences, so I felt like I was prepared for Honors Biology,” he said. “And math-wise, I had taken Algebra II before, so I already had experience in the class.”
The academics are not the only part of Brophy that students must adapt to.
Freshman Jack Eden ’19, who attended Scottsdale Preparatory Academy, said he believed that the all-boys aspect of the school was the hardest part to adjust to, but that wasn’t a bad thing.
“It being all boys is a different atmosphere, and it just feels really comfortable,” he said.
Also, the sports at Brophy are much more competitive than most middle schools, and new students are faced with the reality that they might get cut.
This is something that is not prominent at all middle schools, mostly due to the relative size of the student body and overall competitiveness of the sports teams.
Mr. Doug Cox, who is the freshman basketball coach, said that there are usually 50 people trying out for the freshman team alone and, in some years, the team is tougher to make due to the depth of talent.
“For most of the boys who don’t make the freshman basketball team it’s the first time they’ve ever experienced being cut…and some years are more challenging to make the freshman basketball team,” Cox said via email.
Both Eden and Kelly said that the one thing their school did not prepare them for was the sports teams.
BASIS did not have any extracurricular activities, and Scottsdale Prep was more focused on academics than extracurriculars.
