It was a nippy morning outside Richards Middle School in Fraser on Monday, Aug. 25, but the arrival of the fall-like chill didn’t stop the back-to-school fashion show on the first day.

Girls wore their jean shorts, tinsel glittering in their hair, and boys donned their basketball shorts, artfully paired with socks and sandals. Several clutched Alani Nu energy drinks as they hurried to the school gymnasium for a quick introductory assembly.

For half of the students sitting in the gym, the eighth graders, middle school is the last stop on the way to high school. And for the seventh graders, it’s the next stop after elementary school.

For the 30 minutes before the assembly started, the gym was a cacophony of student voices. In the tweenager stage of their lives, the middle-schoolers lived

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