SPENCER — Juan Mendoza doesn’t mind going to class in a different part of the school from the upperclassmen.

In fact, he sort of likes it.

“This is better,” the freshman at North Rowan High School said, “because the sophomores and juniors and seniors don’t pick on us as much.”

This summer, North Rowan High finished turning a former auto mechanics shop into its six-classroom Freshman Academy.

The separate school — you have to walk outside to get into it from the main building —is one of many steps the school has taken to make the move from middle school easier.

Friday, the entire freshman class crowded to the front of the auditorium to hear a counselor teach them how to set goals and make good grades. That can create better opportunities after they walk the line and get their diploma — whether it’s more school or a job, the speaker told them.

Said freshman Crystal Lawing: “I think this is good to help them get used to high school.”

“It’s good for the change,” student Tony Deal said. “We get more done. In middle school, it’s just mass confusion. It’s quieter here.”

Freshmen differ in many ways from juniors and seniors, social studies teacher Jennifer Shirley says. They don’t drive, work and have the same responsibilities.

“Before, students who were just 14 years old were thrown in with students who were 15, 16, 17 years old,” Shirley said. “And it was culture shock. There’s a big difference, socially.

“They didn’t understand that they were expected to act like adults now, and not like little children anymore.”

English teacher June Misenheimer called last year — the Freshman Academy’s first — the best of her 30 years at North Rowan High. “If they’re thrown in and there is no structure, they’ll fail,” she said.

Freshmen still must take some classes in other parts of the school because of a lack of space.

Built in 1958, North Rowan High is the only one of Rowan County’s five high schools that has never had additions to its campus, though it has renovated its existing space. This year it moved classes for exceptional children into two new trailers.

And this year’s freshman class — 270 — is one of the school’s largest.

Tom Ducote, an assistant principal who oversees the freshmen classes, says children in seventh through ninth grades are more vulnerable to peer pressure than at any other age. With that, hopping hormones and a know-everything attitude, the first year of high school can be a trying time.

The Freshman Academy should help ease the transition, he said.

“The proof will be in the pudding their senior year,” he said.