Teaching in the Middle Grades

The reading in AMLE this week focused on the type of school community that a "developmentally responsive" middle school should have. This includes involving families and the wider community, being advocates for students, and fostering an egalitarian social climate that is safe and supportive. The phrase "developmentally responsive" really resonated with me as I was reading. I think this best sums up the main goal for any middle school administrator to have: they want to be able to best meet their unique students' needs, and this can only truly be done if the school environment is developmentally responsive. That means that the teachers are well-versed in the emotional needs and developmental milestones and characteristics of a middle school student, as well as the administrators. I believe a lot of the aspects of an outstanding middle school come down to this idea.  The book also emphasized the importance of teachers being advisors to students, and that each stu...

 This week focused on anxiety and panic disorders in middle school students. I have to say that it hit home for me, as someone who has been diagnosed with anxiety myself. I remember both the "normal" stresses of being in middle and high school -- the packed schedule, harder homework and tests, wanting to fit in, and feeling awkward socially -- as well as the feelings of anxiety that come with a chemical imbalance. Treatment made a huge difference. I feel it is so important for middle school educators to be aware of the symptoms of anxiety disorders, panic attacks, and depression. In my opinion, being educated on these things goes along with being educated about the age group that you are teaching. If we don't know what our students are going through - developmentally, socially, or even in cases of anxiety or depression -- how can we best help them and guide them? How will we get them to experience meaningful learning? This is why this quote from the AMLE article resonated...

 This week, we read about how to support the diverse groups of students that we will be teaching at the middle school level, as well as how to differentiate our lessons. The Edutopia article in particular was very helpful to me, because it broke down how teachers can differentiate at each level of instruction.  Throughout my time in this program, I have written my fair share of lesson plans, and so I have gotten used to incorporating different strategies into each plan for different modalities so that students will have "deeper" and more meaningful learning. However, this text was very straightforward and it made a process that once seemed intimidating sound pretty simple. This is encouraging because I tend to be a perfectionist and want to include the "right" things in my lessons. But now, I see that I have all of the tools in front of me to differentiate my instruction and ensure that students are involved in their learning.  The most interesting suggestion I took...

This week was centered around the responsibilities of administrators in the school. These go along with the guidelines we learned about in Week One. The principal just has to be in charge of implementing them (i.e., high standards) and make sure they are collaborating with teachers and staff to support a shared vision, which was touched on last week.  I was encouraged, personally, that both readings emphasized that administrators must present not only a positive attitude and atmosphere in their school's environment but also work with teachers and staff and be open and willing to listen, rather than immediately blame. The Wallace Foundation article in particular mentioned that doing this could improve teacher morale and help remedy pessimism and feelings of isolation. As a future teacher, this makes me feel that principals are being instructed to look out for my best interests, which is great to know. I have heard stories from friends and former co-workers of administrators not supp...

 This week, the focus was on utilizing active learning strategies in the middle school classroom. We have learned in the previous weeks that middle school students need to be engaged in their learning, perhaps more so than any other age group. Thus, it makes sense that this week allowed us to zero in on ways to make this a reality in our future classes.  Active learning is a topic I have thought a lot about, especially right before I made the big decision to enroll in Trinity's program and become a licensed teacher. I previously got my bachelor's degree in  English and double-majored in History before completing my master's degree in History in 2013. After I was finished, I taught as an adjunct instructor at several two-year colleges around the area. Since I had an M.A. in history, I was considered qualified to teach it. However, I had no idea how to teach students. I only had the experience of how I was taught in college - and that involved a heavy amount of lectures and...

 This week, we read in detail about what a middle school curriculum should consist of. Not only should it be tailored to the specific needs of the young adolescent age group, but it should also be appropriately challenging. Furthermore, a strong curriculum should involve utilizing various different teaching strategies to ensure that active learning is taking place. One element that the AMLE text talked about a lot is the need for the curriculum of a middle school to be relevant. That is, what students are learning needs to be connected in some way, if possible, to their own lives. This made sense to me, as we learned last week that one of the main characteristics of middle schoolers is that they are developing their own opinions and perspectives on the world around them, and may start to question things more. One example of this might be asking, "Why do we have to learn this?" or wondering how what they are learning relates to their own daily lives and the issues they are con...