Middle level education

My final thoughts about what middle level education should be was pretty much reinforced through our class. Students should spend the first four to six years (K-5?) learning and strengthening their basic skills (particularly math, but we know my position on that). Then, in middle school, they should start the process of transferring from learning the basic skills to applying them over the span of the first couple years, maybe 6th and 7th grades, before gearing the 8th grade year for almost entirely project-based work unless there is new material that needs to be taught prior to project work. Granted, there is always new material, but by the 8th grade, students should be able to readily implement the new material into applicability, if necessary. After 8th grade, working in groups and applying basic skills to solve problems and create projects should be second nature and give the students a head start moving into the high school years. In high school, they will be doing a lot of projects in all subject areas, and middle school should be the training ground for this.

including parents

You know, I'm also a Generation X person myself. In fact, I was born almost dead center of the Generation X years, so I know what it was like to be a latchkey kid. My grandparents had to do the shopping for the family (my brother and I were raised by our grandparents, so they weren't even baby boomers, but the generation before that), and sometimes would not be home when we got off the school bus. However, we didn't see this as a detriment to our upbringing; in fact, they trusted us to get our own lunch and go off to our friends' houses if that's what we chose to do, as long as we left a note stating as much. I never felt neglected or anything like that, so communicating with parents who may have had these feelings may have their hands full dealing with me.
In the "Solve for X" section, I have some agreements and disagreements. Planning for extracurricular activities requires parental involvement and I will strongly encourage and even actively search out that involvement. Parents completing homework assignments with their students? I thought that's what you were supposed to do anyway. Again, this is strongly encouraged, but the free-choice assignment may be restricted to every two weeks so I can be assured that the required in-class content is covered appropriately. My one disagreement is having a parent come in to teach for an afternoon. That is the equivalent of me as a teacher going in to a parent's place of employment and giving my input as to how their business should be run. I'm sorry, but this particular idea isn't good. My job as a teacher depends on the information that the students accumulate from my efforts; the parent's place to teach is at home, with the exception of the chaperoning on field trips. I fully expect them to be teachers as well as chaperones in this arena.....just not in the classroom. This is my office and has to be my rules. I do expect input from the parents and I expect help from them. This is part of what makes my job a little easier and I always weigh the input of others equally, but must work for the good of the whole as well as the good of the individual.

Problem-based learning

I'm not active in a classroom yet, but I still have some input to share about problem-based learning. I am a HUGE proponent of problem-based learning as opposed to simple bookwork and lecture learning. Kids want to be actively engaged in their learning; the sooner today's teachers realize this, the sooner we may see improvements in assessment scores. My number one goal as a middle school teacher is to answer the age-old question asked by middle-school students everywhere: "When am I ever going to use this?" I think some lecture is necessary to teach new material, but the faster you move into applying subject material into real-life situations, the faster the students will learn the importance of each topic as it is really applied outside the classroom. My idea is to take each topic as it arises, give one class lecture (two at most) with a book assignment to make sure the students understand the material, and have problems or small projects prepared for each topic for the students to work on in small groups. This could be varied to make a little bigger problem or project for each chapter as it ties everything in the given chapter together. I suppose either way could work, depending on the situation; I just think the kids will perform better on assessments and in class if they understand how to use the concepts that they learn in class rather than just answering the questions posed by homework assignments.

cyber communication

OK, I think I prefer blogging to voice thread. I don't want to feel like I have to rehearse what I want to say before I say it and go back and cancel and save again. If I don't like what I'm saying in my blog, I can delete as I go before I make an official post.
Anyway, I read the Keteyian article on cyber communication and, well, while I can understand finding a way to communicate with kids by using methods that they are comfortable with, I think there is a risk of creating forms of antisocial behavior by encouraging instant messaging when you are within the same building. My wife and I do it once in a while just to be foolish, knowing the other is in the very next room, or with one of the kids who may be online on their own computer upstairs. 99.99 percent of our communication in the house is face-to-face, or at least through the use of our voices. If the parent and child find it more comfortable to IM each other, fine; I just don't see the need to encourage it. Sometimes we have to learn to leave our comfort zone (which I did by posting my voice thread....not comfortable, but I did it).
As far as the overuse of technology, I have to concur with Keteyian that it (use of technology) is becoming more prevalent with today's youth. Between cell phones, Internet communications, television and other various media, and online gaming, kids today are spending way too much time in front of the tube and not enough time getting physical activity (like I'm one to talk here). Hey, I work 65 hours a week, and it's all physical, so I've earned my right to a little tube time. 7.5 hours a day with electronic devices is almost half of kids' waking hours-------->obesity in America. It does kind of add up, if you look at it long enough, but by doing that, you're not getting any exercise. I'll save the obesity speech for another time, though. It's just the concept of what technology and its roles in communication have become over the last 20 years. Is it a problem? That depends on how you want to define what should and shouldn't happen in communication.

morning news

This is something that, as a participant, we tried back in 1983 as a class. It was a one-time thing that we did with the given technology of the day. We wanted to get an idea of what newscasters and anchorpeople did on the air as part of our current events studies, so we did a news program with local news, sports, and weather. We added our own little twist to it so it looked a bit more like Saturday Night Live than a real news broadcast, where the "audience" would throw paper and other harmless stuff at the news or sports anchor while they were trying to read their script, just to have some fun with it, and that we did. It was a learning experience that we managed to turn into fun.
Today's technology would make it so much better. Classes can actually utilize YouTube to put their "news" on the Internet and view later on, even a year or two after the fact, like an archive of sorts. I believe it would be exciting for the kids in high school to go on YouTube and view themselves as sixth-graders doing a news broadcast and looking at the posted replies. It is also a way for kids in other states and countries to view the same thing and see what you do in your school. That's just my viewpoint, anyway.

project learning

This is what it is all about. By the seventh or eighth grade year, students should be actively engaged in this form of learning. You might ask why. I believe that students will get more out of their education by seeing and experiencing first-hand how subject material comes to life and is used. One thing that really comes out of project learning is the life experience that comes along with the learning. Another important benefit is that, through the experience of projects, the students can "fail" without actually failing. That may sound a bit funny, but we can't expect that all projects that are undertaken by the students will be successful. However, if the students do everything that they are supposed to do and perform well, the "failures" that they may experience won't be crucial. In fact, it would do the students well to occasionally "fail" a project. Now I'm using quotes around the word fail because they are still learning. It's not like they are designing the new engine for the space shuttle and if they mess that up, okay, that would be a critical failure and lives would be lost. By experiencing their mistakes through project learning and actually learning from these mistakes, those mistakes won't be made when it actually counts in real life. Project learning is like a simulation machine for life; if you screw up, it's okay---no one gets hurt but you see where you made your errors so you don't make that error next time. Life is not a multiple-choice test, though sometimes it seems like it when we're faced with options and more than one answer seems likely. I'm pretty sure I would get a failing grade if that were the case. Let me get back to the word "fail" again for a moment. I don't want to come across as believing that the students will fail. I want to come across as being the one to say, "Okay, so this didn't go as planned; let's back up and see what went wrong and correct it." By doing this, the students get to deal with temporary failure, but eventual success. After all, isn't this what we want the students to do?

a bright idea

This sounds like a facetious title, but actually it's not. Gathering just from the news story, Vine Street School here in Bangor conducted a project recently that integrated math, social studies, and phys ed. What the students did were, in groups, chose (or were assigned, not sure) countries which they were to study, the history and culture and the like. This was the social studies portion. Then, they "represented" these countries in their own Olympics that ran concurrently with the Winter Olympics recently held in Vancouver, British Columbia. This integrated the math and phys ed portions. Whoever dreamed up this idea is an educational genius. The kids got actively engaged in the study of their prospective countries and had fun competing in their "Olympics", which allowed them to perform some physical activity and get much needed exercise, especially during the months where kids generally don't get that exercise. You think we can come up with some similar ideas for integrating subject areas and genuinely show how what we study in school is applicable in the outside world? This is how we should be teaching our students, not putting a bubble sheet in front of them and making them take multiple-guess assessments and using that to measure their performance. They won't be taking these exams when they're in the real world solving real-world problems.

ending high school after 10th grade???

NO, NO, NO!!!!!

Okay, so that's my emotional moment for the day. There is a program that is going to be implemented by a number of states, Maine included, that is going to give students the option to graduate from the 10th grade and advance to, at least, community college. I don't see this as a good idea because I don't think a 16-year old is mature enough to advance to a college setting. Yes, there are those special cases where the "geniuses" manage to finish high school by the age of 10, 11, etc. We should take a look at how these people are doing now, financially, psychologically, and most importantly, socially. The four years that I had in high school provided me with friendships that will last a lifetime, but it also provided me with the challenges that all high schoolers face and the time and opportunities to deal with them. A two-year high school education will not provide this. If this is about saving money, it's a bad idea. Yeah, so maybe Algebra II isn't for everyone; the experience of at least three years of math (personally, I believe in all four years) opens up options that wouldn't otherwise exist. What are some of these students going to actually do once they've graduated at the age of 16, when they are just at the age where they can be employed? Hey, while we're at trying to make their lives a bit better, why don't we lower the drinking, smoking, and voting age to 16? In essence, I'd be willing to bet that no less than 60 percent of the students that graduate after 10th grade will wish they had stayed the course in high school, if only to fortify the friendships they have started to forge. Maybe high schools should weigh the options of providing college-level courses just to keep these students challenged, but within the same physical setting. If these students are geniuses who are not benefitting from the high school setting, let them advance. I just don't believe we should be having 50-100 graduates (ballpark figure) a year who are only 16 and haven't got a strong social background. Keep the four-year program in place, or minimum of three if the graduation requirements can be met.

discipline problems

Okay, so I looked through the article on classroom management as it pertained to discipline in middle school, as opposed to elementary and high schools. I'm sure someone has had to have figured this out by now, but the reason why there are so many discipline and behavior problems in middle school is because kids are at the age where they are coming into their own as individuals, and they want to assert themselves as authoritative figures among their peers. By acting out or generally getting into trouble or causing trouble, it's the student trying to make a statement to his or her peers that they are in charge and won't be told what to do. It does usually backfire on them in the end, when they run into disciplinary problems, both in school and at home, but most of these students are "living in the moment" and do not weigh in the potential consequences of their actions.

This is a situation I ran into quite a few years ago, back in my own "wild" years. I was hanging out at the bowling alley when a couple teenagers were having an animated "discussion". It looked like they were going to get into a big fight, and I had earned my own authoritative position at the bowling alley, so I could mediate and prevent a brawl if I had to. I told them if they wanted to fight each other and have it out, I would take them next door and let them do it, with no witnesses, and the winner would have to take me on next. I don't know if it was the lack of witnesses or having to face me that discouraged them, but they broke up their disagreement and went their separate ways (at least for the time being). Anyway, the point is that some of these kids will only act out and misbehave with witnesses around for proof of their bravado and masculinity/womanhood (depending on who is involved, of course). If there is no one around to see, they're not so tough and acting so big, and this is a general rule of thumb, at least in my experience. Now I don't know if this approach would work in the position of being a teacher (a bit of a rogue approach), but it seems to me that if the student is taken out of the position of being able to show off, they aren't going to do anything stupid that would get them in trouble.

kaiser report

The fact that today's youth uses media more than ten years ago does not surprise me. We are in a rapidly expanding technological age, and the next new best thing will be available tomorrow. My kids are going to go out and get it; I don't know exactly what it's going to be, but they will have it. I wasn't a big text person until I got my current phone that has a keyboard on it. I still refuse to curtail my texts with incorrect spellings, but will occasionally use abbreviations such as btw for by the way, or my favorite to my wife, ILUVVM (I love you very, very much). I will never say "u r" for "you are"; if you get in the habit of doing this frequently, what's going to happen when you're trying to create a legitimate document for viewing by professionals?
Anyway, I'm digressing. This increase in media use started in the 1980's (maybe before) and I remember it. In 1984, I got my first television in my bedroom, where I watched my afternoon soaps (no comment please....I was 13 and was intrigued) and my favorite programs at night. I had a stereo next to my bed where I listened to music for the first hour of "bedtime". Of course, it's all different in today's society. Kids go to bed with their Ipods and their cell phones to text their BFF (I just had to use that one) to find out the in-school gossip of the day.
Is it going to affect performance in school? Absolutely. Will it be positive or negative? Both, I would say. I say positive because the media that children have access to will make doing homework/research so much easier. Instead of flipping through pages of an encyclopedia and finding the right volume, an Internet search for a subject is right at the student's fingertips. I also say negative because, with all of the potential distractions that these media present to children, it will be difficult to keep the children on task. However, if properly used, the media acts as a great benefit, making it a "necessary evil".

Positive Discipline

I found that a lot of this would have been useful when I was in school, anywhere between third grade and high school. Peer mediation would have been the best; it would have resolved a lot of problems that I ran into over the course of my pre-adolescent and adolescent years, but in a small school, it would have been difficult to implement.
The one thing I didn't care for was in the TAB portion (Take A Break) and ZAP (Zeroes Aren't Permitted). Both concepts are good, but I didn't like seeing the student being called out in front of his peers. The one teacher who took the student into the hall for a brief discussion, I believe, handled it properly. I think that calling a student on the carpet in front of his peers is only raising the risk for more aberrant/rebellious behavior. The other concepts were good and I liked those, including a fix-it plan, written apology, and a form for the student to explain what they did wrong and how to correct the behavior in the future. Granted, calling them out publicly might embarrass them enough to discourage bad behavior in the future, but it could also make them rebellious for the same reason. The other corrective ideas can be done privately and kept between the teacher and the student, or the student and the affected party (such as another student).

expressions from the middle 08-09

I have to comment on two "expressions" that I observed in Expressions From The Middle (2008-09). Mariah and Max are extremely insightful children with spectacular viewpoints of the world and how it works. Mariah's view of the world being wrung out like a wet washcloth as an analogy to the world's economy/global warming/natural resource depletion is awesome. It really has an adult point of view. Max compares a spectrum of light to the many different backgrounds of people, but all going in the same direction. Again, a very mature way of viewing the world. I know that all middle school children can do this; I just wish they all did have this maturity. The funny thing is I think they all do; it's just a matter of tapping into it instead of bending to peer pressure and acting and thinking the way your friends expect you to. In the long run, it's the ones who openly share their viewpoints like this who stand the best chance of being successful in guiding the future in the right direction.

Being 13

I'm going to keep this in the order of the article and discuss each part, as it pertains to my beliefs and experiences. I learned a little bit from this article, starting with 13 being that magic age, such as the Little Red Riding Hood references to sexuality; I don't think I knew that, but I'm not surprised. Honestly, I think I wanted something sports-related for my thirteenth birthday. I think I kissed my first girl at 13 or 14, somewhere in there, and had my first near-sexual experience at 15 (don't get me wrong....I was a virgin officially until just before I turned 24....not that you really wanted to know that, but in relation to normal teenagers.....you know).
Here's the thing about today's teenager: A child who turns 13 today was four years old when the events of 9/11/01 happened. That means that most of their lives have been lived in fear of terrorism, even if they don't exhibit that fear. It's in their psyche, in the back of their mind because it happened at a very impressionable age. Are today's teenage lives different from ours? Definitely. Aside from the fact of terrorism being on the rise, the technology age has exploded in just these last fifteen years. While we were calling our friends on the phone or passing notes in class, today's students are texting each other with their cell phones or sending e-mails with the laptops that they use in school. Communicating globally is at our fingertips now; when we were that age, it was unfathomable to our teenage minds that we could talk to someone half a world away in real time.
Let me refer back to myself for a moment. I married into a family, so I plunged headfirst into being a father to teenagers right from the outset. My oldest son was almost 15 when I married the boys' mother (14, 12, 10, and 7 were their ages). Now my youngest is going on 19 and is engaged to be married (2011?....remains to be seen). I can't say that they all had the same teenage problems, but my oldest became sexually active at 15, my next-to-youngest started smoking when he was 13 (I think, maybe even 11 or 12), and was once addicted to painkillers. My youngest has been the most active and had the least of the normal teenage problems (somehow he managed to take after me), probably because he is also the biggest of the four boys. My second oldest didn't have a typical adolescent life either. He was never much to socialize outside of his small peer group, which has since dispersed to the four winds since high school. He is not sexually active, which is probably a good thing until he meets that special someone, though he is already 23. I'd like to think that I had some positive effect on all of them so that anything good that happened during their adolescence can be carried with them throughout life.
Okay, so I've gotten a little long-winded (which is probably not a good thing---I think I'm developing carpal tunnel syndrome, so I shouldn't be typing so much, but I have a lot to say). Let me close with this statement: what does it mean to be 13 today? It means that your world is just beginning to expand to horizons that we as adults could only have imagined at that age. It's time to start training to become one of the leaders of tomorrow in whatever field you choose to be in. We'll always be there to be a guiding hand, but the future is yours.