Sarah T's This We Believe

The ideas covered in these seven pages are about the changes in social, emotional, physical, and intellectual development of 10-15 year olds at the middle school level. It is important to understand that at this time, as teachers, it is not only our job to create a positive learning environment that is full of authentic assessments as well as differentiated instruction that plugs in to the interests and desires of the students, but it is also our job to foster a caring, healthy environment in which we provide students with the tools to make appropriate choices for their lives during this difficult time period. Adolescents lives are constantly changing while they are forced to make important decisions about their lives. This happens in the face of peer pressure, temptations involving sex, drugs, alcohol as well as the consumer aspect of life. It is important that we, as middle level educators, have the understanding and training to be able to work with these students. The National Middle School Association has fourteen components they believe create a well implemented middle school. They include the following:

teachers who care about these students and who have necessary training
leaders who work together
a vision that is used to make decisions
an enviornment that is safe, supportive and encouraging
the belieft that every student can perform at a high level
students and teachers learning together
an advocate for every student
an environment that fosters family and community involvement
curriculum that challenges, explores, and integrates
differentiated instruction
authentic assessment
organization that supports meaningful relationships and learning
school-wide policies that encourage health and safety
and guidance and support services

The next pages elaborate on the points made by the National Middle School Association. Those include the points previously discussed. It is important to create an environment that allows students to feel safe, to be able to make mistakes, and to foster some independence and thinking. Students need to have relationships with adults they can trust as well as to work with adults who care about them and understand the difficult time period they are going through. Also, it is important to keep the connection between families and the community.


It is important to understand that when teachers decide to "cover" the material that is required to meet the standards, true learning does not take place. That is why it is important to have middle schools that create a curriculum that is relevant, challenging, integrative, and exploratory. The curriculum needs to be relevant to the student's lives and explores questions that they want to answer. Although the text discusses the idea that all of the material should not be generated from their own interests, yet it should help students to develop new interests as well. It is important that the material is challenging to the students, but not out of reach. When material seems unreachable to students, they shut down and the learning stops. It is about "teach[ing] skills and concepts in context, with the focus on helping students become skilled writers, thinkers, and explorers, rather than merely copying or memorizing other' ideas" (21). The authors discuss how the content and methods need to be geared towards individual students and that by integrative they mean to connect the material to their lives and the world around them. The learning is more authentic when it can be taught in specific subject areas and then applied to other stuff and real life.

Exploratory learning is about uncovering and exploring new information and ideas. Hands on exploration and learning are extremely important during this time period.

Teachers need to use multiple learning and teaching approaches that respond to their diversity by teaching to the multiple intelligences as well as individual learning preferences and needs. It is about engagement, interaction, collaboration, cooperation, using the community for resources, and technology.

Authentic assessment is a huge aspect of this. When teachers use authentic assessment they have the ability to actually teach their students things and then evaluate them effectively. The student has the ability to demonstrate their learning in a valid way that isn't with pen and paper.
Teachers need to organize structures that support meaningful relationships and learning. They suggest that teaming is a valid way to do this. They also discuss the pros and cons of block scheduling. All of these things lead to better student achievement, more parent-teacher contact, better climate, positive attitudes, more time for learning to happen, and it is also important to have a common planning time for teachers to meet.

The school also needs to implement school-wide efforts and policies that foster health, wellness, and safety. This creates a school that permeates with a healthy attitude which falls over into the curriculum, policies, good adults as healthy role models ... etc. You also need multifaceted guidance and support services. When this happens the entire school knows who to direct students to for what services they need. You have guidance counselors, social workers, psychologists... etc. all trained professionals to help the middle school students make it through all of the stuff they are going through during this time period.

The call to action- basically tells people to review the book and know it inside and out and to use it to inform teaching strategies and to make decisions about teaching and schools

Reflection:
I believe that the biggest piece to successful middle level education is the early intervention. Middle school is the time where all of these changes are happening, and we, as educators, have the abilitity to help students make informed and hopefully good choices by demonstrating and teaching them what these are. Also, in the face of all of that, we have the opportunity to get students encouraged and hooked on learning. It is an extremely powerful opportunity to shape the minds of the young people who will become the leaders of tomorrow. I believe teachers need to be learning along with their students. It is a great idea to collaborate with the students to come up with assignments and to ask for their input. They'll give it and they have great ideas. I know I say this all the time, but I love the idea of involving students in decisions about projects and assessments and the rules and regulations of the classroom. First of all, students have really good ideas and they know exactly what they need and want. Second, you are putting the power in their hands, which means they are going to be more interested and engaged. I really agree with the idea that the learning needs to be authentic, and exploratory. I believe that it is not simply about copying and pasting the ideas of others and creating an essay or regurgitating what others are saying. THAT IS NOT LEARNING. That is exactly what I did until I came to college and I strongly believe that the curriculum and instruction need to be different in order to prevent this. I also love the idea of how they discussed writing journals because that also enables you to incorporate literacy into the classroom.