Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 15

Chapter 15 of Meet Me in the Middle focused primarily on how to bring parents into the classroom and help them be aware of what is happening in the classroom, so they can connect with their kids and learn about what their kids are doing in school. Making sure that parents have a way to access what their student is doing in the classroom is extremely valuable, as it can provide a way for parents and children to communicate about how school is going, or encourage parents to ask their kids about school or go over homework with their child. Keeping parents in the loop, even if it’s just through short postings on a classroom website, will help parents and kids be able to honest conversations about what kids are doing in school. If these conversations are happening, then some kids, who might have thought their parents didn’t care about what was happening in the classroom, might be encouraged to work harder, because their parents know about what they’re doing in the classroom. It also might make kids more excited to share their work with their parents.

Another valuable thing brought up in this chapter was bringing parents in the classroom, or at least into the schools. Sometimes there is such a disconnect between parents and teachers, or between parents and the school, that parents never know what’s going on at school, or what their children are doing, and while a website might help bridge some of those gaps, there is also a value in bringing parents into the school, whether it be for a parent/teacher conference, allowing parents to come and speak in front of the class, or hosting an event where students can display their work to their parents.

Turning Points Chapter 9

This chapter of Turning Points 2000 focused primarily on community and parent involvement in the school, and the benefits of creating those connections. Obviously, it’s important for parents to be involved in their student’s learning, and be made aware of what is happening in the classroom. Creating a communication between parents and teachers from day one is extremely beneficial and will only create stronger connections between parents and teachers throughout the year. These strong connections might also be beneficial to the student, with these strong connections being made, this will help students be encouraged to be more active and participate more in the classroom.

One of the most important things about this chapter, I think, was the stress on the connection between the school and the community. I remember being in middle school and high school and because my school and community were so small, the connection was extremely strong. Members from the community were always coming into the school, and we were always going outside of the school to interact with the community. You can learn a lot about the world around you just by looking at the community that you live in. Every community as the opportunity to be a classroom, and you can learn a lot of life skills by interacting with the community.

Overall, it’s extremely important to build strong bridges between your classroom and the parents and community outside of the classroom. By building these bridges and connections, students will feel like what they’re learning is more valuable, and be more likely to be excited about being in the classroom. By showing them the importance of their learning, and what they’re doing in the classroom means in a real world context, they’ll take their work more seriously and be more likely to succeed.

Why Gender Matters

I found this presentation to be extremely fascinating, not only with the research behind it, but how I was able to connect my own experiences, to what was being discussed in the presentation. Some of the things that were discussed, hit almost completely on the nose with things I had seen and experienced, while other things, were almost the complete opposite. There were a lot of really great points and ideas brought up in this presentation that could be brought into the classroom, such as girls having better hearing than boys, so boys should be closer to the front of the class, or with the different strategies that should be used when working with male and female students. These kinds of things, along with the management, and even the bullying aspects of this presentation, are all important things to remember when being a teacher, because there is a difference in the way that you should work with female and male students, because the brains are different and they process things different ways. Even though, of course, each student's brain is different, it is important to take gender into account when addressing a student.

One of my favorite parts of this presentation, was how easy I was able to relate it to my own experiences. One of the sections that particularly stuck out to me, was the section about friendships. I've always been someone, who had a lot of people that I was friendly with, only ever had 3-4 close friends, while my brother, has always had a large group of friends, never really having any "close" friends. My brother, recently, spent over 2 hours with my mom's friend's son, and never even learned his name, but they were able to communicate and get along in the hours that they were together, something I know I would never personally be able to do. But on the flip side, in own high school experience with bullies, I knew more male bullies that were popular and did well in school, and more female bullies were loners, who weren't really doing well in school.

The idea and concept behind gender differences is something that really fascinates me and makes me really want to read this book so I can get the full experience. While I am afraid that stereotyping and using extreme examples would be an easy thing to fall into, but I do still think that this is an important thing for everyone to read, not just future teachers, but anyone who might have to work with people. I feel like some of the gender differences might be more surprising or more discreet than others, so learning about them would be extremely beneficial.

Overall, I really enjoyed this presentation and I learned a lot about male and female brains that will be useful when I become a teacher. I also really enjoyed the survey that we got to take, and the drawing activity that we got to do. I really want to learn more about gender differences, so this presentation definitely sparked an interest.

Turning Points Chapter 8

In chapter 8 of Turning Points 2000, the big key ideas were how to create a safe and healthy learning environment for all students. This is something that has been touched on time and time again, and for good reason, it seems simple, that if students are in a good and healthy environment, they will be happier and more willing to learn. But, it’s also much more than that. One thing I loved about this chapter is that it went into depth about the different ways to promote that healthy and safe learning environment. Like, teaching students conflict resolution when something arises in the classroom isn’t something that I would have ever thought of, if students know how to resolve conflicts themselves, these conflicts might be less likely to arise in the classroom.

My favorite part of this chapter was the section on health education, and teaching students how to lead healthy lives. If students are learning how to live healthy lifestyles, that will reflect in the environment of the school. I know, reflecting on my own experience as a student, that my health education was very bare minimum, and focused primarily on sex education and the harms of drugs, which of course is important, but there is also importance on teaching kids how to eat healthy and how to take care of their bodies.

Also, it is extremely important to have appropriate and proper health services provided at the schools. Especially if a lot of students come from lower income areas, if you provide health services at school, some of the kids who can’t go to the doctor regularly, can be looked at, at school.

Turning Points Chapter 4

This chapter of Turning Points 2000 focused primarily on a very important part of teaching, instruction. There are many different ways to give instruction to your students, this instruction is the structure of your lesson, and will change from class to class, based on your students and the nature of the lesson. The most popular and extensive type of instruction, is differentiated instruction. Differentiated instruction is instruction that brings student’s cultures and backgrounds into respect when designing lessons, and makes lessons as relatable as possible for every student. It takes into account students who have different learner profiles, or if you have any students with learning disabilities, or anything else that might change their experience in the classroom, like if they’re an ELL student, or if they are partially deaf. Differentiated instruction takes all these aspects and allows you, as a teacher, to create the most successful lesson plan to give all the necessary information to your students.

This chapter also touches on the importance of technology in classroom, while this book was published in 2000, this point is still extremely important. With the ever changing technology in the world, it’s important to use technology in our classrooms, so students have experience with it. But, it is also important to remember, that technology should only be used if it’s necessary, unnecessary technology could be a downfall, rather than a success in the classroom.

The most important thing that I took away from this chapter, is that, no matter which method is used to teach instruction, taking in student backgrounds and needs is the number one priority and should always be taken into account when planning instruction.

A Whole New Mind

I really enjoyed this presentation and came away with so many ideas to encourage right brain thinking in my classroom, and bring some of these activities into the class. I feel like the six aptitudes were connected well to the classroom, and I came away with a lot of ideas on how to bring all six of the aptitudes into a lesson, and effectively help students tune into their right brain thinking. So many of these activities I would have loved to have done as a student, such as the laughter yoga or the story activity, because I feel like stuff like laughter isn't encouraged in the classroom, and unless you're in an English class, thinking fictionally is something that you do very often. Sometimes kids learn best by putting facts into a story, and when kids are having fun, they're more likely to have take away something from the lesson that they're learning. As a student myself, almost every activity that we did today would have been a lot of fun to do in class, and for some of these, if we had done an activity like this during a lesson that I wasn't enjoying, I might have enjoyed the lesson more.

I think my favorite thing that we talked about in the presentation, was the importance of play, and laughter along with joyfulness and games. Kids are always complaining about how school isn't fun, and how they don't do anything fun in school, so if you, as a teacher, make an effort to make your class more fun, students might enjoy your class more. At the end of the day, as much as it might frustrate us as teachers, students are going to remember the class that they got to play a game in, over the class where they simply took notes down. Also, students are more likely to remember what they learn if they're having a fun, and it's important for them to be moving around and being active, so incorporating games and laughter and fun into your lesson, might actually help kids learn better.

I definitely want to go out now and read this book for myself. I have always found psychology and the brain to be extremely fascinating, so reading in depth about the difference between the two sides of your brain would be really interesting. Especially when you apply this psychology to the classroom, when we become teachers, we're going to have students who identify more with the left brain kind of thinking, and some who identify more with the right brain, and as teachers, it's our job to create a lesson that can be absorbed by all of our students. So, by reading this book, it might give some insight on how to help those kids who are more left brained, think more like someone who is more right brained.

Overall, I really enjoyed this presentation. I loved the different activities that we got to do and I definitely want to try and implement them into my classroom when I become a teacher. This subject was extremely fascinating and it really made me want to learn more. I definitely am going to try and use some of these ideas in my class, and am going to read this book so I can go more in depth on this topic.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 8

As a student in high school and middle school, I remember the idea of assessments (especially those of tests) being incredibly daunting. I had extremely bad test anxiety when in middle school and high school, I understood what I was learning, but the minute that I was left in silence to stare at a piece of paper in front of me with questions and value points indicated on the side, all the understanding went out the window. Many many times, I walked out of a test and as soon as I opened my notebook, I would remember the answer to a question that I had struggled on. Assessment was something that I, as a student, always dreaded, and I was certainly not the only one. I think, that if as a student I had been given more choices and was reminded that if I did poorly on an assessment, that it wouldn’t be the end of the world, I would have moved forward in school with much less anxiety and dread for these assessments.

One of my favorite things in this chapter was the antidote that Wormeli gives in the beginning about Danny, who composed a musical piece instead of writing a summary, because Wormeli knew that if Danny had been asked to write a summary, he would have failed, but Wormeli knew that Danny knew and understood the piece, so instead he was encouraged to do something that would properly show his understanding.

Another thing I loved in this chapter was the part that talks about how teachers should track progress, not just check at the end of the unit or semester. If we track student progress throughout a unit, and check in using conferences or small assignments, we can get a better understanding of what our students do and don’t understand, so we can help them in areas that they struggle with, before the end of the unit assessment.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 7

When I think about what I’m most nervous about in becoming a teacher, it’s not connecting with my students, or bonding with my fellow teachers, it’s making sure that the lesson I create can be understood by every student in my classroom. Differentiated instruction is something, that on paper, seems very simple, just insert different things into your lesson that everyone in your classroom can understand and learn, and remember. But, in reality, differentiated instruction is a beast that is hard to bring fully into the classroom and make work effectively. As a teacher, you can work for hours on a lesson, make sure that every different learning strategy has something in your lesson that they can use to absorb the information, but no matter how hard you work to include everyone, when it comes to bringing it into the classroom, it could easily fall apart at the seams.  Every year, as teachers, we’re going to have a completely new set of learners, some of them might be geniuses, with college reading levels and can compute mathematical problems way beyond their years, and others might be just starting out with chapter books, and still struggle with basic division, and we’ll have countless of students who fall somewhere in the middle.

As a teacher, this concept of not being accessible to everyone, and your lesson not being inclusive to everyone, in a scary idea. But Wormeli gives a few tips for teachers to carry with them, such as being empathetic towards all learners, be flexible with time and lessons, be willing to meet with students who are struggle, and being organized. While, this won’t automatically make us experts at differentiated instruction, it might make the whole task less daunting.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 6

Chapter six of Meet Me in the Middle is all about how we can hold our students accountable and how we can help them reach a higher standard of learning. There are multiple ways that Wormeli suggests doing this, and my favorite one that he talks about was the lack of extra credit assignments. By eliminating extra credit assignments, and instead encouraging students to edit work that they’ve already done, it pushes students to excel on the assignment the first time that they hand it in, instead of counting on extra credit or redoing the assignment to get the grade that they want. In that same vein, Wormeli also discusses just simply holding student work to higher value level, that way students will take their work more seriously, like telling students that their work is going to be on display, or published, they’ll work harder on it, feeling a sense of responsibility to the community.

Another thing I really enjoyed in this chapter was Wormeli’s discussion of risk taking. Sometimes by taking risks, we are betting on higher results, and sometimes it pays off. In the example he gives, Wormeli discusses an experience with a boy with Tourette’s playing the lead in the school play, and he performed the play brilliantly. As teachers, we have to take risks like these with our students sometimes, and sometimes they can pay off in our favor. By giving our students a big responsibility, or encouraging them to take a risk in which they might doubt themselves, we might get a result that we don’t expect.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 3 Synthesis

Chapter 3 of Meet Me in the Middle focused primarily on the brain of middle school students, something that all of us found extremely fascinating and a very interesting topic. Almost all of us talked about memorization, and how, while sometimes necessary, we need to avoid depending on it in our classrooms, and focus more on encouraging independent thinking in the classroom. Most of us said that, as teachers, we want to encourage our kids to think for themselves, and not rely on memorization, or simply just learning all the information and not think critically about the information. If students are thinking more critically, and being encouraged to come up with their own conclusions, they’ll be more likely to remember it naturally. Another way to get kids to remember things naturally, is applying different important key points to something outside of the classroom, that they can relate it to. One thing that almost all of us pointed out that we found interesting, and none of us had ever really heard of it before, was this concept of chunking. Chunking is a memorization strategy, that connects different items together, which allows easier and more natural memorization, if students can connect two things together, they might be more likely to remember it.

Student Oriented Curriculum

Before this presentation, I had never heard of student oriented curriculum, but after today's presentation, I feel like I learned a lot and would be able to implement this into my classroom. I really love the idea of letting student's decide what they want to learn and being able to create how they learn it, although I do think something like that does leave a role up to the teacher to coach the students through the process, so they can achieve the most learning. As a student, I would have loved to do something like this in many of my classrooms, countless times I would want to learn certain things within a large unit, but we would never touch on the subject, or I wouldn't be able to learn based on how the lesson was being taught. So, being able to facilitate my own learning would have been beneficial to me as a student.

There were some parts of the presentation that I wish we had gone more in depth about, like more on the process of creating a lesson, or learning more about some of the assessments, but I think we could have had an entire week on this topic and still not learn everything there is to know about student oriented curriculum. I think my favorite thing that we talked about was how much planning on the end of the student goes into creating this student oriented lesson, with weeks of planning time, and class discussions about how things are going to be taught and done in class, with everyone in the class being encouraged to participate and bring their ideas to the table.

I personally would love to go out and try and find other examples of student oriented curriculum in the classroom, while the book highlights a success story, I would be interested to know if other schools have tried to implement this in their classrooms, and know if whether or not they experienced the same kind of success that this school did. This obviously is something that we wouldn't have had to do during the book talk, but it's something that might go out and try and search for myself, because this presentation peaked my interest in something that I have never heard of before.

Overall, I feel like this presentation really opened my eyes to something that I haven't heard something about before. It's something that I think would be really rewarding to bring into a classroom, and I'm glad that I got to learn about the different aspects of it. I think it's important for all students to have a chance to participate in a student oriented curriculum, as it would encourage them to take more opportunities and chances with their learning, even after the student oriented curriculum is over.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 3

This chapter of Meet Me in the Middle focused primarily on how we, as teachers, can utilize the middle school brain, and give students the right amount of “mental workout.” Just because our students are young, doesn’t mean that they are incapable of stretching their minds and thinking critically. This chapter touched on a couple of things that we as teachers, should encourage our students to do, think critically, think for themselves, and think effectively. If you, as a teacher, are encouraging these behaviors in your students, and helping them hone in on these skills, then you’ll be effectively preparing them and helping them.

Thinking critically is especially important, especially from a history and social sciences point of view, if students are simply memorizing dates, they aren’t really learning about what they’re studying. Students could memorize dates every single day, but in the end, they aren’t learning anything about the actual event, because they’re so memorized on the date. Encouraging students to think critically about the things that they’re learning, will help them approach everything in their live critically, which will be beneficial to them as they go into high school and college.

Thinking for themselves is another super important thing to encourage in your students. If students aren’t thinking for themselves, then they’ll be more likely to cheat or plagiarize when it comes to important tests and papers. Students need to be encouraged about their importance of their own thinking and their own opinions, and should be taught ways to avoid plagiarizing and how to use other information and texts and form their opinions and thoughts.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 13

In chapter thirteen of Meet Me in the Middle, Rick Wormeli talks about how to successfully bring students on an overnight camping trip. As a student, I never was taken on such a field trip, field trips were limited to museums, hikes on local trails, and one day trip to Salem, Massachusetts to wrap up our unit about the witch trials. Although, I did go on overnight camping trips with my girl scout troop, and learned a lot about myself and the wilderness by doing so. I think there’s a lot of value in going on trips like this and it allows students to not only learn about their subjects in an environment outside of the classroom, but also teaches them other skills that they will bring with them even after they’ve left middle school.

Something that I found most interesting was how Wormeli makes arguments and gives examples for how every subject can be represented on a camping trip. Most of the time when you think about being in the wilderness, science is the first subject that comes to mind. But Wormeli gives examples like, writing about what they see around them, studying the trees and their circumferences, or doing a civil war reenactment to bring all the subjects out on a trip like this. Not only would students be learning about things relevant to their core subjects, but they’d be doing it in an unforgettable environment on an exciting camping trip.

Doing something like an overnight trip or even a complete day trip outdoors is something that I never thought I would be able to incorporate into my class, but Wormeli gives solid examples on how a camping trip can teach everything from math and social studies to leadership and trust.

Meet me in the Middle Chapter 4

The main topic in Meet Me in the Middle chapter 4 is active learning, and incorporation physical activity into your learning. Middle school students don’t really know how to stay still, and most of the time the only physical activity they get during the day is gym class, or in some schools, recess. But most of the time this isn’t enough and kids spend the rest of the day antsy and squirming in their seats. One way to help this problem is to incorporate some form of physical activity into your lesson, so that kids are getting up and moving around in the classroom, and still learning the lesson. This not only gets them up and moving, but most of the time middle schoolers have more fun moving around, so the lesson becomes more fun and engaging and they are more likely to learn the key points of the lesson.

Physical activity can be implemented into every subject, in the example provided by Rick Wormeli, he took students outside to measure and learn about ratios, using a tree and shadows, and he also mentions a physical activity to do with punctuation. And physical activity doesn’t necessarily mean just getting students up and running around, sometimes just taking them outside to do an activity, or getting them up and drawing on the board can get them stimulated in the lesson.

When kids are squirming and being forced to sit, they aren’t absorbing the lesson because they’re thinking about how they would rather be doing something else, so by getting them up and moving, and learning something, they’re much more likely to absorb the lesson.  

Turning Points Chapter 3

Chapter three of Turning Points 2000 focused mainly on curriculum and standards, and making sure that the lesson you’re creating can be accessible to all of your students. Equality was something that this chapter talked about, and how when creating a lesson, being able to reach every single one of your students can be challenging but is also one of the most important parts things to remember. Coming up with essential questions to be answered in the lesson, and coming up with ways to connect the lesson to their students past learnings will help all students take away the important points from the lesson, and utilize the skills that they already have.

One of my favorite things that they talked about in this chapter, was connecting lessons to the world around us. I think that connecting what you’re teaching to the world that kids live in is something that is extremely beneficial and will really help students understand the lesson better, and take away something that they can then carry into their life outside of the classroom. If students are learning about something they can then go outside and experience, and touch and hear and feel, they’ll be much more likely to call back to it later, as opposed to learning about something that doesn’t actually exist or that they can’t experience for themselves.

One of the most challenging things is making sure that every student takes away the same important essential ideas from a lesson, because not all kids learn the same way. As teachers, we must make sure that our ideas and lessons are accessible, so that all students can learn something and take away the same key ideas.  

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 9

In chapter nine of Meet Me in the Middle, Rick Wormeli discusses extended class periods, and what that means for your classrooms. This is also referred to as block scheduling, where students don’t have every class every day of the week, but when they do have it, it’s an extended class period. While to some, this may look like a bad thing, like can students really stay focused enough for 80 minutes, or will students absorb as much if they aren’t meeting every da. But, it has mostly proven to be a positive thing and that students actual absorb more information during extended class periods.

One thing that extended class periods allow is more wait time, which can be beneficial to students who might have been struggling with processing information in the shorter class periods. These extended class periods also are beneficial because it allows you, as the teacher, to use multiple instructional methods to help students understand the material. By using multiple instructional methods, you’re reaching out to more of your students who may benefit from multiple methods or those who just learn a different kind of way. While this may seem repetitive to some students, it will help them understand the important material and process information better.

There are plenty of other benefits to block scheduling, like having the ability to do longer lessons, or having more time in a class period for presentations or movies that you’d like to show. And students will absorb more of your lesson.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 12

Chapter 12 of Meet Me in the Middle tells the account of a middle school teacher who brought his students on a hike and ended up getting caught in a downpour and freezing temperatures. The story is meant to highlight the value of students working together to overcome an obstacle, and that even if something goes wrong, there can still be a positive outlook on things. This teacher turned the horrific weather into a bonding experience, with students looking out for each other and helping each other stay safe and warm. In the end, almost all of the students enjoyed the experience and were happy that they had gone on the trip, despite the weather.

This chapter also talks about the benefits of something called a “teacher advisory” program, where one teacher is assigned to a group of 12-15 students, and the group meets during the week, and does activities together. The trip that is described in this chapter is part of the advisory program, and is referred to as a full day advisory trip, where that one teacher takes his students on a field trip that isn’t related to any of their school subjects. The reason that this kind of program has a benefit, is that it allows students to bond, and allows them to explore the world outside of the school with their classrooms, without the pressure of being in a school setting.

Since in the middle school that we are creating, we want there to be a strong connection between our students and the outside community, and our students with each other, something like the teacher advisory program could have a significant positive impact.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 11

In this chapter of Meet Me in the Middle, Rick Wormeli dives into the topic of communication and team relationships in the middle school. Most middle schools have “teams” of teachers, all of whom teach different subjects, but teach to the same group of students. These teams are meant to collaborate and work together to make sure that each of their students is reaching their highest potential and being successful in all subjects. This is accomplished by teachers talking about their students, making sure that their own lessons and schedules are ideal for student success (such as making sure major deadlines don’t overlap, and that students have enough time to complete all their work for all their subjects), and teachers listening to each other when a concern or idea comes up.

In this chapter, there are a few different scenarios that are brought up, that would cause trouble among a team if they were to ever happen, such as one teacher assigns too much homework and is always yelling at his students. Depending on the structure and communication of the team, this scenario could either go very well, with a discussion leading to a solution, or very badly, with the teacher being angry and frustrated and refusing to change his ways.  If the team has good communication, then the scenario should end like the first option, but if there’s disjointness among the team, then the latter option might end up being the case.

All in all, the team’s major focus should be on the success of the student, with student needs and feelings coming first. Teams should make sure that they’re always keeping the student interest in mind, and should always be working towards the highest student success.

This We Believe

pages 1-26
One of the key points that was made in the first part of This We Believe, is that students are the most important part of teaching. This is something, that theoretically should be a given, but it’s not always the first thing that teachers think about when designing lessons or creating their classroom. In This We Believe, there’s a lot of discussion about how middle school is when kids are developing the most both mentally and physically and the effect that these developments have on students, both socially and in the classroom. The book also touched upon how kids socioeconomic status, family situations and home lives can have on their learning, as all of these things are things to take into consideration when planning out your lessons and looking at the curriculum of the district and working it into your lesson.

I firmly believe that your students are the most important thing when being a teacher, and I think that this part of This We Believe did a good job of bringing the students into play without forgetting about the lessons and the curriculum, which are also, extremely important things to take into consideration when being a teacher, obviously. This book highlights the importance of assessment, and how to assess your students in ways that work for them, and talks about the importance of addressing the things that students are doing correctly, while also helping them improve in areas that they aren’t excelling in.

There is so much happening in student’s lives when they enter middle school, with their bodies changing, the way they interact with their classmates changing, their minds developing, that finding a way to connect their lives with what they’re learning and encourage them to continue expanding their minds, is the key.

pages 27-33

The second part of This We Believe had to do mainly with the collaboration that must exist between teachers, and other staff members, in order to create a healthy and accomplished middle school. As this part discusses, without communication and collaboration between teachers and staff members, the overall energy of the school wouldn’t be as positive and students wouldn’t get as rich of an education. One of the major reasons that collaboration is a key part of being a teacher, is that nearly every subject can be intertwined and connected, which means that the lessons being taught in one class can easily cross over to another class. If teachers are collaborating and communicating with each other, they can combine lessons, or match up their lessons, so their students are getting a holistic look at the entire theme of the lesson.

Being able to communicate with your fellow teachers and staff members is one of the most important things to do as a teacher. In my practicum experience, in the community that I was one, there were three teachers (coincidentally, all three of said teachers had practicum students) who were really good communicators and always were on the same page with each other, but the fourth teacher in the community wasn’t involved nearly as much as the other teachers, and never seemed to be completely up to speed on what was going on during the community meetings. Because of this communication issue between teachers, the connect between science (which was that singular teacher’s concentration) and the other three subjects was severely lacking.

Talking to your fellow teachers and being able to talk to the principal and administration about important issues is one of the things that should be established early on, as it’s going to be a lot easier to form communication in the beginning, then have to try and form communication as soon as a problem arises.

pages 33-42

This part of This We Believe focuses primarily on how to create a safe and healthy environment that allows students to grow and succeed in your middle school. There is a stress on interaction with students outside of the classroom environment, making sure that parents are aware of what is going on in the schools and making sure that students get physical activity time in, so they have some outlet for their energy. One of the things that I feel most strongly about is the physical activity aspect, not that I was ever a fan of gym class, but since my school was a K-8 school, when 8th grade rolled around, my class still got to go outside for recess for 20 minutes every day. When talking to my friends who went to actual middle schools, almost none of them had recess in their middle schools and hadn’t had recess since they were in grade school.

Kids in the middle aged group have a lot of energy that builds up throughout the day, and are expected to sit through hour, sometimes longer, classes, without any outlet for that energy. Most schools have gym class, but sometimes kids still don’t get out their energy. I think that recess time has a lot of value, even in the middle level grades. If kids are spending time outside, they get fresh air and an outlet for their energy, so when they are sitting in class, they’re less likely to be distracted by thoughts of being outside.

By communicating with students and giving them something like recess, it will allow their to be better relationships between students and teachers. If the relationship between students and teachers is strong and healthy, then the students will feel safe in school. When students are feeling safe in school, they’re more likely to succeed.

pages 43-62

In this last part of This We Believe, it mainly focuses on how to bring all these ideas introduced and talked about into action. Hence the chapter title, “Call To Action.” We learn a lot about ways to teach adolescents and how to bring leadership and community into the classroom, but this chapter brings it outside sources to stress how important some of these ideas are. Such as, parent involvement to create a real community within the school, doing training sessions among the teachers to build leadership schools, and developing a curriculum that gets students involved and keeps them interested.

The very last section of This We Believe was about the students. Throughout this book we’ve learned and discussed how important ages 10-15 are for all kids. They are going through things, physically, intellectually, morally, socially-emotionally and psychologically, all of which play a hand in their learning and might end up coming out in the classroom. As a teacher, we need to be aware of these changes and understand them, and try to understand where all of our students are in these areas. Such as, if one girl in the class is developing faster than all of the other girls, and all the boys, she might be a subject of bullying, so knowing that ahead of time, you might be able to stop it before it becomes a problem. Of if some students are developing social-emotionally faster, this might cause a problem in the classroom, and in the school community as a whole.

The most important thing is to be aware of these changes and not be afraid to talk about them with your students. Students will respond better if open communication is stressed and introduced to them while all these changes are going on.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 2

In the second chapter of Meet Me in the Middle by Rick Wormeli, the main focus was keeping students motivated. Motivation is one of the major keys to student success, if students are motivated, they’ll be more likely to be successful in the classroom. The way that we teach plays a major role in how motivated students are, and it’s the methods we use in the classroom that will determine whether or not students will be motivated to learn the material we are teaching. Rick Wormeli uses many different examples of motivators, such as games, mixing up the structure of the classroom every once in awhile to keep students on their toes, build suspense to the next lesson and providing the reason “why” students are learning what they’re learning.

Motivation is one of the hardest things to inspire in students, because sometimes students are simply not interested in learning what you’re teaching, and no amount of games or suspense building can make things interesting for them. With these students, I think the key thing is to find something that they are motivated into doing, and personally insert that into the lesson. For example, if you have a student who doesn’t like history at all, but loves science, find a way to make them look at the history lesson from a scientific point of view, while still learning the same information as the rest of the students. Not only are they getting all the same information, but they’re now interested in what they’re studying.

There are many different way that motivation can be either implemented, or crushed in students, and it’s our job as teachers to keep that motivation alive in students. If students are motivated, they’ll be more alert and alive in class, which will help them be more successful.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 1

In the opening chapter of Meet Me in the Middle by Rick Wormeli, he talks mainly about how as middle school teachers, or teachers of any age group, our main goal should be to inspire our students. While yes, it is important to give them the knowledge they need to be successful in life, the key is to inspire your students to go through life being good and honest people. He highlights the major points to impacting this wisdom on your students and the key to hitting the idea home when talking to your students.

A major thing that he talked about, that I’ve seen both in my experience as a student and in the classroom as an educator, is that a lot of teachers, and many other people, see teaching as being a chore and that “the three best parts about being a teacher are June, July and August”, acting as though, teachers chore through the entire school year and only enjoy the time off. I feel, in my experience, that there have been plenty of people outside of the field of education who believe that the only reason teachers teach, is so they can get three months off of their job. Even though, truly, being a teacher is something that’s so much more than a job, and much more of a lifestyle than anything else.

As teachers, it’s our job to inspire our students to love what they do and put their whole heart into the things that we do, so when we as teachers don’t do the same thing, we’re failing to teach our students that message.

Turning Points Chapter 2

In the second chapter, there are eight different recommendations given on how to improve middle school grades, including things like involving community members and parents, teaching skills that will students can implement beyond middle school and providing a safe and healthy environment for students so that they can grow and develop in a place where they are supported. Most of these recommendations are more from an administration viewpoint, but they all can be applied in a classroom, and every teacher should think about the bigger administration picture when planning out their classroom. One of the most important of the recommendations given is making sure middle school is a safe place for students, considering how much is changing in student’s lives when they enter middle school, that it’s very crucial that they not only have a healthy environment to learn, but also a healthy environment as they deal with the important changes happening in their lives.

Turning Points Chapter 1

The first chapter mainly outlines what exactly should be put into account when talking about middle school and middle schoolers, such as the financial situation that both the school and the student’s family find themselves in, because it can have major and minor effects on the school and the student. These chapters also highlight the expectations that teachers have on their students, and how those expectations might vary from student to student, and what kind of impact these expectations have on your students, which can be both negative and positive. Another thing that was a major part of this chapter was what kind of problems middle schools face, and the problems with training teachers to teach middle school. This is a problem that can be addressed by schools like UMF, with big education programs, I feel like middle school isn’t a big focus in the education program here. With my experience in the secondary education program, most of the focus is on the high school level, and with speaking to people in the elementary education program, most of the focus on grades K-5, so again very little focus on the middle school level. Middle school is a very crucial time in student’s lives, and this chapter focuses on how middle school teachers need to well trained, but there’s very little emphasis on middle school training in these ed programs.