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.