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.