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.