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.