"This We Believe" -Abbie

The authors of "This We Believe" preface their book by giving an overview of their philosophy of Middle Level Education. They discuss the challenges students meet because of their continuous development throughout this stage in life, and how changes in social structure impact our students. The authors, the National Middle School Association, outline fourteen characteristics and attributes of a successful middle school before delving into each in subsequent chapters.

Successful middle schools must have educators that are prepared for young adolescents and their dynamic lifestyles; these educators must put students first, love what they are doing, and "serve as role models for students" (9). Collaboration and the use of teams in middle schools is vital; these elements better serve our students and help them reach their goals of success. These elements also join educators --teachers, staff, principals, superintendents-- in a shared vision of sticking to the school mission statement to ensure student success. Within this community, there will be smaller teams of teacher/advisors and student/advisees so that each student has an adult advocate; to coincide with this idea of each child having an adult advocate is the idea of communicating with parents, and inviting community members to take part in the learning community.

A safe and supportive environment gives the sense of community and fosters learning for all; this sense of community gives everyone -teachers & staff, students and the outlying community-- a feeling of teamwork and goals towards which to strive. A safe and supportive environment fosters learning by upholding high expectations for every member of the community; teachers work together to appropriately challenge and engage students so that each individual is continually striving.

Successful middle schools provide a “curriculum that is relevant, challenging, and integrative and exploratory” (19), and successful teachers take advantage of teachable moments to address the “hidden curriculum” (20). Relevance, integration and exploration refer to a curriculum’s relation to the real world, as well as its ability to incorporate and be sensitive to students’ questions and interests. These three components also speak to a curriculum that is interdisciplinary, one that does not isolate subject areas, but rather connects them. Challenge calls attention to whether or not a curriculum is developmentally appropriate, and pushes our students to go beyond the covering of content; challenging our students to master necessary skills to look at a concept from all angles, and discover how as well as why.

The authors continue on to discuss the importance of multiple teaching and learning approaches to accommodate student diversity: multiple intelligences and learning styles, skill levels, cultural experiences, and prior knowledge. Successful instructional approaches include an emphasis on collaboration and cooperation, technological integration, various individual and group activities, and hands-on experiments –all of which cater to student interest and/or have a real-life application.

Meet Me in the Middle Ch. 9

The subject of this chapter was the benefits of using block scheduling, the idea that you have fewer classes in the day (usually 4) that last for a longer period of time (around 80 minutes). This may make it so that less material is covered over the course of the year, but Wormeli asserts that more material will be remembered by students than in the traditional schedule. The chapter goes over the backward design model, and explains how it is important for us to use this model in blocks because it helps us define what we want to do with all the time we have. The author argues that block scheduling is less stressful for students because you are not trying to cram everything into a short period of time. A potential drawback with them is that students don't remember as much from the middle of the period, so teachers should place their most important material in the beginning and end of the period, and save tasks like attendance and homework review for the middle. Other benefits of blocks include more time for teachers to integrate their curriculum, more time for students to reflect on their work, better opportunities to integrate the community into the learning process, and more time for teachers to incorporate all of their students unique learning needs. In the end, block scheduling can only be successful if teachers fill all the time with engaging activities for their students.

That last point is something I think we can all relate to, even in college. Long periods of time can be powerful for learning, but if they are not filled with engaging activities they can feel like they are dragging on forever. Another thing many of us noticed was that the beginning and end of our classes are usually for administrative tasks when they should really be for the most important subject material. The beginning of class should be for engaging material, and the end should be for reflection. One negative criticism some people had of the chapter was that it focuses on backwards design, something many of us learned in practicum. Also, block scheduling does not allow for teachers to see their students every day. At the end of the day, block scheduling focuses on what's important, the learning.

This video is a documentary about one school's move to block scheduling and shows a variety of opinions about the issue. Everything we said in our reflections seems to be represented well. You should know also know that is student made, so it's not always appropriate and it is very long.