Monday, January 10, 2011
Breaking Ranks in the Middle
As you read this article, look back at your middle grades experience. There may be things that you don't recall or are not privy to, like how data was used to make decisions. But reflect on the topics that you can. How was academic performance (you may want to check your schools scores now -http://paayp.emetric.net/), did you feel connected to a person, were your classes integrated or did each content area work as an "independent state?"
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Looking at the website, my elementary/middle school is graded with a warning sign and the area of weakness is in academic performance. However, when reflecting on my experience there, I feel that quite a few of the recommendations for the 3 core areas were incorporated. Our grade was divided into smaller groups and we would rotate between different classrooms of different subject areas. This does show though that each content area was treated as "independent states". The teachers had good relationships with us as students and provided a comfortable atmosphere.
ReplyDeleteFor me, seventh grade was twenty-seven years ago. I can only remember a little bit of what I experienced. (Possibly those years were so unnerving I have blocked them out!) In 1984, when I was in seventh grade, I had a sense that Westlake Middle School was academically sound. Most students were middle to upper-middle class socioeconomically and students were fairly well behaved during class times. In 2009-2010, the AYP target was met in all groups reported on the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Academic Achievement Report.
ReplyDeleteI do not recall feeling connected to any adult in particular, in fact, I do recall feeling rather disconnected. I experienced a lot of fear and feelings of intimidation and inferiority. I was scared all the time that I might be called on unexpectedly. On the other hand, my seventh grade son feels very connected to a couple of his teachers in Conneaut Lake. His teachers report to me that he is the exact opposite of how I was – he voluntarily raises his hand to inquire further concerning topics raised by the teacher. My two daughters have been involved in a peer-helper group where they are assigned at-risk younger students to mentor and encourage. I’m sure the peer-helper program provides a great sense of connectivity.
In my middle school experience, every class seemed to be completely independent of one another. However, I have personally met with my children’s teachers during one of their team planning sessions. They seem to work very closely together and meet once per week.
It has been 15 years since I was last in middle school. I believe that while I was at North East Middle School for grades 6-8, the school performed well academically. When I was a middle school student, we did not have PSSA testing. NEMS used a standardized type of testing called the Iowa Tests. I remember not liking the tests at all. I even remember simply filling in circles, just to be done with a section of the test. These tests and my score on them did not have much impact on the school. North East School District started using the PSSA after I graduated from high school in 2000. Their PSSA scores for the 2009-2010 school year were quite good. As a whole, the district met AYP standards. However, NEMS did not meet academic performance standards for their IEP/Special Education students. This was the only area that missed AYP for the district.
ReplyDeleteWhile at NEMS, I never once felt a personal connection with any teacher, principal or staff member. If there was a teacher that showed an interest in my learning and my grades, I would have applied myself much more than I did. Many of the recommendations presented in Breaking Ranks, would have made me a more successful student and helped with my personal and social skills. My classes worked as an “independent state.” I had four core subject classes with four different teachers. To my knowledge, never were classes connected to one another in anyway. What I did in science and social studies never had anything to do with what I was learning in math and language arts. During my junior field experience I witnessed first-hand, a letter writing assignment that connected social studies with language arts.
During my middle years, I attended an elementary school and then a Jr.-Sr. high school. The school district had no formal middle school, although they had 2 elementary schools. One of the elementary schools had K-3 students and the other had K and 4-6. In 7th grade I entered the high school. When I was in 5th grade, I started to change classrooms by subject and each class was definitely an “independent state”. Obviously, I do not know what kind of collaboration, if any, was happening between the teachers, but from my perspective it doesn’t seem like they knew at all what was going on in any class but their own. The idea throughout the three Core Areas of teacher teams was not present in my schools. I recall students complaining about all of the teachers giving lots of homework on the same nights and the teachers’ responses were always something to the affect that it wasn’t their “problem” what the other teachers are doing. Because of this, it seems like there was a sort of “us vs. them” attitude among the student body and it was perceived by our young minds that the teachers bought into the idea too. Although looking back, I doubt they thought about our attitude much unless it affected their class in a negative way.
ReplyDeleteBecause I did not have a counselor assigned to me or really anyone to talk to about school-related concerns, I did not feel connected to any adults in either school during the middle years, but I was also not actively seeking out any connectivity with the faculty. My classes during the middle years were very lecture oriented and not geared toward student participation or active learning, and so I remember taking a very passive approach when it came to interaction with my teachers. If I were to see any of my teachers from that time on the street and tell them who I was, I’m sure that very few would probably know who I am even though I was an excellent student. For the most part, I did not have close relationships with teachers, especially any that I would classify as connectivity. In other words, my school district did not adhere to the Core Area 2 idea of personalizing the school environment by eliminating anonymity. I was able to slide through my middle years almost completely unnoticed.
The school district I attended now has a K-6 elementary and still has a 7-12 high school. According to the Pennsylvania Annual Yearly Progress report card, the high school met the AYP requirements but the elementary school’s status was listed as “Warning”. Obviously, I have no idea why the students’ scores are not meeting the standards, but it’s possible that if they lack a specific approach to the middle level students at the school, like they did when I attended the district’s schools, then those students could be bringing down the overall test scores of the school.
My middle school experience was not like most public school systems. I went to a Catholic grade school that went from kindergarten to eighth grade. The class sizes were small so in that sense it seemed like a small community. I would say that was the only thing that matched up with the recommendations given in the article. We didn’t pair up in small groups to do any activities. It was very much just the teacher lecturing and giving notes and grades were based on homework questions and tests. There might have been small projects here and there but few and far between. In each grade we had about three teachers that taught us all of the subjects. The subjects were very much independent states. None of the subjects corresponded and were used to link each other together in any sense. My school no longer exists so I couldn’t look up the academic performance on the website.
ReplyDeleteAs far feeling connected to anyone the students together felt connected because most of us had been through all of the grades together. I didn’t feel a direct connection to any of the teachers like an advisory program would lead to. I did like my teachers very much and I believe they cared for the students but didn’t feel as if I would ever go to them with something that was bothering me. My school didn’t even have a guidance counselor for students to talk to. The closest thing we had was a priest. I don’t know a single young adolescent that wants to share their problems or thoughts with a priest.
The article states how every student should be treated equally and if a student is having a problem you should try to address it and help them. I don’t think there were many students that had trouble with the material but if there was there wasn’t anything in particular that was used to help them. We had a gifted program that did things to advance the smarter students and help them but not the ones that were lacking skills in a specific area. I believe more tools could’ve been used in the classroom. An example would be using a globe. We had a globe in the classroom but never actually used it. I say that because I know most of the students in my class, myself included, believed that Alaska was an island when we graduated. Our textbook always showed Alaska in a tiny box on the side on the map of the U.S. next to Hawaii. Had a globe been used to show students the actual geography of the world this false belief would not have existed.
Honestly I wouldn’t change my experience I had in this school. I didn’t feel the pressures that most children this age feel due to the fact that I spent all eight years with the same group of kids. I was and continue to be very close with the people I went to school with. I believe the education and curriculum could’ve been improved greatly. So now my job will be to learn from my experience and try to make it better for the children I will be teaching.
Thinking about my middle school experience makes it feel as if it were ages ago. However details of those years creeps back slowly but surely. They are mostly positive things but there were things that I perceive as flaws.
ReplyDeleteI think back to those years striving to recall how many decisions were based on data and don't seem to remember a lot of examples. I feel that the private school experience, which I had, is different in comparison to that of public school. I don't every remember having to worry about the data or AYP standards. I do however remember and instance were a student was out for an extended time period due to illness and fell behind in work. The school attempted to get the student back on track with all classes, but this seemed to fail. Resulting in the school asking him to leave the school and go to a public school. I must keep in mind that I was a fellow middle school student at the time and some of this may be a little falsified due to rumor. Either way, I felt it was not a proper decision for the school to dismiss him because his scores would result in bringing the schools scores down. This was one story that stuck in my mind, but other than that instance it was very positive.
It may have been such a positive experience due to feeling connected to the teachers and administrators of the school. I knew every teacher by name and everyone in return new me personally by name. This personal environment created the ability to easily communicate between teachers about my progress. I never felt that teachers were cut off from the others. They worked together to provide me with a quality education that prepared me for high school and much more.
It has been 16 years since I was in middle school and remembering 5th and 6th grade seems somewhat difficult. From reading above, I find that my experience was very similar to Korey’s. I attended a K-6 elementary school and then at 7th grade moved into a Jr. Sr. High School. While in Elementary I still remember taking the Iowa tests and dreading those days when we knew that they were coming. Teachers would always stress that they were important and that we needed to take our time and complete them properly. I remember people in my class that would complete sections in about 4 minutes and teachers walking over to review with them and see if they actually answered the questions properly.
ReplyDeleteI graduated in a class of roughly 90 people and I do remember feeling connected to two of my elementary school teachers. They were both in 6th grade, but it always seemed as though they wanted to know you a little better and joke around with students. I felt that these two teachers had better relationships with most of the students in the class and I also felt that most people did well in their classes because they cared. Even upon graduating some of the members of my class would recall those two teachers being the better teachers throughout their education and to this day will walk up to them and talk to them when seen out in public.
Once I moved into the Jr. Sr. High School for my 7-8th grade years it always seemed I was much too busy to get to know teachers. I remember having home work at times that would last 2 hours and on nights that I ended up not having any I was just very thankful or took the opportunity to review and study. I did find that I thought that I had relationships with certain teachers, but most of the times it was teachers that were either coaches of a sport that I played or teachers that I had for multiple periods in the day.
Looking back, I don’t feel that any of my classes throughout my middle school years were integrated. I feel that every teacher had their own agenda and nothing really came together for a collective lesson. I also don’t even recall any teacher teaching a lesson that had any type of other information except for science. I felt that sometimes teachers would incorporate some math with science but it was very little and for the most part every class had an “Independent State” aspect
I attended a middle school that held grades six through eight. After reading the article I noticed my school did try many of the things listed as core areas, but there were also many problems in my school district as a whole that made these adjustments less successful than intended. For example, like mentioned in the article, my school constantly had negative media coverage ranging from frequent drug bust to the school being released early for gang violence, to the school being exposed to toxic chemicals from nearby factories. This led to our school getting a reputation that allowed slacking to happen. Although content areas were "independent states" and there were some personal connections with teachers, we were not held to high standards because teachers did not expect much from us and neither did other nearby school districts because of our reputation.
ReplyDeleteAnother problem that faced our middle school was that the team we were placed in for our education was based on our test scores. This resulted in students in classes that were considered "less smart" not caring as much, and teachers not putting as much pressure on them. To change this administrative workers would give rewards to students with negative behavior and poor grades when they would improve slightly but never rewarded students who were always well behaved. This led to incentive for the "good" students to not do so well anymore.
It seems this things are still negatively affecting my old middle school because the website listed has it marked as corrective action I. The report card also shows that they are doing poorly in math, and even worse in reading.
Being rather fresh out of high school and middle school, I can see a lot that was right with the “system”. Based on our scores on our proficiency tests, our school system was rated Excellent by the state of Ohio. I felt that the academic performances were good, but could do better with improvement. The main problem was the connection with the students. I only really connected with one teacher. He was my band instructor and he was the only one it seemed who knew how to understand and connect with what we, as children, were going through and what, as students, we needed to learn. All of the other teachers focused more on the lesson than if the students actually understood what was going on at that particular time in class.
ReplyDeleteThe classes we had were integrated and it seemed as though if we were doing the French revolution in history, we were doing French literature around the same time period in our English classes. The same happened with the math and science (even though it helps when the math and science teacher are the same person).
I recall a lot from my middle school years even though it was twelve years ago. I went to James S. Wilson Middle School in Millcreek. I believe that it was a true middle school that tried to incorporate the 3 core areas. We were divided into two teams in order to make classes smaller and more comfortable. I thought this was nice because you had better interaction with your teachers and fellow students. This also allowed for friendly competitions between the two teams the gave us motivation. They wanted to make it a learning environment that was comfortable for everyone. One thing I remember that goes along with the third core area is we had a SWEP program. It was a program that allowed for students who were a little more advanced to go and be more challenged. We would be given different exercises or problems to solve that were more complex and I believe that it helped individualize the curriculum. I feel that Wilson was a high achieving school. We were the oldest building in the district so the materials or technology was not the greatest but it was still a great learning environment. They have since then built a brand new building that is designed in a way that better fits a middle school curriculum. They now have actual pods in order to create a sense of teams.
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