MWSubstack 015: Teaching MS; Student Voices
What's it like to be a middle school teacher? And what do middle schoolers want us to know?
Welcome to MiddleWeb Substack. It’s a twice-monthly, two-topic, five-minute read for middle grades educators, featuring several of MiddleWeb’s most popular and influential articles, a book review, and a noteworthy 4-8 resource or project we’ve spotted. That’s it!
►TEACHING MIDDLE SCHOOL
"Tough doesn't begin to cover it."
If you're considering teaching in grades 6-8 (or just looking for your people) you'll appreciate our collection of articles about middle schoolers and, as Cult of Pedagogy's Jennifer Gonzalez writes, their "ridiculous, smelly, stubborn, fragile beauty." Start with her 8 Things I Know for Sure About Middle School Kids. It's terrific.
History teacher Laurie Lichtenstein's fascination with kids in the middle began more than 20 years ago. Her posts for MiddleWeb have helped explain Why Middle Schoolers Still Love The Outsiders and puzzled over their enduring passion for fads. Our favorite may be Middle School Survival: 'You Gotta Get to June' which offers a vivid description of the month of May in a 7th grade classroom.
The best middle school educators bring empathy, rigor (the good kind) and a gift for community building to the work required to teach young adolescents. You'll find all that in Cheryl Mizerny's How to Become a Tween-Centered Teacher, and in Elyse Scott's How to Be a Successful Middle School Teacher. You can also hear it in Sarah Cooper's wistful What I Miss About My Middle Schoolers, written during the first months of Covid online teaching:
We as teachers didn’t choose middle school because we want a class of easily muted kids. Part of the reason I love this age group is that it’s a messy, evolving, nonlinear process to grow from here to there – from sixth to eighth grades, from 5’1” to 5’8”, from child to young adult.
Are you wondering if this is the job for you? Author and award-winning teacher Debbie Silver's spot-on advice in Should You Become a Middle School Teacher? can help you decide. She describes three special characteristics that will be key to your success: quirkiness, flexibility, and a strong sense of self.
Other good sources of insight and inspiration:
Crazy Love: 6 Reasons Why I Teach in the Middle (Beth Morrow)
Adolescents Thrive on Advocacy and Agency (Dru Tomlin)
Who Are You to Tell Me What to Do? (Elena Aguilar)
5 Special Strategies for Teaching Tweens (Rick Wormeli)
Bring Your Personality and Humor on Day One (Heather Wolpert-Gawron)
Six Reasons Why Middle School Rocks (Cheryl Mizerny)
Regie Routman “believes that we are most fully ourselves when ‘teaching, learning, and living are interwoven and seamlessly integrated.’ To show us this full self, she shares stories that might help us navigate our own worlds.“ – Read Sarah Cooper’s review of The Heart-Centered Teacher.
►STUDENT VOICES
" We keep discovering things about ourselves every day."
Can we gain more perspective about middle school teaching by listening to the consumers? These three posts are by students eager to share their experience.
How Middle School Kids Rejected Stereotypes (The Students of Liberty Middle )
What Teachers Need to Know about Homework (Lily Strickland)
For Kids: 5 Things to Know about Middle School (Zoey Chandler)
►ELSEWHERE
Many students are anxious about climate change
Climate trauma has long-lasting adverse effects which persistently impact people’s overall well-being. In this article at The Conversation, a group of teacher-educators consider the best ways for teachers to address students’ concerns about climate change, including “truthful hope” built on forward-looking stories.
►OUR BOOK REVIEW
Humans Who Teach: A Guide for Centering Love, Justice, and Liberation in Schools by Shamari Reid.
"The ideas that self-care is insufficient, that teachers are better humans and teachers if they pay attention to their own needs, and that simply thinking about change is not enough permeate the book," writes teacher-leader Sarah Cooper in her review. Read the complete review.
►REVIEW THIS SPOTLIGHT BOOK
Place-Based Learning: Connecting Inquiry, Community, and Culture by Micki Evans, Charity Marcella Moran and Erin Sanchez; foreword by Lisa Delpit. Solution Tree, 2024.
Empowering educators to cultivate student connections to place, culture, and community, this book provides tools and principles for teaching and learning beyond the classroom walls, using authentic, community-driven experiences that create student ownership. GO HERE to see the free book and our reviewing guidelines.
►NEXT TIME
Several master-class articles about teaching writing and developing student writers. And suggestions for class closers that help pull all the learning together.