During middle school, students begin to strengthen their ideas and beliefs about themselves and the world around them. To become socially responsible citizens, students need the skills to explore controversial issues...

For the life of me, I cannot remember having a significant interaction in middle school with my peers who had disabilities. I'm not a particularly forgetful person; I have many memories from my small town middle...

Everybody has a story. These stories comprise the events in our lives that intersect in complicated and uniquely beautiful ways to shape our perceptions and general outlook of the world. They demonstrate our strengths...

It's not our imagination, kids really are different. Today's youth face four constructs that adults either did not experience at all or did not experience in the same way as youth today. Athletics As a parent of...

I nervously entered the room and found a seat in the back. I looked around to find the fastest exit, but I was too late; the teacher walked in, queued the music, and dimmed the lights. "Welcome" she began. "It is a...

From the inception of the middle school movement, team approaches to instruction were considered the preferred way to organize a school housing grades 4-8, 5-8, or 6-8. Today, educators see teaching teams as a key to...

The term dog-and-pony show, in reference to teacher evaluation, frequently denotes a false presentation by a teacher to demonstrate instruction that is only done for the sake of the evaluation. I understand the...

As a white, privileged, cisgender, heterosexual male, I can walk into most situations with people of my own race, or with mixed race, gender, sexual orientation, or socio-economic status groups, and not have to be on...

Last night I saw the play Dear Edward Hansen with my 14-year-old eighth grader, Zoey. It's amazing, of course, but one thing that really struck me was the audible sobbing during the show. This is a play about a...

By the time Catie, 14, stormed out of her last class of the day, she felt disconnected from her emotions. She had no idea how deeply she'd been impacted by a minor fight with her mother on the way to school. In...