Five elementary schools come together to form one intermediate school in our district. This means nearly four hundred students from across the community, many of whom have never met, join under one roof at Custer Baker Intermediate School (CBIS), an AMLE School of Distinction. For a ten- or eleven-year-old, the transition can feel overwhelming. With
Read More… from The Power of Middle Grades Teaming: Building Belonging and Boosting Success
In August, 2025 AMLE conducted a survey of its membership to better understand interdisciplinary teaming practices across middle schools. For the purposes of this survey, interdisciplinary teaming was defined for respondents as teams of two to five teachers representing the core subjects. The team shares the same schedule, students, area of the building, responsibility for
Read More… from A Survey of Middle School Interdisciplinary Teaming Practices
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In The Successful Middle School: This We Believe, we learn that interdisciplinary teaming is “a signature component” of a middle school (p. 51). The benefits of these smaller groups of students within a larger school include easing the transition from elementary to middle school and helping students feel a sense of belonging. However, creating a
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What if you were told that a weekly spiraled assessment was a vital part of preparing your students for the end-of-year summative assessment? When we, an eighth-grade math co-teaching team, started working together in 2017, we were not convinced. Now, six years later, we not only believe in weekly spiraled assessments (WSAs) and use them
Read More… from A New Mindset: Assessment Strategies that Work
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[Note: This article is a significantly (about 75% so) revised version of a column I did in the February 2013 issue of AMLE’s Middle Ground magazine. It has been updated numerous times since, including through our time here in the 2021-2022 school year. RCW] Many schools aren’t designed for teaching. Most are designed to protect
Read More… from Where Do We Find the Time to Do All This Stuff?
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Conversations with students are a highlight of many administrators’ day. Often, the conversation turns towards the child’s academic progress. During the first quarter of my first year at the middle school, I met with a child who had been given a homework assignment described as “progress report signed” for which he had received a grade
Read More… from Defining Grades: A Middle School’s Approach to Grading Reform
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