Creating Belonging in the Middle Grades, No Matter the School Setting When Laurie Barron became Superintendent of Evergreen School District in Montana, she knew it’d be different than the previous two decades she’d spent as a teacher and school leader in the suburbs of Atlanta. “We do not ride horses and buggies to school,” Barron
As an educator, do you ever feel like you might be at a point in your career where you’re like the old person sitting on the front porch complaining about people walking across their lawn? Have you started saying things like: “These kids today!” or, “When I was a teenager … ?” Some argue that
Read More… from 8 NEW Characteristics of Middle School Kids: What Can We Do?
2
The holiday season is upon us and that can mean madness in our classrooms. Why is that? The truth is, we are often the primary culprit of the chaos. We spend months tirelessly pre-teaching routines and procedures and establishing behavior expectations, only to ease up on them or even abandon them during the holiday season.
Read More… from It’s The Holiday Season, So Whoop-De-Do: Managing the Holiday Madness
6
An Interview with the Authors of Successful Middle School Instructional Technology In their newly released book, Successful Middle School Instructional Technology, authors Ryan Ruggles and Tim Schigur advocate for schools to develop a common language and approach to instructional technology within the middle grades setting. I sat down with the authors to talk about why
Read More… from The Most Important Instructional Conversation of Our Time
0
These are challenging times in education, and middle school educators are looking for encouragement and inspiration about how to best engage this unique age group. Enter the amazing, uplifting, and sometimes provocative documentary Changing by the Minute which captures one school’s remarkable and memorable efforts to help young adolescents thrive. The Center School (the public
0
About a month into her student teaching semester, Melissa voiced frustration about one student who just would not engage in social studies class. Gregory seemed disinterested and apathetic, and he seldom completed his assignments. Melissa was determined to make a breakthrough, but how? How could she get Gregory engaged in social studies? How could she
Read More… from Research to Practice: Addressing Student Motivation in the Middle Grades
1
1