The Critical Years

        Think back to your middle school experience, who was your favorite educator? Was it your wacky P.E. teacher who taught everyone how to do the electric slide and the boot scooting boogie? Or maybe it was your history teacher who came in dressed as a medieval knight? Excellent middle school teachers are known to leave us with an exciting or fun memory. These teachers knew how to refocus our friend drama and bad hair days, into an engaging educational experiences.
          In Elissa Gootman’s The Critical Years articles, she looks at the changes middle school students face and how our school system is not effectively helping our students. Her second article For Teachers, Middle School Is Test of Wills she looks closely into the relationships students have with their teachers, and how most teachers are not prepared for the demands of middle school.

Gootman states “Around the country, middle school teachers are often trained as elementary school generalists or as high school subject specialists, with little understanding of young adolescent psychology.” And points to the findings from the The Education Trust, a Washington-based advocacy group, explaining that a “scandalously high” number of middle school classes are taught by teachers lacking even a college minor in their assigned subjects.”
            These articles were written in 2007 during the height of testing, and many of the failing students and schools were shown through the test scores. Statistics showed the drop in student test scores from elementary school to middle school levels. Now that many school systems are changing their models from high stakes testing, I wonder what data will come from middle school students and teachers? I am interested in how changing our data will influence our teacher? Will retention rates change? Will we focus more on mastering the curriculum and less on teaching to the test? To read more on this ideas, find the link below to all three of Gootman's articles.

The Critical Years- The New York Times