What is it like to teach middle school?

Imagine you are on a roller coaster and you are just about to pull into the station to disembark the car, but the brakes suddenly fail, and you are now off on the same ride again. That pretty much sums up what it’s like to teach middle school.

Some days you can manage to go through the day with relatively little drama and students fully engaged. Other days it is a roller coaster filled with ups and downs.

The biggest issue to learn about teaching middle school is that within a certain age group hormones become a key factor in behavior. Students who absolutely loved one another and were best friends can immediately turn on one another, and the next day, they are best buds again.

For instance, just this week I had a similar issue. I have two young ladies in my 7th grade ELA class who are best friends. They will often dress alike, and just recently, they have the same hairstyle. I’m so used to them talking or passing notes, that I have them seated near my desk, so if I am at my desk, it is easy to turn around and remind them to stop talking.

On Wednesday of this week, they came in and immediately one of the young ladies said, “Ms. Thurston, tell she’s sitting in my seat.”

I looked over and saw that they had switched their seats back. The girl accused replied, “I was here first.” I shrugged and went on about my class not thinking anything of it.

At lunch, instead of the two sitting in the floor beside one another giggling, I noticed that one had decided to sit across the room with another group of girls and left the one to spend lunch alone. This was my first clue that something wasn’t right. As I monitored the class, I notice that the group on the other side of the room kept casting glances at the other girl. My spidey senses tingled, but I didn’t heed the warning. Instead, I decided to take this group out to recess to let the boys run around and burn off energy while the girls had an opportunity to chat.

As soon as we exited the building, the class immediately (with the exception of two girls who went off to do their own thing) grouped up, and I began to hear raised voices. The mass of students went from one bickering girl to the next. Suddenly, the girl who had lunch alone stood up on top of an outdoor planter to get above the crowd, pulled out her phone, and yelled, “I have the proof right here!”

As soon as I saw the other girl start for her friend with clenched fists, I began yelling for the class to get inside. I needed this in a smaller place to contain the situation. As soon as we were inside, they both told me that they wanted to be separated away from one another.

The next day? They were best friends again. It was all a misunderstanding. They worked it all out.

That’s the thing about middle school students. Things change daily. Sometimes things change in the same class period.

So how do you teach middle school?

In order to be an effective teacher in middle school, you have to be aware of everything. My students claim that I know more tea on the students than they do, but it is only because I keep my eyes open and my ears open. I watch and observe. I listen to what they are saying and not saying through body language.

I pick my battles. What is the most important thing? Is it going to solve my problem to throw a student out of my class who cusses? Or do you keep going? Do I address it? Not all the time. If it was loud enough, I may ask them to refrain from using that type of language. If I saw it muttered or caught it in a whisper, probably not. Most of the time if a student says a word they shouldn’t and I heard it, but it wasn’t loud, I know. All eyes turn to me when it is said to see what my reaction is going to be. You can either argue with a student over whether or not they said it, or you can save your breath and move quickly along.

Sometimes you catch the funny moments.

Sometimes you swear at the end of the day that you do not want to be around anymore children.

Sometimes you reach your planning period, close the door, and pray for quiet solitude.

You’ll find that some days that roller coaster ride didn’t seem as thrilling, and some days you are screaming inside that you want off after the first drop.

The post What is it like to teach middle school? appeared first on Teaching ELA in the Middle.

Culture Shock

I’m not sure why I expected every student to be just like me, but for some reason my reality clashed with the realism of it all. You see, they hint at the fact that you may have poverty stricken students in the classroom, and you may have students with single parent households, but they don’t tell you how many.

I’ve taught multiple classes with students from single parent families, students whose grandparents were raising them, and students whose parent(s) were currently in jail. I have also had a parent talk about a child as though that child was not sitting in our presence and make statements that made you want to reach across the table and knock them out, but you can’t do things like that.

I think I have even taught classes where students had never been taught to use a spoon and fork, and students who were so hungry they’d hide the food in their bookbags to take home.

How to teach reading

As a Secondary Education English major, I was prepared to discuss literature. After all, I was well-read and had a love for books as well as a huge collection of said books. I didn’t expect to walk into a high school or middle school classroom and find students who did not know how to read. How do you teach reading?

It was my understanding that children learned to read in elementary school, and middle/high school was where they learned to appreciate great works of literature. I felt completely in over my head, and I was unprepared for such challenges. I took a class on Content Reading Across the Curriculum, but throughout that class, it was never discussed how to teach children who lacked the fundamentals of teaching, and how to teach comprehension.

To be honest, it has only been in the last two years that I’ve learned how to teach comprehension in multiple ways, and that has been through the Seravallo series. I had no idea what a reading record was, or Fountas and Pinnell levels, or how to build fluency. This was like an unknown language to me.

Rigor

I had a principal constantly talk about adding rigor to lessons and making lessons more rigorous, but no one wanted to stop and explain it. In fact, even when I looked it up, I was still confused. Since my first experience with the concept, I’ve learned what it means to have rigorous lessons.

Rigor has to do with challenging students in the real world. For example, my lesson on “The Tale-Tell Heart” and where students assumed the role of psychologists in a trial. That was rigorous.

Things Change

School districts are constantly changing their approach to education. In fact, I’ve seen curriculum rewritten so many time that I didn’t know what we were teaching from one year to the next. I’ve seen teaching methods implemented, strict rules be placed on how lesson plans were written, and districts give us specific ways and in what order we teach our classes.

In other words, you can’t just go in and make a change. Instead you have to make a change within the boundaries and guidelines that your district and/or state provides. This is different from what you picture prior to teaching.

Classroom management

This will vary from year-to-year and student-to-student. What works in one class may not work in another. While there are many different studies and methodologies of classroom management, it is going to take an entirely different approach than just one. Sometimes it takes a mixture and sometimes it takes creating your own.

I’m not disappointed about my teaching experiences. I do wish that I had someone to come along and just remind me that things will not always go as planned, and that my fantasies about teaching were completely that: fantasies.

Would I still teach knowing all of this?

Yes.

Would go about a few things differently?

Yes. In fact, I would’ve taken a course in teaching reading or even researched something other than the classroom management philosophies.

The post What I wish I knew about teaching appeared first on Teaching ELA in the Middle.