Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 15: Parents as Partners

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 15: Parents as Partners
This chapter was all about getting parents involved in the classroom. Wormeli talks about using both technology and the old face-to-face meetings as a way to get students involved. The chapter talks about finding a website, like blackboard, and getting your school to use it so that parents and students can see what work needs to get done. According to Wormeli, this will help make parents and teachers a team instead of having them argue with one another; he also added that with this system, he gets nearly 100% completion on all of his homework assignments because the students can no long say “I didn’t know about the homework”. The chapter also talks about how to get parents, who lack the internet, involved. He suggests sending out notes, post cards, calling, or going to their homes in order to make contact with them. He also suggests that teachers allow parents to come in and watch a lesson so that they know what is going on and can be a bigger part of their child’s life and education.
I liked this chapter a lot because I thought that it gave much more insight into how to get parents involved along with giving neat ways to make sure that they are involved. I thought it was great that he spoke about the fact that not every parent will have the ability to use the internet; he also spoke about how it is difficult for some parents to make it into their child’s classroom – I think that is very important because it is much more realistic than our other books. Not all parents can or will want to come in or communicate with the teacher and if we understand that we can find different ways to help our students to be successful.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 13: Outdoor Adventures

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 13: Outdoor Adventures
This chapter was quite interesting because it talked about the importance of having an outdoor activity is to the health of your class. Wormeli talks about different camping trips that he took students on and the benefits that they shared. In general, he said that there are two major events that take place as a result of his camping trips. The first is that students come back and are much more proud of and thankful for the things that they have at home such as food, heat, and electricity. He said that the second big change is that students are much more apt to do things for themselves and be autonomous – this is something that is very important as you grow up; you should be able to do more and more things on your own as you get older. One final thing that was important from the chapter is that Wormeli talks about how the camping trips end up making students more comfortable with each other and with the teachers; he feels like the students are more likely to open up to the teachers and to each other after spending time in the wilderness and needing to rely on one another.
I am not so sure how I feel about going on a camping trip with a bunch of middle school students. To me I feel that this is an incident waiting to happen; with things such as injury, arguments, or some kind of misconduct taking place. We live in such a politically correct world, and we are so afraid that something terrible is going to happen that we try to shy away from it. For instance, teachers have to be very careful around their students for fear of anything being taken out of context. I personally cannot see many schools approving this, but maybe I am wrong. On a positive note, I did like his ideas for the Civil War re-enactment and the slave journey idea – I think that those would be fun activities that would also teach students history at the same time.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 8: effective assessment

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 8: effective assessment
This chapter was all about designing effective assessment and how to go about doing that. Wormeli gives some ideas of how to make sure that you have designed good assessments for your students. When the assessment is good, it should clearly outline goals; it should prove to be challenging enough to make them work hard but not too hard so that you avoid making the student upset; you should give options for assessments so that students have a say in what they want to do; you should be able to link other content areas in so that the student can see how one interacts with the others; and you should may different formats when creating assessment instead of always asking students to write an essay. The other part of the chapter that many teachers are probably happy about was that Wormeli says to make sure that your assessments are easy to grade. If they are too time consuming or too difficult to grade then you assessment has missed the mark – always remember to use a rubric, it makes your life easier and it makes the student’s life easier.
I liked this chapter because it gave some great ideas for different assessments such as to use menus, journals, debates, games, or time lines to see if your students have learned the materials. I really like the notion of doing different types of assessments and within those assessments using different topics. The easiest way to describe it would be if you gave an essay to the students to make sure that there are different essay topics. I know that from personal experience, I really like when a teacher gives some choice especially in a history class – it is easier to write a history essay when you are actually interested in the topic. I can also attest that clear instructions and directions are vital to the success of the students; if you do not make things clear or the directions are hard to follow, many students will either refuse to do the assignment, do it poorly, or the wrong way. To be a good assessment, it must be hard enough so that it takes time to accomplish but not so difficult that you get frustrated with the whole concept. I also think assessment should be fun because it makes the students happy along with making it easier on you to grade them; it beats grading eighty essays on the plague.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 7: Differentiated Instruction

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 7: Differentiated Instruction
Chapter 7, as the name implies, was all about differentiated instruction and how to work it into your classroom. This is probably the most difficult aspect of teaching because you will have students with disabilities, students who are general education students, and those who are considered to be gifted and talented. What makes it that much more difficult is that these students will all be in the same classroom trying to learn. Obviously, a teacher is not going to give the same amount of work to a student that has severe mental retardation and to a student listed as gifted and talented – the objective is not to give the same amount of work, but to make sure that you get these students to the same level so that they all can understand the major concepts of the unit. Wormeli gives a list of characteristics that a teacher using differentiation should possess. These include being a risk taker, being empathetic, being organized, flexible, resourceful, and having a good sense of humor. Those are all characteristics of good teachers regardless, so that means that you are more than halfway there if you want to be able to differentiate your classroom.
I have said this many times before, but I believe that differentiation is the hardest thing to do as a teacher. I think what makes it so difficult is that there really is no answer to how to do it; there are so many different types of students, and they all learn in different ways so there is no one method or plan that you could follow in order to differentiate. I do think there are things that you must avoid in order to be successful and that is to make sure that you do not give the gifted and talented students, a term I really dislike, more work for the sake of doing more; you also need to make sure that you do not give less work to the students with learning disabilities. I think that it should be about the type of learning and not about the amount of learning. I almost feel like differentiated instruction is a very abstract term because you would have to know each one of your students to be able to tailor lessons, but while in a college education class you do not have that ability so you end up learning about something that you do not fully understand – that is what makes differentiation so difficult to understand and succeed at.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 6: Accountability for High Standards

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 6: Accountability for High Standards
This chapter was all about making sure that both students and teachers are held accountable for high standards. The first few pages talk about how to make sure that the students are held accountable. Some of the suggestions were: when assigning a project, give examples of good work so students know what is expected; avoid giving extra credit, but instead allow students to go back and make corrections on their work; to use a rubric that outlines everything that the student needs to do to get a good grade; and another good idea is to display their work public because they will be more apt to work harder. Not only do students need to be accountable, the teachers need to be also. Some suggestions for doing so were: make sure that you help your students be life long learners, do not simply teach for the test; make sure that everything you teach is relevant; if you cannot tell a student or parent why you are covering a particular topic, then you should remove the topic all together. To be better teachers we must give formative assessments to students to track progress, place the student first, and think outside the box.
I liked this chapter because it talks about holding everyone accountable and not just the teachers. Obviously, the teacher should be held responsible if he or she is doing a terrible job, but if the students are not doing the work then they need to be held responsible also. I whole-heartedly agree that we must put the students first and make sure that we are not teaching them so that they can pass a test but instead teach them so that they can learn and function normally in society. The last big step to an effective teaching environment is to make sure that you collaborate with your teaching collogues and make sure that each one of you works together to help the students learn.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 4: Active Learning

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 4: Active Learning
This chapter can be summed up using one term, bodily-kinesthetic. The entire chapter is about helping students participate in active learning. As the name implies, active learning deals with movement and activity; which for middle school students is a needed thing. At this age, the middle school body is changing quite rapidly and causing difficulties with some motor functions and sitting for long periods of time. Wormeli suggests that you get students moving about every 10 to 15 minutes so that oxygen can get into the brains, to stimulate learning, and to relieve pressure on the students’ aching joints. The other important thing to remember about middle school students is that they are very concrete thinkers who have a very difficult time thinking abstractly. The chapter gives an example of a student who learned best when he did hands on work; so the teacher decided to take the class outside to measure and work with trees, the topic of the class; this little exercise greatly helped the student learn the material.
I thought that the chapter was interesting and gave some great ideas to get kids moving. Some of the things that stood out to me was to have the students stand up while talking about the materials just covered in class; I also liked the idea of having students get up to bring their papers to the teacher or making them put it in a basket on the other side of the room. I would be more than willing to try these approaches along with mixing in other ideas such as having students perform skits or re-enactments. On the other hand, I do think that you cannot really do this with every class because there are some classes were movement like this might distract them and prevent them from working; I might just be thinking like one of those old school teachers, but I would be afraid that all this movement would prompt kids to have off topic discussions and cause them to lose their focus. At the end of the day it is worth a shot, and I am willing to try anything that might help my students do better in school.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 3: Brain Research Applied to Middle School

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 3: Brain Research Applied to Middle School
This was a very interesting chapter on how to take what we know about brain research and turn it into learning for the children. There were a couple very fascinating parts of the chapter; one of which was the discussion on how to keep students engaged. Wormeli has the suggestion, which he follows in his own classroom, to ask a question and give time to answer – once the student answers, you then ask another student whether he or she agrees. Once that student has answered, you call on a third student to give an opinion; this is aimed at making sure that all of the students are learning and not just zoning out after the teacher calls on someone to answer the question. The chapter also talks about the importance of drinking water during the day to make the brain a stronger “creature” – if you are well hydrated, then the neurons in your brain flow faster, and you get better results and quicker response time. The last part of the chapter that was interesting was the list of activities that a teacher can do so that students can practice how to reason; one of the big problems now is that students have a hard time being able to reason anything out for themselves because they are asked just to spit out answers. We should teach them meaningful information but at the same time teach them how to reason and be able to do things on their own.
I liked how the chapter was set up because it looked at learning from a scientific background which is huge considering many teachers, except those in science, know little about the human brain. This is a very important time for a young adult because he or she is starting to find out who they are and what they want to do with their lives – it is also a time with a lot of experimentation, not all of it good, which can cause a lot of problems for your students. I thought it was interesting to find out, and slightly sad, that students now do not see how giving a person an answer to a test or coping down homework is considered to be cheating. It appears that we have a moral black hole in our society, and more and more people are unaware of how their actions are morally wrong or detrimental to themselves or others. I am not saying that we should preach to students, but I do think that we need to set good examples and try and show students what the types of behaviors are that show good morals.

Turning Point Chapter 9: Involving Parents and Communities

Turning Point Chapter 9: Involving Parents and Communities
This chapter dealt with how to get parents and the local community more involved in the students and the school. The research shows that students who have high expectations from their parents and receive involvement from their parents have higher grades and test scores, better school attendance, and higher graduation rates; whereas teachers experience improved morale, more support from families, higher student achievement, and better reputations in their communities when parents are involved. A teacher cannot disagree with the fact that his or her students will do better when the parents are involved, and they will try hard to make sure the students include their parents. The chapter also talks about getting the community involved by running community out-reach programs where students go out in the area and volunteer at a hospital or a soup kitchen. That is a great thing to do, and many students will learn from that experience – plus, it is something that the school can do with or without parent involvement.
I want all of my parents involved in what my students are doing, but there comes a time when you must realize that you are not always going to get a lot of involvement. Many households need to have two incomes so both parents work, parents need to take care of at home things, and in some cases, the parents just do not care about what their child is doing in school. It might be depressing, but it is the truth. Depending on where you teach, you might get a lot of involvement or none at all – you can try all you want to get them involved but many of them will just refuse no matter how many times you try. You also have to take into account cultural differences and immigrant families who might not feel comfortable being involved or are not use to doing that in their native country. On top of that, the chapter also talks about how parents are more hands off in middle school and high school. I do not think that is necessarily a bad thing; I think that students need to know how to do the work by themselves and not have their hand held. Though, this seems to be changing now with parents calling their kids college professors to complain about grades. I do not know if there is a solution to make all parents happy and get many of them involved – I think that you need to work with what you have and try your best to get people involved; if they really want to be there then they will, if they do not then you cannot force them to care.

Turning Points Chapter 8: A Safe and Healthy School Environment

Turning Points Chapter 8: A Safe and Healthy School Environment
This chapter talks about one of the most important issues in schools today, how to form a healthy environment for learning. The chapter outlines how many teachers believe that student discipline is the biggest problem that they face. One way to help prevent bad behavior is to make sure that all students understand the rules and know why they are important; another big step is to communicate the consequences of bad behavior along with making sure that teachers and administrators know who is in charge of dealing with discipline issues. Another big part of the chapter is dedicated to race and ethnicity. The book points out how preschool children understand race, and middle school students are at the age when they begin to develop thoughts about people – it is important to make sure that these thoughts are not racist or bigoted ones. The other big health problem that students run into is that this is the age when they begin to experiment with drugs, sex, smoking, alcohol, along with bringing guns to school, and eating poorly. It is important that your school deals with these issues and helps students avoid bad behavior that can harm their school work along with harm their lives.
I had to agree with most of the things in this chapter. I know that if you do not feel comfortable in school then you will not want to go or participate; in turn, failure to go will not only harm your grades but will also harm the social skills needed to survive in life, which you develop during this time period. I think that schools need to develop good health classes, ones that students do not think are jokes, so that we can help prevent under aged sex and drug use. I remember when I went to middle school, my school had a real bad problem with discipline and it not only hurt learning but it made many people not want to go to school. I will not allow that to happen in my classroom and I hope to be an advocate in my school to make sure that students do feel comfortable in school and will not avoid going because of something that is going on.

Turning Points Chapter 4: Designing Instruction to Improve Teaching and Learning

Turning Points Chapter 4: Designing Instruction to Improve Teaching and Learning
This chapter dealt with how to design instruction so that the students will be able to learn the information that they need to be effective students. One of the big topics in the chapter was a set of criteria for teachers in order to get their students prepared. These criteria were: students should be able to produce knowledge instead of repeat information back; students need to be involved in work that makes them think; students’ achievements should show that they have gained a life skill instead of being nothing more than a measure of their competence. The chapter also talks of the importance of using differentiated instruction to help all students be able to learn the information – a big issue with this is to make sure that you do not give some students work that is too easy and you should also avoid giving more work to students who are above average. The chapter also talks of the importance of technology – they warn teachers to make sure that computer use if for higher-order thinking and not just to play games on. When technology is used correctly, then students exhibit higher grades and more involvement, which is exactly what a teacher wants to see.
Once again, this was not totally new to me, but I did find two sections of the chapter very fascinating. They once again talked about the notion of tracking which is definitely a hot-button issue. In a perfect world, tracking should be used to make sure that students with the same abilities are in the same room in order to maximize learning – but in actuality, tracking prevents students from working hard and there is also evidence that minority groups are overrepresented in lower tracks in school; this is what makes tracking such a terrible thing to follow. When it came to technology, there was one thing that stood out to me; it talks about how most black students are asked to do much more lower-order thinking, such as playing games, than their white counterparts are. That very fact is quite sad and needs to be corrected, but I am curious why that is the case. I assume it happens because many more black students are in lower tracks, and the teachers must just assume that they cannot do any work by themselves or at least any work that requires real thinking. And some people think that America’s racial problems are over!

Turning Points Chapter 3 curriculum and assessment to improve teaching and learning

Turning Points Chapter 3 curriculum and assessment to improve teaching and learning

This chapter dealt with how to create a solid curriculum and different forms of assessment that can help students learn and still meet the standards set by the state. When it comes to planning lessons, it is important that you do it using backwards design – in other words, you plan your lessons starting with the things that your students need to learn; once you have done that, you can then think of activities that will help you get there. It is also important to remember when designing lessons to make sure that the information covered is relevant to the students. Teachers need to get away from covering every topic in a given area, such as history, and focus on the depth of information. The rest of the chapter deals with how to create good assessments. Assessments are key because they can let a teacher know which students understand the materials, which ones do not, and what materials need to be covered more in depth. It is important to use a mixture of assessments and end the unit with a large “project” that connects the information learned to a real-world application.

This chapter was really nothing more than a refresher of practicum. I have been taught how to design lessons using backwards design, and I also know the importance of both formative and summative assessments. I think that the biggest problem with trying to do backwards design is that the standards are not always very interesting or well worded, and it makes life more difficult. The one thing that I did not like about the chapter was the talk of linking the standards to things that are on the state standardized tests. I think that there is enough emphasis on trying to take “teaching” out of the classroom and replace it with “studying or teaching for the test” – in the end, the kids might be able to get a hundred on a standardized test, but the real world is not one giant standardized test – we need to make sure that our students are getting the information, learning it, and are capable of using that information in real-world situations; if not, then we have failed them.

This We Believe

This We Believe
Pg. 1-7
This chapter details the importance of middle grades education while at the same time informing people and teachers about the difficulties of being an adolescent in today’s world. The opening pages talk about the importance of making sure that middle grades are supported by their school and the teachers; the chapter hints at the need for schools to make sure every thing is in line so that the students are most successful – this includes good teachers, good curriculum, and collaboration. The rest of the pages talk in detail about life as an adolescent. They mention about how the body of an adolescent changes so much during this time and, unlike during infancy, a middle school child is well aware of those changes. Not only are their bodies and minds changing, but the students are also being exposed to drugs, tobacco, alcohol, and sex; these are a lot of things for a young person to deal with never mind trying to deal with it while all these changes are taking place. The last part of the chapter talks about how its hard enough being a teen, but it is made harder by things such as race, socio-economic status, gender, and an ever-changing world.
I liked this chapter because, like all the other books we have been reading, it really hammers home information about how much adolescent kids change and the things that they go through on a daily basis. It is hard enough having to deal with new emotions and being uncomfortable in your own skin but then add on top of that relationships, friends, having money or the lack of money, and you have yourself one big mess. If you are not prepared to deal with situations like these or deal with young adults who are very emotional then middle school may not be the place for you – though I think you can change those beliefs if you read this book and try to understand where a young person is coming from.

This We Believe 9-19
In these pages, the book talks about the keys to having a successful middle school; a school that helps to teach students and teachers alike. One of the major pieces needed for a good school is good teachers – middle school teachers must be highly qualified, know their content area, and most importantly, they should want to be with middle school students and strive to understand them. This successful middle school should also focus on collaboration amongst the teachers and the administration, along with trying to provide a safe and caring environment for all involved. If the teachers and administration all get along then they are more capable of working together to help teach the students; if that happens, then the school will be able to create and foster a safe environment where students can learn and grow without feeling anxious or worried that someone might say something to them. The book also talks about the need for high standards and life-long learning. As a teacher, you should believe that your students can do anything that they set their minds to, and once you believe that then you will make sure that you do everything you can to ensure they work hard. Teachers should also recognize the fact that learning does not stop when students and teachers are out of school; the learning continues throughout life and to be a good educator you must teach your students the skills that will allow them to continuously learn.
If I had the opportunity, I would travel to local middle schools and share the things that I have learned with them. I think most middle schools still fail to provide at least one of these essential things on a daily basis – as the book talks about, if you do not change the system all around but only change one or two pieces then nothing will get done and things will not improve. I have said this many times already, but I think that the most important parts to forming a good school is to make sure that you have the best teachers that you can find; teachers who enjoy their jobs and want to teach at that grade level, and you must also make sure that you create a good environment for students to learn in – if the students do not feel comfortable, then their work will suffer. It will take time, but I do not see a reason why every school cannot adopt these policies to make their students’ experiences so much better.

This We Believe 19-34
This set of pages deals with the age old question of how to create a complete curriculum that meets the needs of today’s students. According to the book, the best curriculum should be “relevant, challenging, integrative, and exploratory” (pg. 19). When it comes to relevant, students should find that what their learning helps them to understand the world around them and help to answer questions that they might have. It is important for the students to be challenged, which means that the work they do should be meaningful and engaging, but at the same time, it should not be too hard which could cause students to get frustrated and stop working. When the book talks about integrative, it is making a reference to making sure that the middle school team works hard to make sure that the things being talked about in English appear in social studies also. If that happens, then the students will understand how knowledge works and be able to make connections with other things in their lives. The last piece is the concept of exploratory – in this case, students should be asked to go deep into materials and concepts and research information on topics in order to gain a greater sense of the big picture ideas talked about in class.
I think that the toughest part of being a teacher is making sure that you design proper curriculum. It is a tough job because things that you think they might enjoy might actually make them want to take a nap. I also think that it has gotten even harder now because general education teachers are going to work with students from all racial, ethnic, socio-economic backgrounds along with dealing with some students who have special needs. A good teacher can manage to make accommodations to his or her lessons so that every student can learn something from the class. I think that at the end of the day, the biggest need for teachers today is enough time so that they can plan out their lessons and units complete with accommodations – given the time, a person can do great work, but it is finding that time which poses the biggest problem.

This We Believe 34-51
This was an interesting set of pages because it detailed steps of how to integrate and transform your own school for teachers, principals, parents, superintendents, states, and teacher preparation professors. The reason why I thought this was so interesting was because I did not really think about all the people that would need to be involved in order to adopt these policies – I kind of wish that the students would be involved and be on this list because I think they should have some say as to what takes place in their education; if the students have ideas that would help improve the school, then I think they should be listened to. The last set of pages was about the different changes that middle school students go through as they mature. The list includes physical, cogitative, moral, psychological, and social-emotional. The list alone should make the reader think that there are a lot of changes that a typical student will go through. I did find it interesting to hear about how girls mature between one and two years earlier than boys and African Americans mature at a faster pace than most other groups. We need to be well aware of the changes that students go through before we take the job or else we will be unaware of the major things that take place with our students that may prevent them from doing work to the highest possible level.