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Who are Middle Level Students?

Middle school students are a dynamic group of people who, all at once, seem to embody endless hope and paralyzing despair.  But one thing I know is that middle level students are genuinely good-natured people.  And, to me, this is one characteristic of tweens and teens that is often overlooked in the broader conversation about who middle level students are.

I don’t know if other teachers do this, but when I was in the middle of a school year and a middle school student said or did something that seemed odd, I would often remember that I once did something very similar. I’d like to pursue this thought in later posts because I think we often have a more refined memory of who we were when we were younger.  As a middle school student I was clumsy, awkward and I often struggled in science and math classes.  But now that I am an adult I can see that Math and Science aren’t so bad.  In fact, I have grown to love these disciplines and I have even participated in these fields professionally.  And I think sometimes I tried to overlook the difficulty some have with these types of things.  I overcame them and I often gloss over my memories of the truly dreadful struggles I experienced.  Surely my revised memories often affect how I talk with students about similar challenges they are having. Anyway, I think this point could be revisited in a longer post–how our revised memories of our own experiences shape our expectations.

From my experience, middle level students are some of the best examples of human kindness that I have ever met. They know, first-hand, what it means to struggle, to search, stretch and strain in order to find the answers to life’s most challenging questions.

A search for a unique identity ranks as one of the many challenges a middle level student will address at some point in their development.  I can remember watching the wild changes some of my students would make through out the year in search for their own personalities and to answer the ultimate question, “Who am I?” On one occasion I had a student stand confidently at my desk and say, “Mr. Skillen, I have decided that I will be the most annoying person anyone knows.”

He was clearly looking for a more concrete position in our community.  But he never truly developed as the most annoying student in the school or even in our class.

While we can not often think of anything redemptive about our own time as adolescents, I tell you this group of people is redeeming.

Logan was a quite kid, but he became even more quiet when September turned to October his seventh grade year.

“How are you?” I would ask.

“Fine.” He would say.

Later that month during a passing period in between classes I got an email from my mom.  She was leaving my step-dad after 11 years of marriage.  I felt like an emotional typhoon had crashed into my classroom as the words of my mom’s note unfolded on my computer.  The bell rang and I hesitated.  Searching for the starting point of the lesson I spoke in broken phrases to get the class started.  I struggled through the lesson, but we made it through.  40 minutes later when the dismissal bell rang Logan waited for everyone to leave.

“You OK?” He asked.

“I’m fine.” I said.  “I just wish adults would act like adults; not like kids.”

There was a pause…

“Are your parents getting  divorce?” Logan asked.

“Yeah.  I think they are.” I said.

“Mine are too.” He said.

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Sabbatical Report: A Work of Speculative Fiction

I would first like to thank the dynamic members of my department.  In this day and age when resources are thin and the workload is heavy it is doubly taxing for a full-time member of the department to take an entire semester away from teaching, advising and administrative work. So while I was focusing for a time on my own professional pursuits, I also recognize that my colleagues have covered for me countless times.  Thank you.

To my wife and family, thank you for “going with the flow” during the last several months.  I have completely disrupted the routine of our family by changing my professional focus for a concentrated time this past year.  Thank you for giving me space to write when I needed to write.  Thank you for celebrating each breakthrough with me along the way.

I have noticed throughout the years that it is customary for a sabbatical report to open with photographs of an academic abroad.  A landscape of a castle or a middle eastern desert.  In this case, I have no photos to share. I stayed very close to Central PA region, but the work I was able to engage in was extremely revealing.

I began my work this past semester by making a short tour of roughly twenty-five different high school and middle school classrooms in the region.  Each is headed up by an Elizabethtown College alum who is now working as a secondary English/language arts teacher.  One of the many things I have always wanted to do is visit the graduates from my English: Secondary Education program, and I was elated to finally achieve this goal to see how the careers our former students have developed.

During these classroom visits I graded papers, made copies, tutored students and even taught a couple of mini-lessons to serve our graduates in their classrooms in some capacity.  From these first-hand experiences I have noticed that the profession has clearly changed a great deal from when I was a classroom teacher 10 years ago.  In a little less than a decade the expectations on our classroom teachers have doubled.  Previously, there was something of an enculturation period new teachers could use to acclimate themselves to the profession–to make small mistakes and learn from them.  This no longer exists, sadly. Teachers are now required to be polished, refined and efficient on the very first day of their new careers–that is their perception anyway.

This one realization had a profound impact in my practice as a teacher-educator.  I am now thinking seriously about how we need to be better preparing our students before they reach the conclusion of their undergraduate licensing programs.

My work with the Life Writes Project, an educational non-profit based in Harrisburg, continues as well.  While on my sabbatical I was able to write three different grant proposals from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, and internally here at Etown College to fund a summer workshop for classroom teachers.  The workshop, currently in development, will host 14 fellows from the region who want to learn more about infusing personal narrative writing and dialogical teaching approaches in their daily teaching practice.  Upon completing the workshop our fellows will receive a classroom research grant that will likely fuel a number of creative, academic and instructional functions.

This work is probably some of the most important work I could have focused on in the last year.  You see, the classroom teacher is squeezed to create a great deal of time for standardized test preparation. These priorities often require specific approaches and methods.  But what the Life Writes Project does is work directly with classroom teachers to help them develop new ways to meet the standards for their disciplines using engaging dialogical methods. We also have some privately raised funds to help those who need additional materials, supplies or technology for their classrooms.  We have opened up a process through which any teacher can apply for an instructional grant.  These grant dollars are gifts we can award to deserving teachers who desperately seek to improve their craft.

As I only have a couple of minutes remaining, and I see another colleague cueing up her powerpoint presentation, let me leave you with these final thoughts.

In my sabbatical I saw tremendously powerful growth in the people we have taught.  They are out there carrying the mission of Elizabethtown College into the classrooms across our state and our region.  Their work is extremely difficult, but each has squared his or her shoulders to take on everything that is asked of them and more.  We should never loose heart because the people we meet here at the college are taking the work we do to new and exciting places in the world.  Be proud, friends.  We are doing a great work.

 

Webmaster’s Note: Dr. Skillen has never been approved to take a sabbatical from his teaching, advising and administrative responsibilities at Elizabethtown College. In fact, he has never applied for this kind of opportunity. The achievements described here are complete fiction.  However, the goals and aspirations discussed here are truly real.  They live and burn in Dr. Skillen’s heart.