Middle School as a Turning Point

After this week's readings I was most captured by the article "Turning Points". "Middle grade schools- junior high, intermediate, and middle schools- are potentially society's most powerful force to recapture milltions of youth adrift, and help every young person thrive during early adolescence. Yet all too often these schools exacerbate the problems of young adolescents" (170). This quote was really surprising to me. I guess I never realized that middle schools were failing the way they were before reading this articles. I was lucky enough to attend a very good middle school so many of these issues never occurred to me. The article continues with recommendations to improve middle schools. I think they are all essential to a successful school, especially a middle school. One that I thought was really important was having faculty at middle school that are experts at teaching that grade. This seems like one of the most pressing issues. Maybe many teachers end up teaching middle school when they had been originally trained to focus on elementary or high school instead of that unique age group.

An interesting point in "The Emergent Middle School" was the fact that scientific research results often come 25 years later. By the time valid conclusions are available they are no longer true. This creates a big problem. I think middle school has changed a lot since I was there 10 years ago. Maybe if districts, teachers, and communities started focusing on the issues that are present in their schools now and experimented with possible changes more improvement could be made. Waiting 25 years to learn new strategies of what works and doesn't will not help fix the problems that have been created since then.

Being a Teen in American Society

Both of the articles for this week bring up some important issues regarding American teens. Some of the problems that American teens are viewed as having including sex, drugs, alcohol, violence, and eating disorders to name a few. I agree to an extent that these are major issues. I think it is interesting, however, that adults are so surprised that teens have these issues. To me I think they stem out of the mainstream culture. Sex and violence are everywhere in media. It should be surprise that American children who are exposed to this at a very young age grow up almost thinking that these activities are normal and not exactly undersanding the full picture. It's unfortunate that teens are blamed for these problems that adults have influenced upon the teens and also are resonsible for the majority of the issue.

In the article "Nymphet Fantasies" I thought it was really interesting to look at how these young beauty queens are often made into "mini adults" by their parents. It;s their parents dream and these young girls do not get the chance to be little kids. This phenomonon has also been put into many tv shows in the last few years who show how crazy these moms (and sometimes dads) are . They create little 3 year old girls to look like they are twenty and its just weird and creepy. Although I know there are young girls who dream of being in paegents, this craze has gotten way too out of hand. We have to think about what the implications will be when these little girls grow up to be teens and later adults.

It is a hard and confusing time for children in America to grow up in. One one hand they are seeings and hearing things in the media and all around them but if they act upon them they are suddenly in the wrong. It is important to think about what a student deals with in their personal life at home and what society is like for them to really understand them. It is also important not to be too judgemental when working with students. Maybe they have a violent past but you do not necessarily know the circumstances or what they have been through. To them it may seem like survival. Teenagers are teenagers and shouldn't be feared because the media puts bad images on them, after all they are only modeling what has been set up for them to follow.

Middle School and Changes

From what I can remember, Middle School was definately a weird and awkward time for everyone I knew. After reading Chapter 2 I have learned more in depth of the pubertal changes occuring at this time. It is mentioned throughout the chapter that often these changes are embarrassing and often ignored by parents. If more education was put in place to explain these changes before and while they are happening and made students more comfortable with these changes, would it be such an awkward time? I think it is an important issue that needs to be addressed because it has been shown that after these changes is when issues such as eating disorders and anger problems can begin and can continue on. This chapter has made me realize most that it is important for educators to understand what the student is going through at this age and may help explain some of their actions. I think it is partly the responsibility of the schools to make sure that these changes that are normal are addressed. If it wasn't such an uncomfortable subject to talk about would we still have all these awkward and weird middle schoolers or would they be able to see what is happening to them is a normal thing.