Building Community

Adolescents, by design, are individuals who struggle with finding out who they are and where they belong. As middle school teachers, one of the most important ways we can use our classrooms is to give adolescents a place where, no matter what, they feel as though they are important and that they are accepted. At the same time, we need to present them with real world challenges to tackle. In other words, it's our job to create an environment that functions like a community where everyone contributes, and everyone matters. As I said in last week's post, since we are preparing our students for the real world, it makes sense that our classrooms mimic this real world as much as possible.

There are some specific ways I've tried to do this in my classroom through both instruction and behavior management. Here are a few techniques I've found to be successful:

1. Utopia Project: While reading The Giver by Lois Lowry, students are strategically placed into groups where they are asked to create their own utopia. This utopia must demonstrate elements of a civilization, and then they are asked to attempt to solve 6 world problems (hunger, poverty, discrimination, war, crime, and violence). Next, they are asked to create a digital advertisement persuading their classmates to move to their utopia. While developing their utopia, I try to step in as little as possible, and allow them to problem solve and reach a common goal on their own.

Why I think this works: Students are examining real world issues, and having conversations which help them to develop their viewpoints on important issues. For example, I observed an argument the other day over whether one group's utopia should have guns. It was fascinating to hear this conversation happening in a context that is so real to them. They are working through disagreements, and attempting to problem solve in a collaborative, interdisciplinary environment, much like their workplaces and worlds will be someday.

2. Montagues vs. Capulets: While we are reading Romeo and Juliet, my two 8th grade groups are temporarily renamed after the two feuding families. Throughout the unit, each "family" is able to earn points for positive behavior and academic choices, and faces losing points for negative ones. Additionally, they participate in several text related challenges where they compete as a team to earn points.

Why I think this works: The students encourage and help one another to succeed. They check on each other, saying things like, "Hey, Matt, don't forget to grab your book before English class!" As an added bonus, they are very motivated to learn the material, as points are taken away when I observe off task behavior. I'm careful not to single out any individual off task behavior, but instead simply remove a point from the score board, and all students quickly remind each other to stay on task. By being more aware of the fact that they are being monitored as a team based on their positive or negative choices, they are more likely to work together and support one another in moving forward.

3. Turning Negatives to Positives: When students complain, I try to spin their obstacle in any way I can into an opportunity. For example, when a student says something like, "I'm not friends with Johnny, and he's in my group." Rather than saying something like, "That's too bad, you have to work with him anyway," I try to respond by saying something like, "This is a great opportunity to learn about working with people you don't normally work with!" Or, "That's great news. I challenge you to find something you have in common with Johnny. I can't wait to hear what you discovered at the end of class."

Why I think this works: Helping adolescents feel more comfortable branching out of their comfort zones can only be a good thing, and can only help them to be more optimistic. It is a less threatening way of reminding students to control what they can control, which is their reaction to uncomfortable situations.

4. Reminding my students that I am human: I have found that my students respond much better to me when I remind them as much as possible that I am human. I am not some all superior being that they need to be scared into respecting. When I make a mistake as a teacher, I acknowledge it and apologize. When I trip over a chair and my students giggle, I giggle right along with them and tell them how clumsy I am. I acknowledge my flaws, like my frustrations with staying organized, and explain that sometimes it's tricky to overcome them.

Why I think this works: It helps adolescents realize that it's ok not to be perfect, and that we all have strengths and weaknesses as human beings. It creates a more relaxing and forgiving classroom environment where students are free to be who they are, and not always who the teacher wants them to be.

Though I haven't perfected the above strategies, I've found that each year, my classroom functions more like a team, and less like a room full of individual students. That's the kind of environment in which I feel best about myself teaching and my students learning. If they can transfer at least a little bit of that mentality into their lives moving forward, then I think I have succeeded.

Our Classrooms, Our World

As teachers working to provide the next generation with the tools they need to succeed, we have been challenged greatly this year. In December, as I'm sure many of you did, I spent an afternoon and evening at home in tears, trying to determine how best to explain to my middle schoolers why someone would force their way into an elementary school and open fire.

Yesterday, I heard about the incident in the city where I live through frantic text messages and phone calls from friends and family. Away from home for the week with my students with no access to a television and only minimal opportunities to check my phone, I didn't know what was happening or why, and I was struggling between maintaining a calm persona in front of the kids, while frantically waiting to hear from friends and family working or spending time close to the bombing. I have never had to appear so at ease while at the same time feeling such turmoil.

Since we arrived here yesterday, my 7th graders have been running around outside, singing at the top of their lungs, laughing so hard their stomachs hurt, and being KIDS, as they deserve to be. While I can't be at home in Boston with my family and friends, seeing the kids so excited has helped me gain perspective. Since my students do not have their cell phones or electronics, and do not have access to a television, I've decided not to share with them the awful news from yesterday. They are kids here to have a great week with great friends, and I don't want anything to get in the way of that. I believe too that since this tragedy hits so close to home, it's best for each family to decide how to discuss it with their children.

I know there will be questions next week, and I know we have faced another time this year as teachers where we must try to explain what we cannot explain, and to comfort when we may not be feeling comfortable. But this does provide for us an opportunity we can choose to take or leave. We have the power to influence how a child reacts to violence and hatred. There are choices we can make everyday which influence how a child may respond when, God forbid, something terrible like this happens.

Our classrooms and schools are microcosms of our world. The culture we promote in our schools will impact the culture of our world's future. In every choice we make as teachers, we must keep that in mind and choose accordingly. When we are frustrated with a child or another adult in the building, we need to make sure we react by deciding what we can do to resolve the frustration, rather than blaming that child or coworker for what's gone wrong. In doing this, we can positively impact our culture by improving ourselves. In our classrooms, will we react to negative behavior with negativity and belittling? Or will we react peacefully and with understanding, while offering students a different, more productive way to communicate their anger and frustration? And in our world, when something as devastating and tragic as what happened in Boston yesterday occurs, will we focus our time as adults on pointing fingers and exacting revenge? Or will we rush towards those in need, share in their sadness, and then focus our energy towards kindness, empathy, and helping in any way we can? If we want our students to be peaceful, kind, and empathetic, we must practice what we preach both in our schools and in our lives.

Though we cannot turn back time and change what happened yesterday, we can make an impact in the future through the way in which we react to negativity and tragedy, and that is perhaps one of the most important and world changing legacies we can leave to our students.

Kids Before Students

On Monday morning at approximately 7:30 am, I'll be leaving our middle school on a journey to Charlton, Ma with about 67 seventh graders.  We are heading to Nature's Classroom for a week long expedition.  What better way can you think of to spend your April vacation?? Seriously, though. There's something to be said for traveling with students, and say it I will.

Yes, it's a HUGE responsibility.  Yes, it takes lots of planning, lots of emails, and lots of paperwork.  This is all very true. All the tasks that need to be taken care of before the trip, are, to put it bluntly, a pain.  However, traveling with students allows you to see them in a whole new light; outside of the classroom.  And while your purpose in taking them on a trip may be academic exploration, it's really the other things that they (and I) remember most.  I'd like to share a few highlights with you...

• We are always wanting our students to ask great questions.  Last year, on our NC trip, I was asked the greatest question of all: "Ms. Anderson, how sunburnt am I on a scale of a French fry with no ketchup to a French fry covered in ketchup?" Now I don't know about you, but I have to say this is about the best scale I can think of to determine sunburn severity.
• Taking a class at NC about using natural ingredients to take care of your skin, and smearing bananas and oatmeal all over my face alongside my seventh graders.  I have to say, it works!
• Watching one of my seventh graders (one of my gifted, and more sophisticated students) eat a worm.  A move that I assumed to be way out of left field for this child.  It was great watching him be a kid, instead of the super serious student I saw in the classroom everyday.
• Watching two of the sportier boys in my class, who are always focused on basketball, football, baseball, and the like, learning how to salsa dance, dipping and lifting included.
• Hearing my current 8th graders say things like, "I cried when we had to leave Nature's Classroom! That was the best week ever!"

I guess what I'm trying to say is that despite the headaches I've had to deal with the last few months in planning this trip, I'm really looking forward to seeing my students in a different light, without the pressure of school. I love seeing my students when they are not students, when instead they are just kids. They are asking hilariously creative questions, stepping out of their comfort zones, and attempting something brand new.  It helps me to remember to relax in the classroom, and to remember that yes, it is a place for students, but more importantly, it is a place for children.

It's Time!

So I've decided it's about time I started blogging.  I spend lots of time perusing education blogs and websites, scrolling through Twitter, and using what I've learned in my ever changing seventh and eighth grade classroom.  However, I've never really kept a log of my successes and failures as an educator still working to perfect my craft, and there are many in both categories.  But teaching isn't all about pedagogy.  It's about fostering the development of the whole child, and helping them become the best version of who they deserve to be.

One of the most important things I've learned is that middle school is a unique place, and being a middle school teacher takes a unique type of teacher.  If you teach middle school, you know what I'm talking about.  Those "is she crazy?" looks you get when you tell people you teach 8th grade, or the "God bless you" commentary:  "oh I was a nightmare in middle school. I could never do what you do!" The truth is, there is no job I would rather be doing.  Teaching this age group of students, some days, can be like pushing up against a brick wall.  But other days, it can be the most hilarious, heartwarming, and rewarding of experiences.

So, what does that mean for this blog? I'm not sure exactly.  I'm hoping for it to be a place to share all experiences as a middle school educator, from highly and hardly engaging lessons, to classroom and behavior management techniques that have proven successful, to those middle school moments that make middle school, middle school.  First blog post..check!