This We Believe

1-7

This particular section talks about how difficult it is to be a young adolescent on the cusp of quasi-adulthood with today's pressures and conflicts. This first section stresses how important it is for middle schools and middle school teachers to provide the correct amount of support for the students. They detail how the physical changes to not only the ever-developing mind, but the rest of the body as well affect how a student's perceptions, opinions, and route of thinking might develop.

This section was really intense, and provided some background information about the brain that I was not aware of, such as how the brain develops during adolescence as much as it does during infancy, and how it is both continual and irregular, making it unique to each student.

9-19

This section reiterated information from the other books we've been reading in collaboration to the NMSA publication, which is both interesting and helpful because it shows that the issues and opinions discussed are shared by multiple established organizations.

This section made wonderful points about the importance of collaboration and leading by example; middle school is where students are more likely to be interested in developing their 'image,' and having positive examples to follow will allow the students to mimic positive behavior. That being said, I loved the bit about having an 'adult advocate' for every student- it reminded me of having a mentor, which can be successful for not only school situations, but everyday experiences as well.

19-34

This section talked a lot about effective curriculum, and how middle school students especially respond to connections they can make with the material being learned to their own lives. There has to be a perfect balance between challenging and frustrating (this I can relate to, as I have several memories of assignments that were challenging but relevant to something I was interested in or had going on in my life, as well as those that made me give up, mid-homework, because it was very difficult and was more for route memorization than paired with another purpose). Relevance can come through several different channels, one (and probably the most obvious) being integration- what better way to practice skills for one class by using them in another?

I think one of the biggest challenges I face personally is making sure that students are connecting with the subject. I mean, I'm a big geek for anything historical and will be fascinated, but that doesn't necessarily mean that my students will be as well. I definitely agree with making connections through the other subjects as well- I once had a statistics project in maths (by far my worst subject ever, taken by choice senior year as a means of scoring higher on the SAT), but the statistics were all taken from gravestones in the oldest cemetery in town. This immediately kicked into my social studies brain, and when we discussed later in the week what information archaeologists were able to assume from cultures and civilizations long since gone, I was able to formulate relevant thoughts that connected the classes. I think subject matter that proves difficult (in my case, maths) is immediately easier when put into something that holds the student's individual interests.

34-51

This section went over how to get all facets of the community involved in the transformation for the nation's middle schools, and included parents, teachers, principals, superintendents, state government officials, etc, and how collaboration and being on the same page with the same goals in mind would help propel the movement forward with more ease and less roadblocks, so to speak. It's interesting and sad, all at the same time, that students weren't mentioned in the facets of the community needed to see the movement to change middle school setups succeed. I feel like student input is a valuable tool (although I can see how it would be cautionary just because of the possibility of someone not taking it seriously), especially if those students understand why there is a movement for change, what the benefits for them would be, and overall, how informed they are in the process. In essence, they're going to be experiencing middle school, so they, of all people, would know firsthand how things work.

Overall, I liked this book, if even it felt like I was rereading information discussed in the other books we've been delving into. It was interesting to get in-depth with some of the more scientific discussions of adolescent development, because even though I experienced it already I hadn't ever been exposed to that perspective.