The ongoing dilemma about where to house and how to motivate middle school students is back in the news on newyorktimes.com. As any parent with a child this age will tell you, middle school students are an unusual lot. They come in a variety of sizes with all sorts of interesting personalities. If you teach them for long, you have to love them. They are caught between the stages of being a little kid to becoming an adult. They are really quite charming once you get to know them, but sometimes parents and educators just don't know what to do with them.
Driven by newly documented slumps in learning, by crime rates and by high dropout rates in high school, educators across New York and the nation are struggling to rethink middle school and how best to teach adolescents at a transitional juncture of self-discovery and hormonal change.
In New York State, grade-by-grade testing conducted for the first time last year showed that in rich and poor districts alike, reading scores plunge from the fifth to sixth grade, when most students move to middle school, and continue to decline through eighth grade.
The troubles transcend test scores. While 74 percent of elementary schools reported at least one violent incident in the 2003-4 school year, 94 percent of middle schools did, federal statistics show.
Educators want to help middle school students succeed. Districts have tried everything from placing students in smaller learning communities with fewer teachers to establishing later start times. Regardless of what parents and educators do, middle school students are constantly struggling with peer pressure and changes out of their control.
"These kids go through more change in their lives than at any other time except the first three years," said Sue Swain, executive director of the National Middle School Association.
Learning to listen to this age student is an important part of educating them. They have a lot to say.