It is the most difficult and important work imaginable.  

Middle school students and adolescents in general – contraryto popular belief – are not boiling cauldrons of raging hormones. In fact,“there is abundant research to suggest that teens are rarely as obsessed withearly sexual exploration, drug/alcohol use or other risky behaviors as manywould have us believe.”

Those are the words of Eric Toshalis, who along with Mike Nakkula,authors of “Understanding Youth: Adolescent Development for Educators,”imparted to 72 Southern Arizona educators at a Sept. 25, 2009, Voices forEducation workshop.

The day-long event, “Understanding Youth: Middle School TeamWorkshop” brought teachers, counselors, administrators and even some parentstogether to delve into the importance of middle school education. Participantscame from Amphitheater, Flowing Wells, Sunnyside, Indian Oasis-Baboquivari andTucson unified school districts and Wildcat School and Paulo Freire charterschools. It was free and Voices for Education provided up to $300 to each school to help pay for substitute teachersfor the day.

Misconceptions about middle school-aged children, Toshalissaid, “can lead to assumptions about how best to contain and control them,rather than listen to, nurture, and challenge them.

But he said in the work he and Nakkula have done withadolescents and their educators, “we have found countless examples of how teenscan be serious, funny, driven, empathetic, careful and considerate in and outof academic contexts.”

That said, though, Toshalis concedes that middle schoolers oftenare oriented more exclusively around friendship and can, indeed, be impulsiveand emotionally volatile as they navigate the many contexts and relationalstruggles that can occur during any given school day.

“But we like to point out that adult educators often displaythe same impulsivity and volatility during faculty meetings!” he said.

Which brings them to the topic of middle schools teachers.

“When middle school teachers are great, it’s often becausethey meet energy with energy, creativity with creativity, and, perhaps mostimportantly, because they are taking on the challenge of helping people throughan important developmental threshold in their lives – moving into and throughpuberty, which includes developing more mature ways of being, doing and interactingwith others,” Toshalis said.

“What makes adolescence different from other developmentaleras is the new powers of mind that expand as the individual enters the teenageyears. The capacity to consider the abstract, to contemplate the ‘what if,’ torecognize another’s competing perspective as valid and to play in the grayareas that define so much of what we confront as adults. These new capacitiesare like wings desperate for the experience of flight,” he said. “Great middleschool teachers create opportunities for students to stretch those capacities,to try out new theories, experiment with ideas and approaches and to test theboundaries of what’s possible (and maybe even acceptable).”

So when educators put curricula in place in the service ofmeaningful questions or real-life problems (rather than as a set ofstandardized answers to pre-set prompts), middle schoolers are often highlymotivated to explore and delve, and they can be counted on to invest themselveswith passion when academic work targets such activity, he said.

“When teens misbehave or say inappropriate things, greatmiddle school teachers (and counselors and school psychologists and socialworkers) approach such occurrences as “teachable moments” in which guidance anddiscussion are often favored over punishments and reprimands,” Nakkula said.

“Given all the evolving adolescent is facing in terms ofadjusting to a changing body, establishing new relationships with family andfriends, constructing a sense of identity, formulating a value system andsetting life habits and goals, the best middle school teachers possess areverence for all their students confront that is balanced by a healthy senseof humor,” he said. “A really good middle school teacher is one that recognizesall this complexity and challenge but still finds creative ways to have somefun.”

Roskruge Bilingual Middle MagnetSchool Principal Jose Olivas said the most important point he took fromToshalis was, “We don’t understand youth until we’re in relationships with themand allow them to tell us and show us what they need.”

Olivas said it reminded him of theneed and importance of taking time to interact with students in ways thatpromote positive development. And he is amazed, he said, at what can be learnedabout middle schoolers when someone takes the time to establish and maintain arelationship “which always keeps the child’s best interest in mind withoutnecessarily dictating how the child must change.”

Roskruge counselor Kathy Osollosaid what resonated most for her was “the power of non-familial relationshipsthat counselors, and staff in general, have to opportunity to establish withmiddle schoolers.”

She said she liked the concept ofthe new “Three Rs,” rigor, relevancy and relationship. Pictured in a triangle,it was relationship that occupied the bottom, and biggest part of the triangle,which means it can have “tremendous potential.”

“A wise person once said thatstudents don’t care what you know until they know you care,” she said. “Anawesome byproduct of these relationships is the ability to guide students inmaking connections between school and career goals and/or life plans.”

Both Olivas and Osollo said theyhad been exposed to much of the information before, but Olivas said he liked“being around fellow educators who also work with this age group and discussingthe difficulties as well as our successes.”

It takes a unique individual to teachat the middle school level, Olivas said. “It requires one to be patient,honest, caring and sincere and constantly reminding oneself that the middleschooler’s part of the brain dealing with risky behavior is not yet attached. Thebrain registers risk, but not what risk is.” 

Osollo agreed. “On the surface the middle school stage canseem challenging, however, teachers, counselor, administrators and parents needto understand that that during this critical period of development youth aresimply trying to discover who they are and how they fit in to the largerpicture. We should not interpret their risk-taking behavior as rude oraggressive but instead as attempts to evolve as an individual,” shesaid. And “we must be willing to push our pride aside and tap intocommunity resources such as mentoring programs.”

JoAnn Groh, co-director of Paulo Freire Freedom School, said the workshop was "very affirming for us because we have implementedstrategies addressing most of the needs the experts identified. We did,however, discuss how their research could help us with dealing with students onan individual basis.

“Middle schoolers are very complex – one foot in childhood,one in the teen years,” she said. “They are trying on identities that arestrongly influenced by peers and media. They often are strongly attachedto their ideas of the world – many which are partially based on erroneousinformation.”

Groh said middle schoolers “sometimes are very concretethinkers but they are beginning to think abstractly – and that fascinatesthem. They are intensely concerned with fairness. They can be brutallymean or incredibly loveable. They actual are starved for adult relationships.”

Nakkula said those relationships students have with teachers atthe middle school level are so crucial “because the teacher can serve not justas a buffer to new pressures, but may actually function as a guide. Byrecognizing the unique stressors faced by middle schoolers and adapting theschool environment to meet the specific needs of 12-14 year-olds, middle schoolteachers are the bridge-makers between childhood and adolescence. They set thetone and make the space safe so that youth can feel secure in themselves and theirschool.”

Some middle school teachers understand their importance, somedo not. Many have been well prepared to do that work; some have not, theauthors point out. “But overall, we find that middle school teachers, like mostother teachers, recognize the awesome responsibilities and privileges of theirwork, including their work as developmentalists, Nakkula said. “As with anyprofession, however, the day-to-day demands can lead to simply ‘going throughthe motions’ and taking one’s work and clientele for granted. Most middleschool teachers are abundantly aware that their students are far more than testscores, but some days it may be hard to act in concert with that awareness.”

One key risk to address is to recognize the reality of theclassroom and how hard it can be to think and act developmentally, said Nakkulaand Toshalis. They said they are not interested in remediating teacherdeficiencies, but instead “seek to participate in systemic change where each ofthe stakeholders understands each other as collaborators.”

Their goals, in their book, their research and workshops likethese, are to build on the knowledge and skill sets already possessed byeducators and then look for ways to extend the edges of that understanding,helping teachers, administrators, counselors, school psychologists, socialworkers, parents and community members to team up as applied developmentalistscommitted to vibrant schools and healthy kids.

             Thisis essential, they said, because if students don’t come out of middle school ingood enough shape for high school on multiple levels – academically, personallyand socially – it will be hard to achieve what they want in life. Middle schoolis very much the developmental crossroads for lifelong development.

Voices for Education Executive Director Robin Hiller, said “wewanted to give participants at this workshop an opportunity to work with thesenationally known experts. We also had a reception for them where they did apresentation for lay people to help raise the level of conversation abouteducation.”

“We are so overwhelmed with all of the negative things thatare going on in Arizona schools that our goals (like moving from 49^thto 48^th on the per-pupil funding scale) are pretty low,” she said.“We miss out on what we can actually do right now to help students.”

The workshop was a way “to support andenergize teachers. School budgets have been cut so drastically that there isn’ta lot of funding for professional development,” said Hiller, who added thatVoices also holds a math training program for teachers twice a year.

Hiller said she hopes Nakkula andToshalis will return for another event. They hope so, too. “We left Tucson feelingso energized even though we touched only the tip of the iceberg with respect towhat’s going on in and around Tucson as a result of the work being done byVoices,” Toshalis said. “The work we do in our teaching, scholarship, serviceand consulting seems perfectly aligned with the work Voices has been doing fora long time now, and we’re grateful our paths have converged.”

The two view their work with Voices“much like we view applied developmentalism in general; that is, as we seek toexpand others’ application of developmental concepts in secondary classrooms,we too learn how to broaden the types of conversations Voices is generatinglocally,” Nakkula said. “We take that new knowledge and integrate it into whatwe know from adolescent developmental research and theory, and that producesnew insights about how best to align our approach with yours. This sort ofreciprocal transformation is, for us, a foundation for productive, rewardingand fun work with adults and middle schoolers alike.”

Middle School Reform

"Middle school reform requires the courage to question long-standing assumptions, the determination to break away from negative attitudes and ineffective curricula and teaching methodologies, the humility to recognize that maybe someone else has knowledge and experience from which you can learn, and the resourcefulness to look both within and beyond the local school and the local school system for promising practices.  It requires risk-taking and it requires putting the achievement of your students first and letting nothing stand in the way. It is the most difficult and important work imaginable."  Hayes Mizell, director of Clark's Program for Student Achievement

In 2009, President Barrack Obama stated, “dropping out of high schools is no longer an option.”  Voices for Education believes that supporting families and children in their quest for education is paramount to middle school reform.

This is one of the most important initiatives we have ever undertaken.

The facts show that if a child attends a middle school where he or she is valued and nurtured they are more likely to complete high school and attend college.  Our children deserve schools that support them and encourage them to explore and discover the passion for learning.  That passion discovered and nurtured in middle schools springs to life in inquisitive minds that are challenged to find the answers to questions we have yet to ask.

Voices for Education believes we can achieve real middle school reform by working with teachers, administrators, and parents to raise expectations, create environments that encourage exploration and education, educate teachers about new methods designed to encourage students to take risks by recognizing the latest in brain development research, and to remove barriers to learning by introducing best practices to ease transitions from elementary education. 

 Nakula and Toshalis explore how factors such as social class, peer and adult relationships, gender norms and the media help to shape adolescents' sense ofthemselves and their future expectations and aspirations.  Please call us at 324-0881 or email rhiller@voicesforeducation.org for more information.

Looking Back to Move Forward: Keeping Middle Grades On-Track to Graduation

For many school children, eighth and ninth grade can be very important transitional years for their education and lifestyle. Due to this, many organizations have developed strong programs that provide guidance in these two crucial years of student development. While these initiatives have reported much success, a recent study, Keeping Middle Grades On-Track to Graduation,  suggests that sixth grade intervention may be the key to keeping students on track to earn their diploma.

The study reports that there are four early indicators that point to potential drop-outs. If a student is in sixth grade and: attends school eighty percent or less of the time, receives a poor final behavior mark and receives a final failing grade in English or a final failing grade in math, they have only a ten percent chance of graduating on time, and only a twenty percent chance of graduating a year later. A student needs only to display one of these characteristics to be considered a potential drop-out. The report claims that in the 1996-97 school year, about 3,500 sixth-graders in Philadelphia had one or more of these risk factors. In addition to providing alarming statistics, the study opens the possibility that educators may be able to locate the students who will eventually leave the system without graduating before they have reached high school; making it possible for constructive intervention before students slip into irreversible habits that lead to dropping out. Researchers hope, that “intervening early and getting students ‘back on track' will not only decrease the dropout rate but will have positive impacts on middle grade and high school test scores, attendance, and overall school climate.” 

Because each student has problems of varying urgency, there are three degrees of intervention: school-wide, targeted, and intensive, all of which address the early indicators mentioned above. In regards to attendance, the school-wide intervention would include closely monitoring attendance, giving meaningful incentives for being in school, giving proactive responses to the first unexcused absence, and searching out reasons for repeated absences. A targeted approach consists of teacher teams identifying and solving problems, and involving families in the solutions. An intensive focus would involve contacting social services for support. 

A behavioral intervention school-wide approach deals with teaching, modeling, recognizing, and acknowledging good behavior. Targeted intervention suggests alternatives to suspension, grief counseling and anger management, while intensive intervention deals with the contacting of social services. Lastly, course failure, school wide intervention simply deals with having a strong core-curriculum, teachers, and staff.

A targeted intervention deals with coordination of classroom instruction with:

1. extra help labs,

2. reduced class sizes,

3. effective after-school programs that deal directly with math and English.

Intensive intervention includes tutoring and very small group instruction of ten or less children.

But, what may be considered the keystone of the reform, are grade-group meetings for school staff. Liza Herzog, the senior researcher at the Philadelphia Education Fund, writes, "twice a month teachers and resource staff meet to discuss students individually and either indentify interventions that are already available or create new ones, teachers assess the progress of students and identify new students who need help.” Researchers also suggest that middle school reform needs to be based on a “proactive and preventative vision” and that schools realize that the mixture of adolescence and poor urban neighborhoods can be a destructive combination. With this in mind, schools should expect sixth graders to have these issues and already have extra support and an established and effective relationship with local social services. 

Because the project is only in its third year, concrete data on the outcome is not yet available. But after contacting Robert Balfanz, co-director of the Center of Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University and one of the lead researchers, it was found that preliminary data for the 2008-09 school year will soon be available for the students that eventually ended up back on track. Though, the data collected through March does show that there was a forty percent improvement in attendance and behavior and over seventy percent improvement in math and English. 

Thank you to Arnold Fege of Public Education Network for the above information. 

Voices has just completed surveying over 8,000 7th and 11th graders.  We're digesting the data now and will soon be able to report.  This survey would not have ben made possible without support from Public Education Network, Forum for Youth Investment, Every Voice in Action, the University of Arizona College of Education, and the Altria Foundation.