This We Believe

This book is looking at the characteristics of middle school children and middle schools themselves. It talks about the children briefly as a blanketed whole but focus’ on the “successful” middle school student. The traits the book lists as important for students to develop and grow into make up a very long list of an ideal well rounded person. My belief is that one of their ideas is more important than the rest. Students should focus on their strengths. This is not to say that no one should ever try hard and become good at something they were bad at, but rather if you want to really be successful you should develop what you are already good at. I think if we could somehow get all the students to focus on their strengths we could produce a society of exceptional people instead of a declining mediocre society that has some general knowledge about everything.

The middle school leadership should be held to a very high standard. Leaders to the middle school children are all of the adults that have an impact on their school day, from their parents and teachers, to the administrators. I cannot agree with the book more when they say the leaders need to develop change with the children in mind. Making changes based on money or personal agenda destroys a working system and is a real problem. In my childhood school system, recently the superintendant eliminated a position to save money and took on the responsibility himself, which included taking a pay raise. From the outside looking in there seems to be so many things wrong with this approach that it is easy for me to generalize all the problems of schools into, money and personal agendas.

Middle schools strive to have a culture that offers individual students the attention needed to help that student grow both academically and emotionally. My middle school did not really have any type of advisory program or make any effort to reach us as individual people. Personally it did not affect me in a negative way but I am fortunate to have a family support system that allowed me to grow. It seems too easy however for a student that does not have a strong family relationship to get lost in the cracks of a middle school. It is such an important time of these students lives that time spent being overlooked or lumped into a group can seriously impact their lives negatively. I would love to teach in a school that focused on getting to know the students as individuals; I believe that relationship would significantly outweigh any curriculum that might suffer from the time dedicated to the person.