Eduleadership

As K-8 schools grow in popularity, and as high-stakes assessments focus on high school students, it’s easy to ignore middle schools. One school district in New York State, however, is putting middle school in the limelight. From the New York Times:

Briarcliff school officials have made a conscious decision to cultivate the middle school, instead of looking for ways to make middle schools disappear, as other districts have done by stretching elementary schools to cover eighth grade.

In 2003, it was the middle school that moved into a new $24 million red-brick-and-glass building with panoramic views of the countryside while the high school took over its old space next door. The middle school also hires only teachers who express a clear interest in working with sixth, seventh and eighth graders, and trains them to reach the age group better.

The school takes particular pride in its focus on how adolescents think and develop. Susan Howard, the Briarcliff principal, emphasized during a recent orientation for fifth-grade parents that a good middle school had to recognize and respond to the stages of adolescence as well as to fulfill their students’ intellectual promise. “If you think about a recipe, if you leave out a key ingredient, you’re not going to get the same outcome,” she said.

So the school strives to develop critical thinking, teach organizational skills, and instill social and moral values. This is most visible in its adherence to Habits of Mind, a system developed by two educators, Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick, and now used in about 300 schools worldwide. link

The Habits of Mind can serve as both intellectual exhortations (“striving for accuracy”) and behavioral expectations (“managing impulsivity”). At my previous school, I created posters to introduce Habits of Mind to our students, but we did not go as far as making them an essential part of the culture.

Middle school is starting to get the attention it deserves, and to have an identity beyond its chronological position after elementary and before high school. Students in the middle grades deserve to have their developmental needs taken seriously, 1as adolescents dealing with the challenges of both childhood and adulthood, and the transition from the former to the latter.

Students at Briarcliff, like students in many middle schools, also carry spiral-bound planners to keep track of their assignments. This is but one example of ways that middle schools can encourage students to develop habits – such as staying organized – that will not only improve their performance in the short term, but will stay with them throughout a lifetime.

Via NY Times