School Culture/Climate

The Power of Community Circles

Building healthy relationships in the middle school classroom The Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE) emphasizes the importance of creating a successful school for young adolescents that is inviting, supportive, safe, and joyful in order to support students’ emotional well-being. As a middle level teacher educator, it has become apparent that teaching future educators the

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Musicals for Middle Level Arts and Academics

Musicals offer a wealth of opportunities for interdisciplinary learning and enhanced academics Musicals can serve as rich sources for student learning, especially when staged at your own school. While musicals are considered entertainment, they can serve as strong curriculum resources. Stage, film, and TV musicals are also possibilities because they are ingrained in popular culture

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Weaving Gratitude into the Fabric of Everyday Learning

Practicing gratitude is one tool that can help students deal with anxiety, depression, and loneliness iGen, a term used by generational researcher Jean M. Twenge (2017), is used to describe children born between 1995 and 2012. In her book, Twenge analyzed large data sets to understand the struggles and hopes of this rising generation. iGen

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Becoming a Restorative Practices School

How one school created a culture focused on improving student behavior Background For many years educators have used punishment, or fear of punishment, as the primary deterrent to student misconduct. We have tried zero tolerance, excessive use of in-school suspension (ISS) and out of school suspension (OSS), elimination of student privileges, and numerous other consequences

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