The following is an excerpt from the newly released book titled Is It Working in Your Middle School? I highly encourage any middle level educator to access the book and use it as tool for ensuring the success of any program, strategy, or initiative that your middle school is implementing. Continuous improvement in our middle schools is
Working collaboratively to create and sustain effective middle schools. Harrington Emmerson, a U.S. efficiency engineer and business theorist, said, “The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss. As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few.
Read More… from International Perspectives on Middle Level Education
The best schools are those that continue to experiment. The term “middle school” is an unassuming part of the vernacular of our educational system. During the past 50 years, middle schools have come to represent what is now the typical organization of schools for grades 6–8. But middle schools were not always the standard. In
Read More… from A Vision for Experimental Middle Schools Today
In January 2013, educators in Ohio’s Mentor Public Schools decided to align the district’s academic focus to the instructional practices of blended learning. After extensive piloting of a variety of devices, the district chose the iPad for its durability, battery life and, most important, its power to transform instruction. The district embraced a 1:1 structure
We are a middle school, not a junior version of high school. To be effective in our teaching, we are developmentally appropriate for young adolescents, not for 16- to 18-year-olds nor for 8- and 9-year-olds. There is an expertise to teaching middle level students that is different than that needed to teach elementary or high