Published: May 11, 2008 07:50 am      

Crucial years of middle school

SUMMIT — They’re no longer little kids. No more coddling, no more glittery stars and smiley faces on their papers.

But they’re not big kids either. No driver’s licenses or proms. Not yet.

They’re middle school students. Barely into their teens, just getting braces, discovering the onrush of hormones, struggling with boundaries at home and at school.

In class they’re dealing with ever more complex material and the push to prepare for college is starting in earnest.

All of which makes the middle school years a tough slog for kids, parents and teachers alike.

Parents may be puzzled at the very term “middle school.” Sure, they think, we went to junior high and sure, we had our bit of trouble with learning the routine of changing classes and remembering locker combinations. So what?

Middle school isn’t just a renaming of junior high. It’s a concept dating from the early 1990s, a significant change in education, said Bill Boblett, principal of Boyd County Middle School.

At the core of the middle school approach is the notion that there is no way to separate the academic and social needs of kids in grades six through eight. You get the whole package with all its needs — intellectual, social, physical and emotional.

“We take care of the whole child,” Boblett said.

To do that at Boyd County, a school of 700 students is divided into teams of about 125 kids. Teachers also work in teams of six, representing different disciplines, and work with the same kids all year.

Teaching teams meet regularly to plan and to discuss their students. Because they deal with a small group of kids, the teachers get to know them well.

At a typical meeting, teachers sit around a table in a classroom temporarily void of students, gradebooks and notebooks spread in front of them.

After coordinating their teaching schedules, they zero in on the predicaments of half a dozen students who are in danger of flunking.

Some of the at-risk kids need summer school, some need extra help. Others have behavioral disorders that impede their schoolwork.

All of them need improvement in one or more grades to pass; the team’s dilemma is choosing the right instructional combination for each.

The team approach is valuable in assessing individual student aptitude and needs, said team leader Nita Holbrook. Each teacher sees children at a different time of day, in a different environment, using different skills; by combining their knowledge the teams assemble a broad and deep understanding of their students.

Teams represent every academic discipline taught at the school — math, language arts, science, social studies and so on.

Parent involvement efforts run into obstacles at the middle school level. Not that schools don’t continue to encourage parents to stay involved at school. The obstacle is the kids themselves, Boblett said.

They’re reaching the age where they see parents as an embarrassment and an impediment. “They just want to be dropped off at the corner,” he said.

The school counters the trend through daily emails, frequent evening activities, and constant encouragement for parents, he said.

The shift to middle school can be hard on parents too. They’re typically accustomed to a smaller elementary and to dealing with one teacher per year. So the school reaches out to parents to emphasize that they are welcome, he said.

Although students change classes between periods, the school takes steps to keep the youngest students separate from the oldest. There’s a big change between the sixth and eighth grades in physical and mental maturity, from small, timid and shy to big and confident. So teams are kept in pods for core classes.

The school has two counselors. Besides the usual academic and career exploration, the counselors help with the emotional highs and lows of adolescence. “They need to know they can sit down and talk and that you’ll listen and that you care,” Boblett said.