Supportive Methods of Teaching

After reading through Ward's "Racial Identity Formation and Transformation" I began to realize how hard it is to be not only an adolescent but an adolescent of color. You have to go through every other horrible stage any other teenager has to but you also begin to see how society really is. When children are young, they do not see color as adults do. Children openly play with each other not knowing there is anything weird or groundbreaking about what they are doing. We teach our children about colors of the rainbow and also about colors of skin. Hopefully, parents are doing this unknowingly but nevertheless it happens as we grow older. We begin to realize that hanging out with people of a different race makes people look at us a little differently. I believe that this realization comes alongside puberty during adolescence.

In our classrooms, we cannot simply celebrate race once in awhile but rather foster positive self-images of all students by teaching equally to all students. We cannot always talk just about slavery from the point of view of the white people, but we cannot also only talk about slavery from the black perspective. There needs to be a constant balance of content and discussion in the class that creates an open and welcoming environment that students feel comfortable in. I see middle school as a very important time in a child's life where they are truly coming into their own as young adults. It is very important to foster a positive self-image of themselves and their culture that they can carry with them for the rest of their life.

The PALS Program

One of the first articles I found about the topic of classroom management in a middle school setting has turned out to be one of my most interesting and most useful for my project. "The Positive Alternative Learning Supports Program: Collaborating to Improve Student Success" starts out with two very real scenarios in the classroom with "problem children." The article then goes into ways that a teacher at any experience level can handle this situation.

One of the main arguments made in this article is for the use of mentorship, whether it be another teacher, counselor, parent, or some other authority figure, that the student can check in with periodically throughout the week regarding various topics. The student can discuss their social life, homework, classroom atmosphere, or anything that they like. This is meant to keep the motivation of the student up and not solely the responsibility of the teacher. Also, by having an outside mentor, the student can feel comfortable talking about problems in the classroom that he might not want to talk about with his teacher.

The results of this program have shown great success in the classroom. By collaborating teachers, administrators, parents and students, the middle school experience can be a success. With the use of assessment along with this mentorship, attendance has gone up as well as grades. This program seems to be a success all around and an option for my classroom one day hopefully.

"Teaching" Our Kids to Grow Up

It seems as though we are gradually treating our students more and more like children rather than encouraging them to make adult decisions. Punishing students for childish behavior is a very different practice than encouraging mature behavior and decision-making. I believe that middle schools need to be teaching with the idea of critical thinking always present in the lesson plan. We need to stop handing out busy work to shut up our students and hammer straight knowledge down their throats. By doing exercises that involve discussion and critical thinking in the classroom, we will produce more independent thinkers that are more confident going into the high school realm.