Middle Management

Joanne Jacobs (see blogroll at left) linked to a great NY Times article about the travails of teaching middle school. Seeing as how I teach middle school, this article naturally hit home with me. I freely admit that my ultimate aim is to eventually leave middle school behind and move up to high school. Finding a social science teaching position is extremely tough, and I took the first position that was offered. That position was at a middle school. It is just so frustrating sometimes to have all this knowledge and enthusiasm about my subject, yet the students couldn't care less. Not to say that I think high schoolers would be googly-eyed about history either, but at least the incentive to graduate and the added maturity of another couple years of age are in the mix.

Since the NY Times requires one to register in order to read their articles, I have taken the liberty to post some of their juicier quotes that made me nod my head and utter an occasional "AMEN!":

Faced with increasingly well-documented slumps in learning at a critical age, educators in New York and across the nation are struggling to rethink middle school, particularly in cities, where the challenges of adolescent volatility, spiking violence and lagging academic performance are more acute...

“There was a lot more anger and outbursts,” Christian Clarke, 29, a Bronx high school teacher, recalled of the students he encountered during his four years teaching middle school. “Twice as much time was spent on putting out fires; twice as much time was spent getting the class quiet. Twice as much time was spent on defusing anger in the kids...”

The most difficult high school students often drop out or skip class, while middle school teachers tend to face a full house.

“Problematic kids in high school don’t come to school anymore, but in middle school they still show up,” said Barry M. Fein, the principal of Seth Low. “I think that piece alone makes it more challenging...”

The quote about the future dropouts still coming to school really caught my attention, because I have pondered that fact many times myself. I can think of so many students who I can easily identify as not likely making it past their sophomore year in high school. Yet in the meantime, here they are in my classroom, raising hell and sometimes making it impossible to teach the students who truly want to be there and truly want to learn something. That right there is the biggest frustration I have with teaching. Every day, I see the looks of frustration, boredom, and helplessness on the faces of the conscientous students as they sit there, tediously waiting for the latest class clown or class disruptor to finish his/her performance. Sometimes, I wonder what it is like to truly teach, and not be a policeman and a babysitter instead.

Good Day to You, Sir