Thompson: "The Middle School Type"

My old high school was the lowest performing in the state, but the challenge we faced was not comparable to the problems in our middle school. When I used to turn the corner from our high school wing and into the middle school hall, I was often hit by a wall of sound that was so intense that it was physically painful.  I would look that the "thousand yard stares" of the 8th grade teachers, see the screaming tweens, and often choose another route to my class. Peter Meyer's "The Middle School Mess" in Education Next provides insight into why neighborhood middle school teachers have to adopt the personalities of bungee jumpers.  His best idea is breaking up the critical mass of students in the "psychosocial-engagement holding pens" that we call middle school.  In a challenging  middle school with 900 students, the troublemaking ten percent (90 kids) will wreack havoc.   In a comparable 900 student pre-k to 8th school, the 30 most most challenging students will be more manageable. - JT (@drthompson)

Comments

[LearnMeProject]

So many horror stories about middle school socialization, lack of focus (by nature), etc. People who know about all these complications and challenges still question my decision to home school my middle school son. Why?

It's all so much "Verging On Hysteria" http://learnmeproject.com/?p=32. Why?

I'm not asking you to home school your kid, I'm not trying to decimate the public school system, not trying to put an independent school out of business--nothing to fear but fear itself.

[CarolineSF]

Just for the record, my kids attended a 900-student diverse urban middle school that was in the process of a turnaround, but was viewed as a "dirty, dangerous ghetto school" at the time my older child started there -- and they both had an excellent experience. Their time at Aptos Middle School in the San Francisco Unified School District, beginning in 2002 for my older child, was far more successful, educationally and otherwise, than my junior high experience in '60s suburbia (Edna Maguire Junior High School, Mill Valley, Calif., 1965-'67).

[john]

Caroline,

What was the key to the success? The problem in our district is that our 5th graders' class is diverse, but anyone who has choices takes advantage of them to get away from neighborhood middle schools. Our district had been advised to remodel the schools into pre-k through 8th the reduce the concentrations of middle students. We were warned that our elementary schools must not be as good as advertized or the 6th grade drop-off would not be so extreme. But we should extend what was good in elementary school - nurturing - into the middle years. After nearly a decade of NCLB, our elementary schools aren't as nurturing, either. What I see is the middle school model, which was rarely tried, was replaced by the NCLB model of test prep. But even before NCLB, our middle schools were too chaotic to provide a respectful school climate. I'm not qualified to judge between the middle school model vs the new performance model of middle schools or to even say whether that is an accurate way to formulate the question. I am saying that in the neighborhood middle schools that I know, the best outcome is to minimize the decline from 6th through 8th.

My school was extreme, but I saw 6th grade teachers trying to teach on a higher level than we could have tried to teach freshmen. My sense was that our high school kids with 5th grade skills had skills that were not that much lower in 5th grade.

I don't completely buy the idea that grandmotherly types can make it in high school but middle school teachers must be tougher (or crazier), but when the middle school moved into our building, I was not prepared for how bloody and intense their fights would be. I blame the even more extrme concentration of terribly traumatized kids kids in middle school, along with having even fewer possibilities for addressing their trauma. I hate to say it, but high school is easier because so many of the most troubled middle school kids barely make an appearance in high school.

[CarolineSF]

A lot of San Francisco public schools that used to be considered unthinkable by anyone who had choices are becoming popular again, and Aptos was part of that trend. All of this is based on the situation – as I describe it; you may have a better way to put it – that a school that enrolls a critical mass of high-need, challenged low-income students will become overwhelmed and struggle. A school that enrolls a smaller number of high-need, challenged low-income students than that critical mass will be able to function more effectively. Keeping a school diverse yet falling short of that critical mass seems to be the key.

A key event was the founding of the San Francisco chapter of Parents for Public Schools in 1999 by two then-preschool moms. PPSSF made bringing parents back to public schools part of its mission, and they truly have, gradually, changed the culture. It used to be that public school parents were on the defensive, and now it's the opposite – in the well-informed middle-class demographic, private schools parents are a little sheepish about their elitism here in San Francisco now.

PPSSF members (including moi) have worked really hard over the years to woo nervous parents and get out in the community and market our schools. It's not really that hard a sell.

There was a perfect storm at Aptos, I think. There were some great teachers all along. The school is in a very nice, and convenient, neighborhood (San Francisco's Balboa Terrace, just east of San Francisco State University) – one that makes it organically diverse based on residential patterns. It's also a beautiful, though run-down, old building, built in the early '30s and full of vibrantly patterned Spanish tile.

Aptos is smaller than the biggest middle schools (which, BTW, are the district's most successful), which many parents found attractive. Aptos had managed to maintain its full band, orchestra and visual arts programs as electives in the curriculum, through all the years of budget cuts and diverting resources to remedial academics that have battered schools. It had and has separate honors classes. There were some years when SFUSD used a freaky way to identify students as gifted and talented, which meant that many super-smart kids were not officially GATE-identified, but Aptos (unlike higher-status middle schools) was willing to bring “high-potential” non-GATE students into its honors track, which attracted quite a number of strong students. That particular situation lasted maybe three years, but those were pivotal years. After that, Aptos started getting really popular with middle-class families.

Two other SFUSD middle schools (James Lick and Roosevelt) have made the same transition, from unthinkable to popular, for different reasons, and others may be on the verge.

San Francisco has some demographic differences from other cities that do impact all this. Our district is plurality Chinese – a high-achieving demographic, overall on average, and one that is in general inclined to go to public school and then raise the achievement levels at the school. Then that tends to reassure the nervous white middle class.