The Purpose of Middle School

After reading this article, it made me reflect back on my student teaching middle school experience. I was at a k-8 middle school that stressed the importance of hardwork and silence. I remember walking through the hallways and it being so quite and then going into my classroom where it was very quiet too. I remember feeling really weirded out the first day of student teaching because it was so quiet and then when I entered the classroom students were working very hard on completing their worksheets. Although everything was in order throughout the school I felt as though students weren't learning how to think critically about why or what they were reading. They were being asked to be producers of worksheets. Now that I am at the high school level teaching, I can see how students from middle school have gotten into the habit of working on completing worksheets. They don't feel comfortable sharing in group discussions or answering questions that ask them to tell me what they feel or think about a particular topic. In fact, the attitude that I've gotten from my students is don't talk to me or teach to me just hand me the worksheet for group work. If this is what we are doing in middle schools then I feel that we are not preparing them for adulthood where they don't question anything or don't know how to question people in authority or themselves about changing things that they are unhappy about.

The Role of Pubertal Processes

I thought this chapter was unique in that it illustrates that there is not much research out there about the middle school aged child. I took a Psychology of Women class and so I was pretty familiar with most of the terms however, what I noticed that was different was the education emphasis to the article which I found to be educational. I would agree with the author that more research needs to be done about how boys are socialized into society. In addition, I believe that society needs to change their views on how each gender should behave like. Boys will become adult men and if they are being socialized that the correct way to act is non-emotional or that it is a feminine trait then it really damages their psyche. When people are boxed into these specific roles and someone who does not fit those traits people do not know how to treat the person. People are so much more complicated and layered in their personality that I feel that the socialization of genders is very harmful but at the same time I feel that if someone doesn't fit those categories it becomes a very scary thing for the person because the person doesn't feel "normal" So I guess what I am stating is that it's a double edged sword.