Young people in transition

I find these articles to be important in the understanding of teaching and learning in middle school. The idea of middle school has not been around as we know it for that long and as these articles pointed out research on the impacts of certain practices in middle schools are lagging behind. Young people in middle school are more than students, they are individuals that are dealing with a dramatic transformation into adulthood. The difficulties experienced by these students should not be overlooked. By addressing more than just math and sciences ect, we can teach young people how to be important members of society. Middle school is more than learning about certain subjects. You learn about yourself as you go through adolescence. You also begin to sue critical thinking skills that are real world applicable. It is important that middle schools be taken seriously as gateways that all children must pass through in order to prepare themselves for the future. By offering good teachers trained in teaching children in middle school who understand the many complexities that arise from that age we can ensure that children all have the same opportunities to succeed.

Upon reading this chapter I realized that adolscence and puberty are very complicated events that happen in our society and that they are in a way a reflection of our society. Not every child in the world experiences these changes the same as the difference between industrialized and pre-industrialized nations is very pronounced. I never experienced fake deaths or ritualistic scarring and others did not have to sit though sexual education class. It is clear to me that not a lot of information exists on this topic partly because of the difficulty in trying to understand how children react to their developmental changes. A lot of it depends on where they live and how they were raised. In the classroom teachers have to be able to adapt to these differences as we teach because it is impossible and foolhardy to try and lump every child's experiences together.


On a side note I wanted to mention the fact that when our book talks about dealing with sexual arousal and attraction to members of the same sex that I found the choice of wordage very interesting. In some of my other classes we talk about the impact that textbooks have and how they further steryotpes and how they often do not discuss the "real" issues and events. I find the emphasis given to "opposite sex" to be midly offensive to me and I also am dissapointed that it is included in a college textbook. I realize that not everyone can agree on homosexuality but I still think that statements like that can cause harm. As someone who is going to be an educator these are items where we need to see just how great of an impact a statment liek that can have on ourselves and our students. By accepting a statement like that as a teacher we are lumping all experiences that children have as adolescence into a heterosexual category and that is unfair to those who do not fit into that category. The impact that a statement like that can have on a child who already is dealing with the difficulties of puberty and then having to sit through those awkward classes in middle school is great. It can lead to a child feeling that there is something wrong with them for having an attractrion to members of the same sex and this can have adverse effects on their learning and motivation.

Danger of Assimilation

I found Kumashiro's article a great way to see the many issues surrounding the challenges we all face as educators.  In such a diverse world we face many instances where we need to acknowledge these differences and embrace them.  Kumashiro brings up the danger of using the assimilationist ideology.  This theory forces us to view students of color or different sexual orientation as different and inferior.  The view that they should all conform to the mainstream culture and become more like middle class White Americans.  This viewpoint is such a detriment to the classroom as it forces us to view different cultures and ideas as inferior and not worth mentioning in a classroom.  Diversity should be cherished in a classroom as it creates such great opportunities to learn both as an educator and a student.