Where is the MOST Need?

Walking my class downstairs to lunch the other day, we passed a MICA student hanging beautiful student art projects in our hallway. At that time, I overheard one of my students complain that they never got to do art projects, and that only the ‘little kids’ got to do the fun stuff. This comment reminded me of something I heard during the School Board Meeting I attended back in early March. During the public comment section, the Parent-Community Advisory Board made a general comment about middle school reform that stuck with me. A representative for this committee argued before the board that Baltimore City is still waiting for true reform at the middle school level, beyond the transition to the K-8 model. He said that we are still ignoring the traditional middle schools within the city that clearly are in need of the most help. He backed his logic with the statistic that about 72 percent of African American males are dropping out starting in the 9^th grade. He attributed this enormous failure to the existing failure in the middle schools.

While he admitted that partnerships have been somewhat successful (specifically pointing to the University alliances with some of Baltimore City schools), he argued that this ‘good work’ was only happening at the elementary and high school level. Therefore, he argued that these partnerships are not adopting the city’s true problems. He suggested that we are only scraping the surface and avoiding the larger issue. For while he mentioned that we are aware of these enormous problems, and that we all can name the middle schools in the most need, still the help/alliances are not going where they are needed.

This got me thinking about the opportunities that exist within my own school, an arguably successful K-8 model. Yet looking deeper into my school, a drastic difference exists between the elementary and middle school level results and statistics. The top floors, which house the middle school children, is considerably different than the lower floor where the elementary children are taught. When visitors enter the building, they are usually taken on a tour of the bottom floor, and rarely shown upstairs. Also, although many opportunities exist in the school, the vast majority of them are aimed at the elementary students, along with an occasional few standout middle school students. Hence, these younger children are the ones working with MICA students, which leads back to the comment from my student that they ‘never got to do art projects.’

Overall, I recognize that my middle school students benefit from being part of a K-8 school with successful partnerships. However, people seem to enjoy working with the smaller, typically calmer children whereas they have a fear of the wilder or simply ‘uncontrollable,’ middle school students. Yet by withholding opportunity from middle school students anywhere throughout the city, we are only closing doors for these students who perhaps need this extra attention and opportunity more than anyone else.