Middle schools...

With in the next year many of the Baltimore City middle school will start to be phased our or close all together. With the closing of many of the 6 to 8 middle schools and moving towards the k to 8 model, many problems will arise because of this. First I feel that with many of the middle schools closing on the Eastern side of Baltimore that the students will be forced into either large 6 to 8 middle schools or they will be forced into a long commute to get to school. Switching from 6 to 8 middle schools and instead keeping the students in k to 8 schools will cause many problems. As a teaching in a 6 to 8 middle school, I can understand keeping 6th graders part of elementary schools, I however cannot see how 7th and 8th graders would function with an elementary school. My first concern is that if they are in an elementary type setting, the wide range of ages will cause problems. As it is, in my middle school we have some eighth grade students as old as 15. These older students are idolized at my school, they are not only the most popular and “coolest” students, and the other students want to be like them. These are also the students who have promiscuous reputations and convince the younger girls to go along with what they do. My other concern is that the disruption and behavior issues that the middle school students cause will be copied by the younger students who look up to the middle school students. This could be a positive things, having the younger students have a positive role model, however at this age many of the students behavior is less then positive. It would also open the elementary schools up to more violent behavior. I also have to wonder if the school system has thought about what they are going to do with the students who have been arrested. There are few students at my school who have been convicted of sexual molestation. This leads me to my next question, what is going to happen to the few 6 to 8 middle schools that are left? I feel that they are going to become a place where the behavior issues, violent, students who have been kicked out of the k to 8 schools will go. As it is now, many of the large middle schools have to take students who have been kicked out of other schools. I have had 3 new students in the last week, all from other smaller middle schools who are now being placed at my school because they were “disruptive and behavior problems” at their old schools. While I know it is not the policy of the k to 8 schools to kick students out, I cannot see how these schools are going to be successful with eight graders who run around the halls creating disruptions all day.

Middle school seems to be blamed for many of the problems with in the education system of Baltimore City. Some of these problems are inherited from elementary schools, some of these problems are the students going through developmental changes, some are problems from being ignored as a group. As a middle school teacher, I feel that the whole aspect of middle school is ignored. In Hopkins classes, we rarely discuss middle school issues, spending most of the time on high school. In many of the professional developments I have attend most of the focus is on elementary or high school, never middle school. Middle school as been referred to as the Bermuda triangle of academia, largely because it is ignored and many don’t understand middle school students. Until Baltimore city spends the time and resources to really understands their middle school students many of the problems will continue and become worse. Most of the problem in middle school is that we are in a constant state of change, nothing seems to be the same from week to week, or year to year. The one thing middle school students need is consistency. Baltimore city has not taken the time to understand how important a consistency is for middle school students.