ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 17, 1996 TAG: 9611180009
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-20 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: LISA APPLEGATE STAFF WRITER
Matt Cox (right) likes changing classes because "it's fun and you get to spend time in the halls talking to people and you get to move around and stretch and stuff." Bobbie Hall (below), a seventh-grade language arts teacher at Christiansburg Middle School, tries to keep the attention of 30 easily distractable 12-year-olds.
You can't be caught out in the hall at Dublin Middle School without a pass - which is a block of wood. Aaron Copeland (left) and Dusty East show their passes.
Seventh-grade teachers on the "apple team" say daily meetings provide support for discipline problems and cohesive lesson planning for their students. The teachers (from left) are Bobbie Hall, Mike Rielly, student teacher T'won Stevens, Ruby McCoy, Jan Marks and Carolyn Shockley.
Photo- Gene Dalton
Photo- Gene Dalton
CHRISTIANSBURG - Imagine overhearing a nonstop telephone conversation by a 12-year-old. Multiply that by 30 and you can hear Bobbie Hall's first-period language arts class.
Some of these seventh-graders write their assigned paragraphs diligently, raising their hands often to ask questions. One boy sitting in the back row leans on his elbow and writes intently: "Dear Nicole " In another row, a girl writes on the neck of the boy in front of her, until he turns around to find her giggling.
Every variation of preteen is represented in this typical middle school class: girls with uncombed hair pulled back in a knotted ponytail, others with curled locks frozen by hair spray, boys with high-pitched voices who are no larger than the desks they curl into and others with facial hair and legs that stretch to the next row. These knobby-kneed, pimply-faced, smiling, sullen, enthusiastic, bored, responsible, immature, emotional kids fill classrooms each day.
And middle schools handle them all.
Like the changes these adolescents struggle through, middle schools have also undergone a transformation in the last seven years. Many educators who have lived through the transition from junior high to middle school say they would never go back to the old way of handling this age group.
While middle schools are widely accepted as an effective way to educate 11- to 13-year-olds, some parents and teachers claim core classes like math are being watered down as a way to develop self-esteem in all children. Eighth-grade test scores show strong improvements in science but little change in reading, social studies or math after Montgomery and Pulaski schools switched to middle school.
Middle schools are under scrutiny for other reasons besides academic rigor. Studies have shown girls often lose self-esteem and interest in school during middle school. It's the age when children begin experimenting with smoking, drugs and sex.
With the Montgomery County School Board proposing the construction of two new middle schools, building design even comes into question. An ideal middle school building - with large meeting areas and classrooms formed in small clusters - costs more to build than junior highs.
In the early 1970s, some Virginia schools began switching from junior high to middle school. Sometimes, that meant including grade six or moving grade nine to the high school level.
But often the educational changes were superficial. It wasn't until 1989, when the Virginia Department of Education mandated all school systems conform to a "middle school philosophy," that administrators scrambled to redesign their schools.
Groups like the Carnegie Foundation and the National Middle School Association developed the philosophy. It emphasizes grouping students into teams and developing a curriculum that combines subject areas: including writing in math class, and studying scientists in social studies.
Hall remembers the days before middle school, when the school day was structured like high school. She taught 150 pupils in seven classes, and was able to connect with few of them. Children as young as 10 were responsible for keeping track of assignments, developing study skills and making it through packed hallways between classes.
Pupils were given the freedom of high school before they had the maturity to handle it, she said.
Now, each grade is broken down into several teams where between two and four teachers share a group of pupils. Because the classrooms are placed next to each
other, the pupils spend most of their day in one area. They may move across the hall, for example, to switch from language arts to social studies.
Not one bell rings during the day. Each grade works on a slightly different time schedule, which keeps all 745 pupils from crowding the hallways at once.
Hall has been on the "apple" team since the school changed seven years ago. In its corner of the building, the apple theme dominates, with an apple flag hanging from the ceiling, and pictures of students from the last "apple day" covering one wall.
Teams "give students a sense of belonging," Hall said. "It makes them feel like part of a group, like they're special."
At this age, students need to feel as special as possible, said Vickie Linkous. A former assistant principal at Blacksburg Middle School and now a Radford University professor, Linkous said middle school-age children will experiment, and middle schools need to be a sturdy base on which they can depend.
"We've got to create a place with better connections to role models," she said. "Middle school teachers should be significantly involved in students' lives."
After friends, teachers are the main topic of conversation with middle school pupils.
In Amy Lombardi's sixth-grade class at Dublin Middle School, her pupils like their teacher because she sometimes uses a "New York accent" to make them laugh and gives "cool" writing assignments. But Dee Holloway, a seventh-grader at Christiansburg Middle, said some of his teachers yell at him, and that's why his favorite subject is lunch.
Most kids identify themselves by their team, and some teams are "better" than others. Holloway's classmate Peter Gustafson said the apple team was the coolest. What matters to him as a middle school pupil is the apple team teachers are "laid-back" and nice.
Teaming benefits teachers just as much as students. With a scheduled planning period each day, Hall's team can share teaching ideas and lesson plans, administrative information, and discipline matters.
Take the boy who spent class time writing a note to "Nicole" for example. At a team meeting, Hall shared her trouble with the rest of the apple team teachers. Others said he's been slipping out of classes and roaming the halls. He's having family problems, one teacher informed them.
So, rather than sending him to the principal - as would have been done in the past - the group agreed to keep a close eye on him and give him some time to work through his problem. Hall said that support is a blessing for teachers and lowers the number of serious discipline problems.
The emphasis in middle school, teachers say, is on finding ways for students to succeed and develop self-esteem. For that reason, pupils are no longer grouped into classes based on ability. Now, a mix of gifted pupils, midlevel learners and special needs pupils fill each class.
Dr. John Ogburn, a parent who has served on Montgomery County School's gifted advisory committee for the past five years, said he doesn't want to go back to the old way of categorizing pupils into ability levels.
"The problem was not so much that the gifted suffered, but the lower end suffered," he said. "There was a little too much labeling and stigma going on, and the two groups never mixed."
But in the schools' heterogenous grouping today, Ogburn worries that gifted students aren't challenged enough and low-level learners don't get enough attention either.
He and other parents would like to cluster at least 12 gifted students in a class. In most schools, that would take gifted pupils from other classes and concentrate them in just one.
Ogburn said he was pleased to see the school administrators are including more lesson plans geared toward different ability levels in curriculum revisions.
That would help teachers like Hall, who said it takes a great deal of practice and organization to meet the needs of up to 30 pupils in one class.
Hall said she doesn't give additional busy work, but assignments that go deeper into a subject. For example, her language arts classes just finished studying folk tales and most of her class created their own trickster. The gifted students, she said, took it one step further by creating their own poems or joining together to write a play.
"I didn't tell them, you have to meet at so-and-so's house to practice this, but they did because they have that motivation," she said.
A major distinction isn't made within the class. "The kids know some are doing something extra. Kids learn to be challenged by it, and working with the regular kids gives them more responsibility," Hall said.
Pupils who may have scored poorly in tests are also challenged by a required enrichment class. Hall said she assigns math worksheets to complete or asks the pupils to review organizational skills, all in an effort to help them catch up to their peers.
Schools can develop self-esteem and and still provide a challenging curriculum, insisted Linkous.
"The purpose is to create places that are safe and to [find] ways to involve students in learning and in being connected with the school community," she said. "Good teachers do what they have always done and that is to hold high expectations for all students."
LENGTH: Long : 181 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Gene Dalton. 1. Two teachers walk down the 2nd floorby CNBhall at Dublin Middle School (ran on NRV-1). 2. Matt Cox (right)
likes changing classes because "it's fun and you get to spend time
in the halls talking to people and you get to move around and
stretch and stuff." 3. Bobbie Hall (below), a seventh-grade language
arts teacher at Christiansburg Middle School, tries to keep the
attention of 30 easily distractable 12-year-olds. 4. You can't be
caught out in the hall at Dublin Middle School without a pass -
which is a block of wood. Aaron Copeland (left) and Disty East show
their passes. 5. Seventh-grade teachers on the "apple team" say
daily meetings provide support for discipline problems and cohesive
lesson planning for their students. The teachers (from left) are
Bobbie Hall, Mike Reilly, student teacher, T'won Stevens, Ruby
McCoy, Jan Marks and Carolyn Shockley. color. Graphic: Chart by
staff: Eightn grade performance. KEYWORDS: MGR