Teaching Middle School

Greetings,

As a middle school teacher, I often get comments from people about how brave I must be to teach these rather strange pubescent beings, but I am not. I just have fun in class! When I imagine teaching five year olds, I nearly cringe at the thought (though I do love the age as a parent), so I guess I can understand how we each must find our calling as teachers. I am not brave, just comfortable with them at this point in their lives of being between little kids and young adults. They are funny!

Last year, we as a school did not fully appreciate the incredible span of abilities we would have in terms of English language, so we grouped all students together in the secondary school for all subjects. Needless-to-say, it was not particularly successful for many. This year, we have split native English speakers (or those who are very proficient) from students for whom English is brand new or an early second language (duh!), and this has been remarkable, in my opinion, in our classes. I am really having fun teaching again and I can better help my students where they are.

I teach grade 7 English and humanities to students who are very proficient in English. They are a hilarious, dynamic, and interesting group. Coming from the Philippines, Malaysia, England, Canada, Egypt-America, India-America, they each bring their own experiences into our class. I teach them about writing and let them launch into their own writing experiences, having them share with each other daily, and I am lucky to get to know them well this way. I read their stories about moving to Saudi Arabia, about saying goodbye to friends, about childhoods, about mischief they caused, about their families, and about their trips. They are just at the point of developing their own voices as writers. We also talk a lot about books, recommending them to each other and reading some books together to learn how to discuss literature. Last year I taught this class too, but in the class I also had kids who had never spoken a word of English. It was so hard to serve the students well with such a vast spread in abilities. I guess this year is better because one boy said, "You are much more interesting this year." The students who are learning English as a second language are in another class where they are also thriving, learning at their pace.

In addition to grade 7 English and humanities, I teach grade 6 English as a second language and humanities to those same 6th graders. These students are nearly all Saudi, but I have also Palestinian, Egyptian-German, Ukrainian, French. They too are working so hard and we also have fun in class. They make so much progress in their learning from week-to-week, and it's encouraging for them. Most of the class came up from the elementary school where they had some excellent instruction in organization, language, homework-doing, and expected school behavior. They are also fun to teach, willing to participate and learn, and funny as well. They help each other and tell on each other, translate if possible for each other, and borrow more books from the library than any other group. Our librarian has ordered many many graphic novels, which are stories that combine mostly illustrations with some words, and my 6th grade students love them!

I think we are off to a good start this year! Thanks for reading, Jennifer