Middle School: They Do Things Differently There

NEA Today, Jan 2004

BOOK FOCUS Middle School: They Do Things Differently There

"Right before puberty, brain cells grow extra connections....This growth...peaks at age eleven for girls and twelve for boys; the cells then fight it out for survival. The ones that are being used prevail. The rest will be shed."

-Not Much Just Chillin'

What a wonderful age for teaching. And so easy! Just offer the material and middle school students soak it up like eager little sponges.

We'll wait a moment for middle school teachers to pick themselves up off the floor. As Not Much Just Chillin' (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003) illustrates, the realities of middle school, like the children themselves, are in constant conflict: The wonderful opportunities for learning and living struggle with the hormonal awkwardness that makes learning-and life-so difficult.

Author Linda Perlstein spent a year documenting the lives of suburban middle schoolers-their conversations, thoughts, ambitions, hopes, fears, shopping habits, dating rituals, gossip, and rollercoaster emotions. What she discovered only affirms what middle school teachers have known all along. Pre-adolescent children are inhabitants of their own land, with their separate language, value systems, and courtship rituals.

As it happens, these are the years when children acutely need positive role models, family connectedness, and guidance. But, Perlstein points out, it's exactly the time when many parents back off, figuring their children are old enough to start caring for themselves and making decisions. Of course, the risks (flunking school, smoking, depression, experimenting with alcohol, drugs, and sex) are huge as the children struggle to figure out life and how to react to it.

The kids in Not Much Just Chillin' speak with a candor that will alternately shock, fascinate, and inform both parents and teachers. Of course, middle-school teachers could probably write their own travelogues, living and working as they do with the exotica of pre-adolescence year in and year out. The slang and fashions change, but the inhabitants remain as vulnerable and confused as ever.