“Effective educators at all grade levels possess something more significant than content knowledge: a deep understanding of their students “(Brown)
“Teaching middle school is not a job for those whose primary aspiration as an educator is the transmission of content.” (Brown)
I

never observed middle school classes or taught middle school students before and my middle school life was over long time ago, so middle school class is a myth to me. However, I know dealing with students in the states are much harder than dealing with those in China, so I assume teaching in the states is quite challenging. To make it worse, I heard so many comments talking about how hard teaching middle school students is. They are more independent than elementary school students and have their own ideas, thus teachers are not authority figures any more. They challenge teachers’ authority and less respectful. They are not mature as high school students so they can understand what teachers did is for their best. Overall, they are described as the hardest group to teach and act as monsters. So though I do not know middle school students well, they are in my black lists of teaching population. The article makes me feel maybe life is not that hard as I imaged teaching in middle school if we can understand them and spend more time working with them.
In the article, there is a list of adolescent behaviors teachers need to know before stepping into the teaching field. It really is really helpful as I know what to expect in the classroom and on the students. I will not be surprised when they carry out those “crazy” behaviors. The list also reveals the reality—as educators we have to deal with all the behaviors or emotion issues. Teenagers can “act emotionally out if control one day and completely mature the next”, and they also can “completely depend on you some days but act totally independent on others”. In the article, it said transmission of content should not be the primary aspiration for educators working in middle school. I partially agree with the idea. Imparting knowledge is a top 3 responsibility for teachers, but it should not be the only one. Beside transmitting knowledge, we need to carry more responsibilities and play more roles. Society have expectation on teachers, hoping we can be role models for students and possess a bunch of nice features as patient, moral etc. As we teach students, we do not only teach content. We help them to be responsible, polite etc. We want to establish a healthy and friendly relationship. What makes teaching middle school students or adolescents so different and special is that students are going through physical, emotional transition and they require more care and guidance.