Middle grade students talk about what makes them tick
As students move from elementary to middle school, everything can seem off balance. Swirling social forces, the high energy of early adolescence, the need to renegotiate relationships with teachers, peers, and parents—the pushes and pulls can seem overwhelming. What makes them tick?
“The science teacher, one time he kept me after school. I thought it was for like a bad reason, but he just wanted to talk to me. He wanted to get me more involved and he said that he knew I could be outspoken and participate, if I just knew what I was doing.” —Kenson
“Eleven-year-olds going into, like, thirteen, they’re starting to turn into adults, so they’re not really sure what’s expected of them.” —Geoffery
In 2006, WKCD asked Kathleen Cushman and Laura Rogers, Ed.D. to make sense of the complicated and often turbulent world of middle school students. That work, made possible by MetLife Foundation, appears in Fires in the Middle School Bathroom: Advice for Teachers from Middle Schoolers (New Press, 2008), in which many of the following passages appear.
Journey Over a Bridge
Kids know they will face big changes as they move from the elementary to the middle grades—but they may not feel sure what to expect. They know they are growing up—but they don’t know what that means, and they don’t know how to do it yet. They have left the shore of childhood, with its literal, concrete markings showing how things go. They have taken their first steps onto the bridge of middle school, and they can already tell that things are different.
“In middle school, it’s harder to focus because we have a lot more peer pressure. It might be like, ‘Let’s jump this kid,’ or something. You’ll do it, but it’s not like you have a choice. Sometimes you get threats, like, ‘Oh, I’m going to get you after school if you don’t do this.’” —Kenson
“In sixth grade, oh my gosh: I was happy and then sad, then I almost got into a fight with a boy. I don’t want to talk about it, but it was funny. And while you’re doing homework you’ll think of a guy, and you’ll think about what you accidentally did, and you’ll go ‘Man!’ You’ll just keep nagging yourself.” —Carmela
Everything Is Off Balance
Unlike in younger years, the self-image of kids in the middle grades increasingly derives from their social interactions outside the home—how they present themselves, how they imagine that others see them, how their peers interact with them, and how adults at school treat them. They find themselves changing hour by hour—and everything seems perpetually off balance.
“Eleven-year-olds going into, like, thirteen, they’re starting to turn into adults, so they’re not really sure what’s expected of them.” —Geoffery
“Like at school, they have to be this perfect student. And then at home, their family expects them to be that perfect child again. But with their friends, they do all these bad things, just to get away from everything they have to be.” —Alma
“If you go to a school where people swear and do bad things, but you didn’t do that stuff in elementary school, then it’s sort of hard to stop yourself from doing it. ’Cause you don’t want to stand out, since you’re basically the only one that doesn’t do that thing.” —Edward
A Teacher on Our Side
Early adolescents see themselves not as a block of kids in a classroom with you at its head, but as part of many shifting group alliances—which may include the teacher, or not. How they respond to you keeps changing, based on whether they think you like them, how they perceive that you treat them, how you react to their learning needs—even how they are feeling about themselves and their peers.
“You can show you really want to teach math. But some teachers do it with a frown on their face, and they don’t let you talk about nothing.” —Alma
“She was real down-to-earth, really talkative, but she was also very . . . ‘teach-ative’—I don’t know what word. She was very smart. She’d teach you. Like, she’d try with you until you got it, and she was real nice. She’d offer to stay after school, so you could go there if you didn’t get it. —Kaitlyn
Social Forces in the Classroom
The social world of young adolescents comes into the classroom with them. It can cause kids to sit with blank or glum faces while you present your most fascinating assignments. It can drive them to make inappropriate comments at moments that should elicit serious thought. Although we tend to think of middle schoolers as risk-takers, that’s not so in classrooms. Instead, kids are worrying about where they stand in relation to others.
“Everybody grew up together but still, we don’t talk to each other as much as you would think.” Kenson
“Sometimes, some kids will go through physical torture, like getting in fights at school, just to fit in with the other kids. It makes no sense at all.” —Daquan
“At the beginning of this year, the teachers made all of us act silly in front of each other. When we’re playing games, we’re all acting silly and everyone is laughing at each other. You can see other people doing it—not just one person.” —Javier
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