Middle school students are a dynamic group of people who, all at once, seem to embody endless hope and paralyzing despair. But one thing I know is that middle level students are genuinely good-natured people. And, to me, this is one characteristic of tweens and teens that is often overlooked in the broader conversation about who middle level students are.
I don’t know if other teachers do this, but when I was in the middle of a school year and a middle school student said or did something that seemed odd, I would often remember that I once did something very similar. I’d like to pursue this thought in later posts because I think we often have a more refined memory of who we were when we were younger. As a middle school student I was clumsy, awkward and I often struggled in science and math classes. But now that I am an adult I can see that Math and Science aren’t so bad. In fact, I have grown to love these disciplines and I have even participated in these fields professionally. And I think sometimes I tried to overlook the difficulty some have with these types of things. I overcame them and I often gloss over my memories of the truly dreadful struggles I experienced. Surely my revised memories often affect how I talk with students about similar challenges they are having. Anyway, I think this point could be revisited in a longer post–how our revised memories of our own experiences shape our expectations.
From my experience, middle level students are some of the best examples of human kindness that I have ever met. They know, first-hand, what it means to struggle, to search, stretch and strain in order to find the answers to life’s most challenging questions.
A search for a unique identity ranks as one of the many challenges a middle level student will address at some point in their development. I can remember watching the wild changes some of my students would make through out the year in search for their own personalities and to answer the ultimate question, “Who am I?” On one occasion I had a student stand confidently at my desk and say, “Mr. Skillen, I have decided that I will be the most annoying person anyone knows.”
He was clearly looking for a more concrete position in our community. But he never truly developed as the most annoying student in the school or even in our class.
While we can not often think of anything redemptive about our own time as adolescents, I tell you this group of people is redeeming.
Logan was a quite kid, but he became even more quiet when September turned to October his seventh grade year.
“How are you?” I would ask.
“Fine.” He would say.
Later that month during a passing period in between classes I got an email from my mom. She was leaving my step-dad after 11 years of marriage. I felt like an emotional typhoon had crashed into my classroom as the words of my mom’s note unfolded on my computer. The bell rang and I hesitated. Searching for the starting point of the lesson I spoke in broken phrases to get the class started. I struggled through the lesson, but we made it through. 40 minutes later when the dismissal bell rang Logan waited for everyone to leave.
“You OK?” He asked.
“I’m fine.” I said. “I just wish adults would act like adults; not like kids.”
There was a pause…
“Are your parents getting divorce?” Logan asked.
“Yeah. I think they are.” I said.
“Mine are too.” He said.