Turning Points 2000: Chapter 2 & pgs 102-105

Chapter 2 of Turning Points 2000 highlighted the authors’ recommendations for creating a functional and successful middle school. The sections I found the most important were actually the ones regarding the staffing of such schools. “Staff middle grades schools with teachers who are expert at teaching young adolescents and engage teachers in ongoing professional development” is one of the best things that I believe can be done for the heath of a middle school environment. Not only does it push educators to a standard of excellence, but it also engages them in new developments over the span of their teaching career. Too often I feel that middle school educators are held the least responsible for the wellbeing of their students. Perhaps that is because the age group is viewed publicly as “tough” or “troublesome”. Perhaps this is rooted in my own personal feelings of resentment toward my personal experience in grades 7 and 8 and the lack of professionalism I felt from my teachers (which actually makes perfect sense after reading section 102-105). Either way, I do feel that keeping teachers sharp and holding them to developing standards is one of the best things that any responsible educator can do to be actively involved with their students’ development and learning.

Turning Points 2000: Chapter 9

Involving community is one of the tasks I think I'll struggle with the most when becoming a teacher. Other than sending home notices, frequent emailing or even phone calling, what can I do as an educator without seeming invasive to students' and parents' lives? As a person, I highly enjoy working with people, so I can see myself as being a fairly active community member. I also believe in being proactive by seeking out the support of others before I need it. Hopefully this will enable me to make some sort of connection with the school's surrounding area in order to engage their involvement with functions. I suppose it depends on the community.

Although I am nervous for interactions with parents, I am sure I will learn where the concerning boundaries are as I become more practiced as a teacher.

Turning Points 2000: Chapter 8

I believe creating a healthy learning environment within each classroom is doable. Each teacher has his/her expectations of each student and everyone has a common understanding of the consequences for not meeting those standards. However, I believe the difficulty lies within the whole school culmination of these sub environments. Having inconsistencies in policy from one class to another can make the lines of appropriate behavior quite ambiguous to the young teenager and thus easy to overstep. In order to create this ultimately positive atmosphere, all teachers, faculty and staff must have a common understanding of what is to be requested of students. But that only addresses the behavioral portion of the healthy environment - there are many other factors that contribute to the overall well being of the school community. Such things as eating habits, social and cultural barriers as well as experimenting with sex, drugs and alcohol all contribute to the attitude of the school. All things are matters which need to be discussed and addressed as a middle school unit.

Turning Points 2000: Chapter 4

Once again we revisit the idea of shaping instruction to maximize meaningful learning. Although it is "great" to teach-to-the-test and produce high scores consisting of regurgitated information, what benefits students is learning with meaning. At one point, the author says that students should be producing knowledge instead of just parroting it back to the instructor. Gaining this information in a way that matters in contexts outside of the classroom leads to durable understanding that students will be able to use throughout their lives. It is the responsibility of the instructors to provide information to students in such a way that they may take away the maximum amount of content. Using such tools as backwards design and the WHERETO model give teachers a leg up in this process, although they are dependent on the educator's ability to properly enact them. If teachers commit to use these formats in their classrooms and if they are genuinely understanding of their students' educational needs, we might be on the right track to achieving this higher level of learning.

Turning Points 2000: Chapter 3

Although I am a fan of the Backward Design, I feel that all too often educators "teach to the test" or other benchmark. I think this sort of planning model definitely pushes for student mastery not just a temporary memorization by setting goals then building a way to meet them, but it could be implemented poorly which would lead to yet another teacher hemorrhaging information for the sake of meeting a benchmark. Then again, I suppose that's not the true backward design if it's being used incorrectly. I guess what I'm getting at is I like the model but I think it'd be easy for less ambitious teachers to abuse it.

Turning Points 2000: Chapter 6

The thing I found most interesting about this chapter was the dry way it was written. Perhaps that’s just because I have just finished reading Wormeli’s chapters on these same concepts, but really I found this book to be quite dull. I understand the benefits of teaming and advisories and it is nice to have Turning Points be able to support these structures with hard data, but I found it difficult to keep myself engaged with the text.

Turning Points 2000: Chapter 1

Chapter 1 of Turning Points 2000 primarily summarized the goals and objectives of Turning Points: Preparing American Youths for the 21st Century, a similar book which preceded 2000. In Preparing, the authors sought to educate teachers and school systems about ways to make a functional middle school based on the typical development of the young adolescent. The chapter also included data from schools that had implemented the suggested techniques and showed a significant improvement in standardized test scores across all content areas in comparison to the minimal improvement achieved by schools that did not use these methods.