Middle School Matters
Take a moment to think back on your middle school years... Does the thought make you cringe? I actually shudder when I think back to my own middle school years in the late 1980s. Everything was awkward. Everything. I've been a teacher in three different middle schools over the last 23 years, and I've heard many students and even some parents say that middle school doesn't really matter. The grades don't count, they don't factor into a GPA that will mean anything, and they've already learned the basics of reading, writing, and math in elementary. I've also seen parents railing against their local middle school over incidents in which their child got into trouble, often for the first time in their schooling. And so middle school often gets dismissed as "just a step to get through" between elementary and high school. Middle school is not irrelevant, it is not pointless, and it does matter. In fact, middle school is a vital step in the educational pr...