If you listen to some adults speak of this current generation of teenagers, it would seem as if the apocalypse was upon us. Our society is going to hell in a hand basket. They can’t speak, listen, or write. Most of all, they display no respect! There are times when, feeling discouraged, I share the same sentiments. Among other factors, questionable internet content, social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook, video games, and other cultural developments have proven to be difficult obstacles to cope with while trying to educate our youth and spurn positive personal growth.

And as middle school teachers, we often witness the most unsavory adolescent characteristics and antics. Skirmishes erupt over passed notes because her friend’s sister said that my brother’s cousin has a butt-ugly haircut, or other ridiculous distractions. I remember being a bully at times during middle school. There is something about these tumultuous years that can bring out the worst in young people. Can we do anything about this troubling—yet very real—challenge?

Like many classroom teachers, I’ve tried countless strategies relating to classroom management. It is exhausting, thankless work to prod, cajole, inspire, prompt, or excite students to be on task in a variety of ways. The good news is, after plenty of experimentation, my faith in middle school student humanity has been restored. I’m no longer going to sit back and complain about how they can’t work in groups, don’t know how to communicate, can’t learn, and can’t be trusted to make good decisions. I believe many of our current middle schools do not align their priorities and practices with what adolescents need and desire most, as defined by human development theory.

If we want to help create effective, caring citizens, let’s pause for a minute and reexamine what we should do more of in our middle schools. We need to create meaningful, positive opportunities for students to interact with each other, build in student choice—despite content standard demands—and, as teachers, model collaborative work with our peers to display the benefits of working together.

Adolescents are driven in their quest for identity. Their peers often take precedent and are more influential or important than teachers and parents. They crave activity, and they crave opportunities to socialize—a tendency that needs to be channeled in appropriate ways. They are prone to ask Who am I? and Who do I want to be? They are willing and able to test out new behaviors, interactions, and social roles.

Knowing the complexities of adolescence, we must strive to create places in schools where students are encouraged by a variety of social, learning, and decision making opportunities during these formative years. Students come from a vast array of backgrounds and home-life; sometimes school is the only stable, positive force in their lives. If we don’t try to provide a counterbalance for destructive or problematic forces in student lives, then we’ll likely be complaining for years to come about how students don’t know how to act.

It is not the schools job to parent. However, I believe we, as middle school educators, can do a much better job facilitating positive social growth. My outlook on student potential has changed this past year due to some changes in classroom structure/management, so I’d like to offer some strategies I utilize to make possible positive interaction, communication, and student empowerment:

* Huge focus on early-year community building—Over the first month of the school year, I will integrate team-building/communication activities into the academic content. I could care less if the team building focus is perceived as touchy-feely, because the year-long benefits are worthwhile. Six months into the school year, I have yet to write a discipline referral.

* Appointments—At the beginning of each semester, I have students draw a clock in their notebooks. They have 12 appointments to make. On my cue, students get up, talk to friends and peers, and set up 12 appointments. Throughout the semester, I’ll provide structured opportunities for students to work with their various appointments on activities ranging from partner reading responses to grammar work.

* Class Break—not only do students—especially boys—enjoy movement built into the day, but it helps keep them focused. I’ll play a three minute song in the middle of class. Students may get up to socialize, but if they aren’t in their assigned seats when the song ends, then they lose break for a week and must remain seated.

* Other Structured Movement—Sometimes I’ll ask students to get up and find someone who is wearing a similar colored shirt and work with that classmate. Again, a structured social/academic interaction that might require he or she to work with a student

* Modeling Collaboration—Whether it be with the librarian, 7th grade teachers, science or math teachers, I enjoy collaboration. I traded classrooms with Ms. Furlong in the 7th grade, and she taught my students Windows Movie Maker. Students see and reap the benefits of adults working together.

* Interdisciplinary projects—Part of the collaborative model lends opportunities for student projects. For example, a few weeks ago the science teacher, Mrs. McKinley, and I joined classes and allowed for students to create science/language arts projects. They could choose partners and choose form, including skits, posters, comic strips, speeches, and integrated science/language arts vocabulary projects.

* Written Discussions—Used for a variety of reasons, including activating prior knowledge, review, and brainstorming, written discussions consist of papers being passed around in a small group of four to five students. The paper might have a prompt or two written on the top, and students reply to each other in writing. I compare it to a “chat-room” or other computer interaction, but it’s on paper.

* Prioritizing Tasks/Movement—About once or twice a teaching unit, I will set up six to seven stations around the room. Each station will host a different academic task—perhaps some daily word work, laptop activity, partner read, artistic task, etc. I ask students to prioritize which five tasks are most beneficial to them, and they make decisions to finish their work in any given order. So far this year, this has been a huge success. Students appreciate the freedom to move, interact, and make decisions about their learning.

* Water Dispenser in the Classroom—If I didn’t believe students could handle drinking water in the classroom, then my expectations for behavior might be too low. Students raised money to purchase a water dispenser and devised a protocol for water consumption during class.

Some students recently applied to become class videographers, or documenters, of various classroom activities. Their goal is to capture a sense of what’s going in my 8th grade classroom. This is a completely student-driven project, with no grades, for those who are motivated. During one recent interview, a student said, “Mr. B, with our video I’d like to show people how 8th graders can act. We’re not that bad.”

Her comments reminded me of the famous 1971 Stanford University study. Volunteers played the roles of guards and prisoners in a mock jail in the basement of the university psychology building. Within weeks, the volunteers had adapted to their environment and displayed some highly disturbing characteristics and actions. Prisoners revolted, and guards retaliated. Out of many conclusions drawn from the experiment, it shed light on the power of situation/environment on human behavior. In general, we too often judge unruly student behavior in schools to be irrevocable.

My student is right—the 8th graders aren’t that bad, but we need to give them constructive opportunities to learn and practice interacting with each other. It took me several years to figure this truth out, and I look forward to continuing modeling and practicing positive interactions with students and staff in order to create a classroom environment that brings out the best our students have to offer.

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