Friday, January 12, 2007

new york times article on middle schools

Shout out to Marco for sharing this article on his blog. I really like reading things such as this because it is so surprising to me how people who work with middle school kids wrestle with educating and helping middle schoolers.

I am no expert but I do have a heart passion for middle school kids. I love (and like) middle school kids and I enjoy interacting with those who love and work with them.

Marko shared this New York Times Article about the education system of middle school kids and how it is missing the mark in helping them. I made some comments on Marko’s blog and I wanted to share them with you all and see what your thoughts are about the article and my comments.

Here is what I said:
One of the observations I have seen with middle school/jr hi kids is their desire to want to succeed and to succeed by helping others. If we as a culture give them a chance to do this in every aspect (I know this is a big idea) of their lives I believe the key problems mention in this article (and many others) could be less or not even be major problems. In the article they say, “research shows that volunteering may work: children who used to being helped take pride in becoming the helpers.” Give a jr hi kid the chance to share with a younger child how to do a math problem or learn how to spell a word and watch that jr hi kid grow. Give him a chance to do a short term mission and watch him fly. We need to show and teach them how to do this by Godly relationships with adults but then we need to let them do it. This is also a fine line for us to walk because the opportunity to succeed comes with the opportunity to fail. For most jr hi kids failing will happen. We just need to be there to help them “fail” forward.

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