Chapter 9: Involving Parents and Communities

This chapter talks about the importance of involving parents and the community within the student's schooling. As it goes on it gives steps to take to get both parties involved. Although I agree that this is a good idea I disagree with the assumptions that the book is making. I know that many students do not have an ideal home life. Sometimes the parents have to work numerous jobs, there are many children that need taking care of, or the students may not be living in an ideal situation. There is even the chance that although the parents are home they may not have the needed knowledge to assist the child in the way that they need it. Personally I feel like the hard part is not making parents who care take part in the child's schooling, but to make the parents that don't care or don't have time care, and make time.

Chapter 8: A Safe and Healthy School Environment

This chapter was all about the results of safe and healthy students on their grades and test scores. After reading this chapter I thought about the video that one of the students in our class showed about exercising before the hardest classes. I think that if students have an effective way to burn off energy then their brains will be more ready to focus in on the harder things. The chapter and I believe that students feeling safe plays a similar role. This safety aspect is the harder environment to create. This, according to the book, has to be created through the students, teachers, and administration. Without all of these players the safe community that all good teachers want for the students will not happen. It's a struggle that is constant, but attainable. It's worth the effort.

Chapter 4: Designing Instruction to Improve Teaching and Learning

I found the section titled "Instruction's Key Connections" extremely illuminating. They give three parts to to making instruction successful. The first part that they say an educator needs to do is play off the curriculum. They say that the importance of this is that the curriculum is based on the agreed-upon standards. I think it is also important to be firm and to stand by the curriculum even if you don't like it. If the teacher is not behind what they're teaching the students will not want to learn it. Another part is the assessments. This for me would never have fallen into the instructional aspect of teaching, but after reading why they think this I understand that after giving assessment you find out how well you instructed the classes prior to this, and to see how we must instruct them after the assessment. The last part of this section was the students themselves. If we as teachers are not sympathetic and observant to the students needs then no matter how well we plan the instruction and deliver it the students will not understand the concepts.

Chapter 3: Curriculum and Assessment to Improve Teaching and Learning

The part of chapter 3 that stood out to me was the part about the different standards. One of the standards that I found intriguing was the Excellence and Equity standard. I never thought that excellence should be looked at as a standard. This is, of course, if excellence was a relative term. I feel like if, as an educator, I am looking at the cumulative grades on the report card looking for high B's and A's then I am failing my students, but if I was to look at excellence as this student was working at level x in the beginning of the year and is now producing work that is much higher then they have achieved working excellence in my opinion.

Chapter 6: Organizing Relationships for Learning

In chapter 6, Organizing Relationships for Learning, Jackson and Davis talk about the different ways to organize large schools to create more intimate learning environments for our young adolescents. The authors suggest many different ways of doing this. These include making houses or "schools-within-school", creating teams, different kinds of scheduling, and advisories. I had heard of all of these before, and have even had one on one experiences with some of them, but I have never heard of houses before. I liked these ideas. I believe with Jackson and Davis when they say that no school should exceed 600 students so that they groupings of students and educators is small enough to "stimulate the development of close, supportive relationships. The "small schools movement" is happening now and I like the idea of it. By opting to restructure a large school into two to four separate, autonomous schools-within-schools there will be a better learning environment.

Chapter 2: Turning Points 2000: A Design for Improving Middle Grades Education

Chapter two is completely about the ways that schools should alter their design as well as their mindset about middle schools. There were seven major recommendations for teaching middle schools. They are: Teach a curriculum grounded in rigorous, public academic standards for what students should know and be able to do, relevant to the concerns of adolescents and based on how students learn best, use instructional methods designed to prepare all students to achieve higher standards and become lifelong learners, staff middle grades school with teachers who are expert at teaching young adolescents, and engage teachers in ongoing, targeted profession a development opportunities, organize relationships for learning to create a climate of intellectual development and a caring community of shared educational purpose, govern democratically, through direct or representative participation by all school staff members, the adults who know the students best, provide a safe and health school environment as part of improving academic performance and developing caring and ethical citizens, and involve parents and communities in supporting student learning and healthy development. I think it is really sad that a study had to be done to see that these seven steps should be taken to create a comfortable middle school atmosphere. I feel like this should just be done without question.

Chapter 1: Turning Points: A Decade Later

In chapter was all about why the Turning Points study was originally done as well as the outcome. The chapter then goes on to discuss the outcome of the study, and what to do about the results. From this study Turning Points offered eight essential principles for improving middle grades education. A couple of these are families are allied with school staff through mutual respect, trust, and communication and schools and communities are partners in educating young adolescents. This chapter says "It focuses on the characteristics and needs of young adolescents. It creates a community of adults and young people embedded in networks of support and responsibility..." I liked that this study was done as well as the outcomes of it. The results and the proposed action steps are what we should have been doing the whole time.