Hello, my name is Ms.Skittles.

Allow me to introduce myself! The name on my birth certificate is Erin, but I prefer my long-time nickname of Skittles. Plus, that word allowed the title of this blog to rhyme, and I'm all about some poetry! In fact, I love anything involving reading SO much that I am planning to be an ELA teacher, preferably in 7th grade. I want to be right in the middle of the middle! It wasn't always that way, though: not until I decided to add a middle school extension to my English with high school teacher licensure degree, just to make myself more marketable. It turned out to be more of a passion than I imagined, thanks to the contagious enthusiasm of my Teaching in the Middle professor, Dr. Roukema, and a special inspiration very close to home: a 7th grader sibling named Hannah that I absolutely adore.

I told my sister I needed her help with a project of global importance. It's time to stop the reaction of groaning from anyone who hears the word "middle school!" It's time to debunk the stereotypes of a classroom full of kids doing the hokey pokey uncontrollably or shooting rubber bands at the teacher for the entire seven-hour duration of the school day. With a little attention to the developmental needs of middle schoolers, teaching them will be a rewarding experience for both the teacher and the students. And what are those needs, you may ask? Many of them are addressed in the Association for Middle Level Education's booklet This We Believe, which was an extremely informative source we studied in my Teaching in the Middle class. But I wanted to dig a little deeper, so I interviewed Hannah  to get an idea of the top 5 improvements she would like to see in her school. Yes, you read that right: you are about to discover the top 5 needs of a middle schooler, from an actual student in the middle of the middle in her natural habitat! What better source could there be?! I found that all of these issues could be remedied with a little bit of developmental responsiveness. Watch for my upcoming blogs about these top 5 issues:

1) More time to talk

2) Opportunities to showcase creativity

3) Less drama

4) A safe classroom environment

5) A set time to address student concerns

  Until next time,

Skittles