Week 9 - Grade 7 and 8

Being in I/S, most of the courses focus on teaching high school, even though we will be qualified to teach grades 7 and 8 as well. This has led to a lack of preparedness for the case if we end up teaching these grade levels. These grades bridge the gap between elementary and high school, so there is a lot of responsibility to prepare these students properly for high school. In class this week we did an activity where we were given certain specific expectations in grade 9 and were tasked with finding the specific expectations in grade 7 and 8 that would lead to the grade 9 expectations.

This task helped to show us how much math is actually happening in these two years to address the stigma that is around middle school teachers which is that they don't really teach anything in math. When students come into grade 9 they are in a new building with new students in an entirely new atmosphere, so it would make sense for students to initially think that they weren't taught what they had been taught. I remember when I was in grade 9, if a teacher asked us if we had learned a certain concept the year before I wouldn't remember that concept until it was reviewed with us. Once it was reviewed then I was able to remember what we had learned about it, but before that we had all said that we hadn't been taught it. Some teachers, upon hearing that we hadn't been taught the concept, immediately sighed and blamed the middle schools for not preparing us enough for high school, whereas other teachers didn't believe us and went into a slight review to help us remember. I greatly appreciate the teachers that put their faith in our middle schools and didn't believe us because they were the ones that pushed us further into our learning.

Middle school teachers have some of the toughest jobs; they are the ones that help students who are in the process of some major life and social changes to start figuring out who they are and who they want to be, while still helping them learn the required curriculum in order to be prepared for high school. These teachers need the support of high school teachers to better prepare their students for their future. Even if I become a high school teacher and not a middle school teacher, this activity has helped me to better understand my role in the middle school/high school relationship because if I am asked what students need to know for high school, I have a better understanding of how the two curricula interrelate which will help me to give a better response to that question.