Students in the middle grades experience tremendous development in various domains. However, childhood trauma can significantly impede this development, further exacerbating the functioning of our most vulnerable student populations. This article aims to describe the use of trauma-informed teaching as a form of middle-level, social justice…

What constitutes appropriate practice in physical education? NASPE suggests the outcome of a physical education program should be that adolescents have gained the skills and knowledge to be physically active for a lifetime. Furthermore, a physically educated person consistently demonstrates responsible personal and social behavior in physical…

This article examines instructional strategies that middle school educators can use in inclusive settings in order to support the unique needs of culturally and linguistically diverse exceptional (CLDE) students. These nine strategies are appropriate for both typical and atypical learners in a whole group setting, but they are particularly useful…

Key developmental issues (growth and development, identity and adjustment, changes in relationships, career paths) form the core of a curriculum-based model for counseling gifted adolescents. Integrated learning strategies are applied to two audiences: gifted adolescents themselves and their parents, teachers, and counselors. (Author/CB)

One of the most challenging daily experiences of teaching young adolescents is helping them transition from Piaget's concrete to the formal operational stage of cognitive development during the middle school years. Students who have reached formal operations can design and test hypotheses, engage in deductive reasoning, use flexible thinking,…

Describes educational and philosophical foundations of the Carolina Friends Middle School, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which blends a conception of adolescent development with Quaker beliefs to create a community that values contributions of young people and the ideals of cooperation, responsibility, and communication. Considers the school as a…

Early adolescence is a time when students require adult assistance to become accurate and effective decision makers and problem solvers. Because of the fragmented nature of society, the family structure, and the schooling process, schools need to establish a nonthreatening environment in which students can discuss the issues related to growing up.…

The middle school program emerged against a backdrop of criticism, awareness of changing educational necessities and values, and new insights into the needs of the middle range of the student population. The precocity of youth mixed with the pseudo-sophistication of adulthood gives the middle school its reason for existence--the…

Turning Points is a New American Schools design for comprehensive middle school reform coordinated by the Center for Collaborative Education (CCE) in Boston Massachusetts. It focuses on creating a professional collaborative culture and using data-based inquiry to improve teaching and learning for all students. Turning Points seeks to create…

The educational needs of middle school students are truly unique. In no other period of PreK-12 education can one find such a wide range of physical, social, and cognitive development among students. For students, the middle school years can be a time of both great vulnerability and great responsiveness to change. These years are highly formative…