CCBC-Net Archives
[CCBC-Net] For Teachers, Middle School Is Test of Wills
- Contemporary messages sorted: [ by date ] [ by subject ] [ by author ]
From: mlgav
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 08:39:14 -0700 (PDT)
ny times article...
March 17, 2007
The Critical Years
For Teachers, Middle School Is Test of Wills By ELISSA GOOTMAN
When a student at Seth Low Intermediate School loudly pronounced Corinne Kaufman a ?fat lady? during a fire drill one recent day, Mrs. Kaufman, a 45-year-old math teacher, calmly turned around.
?Voluptuous,? she retorted, then proceeded to define the unfamiliar term, cutting off the laughter and offering a memorable vocabulary lesson in the process.
Such are the survival skills Mrs. Kaufman has acquired over 17 years at Seth Low, a large middle school in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn: How to snuff out brewing fistfights before the first punch is thrown, how to coax adolescents crippled by low self-esteem into raising their hands, how to turn every curveball, even the biting insult, into a teachable moment.
But not all middle school teachers can do it.
Faced with increasingly well-documented slumps in learning at a critical age, educators in New York and across the nation are struggling to rethink middle school, particularly in cities, where the challenges of adolescent volatility, spiking violence and lagging academic performance are more acute.
FOR THE REST OF THE ARTICLE... http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/education/17middle.html?em&ex=1174622400&en=7d8dee740d802789&ei=5087%0A
BEGINNING ARTICLE http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/education/03middle.html?ex=1174622400&en=3eae8094032c7d29&ei=5070
~~~~~~~
mary gavlik
librarian
chuckey-doak middle school
afton, tn
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You see, I don't believe that libraries should be drab places where people sit in silence, and that's been the main reason for our policy of employing wild animals as librarians.
? Monty Python skit
--------------------------------- Don't get soaked. Take a quick peek at the forecast
with theYahoo! Search weather shortcut.
Received on Wed 21 Mar 2007 10:39:14 AM CDT
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 08:39:14 -0700 (PDT)
ny times article...
March 17, 2007
The Critical Years
For Teachers, Middle School Is Test of Wills By ELISSA GOOTMAN
When a student at Seth Low Intermediate School loudly pronounced Corinne Kaufman a ?fat lady? during a fire drill one recent day, Mrs. Kaufman, a 45-year-old math teacher, calmly turned around.
?Voluptuous,? she retorted, then proceeded to define the unfamiliar term, cutting off the laughter and offering a memorable vocabulary lesson in the process.
Such are the survival skills Mrs. Kaufman has acquired over 17 years at Seth Low, a large middle school in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn: How to snuff out brewing fistfights before the first punch is thrown, how to coax adolescents crippled by low self-esteem into raising their hands, how to turn every curveball, even the biting insult, into a teachable moment.
But not all middle school teachers can do it.
Faced with increasingly well-documented slumps in learning at a critical age, educators in New York and across the nation are struggling to rethink middle school, particularly in cities, where the challenges of adolescent volatility, spiking violence and lagging academic performance are more acute.
FOR THE REST OF THE ARTICLE... http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/education/17middle.html?em&ex=1174622400&en=7d8dee740d802789&ei=5087%0A
BEGINNING ARTICLE http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/education/03middle.html?ex=1174622400&en=3eae8094032c7d29&ei=5070
~~~~~~~
mary gavlik
librarian
chuckey-doak middle school
afton, tn
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You see, I don't believe that libraries should be drab places where people sit in silence, and that's been the main reason for our policy of employing wild animals as librarians.
? Monty Python skit
--------------------------------- Don't get soaked. Take a quick peek at the forecast
with theYahoo! Search weather shortcut.
Received on Wed 21 Mar 2007 10:39:14 AM CDT
