Negotiating Middle School is an Uphill Battle
For teachers, being a middle schooler is probably ancient history.
But for the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders at Bedford Middle School, being a middle schooler is completely relevant.
Some things teachers should know about middle school students are that being a tweener or teenager today is a lot different than being a middle schooler back in the day.
For example social media. We have to deal with smart phones, Instagram, Snapchat, and texting. These apps are making us not just what we are known for, they are taking over our lives.
This is the life of some of the middle schoolers at BMS. When we get in trouble for having our phones with us, teachers, you have to understand how some people have to have their phones with them every minute of everyday. We have an emotional attachment to them.
I, for example, am typing this column on my phone. My phone is my friend; it’s how I connect to everyone I know in the world.
Having it in our pockets doesn’t mean we’re going to go on them. Phones also have many useful school tools, like a calculator, notes and others features. And we can just pop them out of our pockets and only use them when necessary.
Another thing teachers should know about middle schoolers is most of us have VERY busy schedules. We dance, act, play sports, sing, babysit and do a number of other things. So when you give us a whole essay to write in a night and it’s not perfect, there’s a small chance we were just being lazy, but most of the time we have after school activities or a lot of work in all the other classes and just not enough time to finish it.
We know that if we don’t do our homework it’s our fault and we should do it, but teachers need to take in consideration that we have other things to do and managing our schedules with school work and other things can be very hard at times.
Related to this is the last thing teachers should know about middle schoolers: giving homework over the weekends or assigning big projects due Monday doesn’t always mean we have the whole weekend to work on them.
The weekend is a break from school when we get to hang out with friends and family, and in the middle school years, going to bat or bar mitzvahs.
You think it’s nice giving us the whole weekend to work on it, but it’s really not the whole weekend, mostly just Sunday night at 9 when we should be sleeping but instead we have to finish a project.
And then on Monday morning when you tell us to wake up when we are sleeping on our desks, that’s why. So it would be strongly appreciated if you wouldn’t give us too much work to do over the weekend because the two days we have is more like two hours.