To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser

Back to Graphic Version

in the Middle

The three R's—relationships, rigor, and relevance—help two Montana science teachers triumph in the difficult middle school years.

Story and photos by Bracken Reed

East Helena and Great Falls, Montana—The news hasn't been good. In 1999, results of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) showed U.S. eighth-graders not only lagging behind their international peers, but also scoring poorly in relation to U.S. fourth-graders. Many critics began to speak of a middle school "dip"—a downturn in student achievement that begins in the middle school years and leads to further struggles at the secondary and postsecondary levels. William H. Schmidt, a professor of education at Michigan State University and the U.S. research coordinator for TIMSS, was particularly critical, claiming that "the middle school is the crux of the whole problem and really the point where we begin to lose it." In a comment sure to raise the hackles of most middle school teachers, Schmidt called the middle grades "an intellectual wasteland" when it comes to challenging math and science curriculum.

The results of the most recent TIMSS (now called the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study), conducted in 2003, showed some improvement in eighth-grade science scores, but U.S. students continue to trail behind their peers in most other industrial countries. Despite encouraging signs, middle schools still find themselves the focus of intense scrutiny and criticism.

Looking for Answers

Researchers, educators, and parents agree that the middle school years are a crucial time in a student's life and can often determine future academic performance. Research has shown that most students who lose interest in math and science do so at the middle school level, which is typically the first time they are exposed to higher level thinking skills and abstract concepts.

Why so many are failing to make the transition, and what can be done to improve the situation, is less conclusive. Some observers focus on the unique social and psychological needs of middle school students and our persistent inability to meet those needs. Others claim that by focusing too much on students' needs we have failed to challenge them academically. These critics often call for wholesale grade reconfiguration and the abandonment of what they see as a "warm and fuzzy," child psychology­based approach in favor of more academic rigor. Finding a balance between these two opposing viewpoints continues to be at the center of the middle school debate.

As M. Hayes Mizell, the director of the Program for Student Achievement at the Clark Foundation, observed, "People seem not to be able to hold those two concepts in their minds and in their practice simultaneously." Until we learn to do so, he implied, we will fall short of meeting either goal.

Other criticisms of the current system are less philosophical and more pragmatic. Teacher certification programs, for instance, are a frequent target. In many states, preservice programs are designed for K­8 or 6­12 certification. Few are designed to prepare teachers for the specific content knowledge and teaching strategies needed to be successful in the typical grade 6­8 middle school. As a result, middle school math and science classes are often taught by teachers with elementary certification who may be unfamiliar with the course curriculum and uncomfortable working with this challenging age group.

Meanwhile, teachers often speak of the dearth of professional development opportunities at the middle school level and of a perceived lack of respect or prestige for middle school teachers, who are often treated as somehow inferior to their high school counterparts.

High-Quality Teachers

In the midst of this soul-searching and finger pointing, one state has gained attention for its success. Every five years the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) includes a science assessment of fourth-, eighth-, and 12th-grade students. On the 2000 NAEP, the state of Montana had the highest eighth-grade science scores in the nation.

With a high poverty rate and predominantly rural population, Montana faces the same problems as many other states, including severe budget cuts and a shortage of highly qualified teachers. For Montana, however, this last concern is deceptive. If a single factor stands out as the driving force behind the state's success in middle school science, it is its wealth of dedicated and knowledgeable teachers, many of whom, paradoxically, fail to meet the federal requirements of a "highly qualified" teacher as defined by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

Alyson Mike is an eighth-grade science teacher at East Valley Middle School in East Helena. In the past three years Mike has had a flurry of recognition: In 2002 she was a Presidential Award winner; in 2003 she received one of Montana's two $25,000 Milken National Educator awards; and in 2004 she was the Montana Teacher of the Year and was awarded an I CAN Learn-NEA Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence. Ironically, Mike would not be considered a highly qualified teacher were it not for her national board certification.

"I have a biology degree," says Mike, "but I only have minors in chemistry and physics. Under NCLB I would be considered unqualified because I don't have majors in those areas." As Mike sees it, there is a definite need for teachers with content area knowledge at the middle school level, but to say that everybody has to have a major in any field they teach is stretching the spirit of the law beyond the breaking point. "When I started out I taught biology, chemistry, physics, and sometimes earth science, too," says Mike. "Well, where are you going to find people who have four majors and then are willing to start at a $22,000-a-year job in Circle, Montana?"

Two hours to the north, at East Middle School in Great Falls, Mike's friend and colleague Beth Thomas is another example of a highly qualified teacher who challenges the literal interpretation of the term. Thomas has been teaching middle school science since 1993 and is also a Presidential Award winner and 2003 Montana Science Teacher of the Year. But, similar to Mike, she might not be considered a highly qualified teacher based solely on her educational training.

"When I went into education I was told that a general science or 'broad-field' degree was the way to go in Montana, particularly if you wanted to work in a rural setting," says Thomas. "They said that if you wanted to teach you shouldn't get too specific because you could be teaching the whole gamut, from seventh grade to high school. I still think that's very appropriate for middle school, with the integrated types of curriculum that we see."

A Shared Philosophy

What Mike and Thomas have in common goes far beyond nitpicking interpretations of the No Child Left Behind Act. The two met several years ago at a Montana Education Association conference and discovered that they shared a common approach to teaching and a similar temperament. Both are high-energy, motivated, passionate teachers who manage to find the balance that Mizell believes is missing in so many middle school educators: They challenge their students academically while also being supportive, warm, and caring adult role models for them. They love science, have a deep understanding of their curriculum, and never stop trying to find fun and engaging ways to present it to their students. At the same time, they love working with middle school students. From their first meeting, Mike and Thomas recognized these qualities in each other. As the years have passed, they've continued to stay in contact, exchanging e-mails and meeting up at conferences, sharing lesson plans and advice.

In person, Mike and Thomas are both as different and as similar as East Helena and Great Falls. A visitor to their separate classrooms will notice subtle differences in approach, emphasis, and classroom environment, but the overwhelming impression is that their similarity as teachers extends beyond a shared philosophy and down to the nitty-gritty of everyday teaching strategies. Both are award-winning teachers for a reason. Both could, and do, serve as model teachers.

A Personal Approach

Both Thomas and Mike are adamant about taking a personal approach to teaching. As Thomas says, "With all my students, one thing I think is critical is to let them know you care about them. I try to get to know them—their interests, backgrounds, family situations. If they know you care, they will work for you and they will behave for you. It's essential to their success."

Mike admits that such a personal approach can be difficult to sustain "when you run 130 kids through your classroom everyday," but she has built in small strategies for making one-to-one connections with her students. "I try to connect with every kid, every day," she says. "I use notebooks and other things so that they have to come talk to me at least once during the class period. That way, even if it's just a 'great, now go do this' kind of thing, at least we've made a small connection. There are days that the nature of the lesson just doesn't lend itself to it, but I really try to do that every day. Otherwise there are just too many kids that get lost in the shuffle."

Another approach that both teachers are passionate about is making science relevant to their students' lives. "You've got to teach for meaning," says Thomas. "You've got to find a way to make it connect to their lives or else it's like, who cares? I wouldn't care if I didn't think something connected to my life in some meaningful way."

For Mike, this often includes drawing on the immediate surroundings. "I think a subject can be especially meaningful if you can tie it in to something local," she says. "It can be something that's going on in town or something about the local landscape." An example, she says, is the local lead smelter that until recently was the lifeblood of the East Helena community. "That's played in so well to some of things we've done," says Mike. "We've talked about the different elements and so we've talked about sodium metal, and then we've got two railroad cars of sodium metal sitting just up the road. The kids get curious, and that's what science is about: being curious about the world around you."

Encouraging curiosity is at the heart of the inquiry-based approach that both Mike and Thomas espouse. It's an approach that requires patience, they both counsel, and it does not always show immediate results on a typical standardized test. "If you're going to do true inquiry," says Mike, "you give them guidance, but you don't answer things for them. It's more like, 'Well, I don't know, see what you think, try it out.' Kids can get very frustrated with that. And for a teacher, it's a different way of doing things. Let's face it, most teachers like to have control, and inquiry is much less controlled, much less structured."

"It's a process," Thomas says about inquiry-based instruction. "It's something that you weave continually throughout every lesson that you teach. It doesn't always have to be a full-blown inquiry-based activity or project, although you certainly want to do those. But it's more about a continual process—continually engaging students in their own learning."

"The ultimate goal is that you create a scientifically literate group of people, right?" Mike asks rhetorically. "And the only way you do that is to have them think through ideas for themselves." For both Mike and Thomas, the beauty of teaching middle school­age students is that their minds are still open and their curiosity and enthusiasm are still intact. "I really believe that this is an age group where you can make more impact than with any other," says Mike. "They're still at an age where they want to get excited about things and they're willing to show that. They're very curious about things."

"It's a critical time to hook them on science," Thomas agrees. "For some of them, with certain topics, you can just see the lightbulbs go on, and that's very powerful. That's what it's all about."