Middle Level Advocacy

Features

Connecting With Communities
Fran Ellers
In Phoenix, business leaders shadow school principals for a day. In Atlanta, citizens serve on school advisory councils. In Kinder, Louisiana, parents volunteer time and money for a variety of school projects.

Advice From Advocacy Experts
Holly Holland
Do your homework. Gather and interpret data. Research your opponent's position. Sounds like a guide for a middle school classroom debate. Instead, experts say, these and other strategies should be part of a plan for getting policymakers to pay attention to middle school issues.

Every Child Counts
Anne T. Henderson and Beverly Raimondo
To close the persistent achievement gap between black and white students in Louisville, Kentucky, a Community Accountability Team focused on the strengths and weaknesses in the school district's middle schools. The stark contrasts among the schools showed citizen activists that changes were necessary to ensure that every student has access to a high-quality education.

The Help Line
In this regular feature, we give educators the opportunity to sound off about the classroom conundrums that rise to the surface in a typical day at school.

Departments

The Electronic Thread
Technology can play an important role in middle school classrooms, but it should never be used as a substitute for substance. Caroline McCullen shares tips for making sure there's depth behind the dazzle.

One Teacher to Another 
Rick Wormeli
How can you create homework assignments that students will want to complete? Rick Wormeli offers some effective strategies, from alternating routine assignments with unique applications to increasing the complexity of the tasks. The first principle should always be defining and communicating the purpose of homework.

The Mark of Leadership
Bruce L. Blumer, Ed.D
South Dakota principal Bruce Blumer says sharing personal and professional parables can be a highly effective way of communicating with the families of your students. So, what's your story?

Spotlight on social studies
Elizabeth Ridgway
One of the challenges for any history teacher is making past events seem significant to the current generation of students. Primary sources can strengthen the connection.