Expressions from the Middle
The online publication that celebrates young adolescents by featuring student submissions from around the world.
Chris Stevenson — professor, teacher, storyteller, and long-time friend and advocate of middle level education—wrote the following articles that will help you make the student artwork and writing come alive in your classrooms. Enjoy!
Getting students to use Expressions from the Middle
To orient your students to the content of the MOYA Web site, consider having them focus on one of the issues raised and addressed by other young adolescent students. You can choose from four issues that invite their reactions, or you might invite them to select the issue that most interests them:
- What I'd do if I were a teacher
- Good advice an adult (parent, teacher, coach, counselor, etc.) has given me
- My ideas about why so many different people/cultures are apparently unable to coexist peacefully … and what they might be able to do about it
- Questions that are on my mind a lot
Prior to going to the Web page, ask your class to brainstorm their ideas in response to the issue you judge to be most relevant or timely in your school or community, listing their ideas on the blackboard or on large sheets of paper. You might then have them work as pairs or small groups to sort or classify their ideas into categories, or you might elect to do this as a whole class activity. The objective is to identify their strongest, most relevant ideas in response to the issue—what "we" believe. Each student should also make a list of his or her ideas along with the ones generated by class discussion. Then take the students or send them to the website to read pieces found there written by other young adolescents that deal with the issue they've just discussed.
If your students have Internet access at school or at home, you might assign them to visit the Month of the Young Adolescent site and read the student-written pieces found there. They could then critique one of the poems or essays according to the literary criteria you are teaching at the time. The goal is to have students express thoughtful responses to pieces written on a common subject by their peers from across the country. Depending upon the quality of your students' writing, you might elect to mail your responses to the authors whose names appear on the site.
Since the four issues offered on the site are particularly valuable for youth, you might also assign your students to discuss the issue at home with a parent or guardian, soliciting their ideas. The goal is to promote thoughtful dialogue between students and their significant adults at home. A poem or essay based upon classwork, Internet sources and the perspectives of adults could be the culminating project.
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Writing for a "real" audience
The awareness that other people outside the classroom are going to read one's work can provide strong incentive for expressing one's views clearly and accurately. When we know that others are going to read and contemplate our writing, there is a healthy pressure to "get it right." Some strategies for putting their thought and writings before others are:
- Publish a team or class newsletter composed of your students' writing. It is appropriate to periodically address a theme of relevance to your school or community.
- Publish a periodic literary magazine that is comprised entirely of your students' writing.
- Note: An advantage of teaching young adolescents is that by using available computer software they are mature enough to handle the production work involved in such publishing: writing, peer editing, spell checks, layout, assembly, and distribution.
- Neighborhood or community newspapers are almost always interested in publishing good examples of student writing. Contact your local editor about this possibility, or, better yet, help volunteer students make the contact.
- Teach your students how to put together a compelling presentation about the issue they are examining, and arrange for them to present their case to another team or class or even to the whole school at an assembly.
- Have your students prepare a presentation to their parents on an evening when the parents visit the team or classes at school. It is also important for them to include time for parents to raise questions or offer points of view.
- As an assignment, have your students send one essay or poem to a relative, inviting that person's ideas about the subject. Grandparents are particularly responsive people to such an invitation.
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