This week with the reading I did I realized that we do need more research on middle level best practices. Last year at a faculty meeting our principal had us download Bright Futures and asked us to read it. As what often happens at our faculty meetings, we ran out of time to truly discuss the document. The feel was negative though for many of our faculty members. Someone brought up that there was not enough research in there saying why we should implement these practices. As I read Goal #5 in the Success in the Middle article, I immediately thought of that faculty meeting and the research comment. Perhaps with a faculty that feel they already do what they need to we do need the research piece that looks more at all of the characteristics implemented together and not at one piece like research for advisory groups. I wish I could say that more of my faculty understood the adolescent but I do not think that is true. Research may help them see it is time to morph some of our practices.
That being said, I think our faculty has been so focused on testing and how to get off of our AYP status that all of our professional development has to do with standards, differentiation, and data analysis and not looking at the adolescent as a whole. Perhaps if we could realize that if we changed some of our practices to match those in Bright Futures we may actually meet all learners and be able to get off of CIPS. We have one subcategory that missed and we are getting close to having too few of our socio-economic students meet the standard as well. It is a lot to take in and I do think that our faculty want to do better. I also think many want to change but can only handle so many initiatives at once. I do not know how to bring about the change now because there is such a focus on that AYP status.
Ha! Lee I read your post and remembered the same exact faculty meeting at my school. Our staff was horrified with the whole thing and some even asked who the "ivory tower types" were that wrote it and pondered on the last time any of them were in a "real" classroom. Others looked up the name and saw that there were other documents out there about "Bright Futures" and thought this was some national organization full of it initiative. Yet others just thought it was an attack on their practice. I literally almost cried by the end of the meeting knowing that some of my mentors and others that I looked up to a lot as middle level educators were involved in creating the document. I'd say the work we did in my school with Bright Futures was some of the most frustrating and depressing that I've done. Whoa, I feel like Debbie Downer!
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