@ctg30 your comment about lunch is one of the reasons I hate our district the most. K-12 shares a lunch room and lunch times. I cringe thinking about it.
Where I grew up, high school always started in grade 9 and you either did a K-8 or K-6 plus junior high (7&8). Where I live now it was k-6, then 7-9 was junior high and 10-12 was high school. Until a year ago. Then it became k-5 is elementary, 6-8 is middle school, and 9-12 is high school. They changed the school names from X junior high to X middle school.
Post by daffodilsandcoffee on Feb 18, 2017 21:37:00 GMT -5
I voted 7th, but it really depends around here. I'm licensed for elementary (1-6, it changed to k-5 the year after I graduated) and my middle school endorsement is for 5-9th language arts. Most of the schools in my state average 6-8 for middle school. I have taught in a district that was 7-8. My son will go to intermediate school (5-6) and then middle school (7-8). A lot of it depends on teaching philosophy and building capacity in the district. I personally prefer 6th grade as middle school. Girls especially are physically a lot more like the 7&8 graders than they are the younger ones. Someone upthread mentioned the middle school being a philosophical approach to teaching that age group, and I find that to be a big factor. In my experience, most middle schools are set up in a team structure, so a student is grouped with about 149 or so other kids and share the same 5 core subject teachers who are all grouped close together in one or two hallways. They share the special teachers, like PE and art, with the rest of the school. In this structure it doesn't matter the starting age because they don't interact with other grade levels at all. Junior High schools are commonly set up by departments, so even though they have only 7th grade students in their classes, they interact with the older students while navigating the halls from say, the English hallway to the math hallway.
Post by northernlghts on Feb 18, 2017 21:44:01 GMT -5
When I was growing up my school district had K-3 in elementary, then my school became a middle school with 4-6 (I actually had kindergarten and 6th grade in the same class room complete with cubbies), jr high was 7-9. Now the middle school is 6-8.
The school I teach in is 5-8 for middle school. I work on a small island where sex, drugs, and rock and roll aren't really an issue before high school. This isn't to say it never happens, but 5th graders aren't being exposed to anything shocking on a regular basis. It is essentially about building size. Our elementary can hold K-4 and our middle can hold 5-8. The kids go off island for high school.
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When I was growing up it was K-6 elementary, 7-9 junior high, 10-12 high school. My current town has one school for K-8 and a high school because special snowflake small town.
Our school district is very small. The school DD will attend is a K-8 elementary school. We do also have a 6-8 middle school too, but we're not zoned for it.
I always thought that in the education world, 7-8 was considered a junior high and 6-8 was a middle school. And that those 2 names implied 2 different philosophies on teaching those grade levels.
Anyway DD won't go to middle at that age. Her school goes through 6th so the earliest will be 7th. But I know at least 2 people who have moved out of the districtbecause they don't want their soon to be 5th graders going to MS.
This gets a real big meh from me but I too have seen it. And I get it, I specifically enrolled my own child in an indie K-8th day school to avoid sending him to a middle school and having that "extra" transition. Those who know me know God said "ha", so I got to see middle school up close in 3 very different settings. All 3 ran a proper middle school- one in a different hallway of a K-8th building, one run out of two classrooms in an old mansion and one split between 2 buildings.
They're confusing middle school with a building. Middle school is more of a philosophy- it's a best practices approach to bridging intermediate grade students from a main teacher and a cohort of 25 peers as learning community to high school where students will be part of a learning community with many teachers, hundreds of peers, and a much larger degree of academic autonomy.
My district operates on a middle school model. Starting in 6th, which is currently house with elementary but functions more as a "school within a school". Excepting a few leadership roles, the 6th graders have nothing to do with the rest of the school and often visit the middle school building for activities like field day, plays, concerts, etc.
Once the kids move on to the actual "middle school" they are divided into houses with a team of teachers and support staff and about 125 students. Each house is diverse- they have GATE and advanced classes as well as sped services. The kids spend all day in the company of about 120 kids which many educators feels is an ideal size to minimize bullying while offering a full range of opportunities to meet the needs of their students. Teachers work together to teach across the curriculum and to balance the assignments in terms of workload and to support growing all the skills a student will need to be prepared fro high school and college.
Both of the private schools DS attended did their middle school program similarly, but didn't need to do a house system because they were much smaller.
Sex and drugs and rock'n'roll? Yeah, it exists. I don't know whether housing 10s and 11s away from 13s is going to put a stop to blow jobs and weed, because that happens at home- not at school. IME, it happens where both parents are out of the house in the afternoons (which is certainly normal rather than neglect) and the kids aren't otherwise engaged. Introductions to such vices are more likely to be through an older sibling and his same aged friends than some random kid a grade ahead of yours.
We moved around when I was a kid. When it was 6-8, they were called middle school and when it was 7-8, it was called junior high. I've seen a lot more variations since then. It's 6-8 and middle school here right now, but 9th grade can shift back and forth depending on building capacity.
I used to teach in a district that called k-5 elementary, 6-7 middle school, 8-9 junior high and then 10-12 high school. They recently switched to 6-8 middle school and 9-12 high school. The district I'm in now calls k-4 elementary and 5-8 junior high. And doesn't call anything middle school. The district we live in is tiny has one building for k-8 with one class per grade, and I don't think any grades get special titles.
From an educational standpoint, usually "Middle Schools" follow more of a team model and "junior highs" follow more of the same format as a high school would.
Basically, it's whatever titles the district wants to give it..
Lord help my awkward ass if I went to middle school in 5th grade.
Try 4th grade.
Talk about awkward! We had lockers too, and most of the 4th graders were still small enough to fit in them. They never got shoved in by older kids, normally peers or just to be funny.
It actually worked out fairly well. It was a two story school, with 4&5 on one floor and 6&7 on another floor. Each grade had it's own hallway on their floor. Specials like art, PE, and music were grade dependent, as was lunch. So pretty much the only time you saw someone in another grade was in school-wide assemblies, or in passing in the hallway to/from specials.
The worst part was that the 4&5th graders got recess, but the 6&7th graders didn't. I was so mad when I moved up to the 6th grade and couldn't play on the playground anymore.
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K-4 elementary- 2 teacher teams, students stay with their class when they switch subjects 5-6 middle- 3 teacher teams, students mix with those only in their team when they switch subjects 7-8 junior high- all students within their grade are mixed in classes 9-12 high school- all students within the high school are mixed in classes
That is interesting. What does that "team" approach do to the dynamic?
K-4 elementary- 2 teacher teams, students stay with their class when they switch subjects 5-6 middle- 3 teacher teams, students mix with those only in their team when they switch subjects 7-8 junior high- all students within their grade are mixed in classes 9-12 high school- all students within the high school are mixed in classes
That is interesting. What does that "team" approach do to the dynamic?
This isn't my school system, but the team approach is used to keep students in a smaller pond, so to speak. It allows the adults on the team to work together and know the students better. The science teacher and the English teacher have the same 130 or so students (or less for three teacher teams) so they can notice patterns of behavior or academic issues across the school day. They can share approaches that work and present parents with a more comprehensive view of the day. It also allows the classrooms, lockers, etc to stay in a smaller area of the school to cut down on issues in the hall during passing periods, since students are supervised by teachers who know them well.
That is interesting. What does that "team" approach do to the dynamic?
idk what the official answer is. I suppose it slowly introduces children to a broader range of peers and teachers. In elementary, Miss Mary teaches math & science. Mr Joe teaches english/spelling & social studies. They each have their own class which switches to the other teacher a few times during the day. I guess it lets the teachers focus more on a couple subjects also.
Yeah just wondering how it works out. I was low man on the totem pole in 6th (one class), but I was dreadfully miserable in middle school. It was so much better in high school.
My middle school used teams to unofficially track kids based on behavior and socioeconomic status. Just saying. It was known. For example, because I was new, I got tracked into the "bad" team in 6th grade. Of my team of 100 kids, 2 of us were in the honors program that started in 7th grade. The other 58 kids were from the other two teams. On our first day, we found out that all 58 other kids had been diagramming sentences for the last quarter of 6th grade, and the teacher yelled at us for not knowing how to do it, even though we hadn't been even close to getting to that.
All the kids and parents talked about the teams, but administrators always denied it. I think they've changed that since then, but I'm not sure. It was so unfair and terrible. Also racist.
My middle school used teams to unofficially track kids based on behavior and socioeconomic status. Just saying. It was known. For example, because I was new, I got tracked into the "bad" team in 6th grade. Of my team of 100 kids, 2 of us were in the honors program that started in 7th grade. The other 58 kids were from the other two teams. On our first day, we found out that all 58 other kids had been diagramming sentences for the last quarter of 6th grade, and the teacher yelled at us for not knowing how to do it, even though we hadn't been even close to getting to that.
All the kids and parents talked about the teams, but administrators always denied it. I think they've changed that since then, but I'm not sure. It was so unfair and terrible. Also racist.
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