The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
By David Grimes, Hawk Eye correspondent
SCIOTA Debbie Kasak was having a bad day, worrying about family problems back home, while touring the MGM Studios at Walt Disney World a few years back. As she exited the facility, someone asked her if she was having a good day.
She responded that, no, in fact, she was having a pretty bad day.
The young man who had inquired turned out to be a former middle school student of hers, and he ended up helping his former teacher talk through the issues that had been troubling her.
Kasak addressed a group of about 100 persons at Northwestern High School Monday night, outlining the specific differences between junior high and middle school alignments for 5th through 8th grade students.
She was invited to speak by the Committee of 10 the group studying the specifics of a four-school district consolidation representing Colchester, Northwest, LaHarpe and Roseville school districts.
The former student's sensitivity to the feelings of others his own teacher in this particular instance is just a bonus of the middle school approach toward education.
The primary difference between a junior high school and a middle school is not the particular grades involved, but a philosophical difference.
Where the junior high is generally departmentalized by discipline, the middle school approach pursues an interdisciplinary course for the student.
"In the middle school, learning as a team means going from teaching a subject to teaching a kid," Kasak said.
The former teacher from Champaign, Ill., is now executive director of the Association of Illinois Middle Schools, as well as president of the National Association of Middle Schools.
Middle schools have been around since the 1960s, she said, but have gained momentum in the past two decades.
Kasak illustrated the team learning concept for middle school students by describing a class of 75 students with three teachers. Students and teachers spend the school day from start to finish in the same section of the school, with the teachers often teaching the same course, but with a number of sections.
"In team teaching, you are better able to build lessons from which each child can learn," she said. "As a teacher, you go from being on your own to being part of a team with the opportunity for collaboration."
Students are allowed more time for exploratory classes industrial arts, vocational courses, music and art.
Parents are also actively involved in their children's education by attending regularly scheduled parent-teacher talks, and there are advisory times, usually 40 minutes or so, three times a week, where the students and teacher discuss each student's educational progress.
Another significant difference between the junior high and middle school approach is that middle school learning teams encourage inclusion of special education students and their teachers and student activities that serve to cultivate a sense of community and consideration of others, such as visiting area nursing homes.
There are 30 different grade configuration possibilities for middle schools, according to Kasak, and more than 900 middle schools in the state of Illinois.
The concept apparently is working. Kasak cited surveys from middle school districts in Michigan, Illinois, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas that indicate a 22% to 24% increase in student achievement test scores from those areas.
Often, a district does not experience a need for increasing staff to implement the middle school philosophy, Kasak said, referring to the staff restructuring as an economy of scale.
While preparing lessons and working to ensure each student's success in learning takes more time than would the traditional junior high approach to education, Kasak said most teachers say they prefer it rather than returning to a junior high style of teaching.
"The longer the kids are with you, the better the education they receive will be," Kasak said. "Doing what is best for each student to learn and develop is what makes for the best middle grade education."