Who am I? What’s my role? What’s my purpose? Where do I fit in? If you’re a middle school educator, these are common questions with which you see your students struggle. However, these questions can also apply to us as school leaders, particularly in middle schools. We build systems, develop curriculum, and design programs to support our kids as they wrestle through these adolescent years. But we don’t always do a good job at building systems to support ourselves as leaders while trying to effectively serve our school.
Let’s get real. Middle school doesn’t always stand out as the most memorable part of our school experience: If you think about core memories from your own school years, you most likely remember the milestones of elementary school and high school. Elementary schools typically have the most parent involvement, the loudest advocates, and are the most “fun” places in a district. They are the places where special memories like a child’s first day of kindergarten are made. High schools are the flagship schools of most districts. Typically they are the largest-sized, most funded, and most recognizable buildings in a district. They host Friday night football, prom, graduation, and other formative events for teens.
So, what about middle school? What’s our role as middle school leaders within our district and community? How do we make an impact? How do we make sure our staff and our students aren’t forgotten when the “big” decisions, like building projects and budget allocations, are made?
Again, if you’re new to middle school leadership, these are questions that both you and your staff are likely to deal with. If you’re a seasoned leader, you’ve probably already dealt with these questions in one way or another. Here are a few guiding principles I’ve learned in my time as a middle school principal that have helped me grapple with these questions.
The Mission of Transition
At the end of the day, the ultimate purpose of the middle school within most districts is to be the transition building. We inherit “little” kids, and we develop “big” kids. Our job is to help our students (and their families) learn what it means to be a secondary student.
Therefore, we should be offering our students greater independence and responsibility, while also increasing accountability. At each level of the academic experience, a bit more emphasis is put on the student and a bit less on their families.
We should be offering our students greater independence and responsibility, while also increasing accountability.
Think about it: In elementary school, it’s almost exclusively the job of the school and family to provide a high-quality education to students. In high school, the majority of academic responsibility shifts to the student as they prepare for life after high school. How do we help middle school students take on more responsibility for their academic progress? How do we help families understand and support this transitional time?
When talking to families and students, I like to explain the 1/3 rule, where responsibility for middle school students’ success is equally divided among the school, the family, and the students. As a school, we guarantee every student they will get our 1/3, which means we’re going to provide opportunities to receive a world-class education in a safe environment from highly qualified educators.
I tell families they are 1/3 responsible for their student's success—their job is to advocate for their students, partner with teachers to support students, emphasize the importance of education at home, and hold their students accountable when they mess up. Every middle school student messes up at some point, so I like to remind parents that when that happens, it just means they are raising a normal kid who is learning to be more independent. It doesn’t mean they are a failure as a parent.
The student’s 1/3 is simply to do their part by focusing on their studies. Until they are old enough to have a job, this is their job—so, let’s help them be the best they can be!
Advocating for the Middle
As discussed above, middle schools can be forgotten about at the district level, so middle school principals need to be constant advocates for their schools. When you’re in district and community meetings, constantly highlight the great things your teachers and students are doing. When you have good performance data, brag about it. Your staff deserves recognition, and if you aren’t telling the community about all the great things going on in middle school, who will?
For example, in my experience elementary schools receive significant resource allocations for intervention services. They tend to have more trained educators devoted to providing tier 3 services to students than middle schools or high schools, but why? There is nothing magical about moving to 6th or 7th grade that changes the needs of students that require extra support. Make sure your district leaders understand that your students need these services, and, most importantly, make sure you’ve developed a master schedule that allows students in need of tier 3 services to receive those interventions.
Likewise, resources for CTE tend to be allocated to high schools. That's understandable in some ways, but how can students make informed decisions about career pathways and elective offerings in high school if we aren’t exposing them to various career fields in middle school?
Finding Your Character
What are you doing well in your school? What’s the character of your school? That is a recent discussion we had as a building team and with our district leaders. My superintendent challenged us to find a theme that personified what we do well as a building. After a lot of discussion and self-analysis, we decided on leadership.
We already had several clubs and a few electives that focused on student leadership development and service. So, we worked to develop this theme: Our school wasn’t just the place that prepared students for high school; we developed leaders who were ready to make a difference in their school and their community.
Our school wasn’t just the place that prepared students for high school; we developed leaders who were ready to make a difference in their school and their community.
With this theme of leadership in mind, we developed a leadership preparation academy for students. We partnered with our local university to create a unique educational experience, complete with career exploration opportunities and an intentional leadership training program for interested students. Students will choose from one of three career exploration pathways, either STEM, Multimedia, or Health Professions. As 8th graders, students in each group will travel to our local university weekly to interact with university faculty in their chosen career exploration pathway. Additionally, they will take a sequence of courses aligned to their career exploration pathway during their time in middle school.
While we’re exposing students to their chosen career exploration pathways through their course work and with our partnership with the university, we’re also finding intentional leadership training opportunities for these students. We will develop a distinguished speaker series, where leaders in our community will come in monthly to talk with our students. As the building principal, I will teach a monthly leadership training course for our students. We’ll start the new program this fall, and so far the excitement from our community has been awesome.
Being the Best You
That’s our story, but I encourage you and your team to decide what yours is. Lean into your mission of transition and be great at it, advocate for the middle and do whatever it takes to make sure your campus is not forgotten, and do some soul searching with your team to figure out what the character of your campus is. Then, when you find it, leverage the talents of your team and be innovative. Do something great for your students, and maybe, just maybe, some of those core memories that are often reserved for elementary and high school will become part of the middle school experience for your students.
