New Beginnings

This blog came from a simple idea.  A quote from Teddy Roosevelt:

"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."

This is especially true for students, teachers, parents, and everyone else that has any contact with a school.  You can replace the word "people" with any of the groups mentioned above and it INSTANTLY changes the focus to school.  While this quote holds true for every level of schooling, I feel that it resonates with middle school students most.

There is so much that goes on in middle school.  So many changes that take place with students over these three years.  This time frame is the "critical middle."  Students will determine during this time how they will proceed with their education.  Will they go to college, choose a career, or possibly drop out.  We need to come together to work on keeping students engaged and in school.  We want to see an entire cadre of globally competitive graduates come from our current and future middle school students.

The goal of this new community is to share what we know to become better at what we do.  I have often heard that no teacher is an island.  A teacher shouldn't shut the door, block out the world around them, and teach with blinders on.  Neither should a school.  To have globally competitive graduates, we need to know what various school are doing in order to help each other.  Let's use this to expand our community of learners.

We will use this blog to identify best practices for working with middle school students.  There will be connections to article, sites, and resources.  We will work hard to provide guest articles from various people around our district and beyond.  The hope is to also have interviews with those that have direct impact on the way middle school looks and those that shape policy for middle school students.

This blog will also be a supplement to a new chat for our school district.  For years, I have been itching to get a chat going among administrators and teachers that focuses on best practices in the middle level.  With Twitter becoming such a HUGE aspect of how we communicate and how we can learn, the iron was hot and so the strike has come, and we will now begin to host a chat.

The best part is that we are going to work to make this as interactive as possible.  We will allow our participants to choose how they want to learn.  How often, how long, what topics, etc.

Stay tuned for more information on the new chat #bcps_msm