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In most US school systems, middle school marks a transition from students having one teacher and classroom for most of the day to having multiple (6 to 8) diffe

In most US school systems, middle school marks a transition from students having one teacher and classroom for most of the day to having multiple (6 to 8) different teachers and classrooms during the day. So that is potentially a 5X multiplier on the number of different social interactions that each student will have to deal with each day. On top of that they have to learn each teacher's style and expectations in order to do well. I used to think the difficulty was due to the onset of adolescence but I think if you forced most working adults through such a transition for a year they would not fare well. This is why most people hate service jobs.

tjr225 7y ago
Interesting. If transitioning from amount of social interactions is difficult it might also explain someone having personal difficulty when going from say, an infrastructure gig to a software support gig.
olau 7y ago
I think it goes both ways. If you know someone well, you can be a much better teacher to them. You can predict what they will have trouble with, what will make them happy, how and when to introduce things to them, etc. Same as interacting with coworkers. And in management, really.
Dumblydorr 7y ago
I taught science in grades 3-8 in low income US schools. The main difference between 3-5 and 6-8 is puberty. These humans are undergoing the most radical shift in their hormones and behavioral regime in their entire life. They go from caring what their teacher thinks to caring what their peers think; the kids get louder, stronger, less respectful of authority, more likely to join gangs or do drugs. Everyone gets a lot more talkative and disruptive. Middle schoolers are simply the hardest age group to teach.
- tbyehl 7y ago
  > Middle schoolers are simply the hardest age group to teach. But how much of that might be structural? Under ideal circumstances, a K-5 student has one teacher each year, in a class largely composed of students they were in a class with the previous year. We throw them into 6th grade, now they have what, 5-6 teachers for 40-50 minutes each? In my district, two elementary schools feed each middle, so their grade size has doubled and even many of the students they shared an elementary school with will be unfamiliar. That's a whole lot of social upheaval to subject 11 y/o kids to. Puberty is just icing on the cake.
  - __s 7y ago
    You can look at areas where teaching varies. My experience at a Canadian school didn't have a different teacher per class until 9th grade at a new school
  - tbyehl 7y ago
    I'll add, my partner's children enter middle school next year and thinking about all of this is concerning. My partner points out that this is where children start to "slip through the cracks" -- teachers' ability to provide individualized attention is greatly reduced by the reduction in class time and increased number of students to educate. The difference in structure has a big impact on both sides.
gshubert17 7y ago
I attended a small school system where there was one class per grade from Kindergarten through 5th grade. What they called junior high school consisted of three rooms, which were the home rooms for 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. Students moved around among these three rooms for classes from the three different teachers (English, science, and history/social science) and a visiting math teacher who might have had an office somewhere else but didn't have a homeroom. This made an easier transition to high school, which had the full (6 to 8) different teachers and classrooms. There we had 3 different classrooms and 4 different teachers.
Kerrick 7y ago
I remember before hitting Middle School (maybe in 5th or 6th grade?) my elementary school rotated the classes in groups of three throughout each day as a way to transition to Middle School's much larger un-grouped class transition. By example: Teachers A, B, C, D, E, and F were teachers of that grade. Classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 were classes of that grade. Before lunch the teacher+class pairings were A1, B2, C3, D4, E5, F6. After lunch the pairings were A2, B3, C1, D5, E6, F4. After a break the pairings were A3, B1, C2, D6, E4, F5. This allowed us to get used to the idea of rotating teachers and we interacted with the other classes in our group a bit during rotations and breaks. However, it only raised the number of teachers to interact with by two, and we didn't actually sit and learn with a larger class. It made for a great transition. That school had a bunch of other really great opportunities to start giving children more responsibilities, too. It had an inter-school mail system run by the students, as well as a bookstore, snack stand, and a few other things. For context, this was in the USA in the early 2000s.
munificent 7y ago
My elementary school age kids have had multiple teachers since kindergarten. Throughout the week, they go to separate classes for health and fitness (i.e. "PE"), music, art, and the library. I don't think the transition to more separate specialized classes is a big part of it. It's mostly hormones and their brain powering up the social reasoning facilities and emotions without yet having the life experience to manage those feelings. Middle school is right around the time that your social status and reputation — your image in the eyes of your peers — becomes an important part of your sense of self and self worth. But that status and reputation is heavily influenced by everyone around you. It's like all of a sudden these kids all wake up with giant targets floating above their heads and rocks in their hands. By high school, they will have internalized some of the norms around how to not use the weapons they have — in large part because of their experiences now — but middle school is a time of experimentation and mistake-making, so there ends up being a lot of random collateral emotional damage.

tjr225 7y ago

Interesting. If transitioning from amount of social interactions is difficult it might also explain someone having personal difficulty when going from say, an infrastructure gig to a software support gig.

olau 7y ago

I think it goes both ways. If you know someone well, you can be a much better teacher to them. You can predict what they will have trouble with, what will make them happy, how and when to introduce things to them, etc. Same as interacting with coworkers. And in management, really.

Dumblydorr 7y ago

I taught science in grades 3-8 in low income US schools. The main difference between 3-5 and 6-8 is puberty. These humans are undergoing the most radical shift in their hormones and behavioral regime in their entire life. They go from caring what their teacher thinks to caring what their peers think; the kids get louder, stronger, less respectful of authority, more likely to join gangs or do drugs. Everyone gets a lot more talkative and disruptive. Middle schoolers are simply the hardest age group to teach.

tbyehl 7y ago
> Middle schoolers are simply the hardest age group to teach. But how much of that might be structural? Under ideal circumstances, a K-5 student has one teacher each year, in a class largely composed of students they were in a class with the previous year. We throw them into 6th grade, now they have what, 5-6 teachers for 40-50 minutes each? In my district, two elementary schools feed each middle, so their grade size has doubled and even many of the students they shared an elementary school with will be unfamiliar. That's a whole lot of social upheaval to subject 11 y/o kids to. Puberty is just icing on the cake.
- __s 7y ago
  You can look at areas where teaching varies. My experience at a Canadian school didn't have a different teacher per class until 9th grade at a new school
- tbyehl 7y ago
  I'll add, my partner's children enter middle school next year and thinking about all of this is concerning. My partner points out that this is where children start to "slip through the cracks" -- teachers' ability to provide individualized attention is greatly reduced by the reduction in class time and increased number of students to educate. The difference in structure has a big impact on both sides.

gshubert17 7y ago

I attended a small school system where there was one class per grade from Kindergarten through 5th grade. What they called junior high school consisted of three rooms, which were the home rooms for 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. Students moved around among these three rooms for classes from the three different teachers (English, science, and history/social science) and a visiting math teacher who might have had an office somewhere else but didn't have a homeroom. This made an easier transition to high school, which had the full (6 to 8) different teachers and classrooms. There we had 3 different classrooms and 4 different teachers.

Kerrick 7y ago

I remember before hitting Middle School (maybe in 5th or 6th grade?) my elementary school rotated the classes in groups of three throughout each day as a way to transition to Middle School's much larger un-grouped class transition. By example: Teachers A, B, C, D, E, and F were teachers of that grade. Classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 were classes of that grade. Before lunch the teacher+class pairings were A1, B2, C3, D4, E5, F6. After lunch the pairings were A2, B3, C1, D5, E6, F4. After a break the pairings were A3, B1, C2, D6, E4, F5. This allowed us to get used to the idea of rotating teachers and we interacted with the other classes in our group a bit during rotations and breaks. However, it only raised the number of teachers to interact with by two, and we didn't actually sit and learn with a larger class. It made for a great transition. That school had a bunch of other really great opportunities to start giving children more responsibilities, too. It had an inter-school mail system run by the students, as well as a bookstore, snack stand, and a few other things. For context, this was in the USA in the early 2000s.

munificent 7y ago

My elementary school age kids have had multiple teachers since kindergarten. Throughout the week, they go to separate classes for health and fitness (i.e. "PE"), music, art, and the library. I don't think the transition to more separate specialized classes is a big part of it. It's mostly hormones and their brain powering up the social reasoning facilities and emotions without yet having the life experience to manage those feelings. Middle school is right around the time that your social status and reputation — your image in the eyes of your peers — becomes an important part of your sense of self and self worth. But that status and reputation is heavily influenced by everyone around you. It's like all of a sudden these kids all wake up with giant targets floating above their heads and rocks in their hands. By high school, they will have internalized some of the norms around how to not use the weapons they have — in large part because of their experiences now — but middle school is a time of experimentation and mistake-making, so there ends up being a lot of random collateral emotional damage.