Middle Child Syndrome

I know what most of you are thinking..."You're an only child...how can you possibly have middle child syndrome?"

Well, I teach middle school. The kids aren't cute a cuddly anymore, and oh my goodness the hormones! I love them though. The problem is the other schools.

We get them from the elementary schools where they have been coddled and babied for 7 years. They expect nothing less when they get to me. In the last week of the six weeks, I can have as many as 15 kids come to me asking for last minute extra credit. Extra credit that I told them on the first day of school would not be coming their way in the last week. I told them that extra credit is like Mom and Dad's insurance, and that they need to do it when it's offered just in case. Then I have a persistant parent who asks for it, and I have to tell them the same thing. Boy are they ticked when I say that. On top of that, in the elementary schools, they only teach it if it is tested that year on the TAKS test. What does that mean for me? Well, they only take 1 writing test before they get to me, and that's in 4th grade. They have no idea how to formulate a complete sentence on paper. Capital letters are only used if they like that particular letter in capitals. For instance, my boys like capital B's, so I often get every word that starts with a B capitalized. They cannot however figure out how to capitalize the first word, nor can they end their sentence with a period. I will have to give you guys a good example of the runons that I got this week.

All this being said, not only do I have to teach them the 7th grade material, but I have to catch them up from elementary school. It has also come to my attention that the elementary teachers "help" student with their TAKS test. No wonder one of our feeder schools have 100% passing! When they get to us, we get in trouble for not having the same results. We spend hours of outside tutoring with them to get them to pass on their own, giving up our planning times and afternoons and mornings to make sure that they are as prepared as possible. We end up with good results, but not good enough. We have managed to send the students on to 8th grade and then high school caught up from elementary, as well as jr. high, and hopefully we have taught them to be better people along the way, making sure that they know that we care about them, and I think that they know that we do because they see all of the extra time and effort we put in to them.

Now they're off to high school. We have been bombarded with complaints from the high school about their TAKS scores and their drop out rate. We had to spend an afternoon of the summer split up into groups with one teacher from each grade 7-12 that teaches English in our cluster. When asked why the kid's TAKS score drop so much in high school, and why the 9th grade drop out rate is so high, I asked them what they do to help the kids out with their TAKS scores. The senior teacher, who clearly thought that she must be the smartest person there because she taught seniors, actually told me that they don't have time in their school day to help out, and that there is a classroom after school that the kids are more than welcome to come to if they need help. I don't know about you, but I never did anything voluntarily in high school, or jr. high for that matter. My kids come because I send for them during my advisory or conference period. I call home and tell Mom that they will be staying with me after school, and if they don't show up, I call home again. We have been known in the past to pull them out of class at the end of the period and have someone from the office walk them down to us for after school tutoring. Sure they're mad at first, then they begin to understand the material, and they are grateful.

This wasn't meant to be a negative post, or venting, or anything like that. I'm glad that I am where I am. I am influencing kids at their most vulnerable point in life, and although I wonder what God was thinking putting ME in that position, I love it. I just don't always love being stuck in the middle!