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Chapter six explores the ways that middle schools teachers adjusted their behavior to fit reform guidelines. Middle school employees continued to shape decisions to fit practices that had proven, over long periods of time, “consistent with the stable web of beliefs and assumptions that are part of the culture” (Stigler and Hiebert, 1999: 87). Those beliefs and assumptions were tied to the exigencies of entrance examinations rather than to ideals about children’s love for learning. Interview and observation data indicate that middle school teachers were pressed to move in one direction—but the foundation on which they operated remained stationary.

Students come to science classes with preconceptions about the natural world and ways to explore that world to learn more about it. Students' prior beliefs may distort their understanding of how to design an experiment and also its purpose: to identify causal factors. These prior beliefs influence students' reasoning about experimentation, leading them to misconstrue instruction aimed at teaching them about the core component of experimental design: the Control of Variables Strategy (CVS). Many students erroneously interpret the instructional goal as to teach them some domain-specific knowledge or to produce a desired effect, rather than as how to execute a domain-general procedure for designing experiments. The behavior of late-elementary and middle school students is examined to categorize common misconceptions about the goal of the CVS instruction, describe how those misconceptions led to delays or failures in learning CVS, and suggest instructional procedures that can be used to remediate the misconceptions.

This chapter takes a closer look at one of the types of programs featured in this book — the full-service community schools. It turns to school reform programs and to efforts to deal specifically with sex, drugs, and violence. It reviews the various types of school–community partnership programs that are on the horizon at the moment, presents several examples, looks at research, and discusses some of the issues that have come to the fore as these programs have evolved. A full-service community school integrates the delivery of quality education with whatever health and social services are required in that community. These institutions draw on both school resources and outside community agencies that come into schools and join forces to provide seamless programs. Examples of full-service community schools are the Children's Aid Society, Woodrow Wilson Middle School, and Missouri Caring Community Schools.

This chapter concludes this book's research conducted in Delight and Earle, Arkansas. In 2010, the school in Delight was consolidated with Murfreesboro High, while only two of the schools in Earle remain open. Dunbar Middle School closed and its students split between the other schools. Looking at the future for schools in Delight and Earle, this chapter emphasizes the need for the development of a more distinct and connected approach to education policy. We need reforms that balance individual and collective needs, support for local and national goals, and foster racial and geographic justice.

In this chapter we focus more directly on individualized and felt treatment of low-income Black students in a context in which difference manifests itself in the school's environment in particular kinds of ways. To be clear, we address felt peer racism but we do not have evidence from White and/or privileged students of color, or participant observation data, that validate such treatment directed towards this group. Significantly, however, the topic surfaced strongly among low-income Black students, making such felt treatment as linked to the nature of their “outsider within” status, important to unpack. As part of this discussion, we additionally take up the position of privileged multi-generational Black students and the privileged children of “flexible immigrants” of color in elite private schools. We then examine the college destination patterns of all students included in this book. We intentionally break from strong ethnographic form to probe, at a more deeply analytical and theoretical level, the meaning behind data reported here and in earlier chapters. At times, then, we go well beyond the actions and words of the participants themselves in order to theorize, in new ways, class and race productions.

Adolescent substance use has been a major concern in this country. According to the Monitoring the Future study conducted by the University of Michigan and supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a high percentage of American youth has tried or currently use various illicit drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. Among the 8th, 10th, and 12th graders surveyed in 2003, for example, one third were using alcohol and one sixth smoked cigarettes. In addition, many adolescents use illegal drugs including marijuana, ecstasy, and LSD. Approximately 17% reported illicit drug use during the month prior to the survey and 37% reported that they had tried it at least once during their lifetime. This chapter discusses the substance use/abuse screening methods that school mental health professionals can easily utilize. It presents a summary table of screening tools developed particularly for the adolescent population. It discusses two screening instruments — Problem-Oriented Screening Instruments for Teenagers (POSIT) and Rutgers Alcohol Problem Index (RAPI) — which are considered most efficient at school settings. This information covers how to administer the instruments and how to interpret the results. Finally, a case example is provided to demonstrate the techniques described in the chapter.

This chapter looks for exemplary programs that concentrate on teenagers. It looks at evidence that the programs have assured Safe Passage by promoting educational outcomes, preventing new morbidities, and demonstrating high expectations for youth. Five programs were selected: Centro Sister Isolino Ferre, a youth and family centre with a police sub-station in Caimitio, Puerto Rico; Quantum Opportunities Program, an after-school enrichment program run by Opportunities Industrialization Centers in Philadelphia; El Puente, a high school in a community center in Williamsburg, New York; Caring Connection, a comprehensive, multi-component, multi-agency program run by the Marshalltown School District in Marshalltown, Iowa; and Turner Middle School, a university-assisted community school run in collaboration with the University Of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. All of these programs proved to be flexible and reactive. They appeared to be able to adjust schedules, personnel, and policies to meet the needs of their clientele.

This chapter examines the design of innovative online courses in language teaching methodology for middle school teachers of English in China that would encourage learner and teacher autonomy. It considers how the development of a capacity for autonomy through scaffolded experiences support online programme participants in acquiring the independent learning skills necessary for success in this increasingly popular mode of learning. It also discusses the e-learning project called eChina-UK funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).

Chapter 7 answers a number of lingering questions about the processes that generate inequalities in schools. Drawing both on data from the current study and on an analysis of prior research, this chapter discusses the significance of class-based strategies and how they change as students move through school. It examines how gender and race might matter in shaping students’ interactions with teachers, how class-based patterns might vary across schools with different types of characteristics, and the extent to which students might learn class-based behaviors from their peers. The findings in this chapter highlight the difficulty involved in trying to learn new class-based behaviors, either through exposure to peers or through more formal training.

This chapter begins by discussing how Feng County's leaders established a Cultural Revolution committee. The first party secretary, Gao Ying, was the head, and the vice-heads were Shao Wen and one other party standing committee member. The county leadership was able to maintain top-down control of the campaign for almost half a year. Not until the end of December 1966, several months after such events in China's large cities, did Red Guard and rebel groups begin to target Feng County's party leadership. The rebellion of students and others was very slow to develop, but the first stirrings were in the county seat, at Feng County Middle School. Feng County's rebel movement was so small, and so late in developing, that there were no factional divisions of the kind that emerged in China's large cities early in the autumn of 1966. The chapter then looks at the formation of the first broad alliance of local rebels, one that would play a key role in the county's factional conflicts over the next decade. The alliance became one of the county's two large factions, henceforth known by its abbreviated name, Paolian.

In 1941, the Japanese Army newspaper reported the Pearl Harbour attack. The Japanese made propaganda of this incident, exaggerating it to show the invincible might of their military. The news came as a bombshell, for they had placed high hopes on the Americans to deliver them from the Japanese. Life in Hong Kong under Japanese occupation was unbearable. The University of Hong Kong encouraged the undergraduates to go to interior China to continue their studies there and promised to give them a stipend each month to cover their expenses. Frances Wong decided to go and her parents wanted her to take her younger brother Gia Yuan with her. This chapter further describes Wong's life and journey to inland China, the Sun Yat Sen University, setting up a home, Pui Lian Middle School, Xinxing, and post-war Guangzhou.

This chapter presents the results of a survey administered to a large and mixed-demographic group of middle school girls in an attempt to better understand what interests them with respect to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in general and IT in particular. It begins with a review of the relevant literature on girls, recruiting for academic programs, and career aspirations. It then describes the event, research methods, and results of the study. It is argued that recruiting is an important but understudied aspect of increasing the participation of women in IT disciplines. The function of recruiting is persuasion, or communication intended to influence, reinforce, or change another's beliefs, values, attitudes, or actions. Recommendations for recruiters are provided based on the study.

This chapter takes a tour in the Eastern Chinese City. It begins by going to Dragon Pool Park in the southeast corner of the former Eastern Chinese city. Here, there is a beautifully landscaped park where the Peking authorities have revived lunar New Year temple fairs. In the middle of the park stands a single rectangular brick structure. The chapter also visits Commander Yuan's grave in a little while at a separate location in this part of the city. By traveling to the west from the Temple of Prosperous Peace, No. 59 Middle School on Wo Fo Si Street can be seen. The Chinese were not the only nation to have an Altar of Heaven. Since Confucianism hugely influenced Vietnamese and Korean culture, the kings of these two countries constructed circular altars for Heaven in Hue and Seoul.

This chapter focuses on Ruleville Middle School, which once sat in the heart of white Ruleville, a school where the Eastland children and their white friends studied and socialized. Safely ensconced in an all-white neighborhood, the school stood for decades as a symbol of the Sunflower County way of life, a segregated institution supported by the entire white community and protected by the white officials who monopolized political power. You would have looked in vain for a black student's picture in any class until more than a decade after the Supreme Court's momentous 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Though the decision had little immediate impact on the racial composition of Sunflower County schools, Brown defined an era and catalyzed the white resistance movement. The decision launched James Eastland's national political career, transforming him from a little-known senator, a farmer-politician with visions of retirement, into the South's most visible segregationist politician, a nationally recognized symbol of racism and resistance.

The ninth grade is the grade when the greatest majority of students start to fall behind and eventually drop out of school. This chapter looks at some of the reasons for this crisis in education and provides suggestions and best practices to address this issue and help more students successfully transition out of the 9th grade.

In this chapter, Abdul Hadi Isma'il talks about his experience during the Iraq war. Abdul Hadi Isma'il was a principal at a middle school in a poor area of northern Baghdad during the time of the U.S. invasion. The ministry of education ordered them to dismiss classes the day the war started. Abdul Hadi Isma'il did but stayed at the school in order to watch over the campus. He was alone in his house, which was very near the school. He had sent his wife and five children to stay in Khalis, northeast of Baghdad, before the bombing started. But he had many students still with him at the school each day. A lot had volunteered to remain with him to keep an eye on the place. Abdul Hadi Isma'il then went to Yemen, where he stayed for only three months and was forced to return to Baghdad after a falling out with his employers.

Since 2003, more than four thousand middle school–aged children and their teachers and directors have gathered in Atlanta, Georgia, each January during Martin Luther King Jr. weekend to celebrate musical theatre at the Junior Theatre Festival (JTF). Produced by iTheatrics (the company that adapts Broadway musicals for kids), Playbill, and Music Theatre International, the convention features ninety school or community groups who present a fifteen-minute segment from a show that they rehearsed or performed at home for professional artist adjudicators’ immediate feedback. The weekend also includes performance workshops for kids and producing workshops for adults, a showcase of musical numbers from new shows, and an elaborate distribution of awards, during which almost every group is publicly recognized. Fueled by progressive language and democratic affirmations, JTF is unabashedly profit-driven, since MTI licenses the very repertoire of musicals that the children perform. The kids who attend JTF find affirmation and community in an intense, emotion-filled weekend that celebrates musical theatre. JTF combines crass commercialism and heartfelt outreach in a seamless, exuberant event.

This chapter discusses the subtle differences in the approach implemented by the Hong Kong government and that implemented by London and British diplomats in Beijing. While an aggressive and provocative stance towards leftists was adopted by Governor David Trench, a more cautious assessment of the situation in the colony and handling of the disturbances was executed by London and British diplomats in Beijing. Trench believed that a prolonged crisis would be the “worst of all possible situations for Hong Kong”. He believed that there was a chance that by taking a very firm line, there might be some prospect of inducing a change of the mainland authorities' attitude which would enable both sides to disengage confrontation. This chapter also discusses the acute disagreement between Trench and Hopson on the deregistration of Chung Hwa Middle School and the US naval visit to Hong Kong.

This chapter focuses on Masaoka Shiki’s early education. In elementary school Shiki had joined with friends to publish a literary magazine that circulated in the school. His contributions were not much more than what one might expect of a bright twelve-year-old, but they were varied and gave an inclination of the promise he would develop into a writer. These are his oldest surviving writings. He did not compose his poetry in Japanese. Shiki entered middle school in 1880. The Matsuyama Middle School was founded in 1876 with Kusama Tokuyoshi as its first principal. In October 1881 Emperor Meiji issued an edict stating that a parliament would be convened in 1890. About this time Shiki frequently cut classes in order to attend political rallies. Shiki not only listened to speeches but also delivered his own at school. In 1883 he went to Tokyo and entered Kyōritsu Gakkō. He studied English under such teachers as Takahashi Korekiyo and James Murdoch.

This chapter focuses on the White Horse Lake group of writers and examines how they redefined the student’s relationship to the cultural legacy and other educational content by placing special emphasis on writing. The White Horse Lake group, who include Zhu Ziqing, Xia Mianzun, and Feng Zikai, all spent time teaching at Chunhui Middle School near the town of Shangyu in Zhejiang Province, on the shores of White Horse Lake. Aside from their shared ideas about the place of writing in education, each of these writers built or bought a little home on the shores of the lake near the school and near to each other, creating a certain kind of physical environment and a correspondingly unique sense of community. This chapter considers essays or stories included in Xia Mianzun’s prose collection, Pingwu zawen (Random Writings from the Bungalow), which touch upon the White Horse Lake living situation and social life. It also discusses Feng Zikai’s 1937 Yuanyuan tang suibi (Essays from the Fated Hall) as well as the essays of Zhu Ziqing.