During each of my six English classes, I told the students about the blogger who held student panels in order to help with teacher professional development by offering the students an opportunity to share their thoughts on how to improve learning. I asked for anyone who would be interested in sharing their opinions by participating in a panel with only me as the audience during homeroom to raise their hand. Surprisingly, between 3 to 7 students in each class volunteered, and it wasn't necessarily the students I would have thought would volunteer.
I really thought the kids who would volunteer would be those who get good grades or who seemed to like school or even those who like attention or are good at class discussion. However, it was more of a mixture of kids who seem bored, some who are attentive but maybe a little shy, some who are super smart and some who need a little help.
Three of my homeroom students took the list of about 45 students and split them into groups of five. I only gave them the idea to try to make comfortable groups- kids they knew got along or would at least feel comfortable sharing freely. On their own, they decided to either make groups all girls, all boys or an even mixture of both.
So far, I have completed one panel consisting of five boys. The majority of what they talked about didn't surprise me. Here's a few things they mentioned.
***I asked- How is technology at school different from your technology use outside of school?
***They said- We use technology for everything at home. We use it to talk with our friends. Well, not just talk, but communicate because we call, text, Facebook, everything, you know. At school, we're not allowed to do those things at all. Everything is locked down here because some kids don't use it well. We should be able to have the cameras on and not have things blocked until we do something wrong.
***This led to a big discussion about how it wasn't fair that some kids did bad things and then everyone got punished for it. They wanted to know if the eighth graders next year would get to start the year fresh with computer privileges or if they would not have some privileges because of this year's student behavior. They thought it would be better if computers weren't locked down at all for all students until they showed they were irresponsible and then only the kids who did something wrong would lose privileges. (Ah. . . I agree, I agree, I agree. Not only for the kids and computer privileges at school but for adults as well. If there's a teacher who isn't following dress code, talk to that one teacher, don't make an announcement for all teachers at a staff meeting. I have tried really hard in the last three years since being a behavior interventionist not to punish a whole class for the actions of a few. I did that often my first few years of teaching. )
***From there, they transitioned to how they felt that teachers spent too much time helping the kids who don't want to learn. Here's where their ideas diverged. Some kids felt the teachers only helped the really smart kids and the ones who didn't want to learn. Some said only the kids who didn't want to learn. Another said mostly students who needed lots of help got it.
After spring break, I will still have enough time (just barely) to interview the other eight groups. I think it will be interesting to see how the comments do or don't show patterns over time through the topics and with the different student groups.
Are you curious about how middle school students think about a particular topic? Post your question here in the comments and I'll be sure to ask them and post my findings. :)
sk
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