Viewpoint
by Jeanne Gibbs

"Look at us again," call out the diversity of middle school adolescents. "Tell us why so many of us feel school is frustrating, not very meaningful and just something to get through."

This question, phrased one way or another, also is being asked by concerned adults throughout the nation. Looking back, we realize the same question has haunted us throughout the last twenty years of school reform. Each new wave promised to establish educational excellence. "World class schools" would result from focusing on tougher discipline policies, behavior modification, high tech schools, computers, a new reading program, smaller classes, site councils, character education, more homework, less professional development, more teaching time. and now standards and testing.

Our viewpoint is that it is time to be courageous enough to raise three rarely discussed questions:

• What proof did we ever have that educational excellence could be achieved through wave after wave of singular reform initiatives?
• Why is the field of education, unlike all other professions, resistant to staying current - to learn and implement valuable cognitive research, developmental studies and effective pedagogy?
• More than all, why are school communities not concerned with the growth and development of the full spectrum of children's development in addition to academic (intellectual) learning?

Our viewpoint parallels that of innumerable respected educational leaders. Listen to some of the voices.

"The failure of schools to address the full range of children's growth and development - their social, psychological, emotional and physical - in addition to their intellectual development - clearly is undermining the nation's efforts to achieve academic excellence." ² - James P. Comer

"Middle school grades - junior high, intermediate, and middle schools - are potentially society's most powerful force to recapture millions of youth adrift, and help every young person thrive during early adolescence. Yet all too often these schools exacerbate the problems of young adolescents. A volatile mismatch exists between the organization and curriculum of middle grade schools and the intellectual and emotional needs of young adolescents." ³ - The Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development

"Our educational systems continue to teach intellectual development rather than intrinsic worth." ⁴ - Jean Piaget

Young adolescents, who are pushed through schools that are not responsive to their developmental needs, fail to discover their identity, unique gifts and interests that motivate learning into the future. They are the teenagers who enter high school unprepared. Lacking in self-knowledge and social and emotional competency, they are less likely to achieve academically. In contrast, schools that are developmentally responsive send middle level students onward with a sense of excitement as a result of having discovered themselves and gifts purposefully to pursue.

Schools that are focusing on the full-range of adolescent growth and development first transform the culture and structure of the school into caring learning communities. They believe, as does Anne Wheelock that.

"building a culture for school-based reform means uprooting many old assumptions about learning - to make way for new beliefs about how students 'become smart'." ⁵

School communities that focus on understanding the nature and existential needs of their students use a synthesis of developmental strategies and meaningful pedagogy. The synthesis that hundreds of schools are turning to is not a curriculum, not a program. It is an on-going renewal process, a caring and supportive culture, known as "Tribes" - Tribes Learning Communities.

Teachers are supported to move from traditional didactic teaching, workbooks and memorization to active group learning so that students gain meaningful and lasting knowledge through constructive thinking, collaborative problem-solving and responsible social interaction. Of utmost importance is the fact that the peer support within learning groups (tribes) helps middle level adolescents to recognize their gifts and interests. The Tribes responsive teaching process is research based, and verified by thousands of studies on ideal learning cultures, resiliency, cooperative learning, constructivism, thematic instruction and brain compatible learning. Responsive education is a daily community process lived by teachers, students and the whole school community. It is a caring democratic culture that includes, values, and challenges everyone in the school community to participate, to learn and to develop their personal best.

Young adolescents, ten to fifteen years old, are striving to achieve four developmental tasks - whether they or their parents and teachers realize it or not. They are seeking autonomy and independence, social competency, meaning and purpose, and the right to solve problems on their own. Middle level teens need to be empowered to accomplish the essential tasks in order to be successful in high school and adult life. They are at the "Turning Point" referred to in the landmark document of the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development. Moreover, this is the basis of the warning that too many middle level schools are exacerbating the problems of young adolescents - by being unresponsive to their developmental needs.

District standards are what needs to be achieved. How to do it just takes a synthesis of what already is known about learning. Excellent middle level schools have a spirit that is recognizable as soon as one walks into the front door. Joan Lipsitz describes the spirit well..

"In excellent middle schools, there has to be [or is] evidence of student joy, as demonstrated by laughter, vitality, interest, smiles and other indications of pleasure." ⁶

Yes, this is the energy that is noticed throughout hundreds of schools who have become Tribes Learning Communities. They are living and internalizing a new way of being and learning together. We invite you to do the same.

1. From Delicious Laughter: Rambunctious Teaching Stories from Mathnawi of Jelahuddin Rumi, (Coleman Barks, translation). (1990). Athens, GA: Maypop Books, p.65.

2. Comer, James. (1997). Maintaining A Focus on Child Development. Phi Delta Kappan. March 1997. p.559.

3.Turning Points, Preparing American Youth for the 21st Century. (1989). New York, N.Y. Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, Carnegie Corporation of New York, pp.8-9.

4. Piaget, Jean. (1950). The Psychology of Intelligence. New York: Harcourt Brace

5. Wheelock, Anne. (1998). Safe To Be Smart, Building A Culture for Standards-Based Reform in Middle Grades. Columbus, Ohio: National Middle Schools Association, p.101.

6. Lipsitz, Joan. (1994). Successful Schools for Young Adolescents. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, p.15.