Module 1 My Middle School Reflection

 As I said in our first class meeting, my middle school experience was rough and it was rough for some other kids I went to school with also. I grew up in Spokane, Washington and attended Chase Middle School on the south hill. 


It was a huge school compared to where I had attended grade school and the building and facilities were also new. During my time there my parents got divorced and I feel like that event set a lot of other things in motion in my life. I was impacted by my parent divorce pretty hard and I began to act out. I had always been a super nice kid and never really had any enemies, but one day I decide to punch a kid in the mouth, really for no reason at all. It was the only fight I have ever been in and I felt horrible about it. I also had never had to be disciplined, but I found myself in lunch detention often. I got my first F's and D's in middle school. As I looked around I noticed that other kids were struggling too. I remember one girl that had come to my morning science class drunk. She could barely walk and was petrified that she was going to get caught. One of her friends helped her through class. Middle school was rough. Amongst all of those things I was trying to figure out who I was, just like every other middle schooler, trying to fit in, but not too much. 

As I read through book, article and watched the video I could identify with a lot of the information about brain maturity. I was feeling huge emotions at that time in my life and acting very impulsively at times. It was out of character from who I had been my whole life leading up to that point and who I am now. I can also see how I was pulling away from my parents and other authority figures and trying to build a deeper relationships with my friends.

I know that each middle school student will have their own experiences, good and bad, and as their teacher I want to learn how to help them feel like they are included in a culture of friends. I'm hoping to learn more about that in this class. I also want to learn more about how I can help them prepare for high school at a time in their lives when they might not be feeling highly motivated. I also want to learn how to make school fun for those students so that they will enjoy coming to class. Over all I would like to see my students middle school experience not be as rough as mine. I want to help them make it through and have fond memories of middle school. 

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