Given the current emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and its key attributes, middle school is an optimal time to implement STEM-based curricula. However, the interdisciplinary and open-ended nature of STEM projects often makes implementation difficult. In this article, we describe a professional development…

For middle schools to fully achieve their goals, it is important for them to be staffed with teachers who understand the unique developmental needs of young adolescents and are specifically prepared to meet those needs. Middle school leaders have long been advocates of specialized teacher preparation and licensure; however, the current terrain of…

The purpose of this article is to introduce text sets of picture books that address 10 ancient civilizations commonly taught in middle school and also offer instructional strategies that could be used for critical and multicultural literacy exploration. Beginning with discussion of the importance of picture books and text sets in the middle school…

This study takes a transnational and collaborative approach to explore how Pacific Island educators are using web 2.0 technology to enhance instruction and facilitate culturally sustaining learning opportunities for emergent bilingual and multilingual students. It is also an analysis of the digital divide for young adolescent users due to…

Why do girls perform so well academically yet lose ground as professional women? This diminishing number of women up the leadership hierarchy is often referred to as the "leaky pipeline," and attributed to many factors: external ones such as work environments not conducive to work/life balance, and internal ones such as women's own…

LaRocque, Kleiman, and Darling (2011) characterized parental involvement as the "missing link" in school achievement. For this reason, especially, middle grades teachers and teacher leaders want very much to reach out to newcomer Latino families--and they do. Although Google Translate™ has emerged as a go-to tool for many teachers and…

In using wordless picture books, teachers enhance the reading experience while fostering, nurturing, and broadening students' reading and writing skills. Wordless picture books are accessible to "all" students. They encourage and require readers to slow down as they inhabit and comprehend the story told through art, symbolism, and…

This article focuses on four university teacher educators across three mid-western institutions working together to collaborate and develop a shared understanding of practice in middle level teacher education while modeling a team approach to teaching and learning. Three institutions, University of Louisville (UL), University of Kentucky (UK), and…

The work of racial justice advocacy in the field of education is fraught with responsibility and challenge. The impact of historical racism on social policy within the United States has had an enduring effect in the educational realm, which is maintained in part by the prevailing white supremacy culture (WSC). Recent middle level education…

The task of providing all students an engaging education is a particularly difficult challenge in the middle grades as young adolescents are on the cusp of intellectual thought. Because they are forming their identities as students who will or will not go on to successfully complete high school or postsecondary education, their experiences with…

The 2018 STEM Summer Camp was held on the campuses of a middle school in the Southeast. Students from Title I schools across the district were invited to take part in the month-long STEM program, focused on advancing content competency through Mathematics, Science, Language Arts, and STEM (Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics) Inquiry.…

An authentic, challenging curriculum engaged middle school students from an urban district in exploratory work related to restoring a small prairie at the school. Integrated science-literacy-arts activities were coupled with a system of thinking skills that helped students view issues from different perspectives. Impassioned guest speakers and an…

This article illustrates the critical need for middle level preservice teachers to be explicitly prepared to engage in reform-oriented advocacy. To illustrate this point, we present the experiences of four reform-minded student teachers who attempted to enact developmentally responsive curriculum, as defined in "This We Believe"…

In this article, the authors propose a model of four attitudinal profiles including both purpose (academic and recreational) and medium (print and digital): (1) recreational digital learning/print averse reluctant readers, (2) avid digital readers, (3) avid print readers, and (4) digital learning reluctant readers. We drew these four profiles of…

Engaging students in both hands-on and minds-on experiences is needed for education that is relevant and complete. Many middle school students enter science classrooms with pre-conceived ideas about their world. Some of these ideas are misconceptions that hinder students from developing accepted concepts in science, such as those related to…