geek.teacher

I got an e-mail today at work informing me that the National Association of Secondary School Principals has declared March 2010 National Middle Level Education Month. According to this site here, that means that we middle level educators join in on an already jam-packed month, teaming up with National Craft Month (PDF), National Frozen Food Month, and National Peanut Month.

I’ve decided to celebrate this glorious month by freezing artfully-created peanut butter sandwiches. I’ll also tell you about one of the best parts of my job as a middle school teacher: advising Student Council.

Don’t get me wrong, I really do enjoy my work in the classroom. It’s hard but rewarding work. I work with students that have some serious learning issues, and I thrive on finding ways to help them understand something they didn’t get before.

The problem is that in my school, I’m pretty isolated. I’m one of a small handful of teachers in my Middle School that has the same students for most of the day. While other teachers work with a wide variety of students, I work with a much smaller number. The advantage, of course, is that it does give me a real chance to get to know my students. The negative is that I sometimes feel left out of the action, as I clearly don’t know nearly as many students as most of the other teachers in the school.

Student Council is a great counterbalance for me. I get to work with an additional 45 students who are very different from the students in my own classroom. This gives me an opportunity to see a much wider range of student than I would otherwise see on a daily basis.

One of my favorite parts about working with Student Council is that it really concentrates the best aspects of Middle Schoolers. The students are intelligent, creative, funny, and passionate. Over the now six years I’ve spent in Student Council, they’ve taken on two different initiatives to contribute to the fight against cancer. For several years we participated in the Relay for Life, a great 24 hour long event that is equal parts fun and moving. In more recent years, we have taken charge of our Alex’s Lemonade Stand in the cafeteria. Between the two, the students that I work with have raised almost fifteen thousand dollars to fight cancer, in addition to the money and time they have donated to other worthy causes in our area. They don’t do it because they’re going to get fancy prizes or awards. They don’t even get a lot of recognition for it. They just do it because they can, and because a world where people can die of cancer is an unfair world. It’s something to be fought with conviction, and is done better while having fun and working together with others. In spite of the image of the jaded, dispassionate teenager, these young adults care about the way the world is, and are convinced that they can help fix it.

That’s why middle schoolers rule, and just one reason of many that I’m proud to be a middle level educator.

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