I was double-booked after school today when both the girls' mentor group and the committee examining the feasibility of maintaining teams in our middle school were meeting. I like cookies, and I enjoy being a mentor to one of our sixth graders, but I dropped off my lemon squares and made my apologies to my mentee, and headed off to the committee.
Splitting a grade level into several interdisciplinary teams is one of the foundations of the middle school model. Both research and my personal experience over the last three decades have shown that a smaller group of educators who share a single team can better support the students we all know and teach. Academic intervention, behavior management, activity planning, and school-home communication are all more effective and consistent with a team. Kids in sixth grade in particular make the transition to middle school much more smoothly when they are assisted by a common cadre of teachers,
Even so, the team model is threatened at our school by district requirements for intensified and inclusion classes which make staffing and scheduling a challenge, so hell yeah I skipped the cookies. Unfortunately, less than half of the volunteer committee showed up, and we were unable to make much progress on our goal of gathering information, problem-solving, and offering a recommendation. Several of the no-shows were actually at the mentor meeting, which I'm afraid does not bode well for teams.
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