High Road or Middle Road

At the beginning of the ETEP program, I was certain of my desire to teach at the High School level. During the first semester, we spent a week visiting different schools, after which I said that if I were to teach Middle School it would have to be at KMS or another Expeditionary School. Now that I’m in, and slowly becoming a part of, the school, I am not so sure what level I prefer. It is early in this placement and I’ve not yet seen too many classes. I will begin teaching in the coming weeks and that should provide the necessary experience to determine which I like better.

My thoughts right now about the different levels are:
In High School we can really dive into a text and get our hands dirty - words and language all over them. The conversations are good and the kids have the cognitive ability to make inferences and critically examine and interpret a text.

The Middle School kids, on the other hand, enjoy reading!. Big tip of the scales there. The kids haven't been stripped of or had their curiosity and enthusiasm for school squashed. It will be interesting to see what kinds of discussions we have surrounding the book Speak. I'll be teaching literary terms as we read in addition to the heavy topics of Rape, Friendship, High School social structures, and anything else that comes up for the students.

With that said I think I'll continue my re-reading of the book and making notes for myself. I'll soon have to start creating lesson plans, ugh. I dislike planning in that way. I much rather have an organic classroom experience, though I see the benefits of having a plan. I've just had too many of my plans get thrown out because of how the class was going or how (un)prepared the students were.