We like to find out about things we didn't know before. But make it make sense. Let us learn together. And be involved and excited, so we can be involved and excited. When I listen to educators talk about junior high, I hear a different message.
Schools is our students' social milieu.
One result is increasing conformity as students progress through the grades, rather than the increasing independence adolescents might reasonably be expected to assume as they approach adulthood. Learning is more likely to happen when students like what they are being asked to do . . . When students are tracked according to ability levels, the possibilities for collaborative learning are severely diminished. Those students place in lower homogeneous sections also need interesting, challenging, worthwhile instruction. Tracking denies lower-place students' basic right to equality of educational opportunity . . .