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Taking aim at the ‘middle school plunge’ with a positive culture [EdSource.org]

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Of all the middle school anxieties facing 5th-graders at Argonne Elementary School in San Francisco last spring, the most tangible was a round-faced combination lock.

Elementary school, a land of cubbies and coat hooks, soon would be in the past for these 11- and 12-year-olds, who practiced spinning the dials right-left-right in a Transition to Middle School workshop. Middle school would mean a metal locker with a lock to open, fast, at the risk of floundering in the hall and being late to class.

Fear of being publicly embarrassed or even physically hurt is widespread among students who are entering middle school, according to research studies, including a 2015 survey that ranked 225 5th-graders’ top concerns: getting undressed in front of others for physical education class, coping with peer pressure, dealing with bullying and opening a combination lock.

These concerns aren’t exclusively social problems. Instead, social and emotional struggles are thought to play a significant role in what researchers in 2012 dubbed “the middle school plunge,” an academic achievement drop that occurs for many students. In some of the strongest evidence to date, a 2011 longitudinal studyof 2,300 Los Angeles middle school students by UCLA psychologist Jaana Juvonen and others found a direct relationship over three years between being bullied and having lower grades.

 

[For more of this story, written by Jane Meredith Adams, go to http://edsource.org/2015/takin...sitive-culture/83159]

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