Helping Middle Schoolers Grow
We are aware of the middle school years, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade, as significant years as students move from childhood toward adulthood. This season in a young person's life is rich with opportunities for connection with their parents and understanding of themselves.
Ambleside's mission statement promises that "in partnership with the family, we guide and empower each student to think with the mind of Christ and to author a life rich in relationship to God, self, others, ideas, and all of creation."
We just had Parent Teacher Conferences in mid-October. As we partner with you through these formative years, teachers in our middle school look for ways we can work with parents to bring up students into the responsibilities of adulthood. Besides the studies in the classrooms, First Fridays, L’Abri Lunches, and nursing home visits provide an additional context for their growth outside of the classroom.
In their enlightening book, Escaping the Endless Adolescence, Joseph and Claudia Allen address the challenge of today's American teens-stressed, anxious, less motivated and independent-and they suggest that today's parenting style might be the culprit. They describe this "nurturing paradox" as a parenting style that shields teens from facing the growth and responsibility of adulthood.
Their solution echoes Mason's thoughts.
Give them worthy work - work that matters to someone.
Invite them into adult conversations.
Help them identify and ask for what they need.
Provide real time feedback.
Get them outdoors.
Don't entertain them.
Give them hard work and challenges.
Treat them as persons.
As we walk this journey together, we are reminded of Charlotte Mason's words about education:
Children make large demands upon us. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. Thou hast set my feet in a large room; should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking--the strain would be too great--but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. We cannot give the children these interests... The question is not--how much does the youth know when he has finished his education--but how much does he care? and about how many orders? (School Education, page 171).
Ginnie Wilcox, Head of School