Chapter 17: The Truth About Middle School Students

I think it is so cool what this teacher did with the paper on his wall for students to write down whatever they want to say. I hope to try this for my students someday. I think it gives them a chance to say something, even if they don’t want to say in out loud in front of classmates, or if they have trouble even speaking to me. By letting students write anything they want down, I feel that as this chapter showed us, these students can teach us just how much they know, we can learn to know our students better (which will help us teach them better) and I feel that this is a place where students could discreetly inform me of something that may be bothering them. For example: one of the responses in our book for a student was “I’m Marvin and I’m depressed.” This is a possible way that I could be informed that a student needs help before they do anything rash. This student may have just been joking around, or this may have been their way of saying “help” to their teacher. If this happened to me, I would see this as an opportunity to observe this student more and get them help or talk to them if I really thought something was wrong. Over all, I loved the remarks from students in this book. I think that if I did this myself it would allow not just an opportunity for me to learn about my students and this age group, but some of their responses could make me think deep of their inspirational saying that they posted and laugh at their humor.