Middle School: Issues now and what may be to come

Grace Speir, Aidan Hollis & Trenton Cox

April 4, 2024

Middle school is a challenging period of life. From body changes, to maturity levels, to different hormones and emotions. But is what’s happening in schools across the country putting a bigger impact on this challenging experience? 

Ever since COVID-19 there have been specific circumstances that have affected students, for example teacher shortages. Even before the pandemic this was a well known issue. But now more than ever it’s become more of a problem. 

Lisa Woodel, a math teacher at Azalea Middle School, said, “Making a difference to students is my favorite part of my job.” This is important for teachers because students are going through a lot during middle school. There are many changes and different impacts on and in their lives. 

Kids have been having to deal with teachers leaving mid year. They have been stuck with either no teacher, or something called a long-term substitute. 

A long-term substitute can do one of two things-either be almost like the teacher and have access to grading and set up the lesson plans for each day, or just come in with the teacher’s notes and just help fill the void. 

This doesn’t seem that bad right? “But a long-term substitute has to stay in a different class every 10 days. So as soon as everything starts going smoothly, the subs have to switch,” Woodel said. 

There are many reasons for teachers leaving. For example, Mrs. Woodel states, “Number one, they hired people who didn’t have a teaching degree. I don't think they realized what it was.”

So districts across America are hiring people who are still in the process of getting their degree, because they are in such need of staffing. She says, “And when you pop in right after graduation, it’s a shocker.” 

But teachers aren’t the only type of staff schools are lacking. Positions like counselors, principals, and IAs (teaching assistants) are all lacking. 

In addition to that, when something wrong goes on in the classroom or anything like that, people talk about it to solve it days later. Not when it needs to be discussed. 

“I wish there was more time for restorative meetings,” Woodel said. She believes it’s more helpful to address the issue right away and not days later. 

Furthermore, staff shortages aren’t the only issue. Students aren’t passing classes, which doesn’t seem like an issue but across “America 62% of middle schoolers are failing one or more classes, “ says Chris Papst, news reporter at Fox News.  

In high school and higher education when you fail a class, you have to retake it to earn the credit. Meaning if middle schoolers aren’t learning that or fail a majority of their classes they won’t be at the right level when they reach high school. 

There iswere also a lot of trouble with trying to find staff, to be present to where everyone has help including the people that already get the help they need or the students that need the help so that they can pass their courses. 

Some districts and schools don’t let that happen. Woodel stated, “Another school I worked at had ‘credit recovery’ in middle school. So if you had two quarters that you failed something you did not get your elective. You had to go to a study hall and whatever class you didn’t pass they gave you a packet of everything you didn’t pass and you had to do it. “ 

This is a great solution. It helps teach students how further education is. 

The school buses are another issue that a majority of students don’t like, the bus drivers would have problems with people and target them whenever they had done something wrong.

The bus drivers didn’t give help to those that couldn’t do certain things such as, finding the right bus or having more time before the busses leave. They also didn’t always give instructions before driving and there was an organization issue with grade levels. 

For example the back of the bus should be for the highschool students only, but younger students started sitting in the back as well and there was no stopping it.

This is an issue because the older students wouldn’t want to sit by the younger students, and it’s safer up front for the younger students if anything were to happen. It also gave the bus driver easier supervision of the younger children up front. And also the older students can get themselves to safety unlike the younger kids would. 

Technology is another major problem for students. In America, by the age of ten, 42% of kids have phones, the age of twelve it’s 71%, and by the age of fourteen it’s 91%. These are from a student survey done with PMC PubMed Central. 

Technology isn’t the only addiction students have. Drug abuse in schools has been increasing. 

Drugs in schools, Woodel says “used to start in high school but now it starts in middle school,” and it’s things like nicotine vapes, marijuanas, and even alcohol. 

More then over, 27% of students drop out due to non-medical drug abuse.

Grown ups in a child’s life should help them focus on his/her talents, and find activities that they enjoy. But the students may take this as very critical and not listen. That’s just a part of the hormone changes and maturity changes. This also has an impact on their confidence. 

There are so many things that impact students. Some good, some bad. Students' attitudes change throughout life, but when going through puberty hormones are different. 

Some students have trouble finding friends or people to hang out with, which is unfortunate Mrs. Woodel says, “School and life is hard, so if you can make a connection with somebody and help them and at least make their days better, it’ll help make the rest of the school better.”

When students have people they can get along with and hang out with they seem to do better. Which is great. 

Rebecca Vandermeulen, a writer for Teaching Tolerance said,  “At least 1,000 elementary schools across six-continents have installed something called a buddy bench.”

A buddy bench is a bench that is designed to help younger kids make friends, and if they make those friends in elementary school. They will hopefully have those friends through the rest of their education and maybe even for life. 

These are some of the hardest times in a student's life, so why are we letting all of these matters affect it even more? Some schools have programs to help solve these issues. Does yours?   

There are things that we can do in the future to help with these problems. The first one is we can improve the punishments for students who do these bad things. When we let the kids off with no punishment they will continue with their actions and continue getting in trouble. “You have to remember that you are a student and that you only have so much freedom and sometimes we take advantage of that,” Woodel said.

Hiring teachers without teaching degrees or without any knowledge of the subject also makes it hard to keep teachers or teach people. Long term substitute teachers that have no knowledge of the subject they have to teach also allow kids to have habits of bad behaviors and think that they can do that in other classes, which makes it hard for everyone to learn. Disruptions can make teaching harder for teachers to do because they have to deal with the disruptions.

Kids also having access to vapes, weed, alcohol, and drugs is also hard to deal with, especially when parents are the ones handing the things to their kids. When kids get addicted to these things at a young age, it can cause brain development problems and can cause violent actions such as fights to break out. Eventually, it can lead them to getting arrested or getting into gang activities. In the future, we can add security checks and search kids to make sure they don't have any illegal substances so they can't bring them into school.

The problem with fights is that the punishments for it have very little repercussions.You hardly get in any trouble for it. The staff doesn’t give any real punishments after a fight except for suspension or ISS (in school suspension) which doesn’t make the kids do any better.

Home life could also be a problem. Kids can act up at school because of parents treating them poorly or giving them illegal things. It could make the kids angry and let their anger out on other students or teachers. There are people that you can talk to about these things like your school counselor. They can find more help for you so you can get past those things. There is also problems with suicide and self harm which also can be helped by talking to a trustworthy adult or friend so they can tell an adult for you.

There are places that you can reach out for help with these things. One of them is NIDA for Teens or the drug abuse hotline 1-800-662-4357. 

There are helpful tips and group meetings that can help a kid get past addiction on drugs, alcohol, or other addictive substances. You can also reach out to a trustworthy adult or staff member at your school for help with problems. There also is the suicide hotline at 988. 

If you ever need help you can always ask for it. There are people that you can talk to for help and other things. 

Photo Credit: https://undark.org/2022/04/25/shaky-science-instruction-pervades-middle-school-classrooms/