It’s never too early to start achieving your goals! Get started on the road to success with this unique guide to middle school and beyond—brought to you by FranklinCovey, the company behind the 7 Habits series and The Leader in Me. Middle school is full of changes—maybe it’s a new, bigger school, maybe it’s friendships starting to get more complicated, or maybe it’s a combination of a lot of things. But these changes don’t have to be bad, in fact they could be the best thing for us—because when things start to change we have the opportunity to grow. That’s why even though middle schoolers have a ton of other things going on, middle school is the perfect time for them to start altering their habits and goals for their future success. Sure it might sound a little scary, but with a little help it can also be exciting! Framed as twelve conversations to start having, rather than checklists or rules, this unique guide helps students start thinking about what they want their futures to look like and readying themselves to achieve those goals. In The Middle School Student’s Guide to Academic Success, portions of which were previously published as Beat the Middle, authors Blake and Bo Nemelka offer tried and true advice, opportunities for reflection and action that middle schoolers can tailor to their individual goals and interests, and ways for parents and guardians to help them along the way. Beginning with topics students can get started on now—like setting goals, improving your GPA, working on time management skills, and balancing extracurricular activities—and moving forward to future subjects including college applications, scholarships, and money management—this book is the ultimate guide to helping readers become not only successful middle schoolers, but successful people.

Young teens undergo multiple changes that seem to set them apart from other students. But do middle schools actually meet their special needs? The authors describe some of the challenges and offer ways to tackle them, such as reassessing the organization of grades K-12; specifically assisting the students most in need; finding ways to prevent disciplinary problems; and helping parents understand how they can help their children learn at home.

A comprehensive look at the promise and potential of online learning In our digital age, students have dramatically new learning needs and must be prepared for the idea economy of the future. In Getting Smart, well-known global education expert Tom Vander Ark examines the facets of educational innovation in the United States and abroad. Vander Ark makes a convincing case for a blend of online and onsite learning, shares inspiring stories of schools and programs that effectively offer "personal digital learning" opportunities, and discusses what we need to do to remake our schools into "smart schools." Examines the innovation-driven world, discusses how to combine online and onsite learning, and reviews "smart tools" for learning Investigates the lives of learning professionals, outlines the new employment bargain, examines online universities and "smart schools" Makes the case for smart capital, advocates for policies that create better learning, studies smart cultures

A counselor and popular Washington Post contributor offers a new take on grades 6-8 as a distinct developmental phase--and the perfect time to set up kids to thrive. Middle school is its own important, distinct territory, and yet it's either written off as an uncomfortable rite of passage or lumped in with other developmental phases. Based on her many years working in schools, professional counselor Phyllis Fagell sees these years instead as a critical stage that parents can't afford to ignore (and though "middle school" includes different grades in various regions, Fagell maintains that the ages make more of a difference than the setting). Though the transition from childhood to adolescence can be tough for kids, this time of rapid physical, intellectual, moral, social, and emotional change is a unique opportunity to proactively build character and confidence. Fagell helps parents use the middle school years as a low-stakes training ground to teach kids the key skills they'll need to thrive now and in the future, including making good friend choices, negotiating conflict, regulating their own emotions, be their own advocates, and more. To answer parents' most common questions and struggles with middle school-aged children, Fagell combines her professional and personal expertise with stories and advice from prominent psychologists, doctors, parents, educators, school professionals, and middle schoolers themselves.

The only survival guide a middle school kid will ever need. It can be the best of times. It can be the worst of times, too. Middle school happens at that tumultuous time in life when one's not a teenager and not a little kid. Middle school means being a middle-aged kid. Expectations-from teachers, parents, friends, siblings-can all change dramatically, causing worry and concern even for the most laid-back student. The Middle School Survival Guide covers every issue, inside school and out, from the most trivial concerns to the most serious issues that middle school students face today. Arlene Erlbach has assembled a teen advisory board of 200 kids between fifth and tenth grade who give advice about topics from cracking a locker combination, to dealing with multiple teachers, to sex and dating.

"Student-directed activities help middle schoolers learn how to get organized, how grading is done, and how to develop good study skills."--Amazon.com

Declining academic performance, along with a growing apathy of students toward the value of education, demonstrates that students in the United States public education system do not recognize the value of a positive experience in middle schools. A plethora of research and writing has been done on elementary schools and secondary schools, but middle school education, as a whole, has been left behind. For this reason, there is the need for current research on all aspects and topics that may contribute to middle school student success. Promoting Positive Learning Experiences in Middle School Education focuses on the ideal conditions for maximizing student success and engagement in middle school education. The chapters take a deeper look into the modern tools, technologies, methods, and theories driving current research on middle school students, their teachers, their classroom environment, and their learning. Highlighting topics such as curriculum reform, instructional strategies and practices, effective teaching, and technology in the modern classroom, this book is ideally intended for middle school teachers, middle school administrators, and school district administrators, along with practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students interested in middle school education and student success.

A revolutionary new educational model that encourages educators to provide spaces for students to display their academic brilliance without sacrificing their identities Building on the ideas introduced in his New York Times best-selling book, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood, Christopher Emdin introduces an alternative educational model that will help students (and teachers) celebrate ratchet identity in the classroom. Ratchetdemic advocates for a new kind of student identity—one that bridges the seemingly disparate worlds of the ivory tower and the urban classroom. Because modern schooling often centers whiteness, Emdin argues, it dismisses ratchet identity (the embodying of “negative” characteristics associated with lowbrow culture, often thought to be possessed by people of a particular ethnic, racial, or socioeconomic status) as anti-intellectual and punishes young people for straying from these alleged “academic norms,” leaving young people in classrooms frustrated and uninspired. These deviations, Emdin explains, include so-called “disruptive behavior” and a celebration of hip-hop music and culture. Emdin argues that being “ratchetdemic,” or both ratchet and academic (like having rap battles about science, for example), can empower students to embrace themselves, their backgrounds, and their education as parts of a whole, not disparate identities. This means celebrating protest, disrupting the status quo, and reclaiming the genius of youth in the classroom.

This must-have resource for middle school educators has been newly updated and improved to include current research. Each module includes: an overview, findings from published literature, important information summarized and made accessible in a list format, reproducible activity pages for using with students, and a wrap-up, Reflect & Review, that allows educators to connect the new information to their specific situation. This comprehensive resource is organized for its ease of use in workshops, in-service programs, and classrooms!