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173 Conclusion Students do not necessarily lose ground when they transition to middle school, especially when their own resilient efforts are matched by a supportive, developmentally appropriate school environment (Eccles and Midgely, 1989; Carnegie Council on Early Adolescent Development, 1989; Dryfoos, 1990; Lipsitz, 1981). Most research participants thrived in middle school because they had resources on several levels working for them, including their remarkable ability to influence the tone and character of their own environments. Mountainview Regional Middle School has already integrated many of the suggestions made by the Carnegie Council on adolescent development: student and teacher teams provide smaller learning environments, each student is assigned an adult advisor, there is flexible scheduling, students are exposed to new opportunities, there is primarily heterogeneous grouping, teachers have community support, parents have access to information and ways to be involved in their child’s education at home and at school. Compared to other middle grades schools, Mountainview Middle School afforded students a good deal of autonomy and opportunities to connect in meaningful ways with school adults and their peers. These are strengths that require acknowledgment, support, and resources to be sustained. On the other hand, I came to question if students were afforded adequate opportunities for analytic thinking, social awareness, altruism, leadership, and dialogue on the issues most relevant in their lives. I did not witness facilitated discussions in which students were allowed to share their knowledge and opinions with each other. There were many missed opportunities to integrate diversity awareness in the lessons of the day. For example, students viewing the film The Crucible were asked questions about the clothing, lifestyle, and religious views of the people of colonial America, but not asked to probe social class, gender, religious diversity, and the ways Arthur Miller’s story might have relevance today. On a questionnaire administered at the end of seventh grade, I asked students to say whether they got too little, too much, or just right amounts of intellectual challenge, homework, responsibility at school, responsibility at home, freedom at school, freedom at home, classroom worksheets, group work in school, hands-on work, teacher talking, discipline , structure/organization, time on task, and free time. Two-thirds of the students from both communities said “just right” for a majority of the fourteen areas they were asked to judge. Most students said that intellectual challenge, responsibility at school, time on task, and structure/organization were “just right.” Six students from Lakeview and two from Hillside-Two Rivers felt that there was not enough intellectual challenge. One Lakeview student commented , “I have been getting very good grades and usually the challenge is just right but sometimes it’s too easy.” Students were evenly split on homework and hands-on work. Another area of agreement was in the amount of teacher talking: half of the students from Lakeview and three-quarters of the Hillside-Two Rivers students said that there was “too much” of it. The amount of free time elicited an overwhelming majority response of “too little,” but three students from each community thought it was “just right.” The most discrepant answers were responding to school discipline. Lakeview students more often felt that discipline was too much; HillsideTwo Rivers students more often thought that discipline was too little or just right. Several students commented on what they perceived to be the irregular application of discipline. One student made the interesting observation that discipline was “too little for some and too much for others.” Some of the differences in student answers seemed to reflect town culture and values. For example, more students from Lakeview were unhappy with the amount of freedom they had in the seventh grade, and more students from Hillside-Two Rivers said there was too little group work. Fewer students from Lakeview found that they received the right amount of intellectual challenge, but fewer students from Hillside-Two Rivers were pleased with school structure. One girl from Two Rivers commented, “I love learning but faculty/structure are all wrong.” When asked to explain why they liked or disliked the middle school, students from both communities liked school because it was a place to see friends. “I don’t like the work but I like seeing friends,” was a comment several students made. Others felt positively about school for the education they were getting: “I learn what I need for the rest of my life; I love doing good and being with my friends,” and “It gives me a place to vent my intellect...

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