Classes help prepare for the future

Emmalee Rathmann
rathmaea@uwec.edu

The bell rings and the halls of Northstar Middle School resemble a circus for the next five minutes.  Lockers slam and books are scuffled. Students hurry to their classes between the buzz of hallway conversations with friends.  

           An eighth grader with books in hand feels out her desk, desperately trying to see over the stack of books.  The top book begins to slip and as she makes her grab for the book, the whole pile hits the floor with a thud. 

She restacks the books on her desk as she prepares for third hour in Ms. Kaia Simon Power’s English class.

“They are expecting us to do so much more, and that is why there is a lot more stress in the world today,” Northstar eighth grader Cory Gunderson said.     

And Gunderson has the proof.  Some of his math homework, he says, covers topics his parents didn’t tackle until they were seniors in high school.

“They are preparing us too well,” he said.

Middle school curriculum is changing and students, teachers and parents are responding with various opinions.

Stacy Basting, the director of curriculum for the Eau Claire School District, said over the last five years there have been changes, especially in math.  The Eau Claire School District curriculum is based on research from a national scale and the district found some students were not learning using traditional ways, she said.

Now there are different ways students can learn math, Basting said. Students at the middle school level have two choices for their math classes, accelerated or the connective math program, she said.  

Basting also said the materials are changing.  Students are now setting up problems, she said, rather then just learning from blackboard or a textbook. The new materials are hands-on tools for students and not just textbooks, she said.

“We teach it differently so that all students can learn math and not just those who are naturally good at it,” she added.

Noah Williams is 14 and a ninth grader at Memorial High School.  He has just left South Middle School.  He said there are a lot of accelerated classes he took in middle school that have carried over into his high school classes. 

Noah said even though he is in accelerated classes there are classes on the other end of the spectrum that help other students. 

“As the curriculum changes, I think they are trying to modify it to every students needs as much as they can,” Noah said.

South Middle School’s principal John Wallace said he agrees with the changes in curriculum. 

“Sometimes we pigeon holed our learning techniques,” he said. “We started to understand that broadcasting information, one size fits all, was not working.”

One major change, Wallace said, is there is detailed dialogue with students about what students should learn, and students have a better understanding of what the expectations are.

Wallace said the goal of the curriculum is to give the students basic core knowledge for them to build on. 

“The idea in middle school is exposure,” Wallace said.

Annis Williams, Noah’s mother, and reading coordinator at Memorial High school agreed.

“They should be exposed to so many things,” she said. 

Students may not know their passions if they do not have the opportunities to be exposed to different things, she said.  Middle school is the time for those opportunities, she says. Even if students are forced to take electives they might not like, those opportunities may not be available, she added.

Wallace said another change at the middle school level is there is a focus on careers.  The effort is to try and have students identify themselves and determine their goals, he said.

There is a focus of careers in the middle school where they learn about jobs, South Middle School eighth grade counselor Craig Hinden said. 

“There is a push to have more career education in the seventh and eighth grade,” he says.  “This is a response to parents and society.”

Anneli Williams, Noah’s sister, has just begun her middle school experience as a sixth grader at South Middle School.  She said that even last year in fifth grade she had some career exploration.    

 “I think there is a push to go on beyond high school to get some further education, whether it’s college, in this society today there is a need for further training,” Williams said.

“The standard right now is that if you don’t go to college you are a failure,” Hinden said. 

He said there needs to be a better job of letting students know what is out there.

Right now tech schools and associates degrees are the largest growing fields, he added.  

“The stratification is becoming more pronounced and as it becomes more pronounced, the education problems are going to be more pronounced as well,” she said.

Gunderson said he feels schools promote college as the only way to success.  He disagrees with this because it depends on how a person defines success. 

The Eau Claire Area School District is the eighth largest in Wisconsin and has an enrollment of approximately 10,400 students.

The Wisconsin Department of Instruction has specific content, performance and proficiency standards set for schools.

Photo By: Emmalee Rathmann

Northstar Middle School eighth-grade students Blake Cope and Ma Lor stand in one of the Northstar hallways. Lor said she discusses her future college plans with her parents.

Listen to audio clips from interviews in this story:

Kaia Simon Power
Listen to the Northstar Middle School teacher talk about her expectations about Northstar students and college.

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