Starting Some Educational Fire

So I actually finished reading Fires in the Middle School Bathroom a few weeks ago; therefore, this post will not be so much about the content but how I'm going to apply it. To give some stylistic background, the book is written as more of a conversation between students and teachers. Author Karen Cushman interweaves quotes from interviews with a variety of middle school students with advice and strategies.

The book referred a lot to behavior management and how to motivate students in the middle school setting. I have never been one to relate well to students in that pre-teen range. This book definitely gave me some new perspectives about the sway of social relationships as well as balancing between responsibility and support.

Ideas I got from this book:

- reworking incentive systems to make it more "real world" to students

- striving to be more consistent in actions toward students

- allowing for more collaborative work between students

Reading this book came at an opportune time because we were going to our Summer Institute conference for Citizen Schools to begin planning for next year. These two things together have me feeling pretty confident about when the students start back with us on September 13.