by Elizabeth Darling
Jordan and its counterpart, Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School, are "still a project under construction," according to Palo Alto Unified School District board member Susie Richardson.
"When you look at success, it has to be taken in the context (that) we are still moving forward," she said.
Richardson was one of many school officials and middle school administrators who gathered recently for a progress report on the city's middle schools. The meeting marked the three-year anniversary of when Jordan Middle School reopened and Palo Alto substantially redefined its concept of middle school goals. In 1991, Richardson chaired a key committee that helped bring about the reopening of Jordan and other changes.
"We have schools that really do meet the needs of early adolescents," said Joy Addison, principal of Jane Lathrop Stanford (JLS). "(But) we do bear the burden of being caught in the middle. We need to work with our colleagues at elementary and high school," Addison said. "We haven't done nearly enough of that."
Three years ago, the middle school goals were considered revolutionary and thus the restructuring process was slow, involving many people. The district went from one middle school with 1,100 students to two, reopening Jordan after six years.
Modeled closely after suggested reforms outlined in a state report called "Caught in the Middle," the two schools were reorganized to help students connect better with teachers, and to develop emotionally and physically as they entered early adolescence.
The sixth grade was moved from the elementary to the middle school, and educators strove to make JLS and Jordan more nurturing for students, and to make learning more exciting by using more hands-on curriculum and fewer textbooks. Not only did the student bodies of each campus look different, but the classrooms themselves, down to their white marker boards, were on the cutting edge of a new approach to teaching.
"This is the first time that we started a planning process by looking at a group of kids and saying, `What are the characteristics of these kids and what can we do to best meet their needs?'" said Richardson. "We came to the conclusion that the needs of middle school kids weren't being met."
Next month, the first class of Palo Alto students to start middle school in sixth grade will graduate to high school.
School administrators, teachers and parents acknowledge that there is still much to do to make the middle schools work better.
Middle schools have a unique burden in that they are expected to ensure a smooth transition between elementary and middle school, and then once again between middle and high school.
There are several "dilemmas" the middle schools face, Addison said. In curriculum, the schools must conform to prescribed frameworks, while at the same time find ways to integrate subjects and allow flexibility. Equity versus excellence is another dilemma Addison identified. The middle schools have moved more toward mixing students with different ability levels in one classroom.
"We are really committed to heterogeneous classrooms," she said. "That involves tremendous change in how we teach," she said, and it often doesn't look like school parents may have attended. "There aren't textbooks, and there aren't pages of neat, progressive work. We have a real parent education challenge on our hands too."
Sixth graders have been eased into middle school by spending their mornings with teams of teachers before having electives in the afternoons. Team teaching also enables teachers to get to know students better and solve problems together.
An "advisory" program designed to ensure that each child meets with a teacher on a regular basis to talk about school or personal concerns has met with limited success. A survey of teachers and students found that about one-third of the staff and about one-third of the students at Jordan thought it was working. Many felt that too much time was spent on announcements and not enough on interpersonal issues. Others liked it just fine.
"I felt like I was one anonymous kid except for advisory. I got to see (the teacher) for all three years," said Jordan eighth grader Peter Mitchell.
However, not everyone got as much out of their advisory class, according to some students.
Part of the issue is that the schools are larger than they were projected to be three years ago, with more than 900 students at each school when approximately 800 were expected. Jordan's student body has increased by 23 percent since it opened in 1991. Teachers' time is often spread thin. Of a long list of "critical issues and needs" in the written "state of the school" report presented to the school board, only two did not deal with scheduling or time issues.
Also, in the three years since the schools opened, many new parents have come in who were not involved in the initial planning.
"I'm not sure how good a job we all have done at keeping alive the collaboration," said school board member Julie Jerome.
"I think you need to involve even fourth grade parents," said Kate Feinstein, a fourth grade parent who also had older children and was involved in the middle school planning.
Feinstein has a unique perspective, because she also had middle school children before Jordan reopened, when the only middle school in town had 1,100 students. "It was like a high school for little kids," she recalls. And that was one of the reasons she wanted to see a three-year middle school.
Bigger schools, Feinstein said, do allow for more electives and more opportunities, but there needs to be more attention paid to having teachers get to know children. "It's already getting really big. The challenge is to make smallness out of bigness."
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