1. The middle school student represents every gender, race, ethnicity, and learning style. Every student posesses a unique perosnality, background history, family and aspirations; therefore, requires a teaching approach that integrates and reaches all unique qualities represented in the classroom.
2. Educators in middle schools encounter students who continuously undergo physical, intellectual, emotional, social and character development changes. This time of life, according to David Strahan and etc., is called "Stressful and Stormy." Therefore, it is important to evaluate and understand each student individually and reflect their needs through meaningful relationships and differentiation of instruction.
3. One of my favorite quotes is written by William and johnson (found in "Introduction to middle school") and states the following: "Young adolescents are child-like and adult-like, mature and immature, sensitive and unaware, seekers of independence and clingers to dependence, concrete and ideological, interested and detached. Sometimes, all these characteristics are evident within a single individual and within a brief span of time. Adolescents are in a state of transition from a more predictable, prescribed, limisted, and familiar place in the world to one less familiar, more unpredictable, more self-directed, and fuzzier in its boundaries." Therefore, every teacher who encounters middle school students should consider such individual characteristic and reflect the same through instruction.
Williamson & Johnson, 1998, p.21 Reference: Powell, S. D. (2011). Introduction To Middle School (2nd ed.).Boston, MA, Belmont Abbey College.