At Mayfield Middle School, in order to create personalized and more meaningful learning experiences for the students, it was realized that a typical, traditional schedule was not always conducive to the types of learning experiences teachers wanted to create. Teachers had great ideas for projects and practices that would incorporate more critical…

For too long, the middle grades have been racked by a mistaken narrative that this age group is simply too difficult, or that it's a time in life when one must simply endure rather than thrive. The Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE) rejects that narrative. It is time for a unified policy agenda in support of the middle grades. This…

Action research is an evidence-based practice that is highly applicable to middle school teaching and learning. Middle school teachers can empower themselves and their students by participating in immersive, meaningful activities that are designed to improve educational outcomes. Action research is purposeful and beneficial for teachers, students,…

Mental health challenges are on the rise among today's youth. Recent reports have noted an acute and significant need for school-based mental health education and supportive interventions for children and adolescents. Among these approaches, a growing focus has centered on improving students' mental health literacy (MHL) as a foundational…

Middle schools are increasingly diverse places where students see and interact with peers different from themselves. However, students with and without intellectual disability (ID) have few opportunities to interact--they are together infrequently within extracurricular settings and the classroom. As such, students with ID are on the margins of…

In spring 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic collided with a national reckoning on racial injustice and ruptured our country's core. The effects of this collision necessitated something other than business as usual in school leadership: it called for the kind of courageous leadership rooted in equity and justice we describe in this paper. In this…

Researchers and practitioners in fields such as psychology and social work increasingly recognize the significant need for schools, in general, to be sites for delivery of trauma-informed practices. Given the extent and nature of trauma exposure in our schools, we believe it is critical that the primary individual supporting trauma-informed…

In a successful middle school, school counselors support young adolescents' academic progress and personal wellbeing through a variety of methods. Classroom instruction, or classroom guidance, offers one method of providing such support and features the benefit of allowing middle grades school counselors to reach all students in their schools.…

This article describes the development of an innovative clinically rich STEM middle school residency program, one with emphasis in middle grades mathematics program and another in middle grades science aimed to cultivate responsive middle School STEM teachers who are prepared to teach and reach the next generation of young adolescent learners. In…

This article describes how preservice teachers (and one inservice teacher) gained content knowledge and pedagogical skills through reading a documentary novel, a genre that combines fictional storytelling with historical primary sources. Preservice teachers read the novel as a required text in a site-based undergraduate course focused on…

This article introduces a new middle grades research agenda recently developed by the Middle Level Educational Research Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). The importance of current research and its impact and influence on the local and national policy are discussed, followed by brief descriptions of the…

A key challenge for 21st-century schools, families, and communities is to develop knowledgeable, responsible, and caring students who are able to work well with others from diverse backgrounds in socially and emotionally skilled ways. This case study tells the story of one middle school's journey through the implementation of a social and…

As middle grades teacher educators, we carry a responsibility to prepare pre-service teachers for the realities of practice ahead in their real-world classrooms. Similarly, middle school instructional coaches and specialists support in-service practitioners within the authentic context of their real world, real time experiences as teachers. In the…

Although middle grades proponents call for specialist teacher preparation, and often herald student voice as critical to successful middle grades programs, young adolescents are rarely provided a role in teacher education. In this article, we explore the potential of student involvement in middle grades teacher education. We first briefly examine…

The United States, in less than 50 years, has gone from legal segregation and exclusion of students with disabilities in schools to an emphasis on inclusion in the least restrictive environments based on individual student needs. The United States has made great strides in the physical inclusion of students with disabilities, but work is still…