This article delineates the success of a leadership plan that one middle school in Center Point, Alabama implemented as a response to a Comprehensive School Improvement (CSI) designation due to performing in the bottom 5% of all middle schools across the state. School leadership, in partnership with coaching from Studer Education, worked…

Arming teachers remains a divisive issue in the United States. Since one goal of this policy is to improve perceptions of safety, it is important to understand how arming teachers impacts students. Using survey data from six Midwestern school districts, we apply Ferraro's risk assessment model to explore how individual and school conditions impact…

This study seeks to share teachers' and principals' voices from middle schools in the Southeastern United States who are attempting to help their students achieve academic success. Obtaining a snapshot of middle schools in the Southeastern United States provides opportunities to recognize trends and identify challenges about the current…

School connectedness is associated with a broad range of positive academic and mental health outcomes. A dimension of school connectedness, student-teacher connectedness, is related to improved academic progress and may be an important protective factor against risk-taking behaviors, particularly for low-income students and for those with limited…

New Mexico is home to more than 28 cultures and ethnicities that deserve to be recognized, celebrated, respected, and accepted (NMDCA, 2019). In 2022, 318,613 students enrolled in New Mexico public schools, with the demographics breakdown of 22% of students reported as White, 61% Hispanic, 9% American Indian, 1% African American, 1% Asian, and 2%…

This study investigated the effectiveness of an intervention designed to support sixth-grade Spanish-speaking English as Additional Language (EAL) learners and their English proficient classmates in acquiring pre-algebra knowledge and skills and associated academic vocabulary. The sample consisted of 88 EAL learners and their 139 English…

Educational learning improvement is an important stage of a student's informative experience and is essential for teachers to provide their students with strategies that motivate them to learn. The overview discussed methods used by teachers who taught English to improve learning in middle school. This exploration in providing incentives could…

This study investigated what 12 prospective mathematics teachers (PTs) in a middle school mathematics method course reported during a video-stimulated recall interview about their experiences when they were engaged in a doing math task that yielded an Opportunity for Productive Struggle (OPS). We investigated their reported feelings during the…

Family-school partnership interventions can effectively address behavioral concerns in students (Smith et al., 2020). However, little is known about factors impacting successful delivery of behavioral strategies by parents and teachers in the context of such interventions, particularly for adolescent populations. This study used a mixed methods…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between teacher absenteeism and student achievement on the TNReady achievement test in the Southeast region. The three instruments used in this study were the TNReady achievement test results from 2018-2019, teacher absentee data provided by the local school district, and survey answers…

This study explores how the ideology of racial individualism--which prioritizes an understanding of racism as individual wrongdoing--becomes embedded in the curriculum and discourse of the middle school social studies classroom and becomes embedded in the curriculum and discourse of the middle school social studies classroom to shape the racial…

In March 2020, 90% of schools shut down due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Many schools responded by quickly moving classes online into a period of what has been called emergency remote learning (ERL). The problem addressed in this research study is the lack of engagement among middle-school students due to the home environment during emergency remote…

Middle school is about the growth, potential, and change of adolescents. Students at the middle school age level, generally ages 10 to 14, struggle with the dynamics of making the transitions from recess and active learning in elementary school to multiple teachers, bigger workloads and campuses, and larger student populations (Alexander et al.,…

The impact of COVID-19 on education involved an abrupt switch from face-to-face instruction toward emergency remote teaching/learning. In public schools, teachers and students were required to undertake language education using virtual learning platforms. This shift created certain problems for both teachers and students. This qualitative research…

This case-study examines how first-year educators renegotiated their teacher identities as they transitioned from pre-service teachers (PSTs) to professionals. Both participants graduated from the same Teacher Education Program (TEP) and conducted their student internship in the same school as their first year of teaching. The results of this…