Voices from the Middle - Volume 24, Issue 1, 2016

Educator Kylene Beers extends a conversation from the 2015 NCTE Annual Convention with advice for early-career teachers working to balance the mandated curriculum and the desire to serve the students. The key is learning to be an advocate.

Voices from the Middle editors facilitate a conversation between NCTE Executive Director Emily Kirkpatrick and President-Elect and 2016 Annual Convention Chair Susan Houser about what to expect at the upcoming 2016 NCTE Annual Convention and what advocacy means to them.

For the YA Voices feature, young adult authors, in their own voices and words, share what’s on their minds and in their hearts related to young adults and the power of YA novels. This month, New York Times bestselling author Lynda Mullaly Hunt explores the many specific ways that we, as teachers, can impact the lives and futures of children and the importance of seeing the child before the student. She also discusses the specific teachers who changed her life as a kid and how one of them became the inspiration for her second novel, Fish in a Tree.

How might teachers help revise the dismissive public narrative about education? Educators who have participated in advocacy workshops share specific strategies for making their voices heard and creating change in their own school communities. As they learn how to create change in smart, savvy, and safe ways, these teachers now view advocacy as part of a new professional stance.

How might teachers help revise the dismissive public narrative about education? Educators who have participated in advocacy workshops share specific strategies for making their voices heard and creating change in their own school communities. As they learn how to create change in smart, savvy, and safe ways, these teachers now view advocacy as part of a new professional stance.

The New Voices column explores the struggles, successes, and dreams of early-career middle level educators, from preservice through sixth year. This inaugural column introduces some of those voices and point to the core reason to be part of the teaching profession: the students.

This article explains how a middle school ELA teacher used Christopher Paul Curtis’s Bud, Not Buddy to engage students in a research project on Flint, Michigan's water crisis. The article offers insights into the capabilities of middle school students by highlighting their work and their voices. The students in this classroom displayed an ability to demonstrate critical perspectives and genuine empathy, pose challenging questions, make thoughtful connections between their research and the novel, and employ complicated rhetorical strategies to convey their idea, all of which challenge the oftentimes low expectations of young students, especially students-of-color and low-income students.

Linda Rief crafts this column, writing alongside her middle school students, to show the beauty and possibilities that lie within the words our students use to make sense of their world. This month, Rief points out the connection between writing and memory and how teachers can help students understand their lives through storytelling.

We argue in this space that the public narrative surrounding the current state of education in the United Stated doesn’t have to be negative. We believe fervently that if

Under current political conditions, classroom teachers may feel undervalued and isolated, as they attempt to incorporate best practices. This article invites middle level educators to share stories from the classroom in a public forum, like a blog, where those committed to advocacy and effective ELA instruction can empathize, strategize, and celebrate the excellent work of students and teachers. Speaking back to policy through online outlets driven by narrative and supported by research can effectively inform stakeholders and may serve as an avenue to affect change.

Jeff Anderson, author and professional learning guru, reveals in this conversation his own writing process and life commitment to literature, teachers, readers, and writers

Each issue will include a special message from members of the Middle Level Section. This issue includes Section Chair Matthew Skillen’s preview of what the 2016 NCTE Annual Convention has in store for those interested in Middle Level matters.