A Decade Later

Kaisha Dunne
Due: January 21st, 2010
Turning Point 2000

Chapter 1
Abstract: The chapter went over the eight Turning Points essentials: create smaller communities, core of common knowledge, organized to ensure success, that teachers and principals need to have a major responsibility and power, staff your school with expert teachers, promote good health, structural change, and it is crucial to get together and synthesize the lessons learned with most current research. Teen drugs and pregnancy are a continuous issue in middle school. As students are having sex younger and younger it becomes a more prominent issue within the middle school classroom. It points out that the less supportive middle schools are correlated with lowered self esteem.

Reflection:
I think that this is a great chapter that every middle school teacher and administrator should read and work on in their own schools. I think that the communities are a great idea. I had communities in the middle school that I went to and it went so smoothly. Portland High and Mt. Abrham also use something similar to communities where they have a set homeroom for all four years. Which isn’t exactly the same, but it makes the transition from community style school smoother.