Episode 1.16 Ask a Teacher Part 1 - The Middle School Mind

On this episode of The Middle School Mind podcast for tweens, we ask teachers questions. Son gets into the minds of middle school teachers to get their perspective on teaching middle school students.

This is a family affair as our today’s guests: Mom, Aunt and Cousin, join us on the show! Our guests bring plenty of teaching experience and bring unique perspectives on this show.

Mom has been a middle school teacher for 26 years while Aunt has been teaching middle school for 27 years. Cousin is new to education and has been teaching for one year.

We ask the teachers about:

What made the teachers pursue a career in education?
What’s it like to teach middle schoolers?

What is teaching middle schoolers like? One of our guests described it like herding cats. Check out this awesome YouTube video on Cat Herders! Courtesy of YouTube.

What are memorable moments when teaching preteens, tweens and teens?
How do teachers maintain a great classroom environment?
What teaching style works for you?
Is there a connection between how much homework you give and how much the students like the teachers?
We talk about how expectations have changed from elementary school to middle school

We play a Word Association game with our teachers!

See how our middle school teachers react to:

Summer school

Image showing summer school which gives kids additional learning opportunities and structure over summer break. — Summer school did not get a positive reaction from our guests! We all need time off! Image courtesy of edmentum.com’s blog.

Bullies

Image of a school bully physically harrassing another student while other students try to stop the action. — Boo to school bullies. Please just be kind to one another. Image courtesy of nobulliesallowed.org.

Dress codes

Grading papers

Educator shown grading assigned school work in her classroom. — Teachers enjoy grading papers almost as much as the students who are assigned the homework. Image courtesy of thoughtco.com.

Common Core

Educators have mixed feelings on the Common Core curriculum. Image courtesy of Council for Economic Education.

We loved making this Ask a Teacher episode because we got honest feedback from our family members who are also long-time teachers! Educators are dedicated to the students they teach and love to have fun and see them grow.

Thank you to our guests and to all the teachers who spend their time teaching kids! We will have our educators back on another episode because we had more questions

Thank you to all of our listeners!

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We also want to hear from you, our listeners! What kind of topics do you want to hear more about?

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For more episodes of The Middle School Mind podcast, check out our latest podcasts below

Bonus Episode: 1.1 Hello World! Relisten – The Middle School Mind

In this bonus episode of The ⁠Middle School Mind⁠ podcast, Father and Son take a listen back to our very first episode, Hello World when he was early in his 6th grade year as a fresh-faced middles schooler. It's a fun way to poke fun and reminisce about our time making the podcast. This is the final, final episode of The Middle School Mind podcast and thank you to all who were part of this amazing ride. For all you middle school kids out there listening to us. You can make your own podcast easily. You guys have amazing ideas and get your voices out there! — Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/themiddleschoolmind/support