November 30, 2023 Read Time:
Students
Picture this: A group of 7th graders stand at lab tables, preparing to mix test tubes of liquid together. Their faces light up as the liquids combine and transform from clear to white, and from water-thin to paste-thick. The volume in the room rises as 11- and 12-year-olds begin to excitedly unpack the science behind what they just observed.
Welcome to one moment in the middle of a typical day at Salem’s Collins Middle School Pilot Program. On Nov. 16 a group of educators and administrators got to see this experiment - and listen in on the follow up conversations - for themselves during a site visit to the pilot program for the Essex County Learning Community’s Reimagining Middle School Working Group. The school’s unique program is in its second year, with support from WPS. The pilot is a small learning community inside Collins Middle School focused on three main goals for students: connection, empowerment, and growth. Key features include:
- Community partnerships & off-campus learning: The pilot integrates community-based learning and field trips into the core experience with trips up to every week.
- Personalized learning and project-based learning: Math and ELA are designed to have more personalized pacing while science & social studies focus on hands-on, project-based learning and place-based learning.
- Design Studio: The pilot uses collaborative challenges to integrate creativity and design thinking into learning.
The educators visited math, science, and social students classrooms, and heard from students, faculty, and district leaders. Seventh and eighth grade students reflected on how their participation in the pilot has unlocked a new sense of community, belonging, and student agency. Faculty members shared that prior to joining the pilot they were feeling burnt out, ineffective, and unheard. The pilot provided them with a space that celebrated educator efficacy and a permission to embrace failure along the journey of innovation.
Superintendent Stephen Zrike recalled his early days in Salem, when he first became aware of the depth of the challenges facing the district’s middle schools. From his office he spent hours observing students “messing around” in the hallways and bathrooms and developed a clarity that middle school simply “wasn’t working” and students were clearly not engaged in learning. As a self-described “outcomes-oriented leader,” Zrike said he realized that data and metrics are not sufficient to truly improve middle school. Now, he said, he realizes that the right entry point for true redesign is a focus on the student experience.
At the conclusion of the three panel discussions, site visit participants were offered time to connect with one another to discuss a few reflective questions: (1) What did you see that you were inspired by today? (2) What surprised you? (3) What are you interested in learning more about? The conversations that followed were rich and dynamic, and participants shared a couple of poignant quotes that we would like to leave you with:
“I thought we faced different challenges in our small, rural community. Now I understand that the middle school challenges are a universal experience.”
“Maybe all districts should move their Superintendent’s office to be adjacent to a middle school bathroom! That would be a way to ensure we focus on reimagining our middle school experience!”
The Reimagining Middle School working group next convenes on Jan. 18 to engage in a visioning protocol for a new middle school experience. To learn more about the working group, see: Learning Agenda Spotlight: Reimagining Middle School.
