Recommendations for Transforming Middle Grade Schools

I thought the recommendations for transforming middle grade schools in Chapter 10 was quite interesting. While all of the suggestions were good ones, I highly doubt these will ever all be achieved in a middle school. As for the first recommendation, "Create small communities for learning...," this is a difficult thing to achieve. It costs money to put students in smaller learning communities. You need more classrooms, more teachers, and more resources in general. Money is a huge issue in school districts. Right now most districts try to cram as many kids into a classroom as they can. So I don't see that one changing anytime soon. Another money-related suggestion is "Improve academic performance through fostering the health and fitness of young adolescents, by providing a health coordinator in every middle grade school..." Once again, I doubt any district would approve this, especially when there are already phy. ed. teachers in the school. Another issue I foresee in these recommendations is the one that says, "Empower teachers and administrators to make decisions about the experiences of middle grad students through creative control by teachers over the instructional program..." From what I have seen through student teaching, administrators do not like to give teachers much power or creative license. Finally, the suggestion I found most important is "Staff middle grade schools with teachers who are expert at teaching young adolescents." I may be wrong, but I don't think there is really a specific program for those who want to be primarily middle school educators. Most people who go into the early adolescent - adolescent program ultimately want to teach high school. I feel like those who end up in middle schools end up there by default. This may lead to a low quality of middle school educators. I think there needs to be a program specifically geared to those who want to be middle school educators. They can focus more on the issues facing young adolescents and how to best educate this age group. All in all, I found these recommendations to be extremely insightful, but maybe not very attainable.