CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The state Department of Education is launching an initiative to support middle school education in West Virginia.
The initiative is called “West Virginia Middle Schools: Bridging the Future” and focuses on students in grades 6-through-8. Two state education officials, Dr. Amon Gilliam and Dr. Kelly Massinople, addressed the West Virginia Board of Education at its July meeting to detail the initiative.
Gilliam, an assistant superintendent in the education department’s Division of Instruction and Support, said the initiative is about furthering success West Virginia is seeing in its elementary schools. He said middle school is a vital transition period for young West Virginians as they move toward high school.
“Between the ages of 12 to 15, a lot of biological changes are taking place that affect students socially, physically, and mentally,” Gilliam explained. “These changes play a significant role in their decision making, motivation, behavior, and interests.”
State Superintendent of Schools Michele Blatt said this has been a main priority over the past year. She mentioned the STRIVE initiative — Strengthened behavior response through Targeted assistance to promote Regular attendance, Increased achievement, Validated practices and Empowered support teams — has found middle school to be an important time period as well.
“As we went out and our STRIVE leaders, our retired superintendents met with superintendents and their teams across the state,” Blatt said. “Middle school is an area that not only does the data show that we want to do better, but we also heard that we need a lot of additional support and professional learning for our teachers in that area as well.”
Gilliam said the WVDE has assembled a team for the initiative, all of whom have an understanding and experience at middle schools. He said there’s a middle school conference coming up on July 29 as well. The conference will include “engaging and targeted sessions” to assist educators, he said.
Massinople, an academic support coordinator for the WVDE, said the initiative will officially launch at the July 29 conference. She said it’s been a multi-month process to bring the initiative together, bringing together a diverse group of people passionate about middle school education.
“Currently we have a little bit over 350 educators that are registered for the conference,” Massinople said. “The conference will focus on key evidence-based practices that we know support successful learning and development of adolescents.”
Massinople said the educators at the conference will get to reflect on their own teaching styles in the middle school setting, assessing what has and hasn’t been successful.
She said the conference will provide those educators with tips and tricks that they can apply to their teaching. The work doesn’t end with the conference, she said, in fact it’s quite the opposite.
“Because we know the conference is only the start, we are working on a variety of supports that include administrator-focused and teacher newsletters to keep our educators up to date,” Massinople said. “A series of webinars on professional learning communities, quality assessment practices, and effective teaming and collaboration as just a couple of those that we’re doing.”
Massinople noted the WVDE has established an advisory team for the initiative as well, one that will provide feedback throughout the process. She said the team is almost evenly split between administrators and teachers, making sure to hear from both groups. There are also some administrators from “exemplary practice” schools in the state on the team to bring successful tips to the table, she said.
There’s a work group that will be started in the next couple of months as well, Massinople said, to help create career exploration lessons. She said those lessons will be aligned with English, Math, Science, and Social Studies standards in West Virginia. The hope, she said, is that it could become a great interdisciplinary resource for teachers.
Also, Gilliam said a group of educators from West Virginia will travel to the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta this summer. The academy is a middle school, launched by award-winning educator Ron Clark, that promotes unique teaching styles to help students reach their full potential.
“This initiative is a strong step toward empowering and supporting middle school educators to sharpen their skills and to reach and build upon their potential,” Gilliam said. “We will do this by focusing on the three evidence-based standard areas of foundational, leadership. and instructional standards, as these are critical in developing and maintaining a successful and thriving school.”
In the end, Gilliam said, the initiative is all about supporting the future of the state — its students.
“Ultimately, we want every middle school student in West Virginia motivated to explore, question, grow, and learn,” Gilliam said. “A supportive environment and bridging the future will help educators along that journey.”