Search Results for: "middle school"

Education research, MindShift Podcast

Sun Ra and Symphony in Middle School: OUSD Music Teacher Retires After Four Decades

Audio 5 Comments

Randy Porter has been teaching music in the Oakland Unified School District for 40 years, but he never set out to become a music teacher.

When he was younger, he had his sights set on a professional music career as a guitarist. Then in the 1980s, he landed a long-term substitute teaching role in two very different schools within the same district: Hillcrest, which is in an affluent neighborhood in the Oakland Hills, and Whittier in East Oakland, which was an epicenter of the crack cocaine epidemic.

The stark disparity between the two schools challenged Porter’s perception of his own impact on the students who weren’t receiving the education they deserved. So, he decided to continue on with his teaching career and eventually landed permanent teaching positions throughout the district.

Photo of students
A Randy Porter and a group of students at Cazadero Music Camp from in 2019 hangs on the wall in Porter’s classroom at Roosevelt Middle School in Oakland on March 14, 2026. (Martin do Nascimento/KQED)

These days at Roosevelt Middle School, his classroom stands out. When most middle schoolers are learning the classics, Porter’s students dive deep into the world of jazz, even going so far as to play avant-garde compositions.

“We’re the only middle school band in the Local Supercluster, as far as I know, certainly in the Milky Way galaxy, that specializes in the music of Sun Ra,” said Porter. Sun Ra was an American jazz composer and band leader, known for his experimental music style and cosmic philosophy.

Porter truly believes in the musical ability of kids of all ages. When he was Berkeley Symphony’s director of music education, he would have the orchestra perform pieces composed by 5-year-olds. And in years past, he’s created opportunities for his elementary and middle school students to record their own albums – something that he’s doing for his current middle school students.

Photo of newspaper clipping on a wall.
News clippings of Randy Porter from 1994 hang on the wall in Porter’s classroom at Roosevelt Middle School in Oakland on March 14, 2026. (Martin do Nascimento/KQED)

Porter’s the type of teacher who provides a safe space for his students to practice, hang out and have a snack after school. But this is Mr. Porter’s last year teaching because he is retiring.

At this juncture, the future of music classes in Oakland public schools is uncertain because of looming budget cuts across the district. Porter does not want arts education to fall to the wayside so he started a fundraiser for Roosevelt’s music program.

Man holds repaired cello
Randy Porter sets up a cello that he repaired with Gorilla Glue in his classroom at Roosevelt Middle School in Oakland on March 14, 2026. (Martin do Nascimento/KQED)

“[The arts] is an absolutely essential part of a kid’s development. Music, art, PE, manipulating things with your hands – this is how kids learn,” he said. “It’s how a lot of people learn. And when you take them away, a certain portion of the population gets a little bit left behind,” Porter said.

There are many benefits for students who study and play music. Research conducted by the University of Southern California’s Brain and Creativity Institute found that learning music enhances auditory pathways in the brain, which could help with other learning systems affected by these neural pathways like reading and language. In 2022, policy caught up with science when California voters passed Proposition 28, requiring the state to provide additional funding for music and arts programs for public schools.

For students like seventh grader Diego, Porter’s band class wasn’t a natural choice when he entered middle school. “It was so weird,” Diego said of jazz music. “I was like, ‘will people actually wanna listen to this?’ I didn’t even want to play it at first.” But, he marched forward.

“I hesitated and then I just stuck with it,” he said. “I like that there’s so many possibilities and different combinations so that you can make any different one.”

Another of Porter’s seventh grade students, Imani, who plays guitar, became interested in playing Sun Ra’s music in band class. “All the parts are so different and they all come together into chaotic bliss,” she said.

Student holding guitar
Imani plays the guitar in Randy Porter’s music class at Roosevelt Middle School in Oakland on March 14, 2026. (Martin do Nascimento/KQED)

Some of Porter’s former students have gone on to new heights, like 10th grade student Ryan, who comes back to Porter’s classroom at Roosevelt every Thursday to mentor middle schoolers. When Ryan arrived in Porter’s classroom about five years ago, he had experience playing violin and had picked up the cello. But Porter’s jazz-filled band class presented something new.

“It just felt exciting to be in the music class…that’s when I started to think, ‘wait, I need to switch to an instrument that’s more suitable for jazz,’” said Ryan.

So, at the suggestion of Porter, Ryan picked up his third instrument – the trombone. “It really opened up a new world for me,” said Ryan.

Now, he plays a total of fifteen instruments, is a member of the SFJAZZ High School All-Stars Band, and has played in a youth orchestra for three years, all at the encouragement of Porter.

Middle school students are in an age group that is notorious in schools and among teachers for their unpredictability, high energy, and increased social awareness. But if you can tap into their interests, the potential for growth is what Porter finds most exciting about this age group, he said.

Man holding bass instrument
Randy Porter tests an upright bass before the start of classes at Roosevelt Middle School in Oakland on March 14, 2026. (Martin do Nascimento/KQED)

He plans on being an active member of the local music education community in his retirement, but the students are what he’ll miss most. “I wanna be helpful. I wanna mentor teachers. I want to do what I can just to see things continue to be successful,” he said.

But he’ll also take time to tap back into the professional music world. This summer you can find Porter playing at one of his annual gigs, Chapel of the Chimes.


Adolescence, MindShift Podcast, Podcast

Mental health tools that can help middle schoolers get a better perspective

Audio 16 Comments

Excerpted from “MIDDLE SCHOOL SUPERPOWERS: Raising Resilient Tweens in Turbulent Times by Phyllis L. Fagell.” Copyright © 2023. Available from Hachette Go, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Challenge distorted thinking

Tweens think they wouldn’t lie to themselves, but they do. They can catastrophize, think in all-or-nothing terms, jump to conclusions, overgeneralize, discount the positive, or blame themselves or others when something goes wrong, to name a few common thinking errors. For instance, if ten people tell a kid that they love their haircut, but one person says, “I see you got a haircut,” they might spend the rest of the day trying to decipher the one ambiguous comment. If a teacher changes a kid’s seat because they’re disruptive, the kid might conclude that the relationship is irreparably damaged. Or if they bomb a history test, they might think, “I suck at history and the teacher clearly hates me, so what’s the point?” That kind of defeatist, unproductive thinking serves only to worsen their suffering.

At the core of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is the idea that how you think impacts how you feel and act. In other words, your thoughts determine your feelings and behavior. That’s why it’s so important to help your middle schooler learn to recognize when their thoughts are out of whack. If that kid who failed the history test adopted a more realistic stance, for instance, he might realize, “It’s not going to be fun to tell my parents that I failed, and I’m embarrassed and upset, but it’s literally a history test now. Next time, maybe I could ask the teacher for help or join a study group.”

As I tell kids, being ruthlessly self-critical is like bullying yourself. When I facilitate Worrybusters groups at school, I might ask students, “If I could listen in on what you tell yourself when you’re really beating yourself up, what would I hear?” After students share their self-critical thoughts with peers, they’re often surprised but relieved that others are equally hard on themselves. They also realize they’d never talk to a friend the way they talk to themselves, and they develop more self-compassion. (As another side benefit, the kids typically bend over backward to compliment one another.)

Once you bring your child’s thoughts to the surface, teach them how to talk back to their inner critic. If they’re telling themselves, “I’m not smart enough to be in the advanced math class” or “I want to go to the party, but I’ll be too awkward to talk to anyone,” ask them questions such as “How useful is it to get caught up thinking that way? What’s the best-case scenario? What’s the evidence that the worst will happen? What’s the evidence it won’t happen? What resources or help would you need to cope with the worst-case scenario? Have you ever been in a similar situation? How did you handle it? Have you seen anyone else experience something similar and come out OK? How did they deal with it?” You also can ask them how they’d reassure a friend who felt the same way.

The goal is to help them recognize when they’re thinking in extremes and then challenge the thought. If they say they’re “a total failure,” for instance, point out that “I’m a failure” and “I’m a success” are not the only two options. Someone can “succeed” in one area and “fail” at something else. Or as I told a sixth-grade girl who was disgusted with herself for being a “crybaby,” there is an upside to every perceived weakness. For one, crying is an effective way to signal that you need support. It also might embolden others to admit they need help. To reinforce the idea that merely thinking something doesn’t make it true, have them preface a self-critical comment with sentence starters such as “I’m having the thought that” or “I’m noticing I’m having the thought that.” They also can try repeating the comment until it sounds like gobbledygook and loses all meaning. After all, they’re the one ascribing meaning to the words in the first place.

I worked with a fifth-grade boy, Marcus, who was irritated because his classmate, Owen, was constantly poking him in the belly button and making comments about annoying things, like how he kicked a soccer ball or how high he raised his hand in class. Owen was instigating fights with most of the students in the grade, but Marcus felt personally targeted. To loosen his thinking, I asked him to come up with a few possible reasons that Owen might be acting like a jerk that had nothing to do with him. Marcus sat at the table in my office for a few minutes before jotting down the following: “1. Maybe I just don’t see Owen doing this stuff to other people. 2. Maybe he doesn’t realize it bothers me. 3. Maybe something else happened in his life that turned him into a butthead jerk.”

After I read Marcus’s list out loud, he said, “You know, I actually feel kind of bad for Owen. He’s annoying to everyone, and he could end up losing all his friends.” The exercise had elicited Marcus’s compassion, which in turn helped him react with more equanimity when Owen provoked him. And much to Marcus’s surprise, that made him a less appealing target.

Woman with blonde hair and dark top
Phyllis Fagell

Phyllis L. Fagell is a licensed clinical professional counselor, a certified professional school counselor, and author of Middle School Matters and Middle School Superpowers. She is a school counselor at Landon School in Washington, D.C. and provides therapy to children, teens, and families at The Chrysalis Group Inc. in Bethesda, Maryland. Phyllis also speaks and consults on issues relating to parenting, counseling, and education.

Adolescence, Antiracism, Belonging, Culture, Mental Health, MindShift Podcast, Podcast, Schoolwide Solutions, Teenage Years

Are Dress Codes Fair? How One Middle School Transformed Its Rules for What Students Wear

Audio 16 Comments

View the full episode transcript.

In 2018, following the reveal of a new dress code, students enthusiastically showed up to Alice Deal Middle School in spaghetti straps, flip flops and short hemlines. “It was just on parade,” said Principal Diedre Neal about students’ attire. With time, the strappy, short outfits leveled off. Neal said that while adolescents revel in novelty, their desire to be comfortable won out in the end: “They ran out of completely outrageous things. The completely outrageous things are also not comfortable or feasible.” 

The decision to reevaluate the dress code arose from the realization that the existing policies were no longer aligned with the needs of the students at Alice Deal, a public middle school in Washington, D.C. Prior to the change, students were pulled out of class if their outfits violated the school dress code. “They had their work. They were engaging. They were learning,” said Neal. “And we took them away from their learning to have a conversation about what they were wearing.” For instance, Zya Kinney, now 23, remembered getting pulled out of class by a teacher and being asked to do the “fingertip test” — a practice where students put their hand by their sides to see if the hemline of their shorts or skirts pass their fingertips. When Kinney’s skirt did not pass her fingertips, she had to change into her gym shorts. “I had to go back to that classroom,” said Kinney, who described herself as an insecure middle schooler. “That is embarrassing.”

To reshape the policy in a way that truly supported student learning and wellbeing, Neal embraced a school-wide approach. She knew that for an updated dress code to be successful and work for learners, it required the active involvement from the students and community members it would impact.

Identify the gaps

The catalyst for changing the dress code at Alice Deal came in the form of a dress code report written by Nia Evans from the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) and a group of students in 2018. The report brought to light the discriminatory and harmful effects of dress code policies at schools in D.C. Evans’ research focused on school pushout — when schools use exclusionary discipline practices that result in students leaving school altogether. “What we found in conversations with students, parents and teachers was that dress codes were consistently coming up as a massive contributor to school push out,” Evans said. 

She recruited over 20 young people ages 12 to 18 to research dress codes with her and produce a report on dress codes featuring the twelve schools they collectively attended in DC. Their findings exposed gender and race stereotypes within dress code policies. “They were using language saying girls need to cover up to avoid distracting boys or Black girls can’t wear head wraps because it’s unprofessional or it’s not neat,” said Evans.These policies resulted in harsh punishments ranging from disrupting classroom time to suspensions. According to a Government Accountability Office report, 90% of dress codes have policies that dictate what girls can wear. The NWLC found that Black girls, who had the highest suspension rate in the country compared to white girls, were being unfairly targeted by school dress codes. 

Uniforms, which are lauded as a way to reduce the appearance of economic disparity, proved to be an imperfect solution. Nearly 20% of the nation’s public schools and preschools require uniforms, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Over the course of their research, students found that uniforms, often sold at specific stores, can become a financial burden for many families. They can also be limiting from a developmental standpoint. “You’re taking an opportunity away from students to be able to express themselves,” Evans said. The student researchers found that uniforms can alienate non-binary students. “We are enforcing what we think girls should look like and what boys should look like. We’re not creating a lot of space for any type of spectrum,” Evans added.

The student researchers proposed solutions for school leaders looking to improve their dress codes. They recommended the creation of dress code task forces, made up of teachers, administrators, parents, and students, to discuss whether a school’s dress code achieved the intended goals. They emphasized the importance of, allowing students to express their authentic selves, including cultural representations like headwraps and Black hairstyles. Additionally, students called for gender-neutral dress codes that didn’t require students to have to wear specific clothes because of their gender identity. They also suggested taking out vague language such as ‘distracting’ or ‘inappropriate’ from dress code policies, as it often leaves room for teacher bias and subjective interpretation.

Collaboration and communication

At Alice Deal, Principal Neal partnered with parent Deborah Zerwitz to get input from students and families before changing the dress code. Zerwitz drew insights from the NWLC report, as well as from student-centered practices from Evanston Township High School in Illinois, a school that had changed their dress code the year prior. Recognizing the need to foster a respectful and equitable learning environment, Evanston Township engaged in collaborative discussions involving students, parents, teachers, and administrators to redefine their dress code guidelines. 

Neal let parents know in her weekly newsletter that they could attend four listening sessions for students, parents and administrators to voice their ideas and opinions on the dress code. Listening sessions were offered at various times and locations on and off the school campus to make them as accessible as possible. To gather even more student feedback, Zerwitz put up poster boards outside of the school cafeteria with questions like:

  • “What changes would you make to the dress code?”
  • “What do you think about school uniforms?”
  • “What should the consequences be for violating a dress code?”

Students could stick post-it notes to the board with their answers or place anonymous ideas in  a shoebox with a slot in it.. 

Additionally, Neal and Zerwitz created a task force made up of student and parent volunteers. “Somebody’s got to put pen to paper at some point,” said Zerwitz. “We were trying to identify a core group of people that will actually take all this information and distill it.” The task force used the feedback from the listening sessions and posters to create the new dress code.



 

Empowering students and redefining dress code policies

Zerwitz and Neal received diverse feedback about the dress code, with students, particularly girls, expressing their desire to be heard and understood. “They wanted to say how it was making them feel. And they felt awkward. They felt like, ‘Why are these grown ups looking at me every morning and telling me something’s wrong?” Zerwitz said.

The consensus from teachers was that they did not like spending time enforcing the dress code. However, some teachers — usually older teachers, Zerwitz said — tended to think the students should dress professionally for school and were in favor of a strict dress code. 

Among parents, safety concerns surfaced. For example, a parent of two Black boys said that she likes using the dress code policies as a reason her son cannot wear hoodies to school. Citing concerns about stereotypes and racial profiling, especially considering incidents like the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, the parent explained  that she could “breathe a little bit easier when my two Black sons leave the house and they’re not wearing a hood.”

With support from the NWLC, Neal, Zerwitz and the task force members worked through these tensions. “Sometimes in wanting to protect our young people, we end up reinforcing the very inequalities that the world puts on them,” said Evans. “The solution to sexual harassment isn’t to get girls to cover up. The solution to police violence and racist violence is not to punish Black boys for wearing hoodies.”

Long-term benefits and impact

The results of the schoolwide effort to change the dress code came at the end of the 2017-18 school year when Alice Deal Middle School introduced a revised, gender non-specific and relaxed dress code. Students were required to cover the core of their bodies with opaque fabric, but there was greater flexibility with articles like crop tops and hoodies. Importantly, teachers were advised not to remove students from class if they violated the dress code. Principal Neal saw a decrease in dress code-related disciplinary actions. Students reported feeling more comfortable expressing their identities, which is associated with overall well-being. 

Despite the positive changes, in interviews last year, some students reported that certain staff members still commented on what they wore. “We’re still working with staff,” said Neal. “I need to check with students and see if people are dress coding them.”

The journey to a new dress code was a source of pride for students. In a graduation shortly after the revised dress code was implemented, Zerwitz listened to a student speaker talk about how the class collectively achieved this transformation. It was evident to Zerwitz that the students understood the power of their voices and felt empowered by the impact they had at their school. “Those kids — all of the ones that came to the listening sessions or wrote a note in the little box or whatever — all of them contributed in some way to this,” said Zerwitz. “And, hopefully, [they went to high school] knowing that their voice matters.”

Episode Transcript

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Nimah Gobir: Welcome to MindShift. Where we explore the future of learning and how we raise our kids. I’m Nimah Gobir.

Nimah Gobir: Every day, when students get ready in the morning, they are faced with a challenge: [dramatic music] deciding what to wear to school that day.

Nimah Gobir: They have to weigh a lot of factors. Like…What makes me feel comfortable? What’s the weather outside? And maybe even What will my crush in 3rd period think about my fit? 

Nimah Gobir: In 7th grade, when Zya Kinney was in her favorite outfit, you couldn’t tell her nothing.

Zya Kinney: I wore my red skirt with a spaghetti strap kind of tank top  – And I had no leggings on. I was feeling myself! 

Nimah Gobir: Zya’s twenty-three now. She was talking about when she was a student at Alice Deal Middle School in Washington, DC. It was ten years ago, but she remembers how putting on the perfect outfit could make her feel good about herself. 

Zya Kinney: I would just put on whatever was comfortable and whatever was like kind of cute. And i would have my little pop out moments here and there.

Nimah Gobir: One of the reasons Zya remembers the outfit she wore is because it was the day she got dress coded. 

Nimah Gobir: That means she was in violation of the school’s rules that dictate what students should and should not wear. There’s usually language about visible skin, footwear and even hair in some cases. Most schools have them, but they can be flawed.

Leora Tanenbaum: The big irony, of course, that lies at the heart of school dress codes is that they are drafted with the intention of eliminating distraction and helping learners. But the opposite actually happens in the end because learners themselves are targeted and therefore they are unable to focus on learning. 

Nimah Gobir: That’s writer and researcher Leora Tanenbaum. She also calls out dress code incidents on her Instagram. 

Leora Tanenbaum: Where they go wrong is when they are gendered. When the codes are created with a presupposition that girls’ bodies pose a distraction to other learners and therefore girls’ bodies need to be covered up in a specific way. And therefore the dress code is drafted in a way that has different language and different rules depending on one’s gender.

Nimah Gobir: If you violate the dress code, a teacher might call you over to talk with you privately about your clothes or you’ll be sent to the principal’s office. You might have to do the fingertip test where you put your hands by your sides and see if your skirt or shorts go past your fingertips.

Leora Tanenbaum: It embarrasses the student. It makes her all of a sudden very aware of her physicality in a way that she may not have been at all. The teacher might assume she was aware of her physicality but you can’t assume that.

Nimah Gobir: Zya was in class when she got dress coded. 

Zya Kinney: My teacher gave us some work to do. Like just busy work or whatever. And she’s like, ‘Can I talk to you, you know, outside the classroom?’  You know, I think I’m not even thinking it has something to do with my outfit.  She said ” Your skirt is too short.” 

Nimah Gobir: When Zya put her hands at her sides, her middle fingertips were just barely past her skirt!

Zya Kinney: and, do you know, they made me change it to my gym shorts? I’m walking around here, cute up top, gym down, down…down below, like I’m not looking the same. And I remember being so upset about it because it’s like, Why are you sexualizing a seventh grader? 

Nimah Gobir: To her, it was so much more than having to change clothes. She was trying to fit in and be  confident and her school basically told her that she was doing it wrong.

Zya Kinney: I can’t lie and tell you that the popular girls weren’t wearing the skirts and had all the new things. They had the accessories. They had like three different book bags in rotation when I had just the one backpack. And I definitely remember seeing the difference in attention that they would get from guys and stuff like that, and then even their girlfriends. Like I felt like they were always the ones that you chose for stuff or, you know, they were like the most likable people and everything. And while I was, I was okay with myself, but I was also really insecure too. [00:07:01][19.3]

Nimah Gobir: Zya, who’s Black, also noticed something else about the dress codes…  

Zya Kinney: It wasn’t until I started wearing skirts and dresses and I noticed how my white friends wouldn’t have anything said to them about what they have on. And I realized, okay, if I wear a skirt and she wears a skirt, we have on two different skirts. 

Nimah Gobir: And Zya was on to something. Here’s researcher and writer Nia Evans. 

Nia Evans: I’m basically a Black girl who grew up in D.C. And when I was working at the National Women’s Law Center, we were doing a lot of research about what we call school push out.

Nimah Gobir: School push out is basically when schools use disciplinary actions that exclude students. These discipline practices often end up forcing students out of school altogether.

Nia Evans: What we found was that dress codes were consistently coming up as a massive contributor to school push out. That black girls in particular were being unfairly targeted by school dress codes. But not only were they being treated differently in school, they were being removed from schools.

Nimah Gobir: At the time she was doing this research – around 2018. Black girls had some of the highest suspension rates in the country. So high that the obama administration opened investigations into school discipline policies.  back then black girls were 20 times more likely to be suspended than white girls. And to be clear, it was not because Black girls were misbehaving more, it’s because they were being targeted by harsher rules.

Nia Evans: We decided to partner with the experts when it comes to dress codes, which is students. We recruited over 20 young people, ages 12 to 18 from 12 different high schools in Washington, D.C., to be our co-researchers. 

Nimah Gobir: Nia worked with them to produce a report about their experiences with dress codes and how they’re enforced. What they found confirmed Zya’s suspicions: for black students, dress codes hit different.

Nia Evans: Dress codes often are steeped in race and gender stereotypes.  They were using language saying, you know, girls need to cover up to avoid from distracting boys or black girls can’t wear head wraps because it’s unprofessional or it’s not neat. 

Nia Evans: At a high level, a lot of these rules are sort of remnants of racist, sexist ideas and are invested in and are a mechanism to sort of keep students in line and to communicate a certain narrative around what it means to be professional, what it means to be neat, what it means to be successful. 

Nimah Gobir: Many schools will defend their dress code saying that they want their students to be prepared to dress for jobs as an adult, but that’s open to interpretation. Different jobs require different clothes. Zya, the 23 year old I spoke to dresses pretty casually for her job at ABC studios because she’s running around delivering scripts to producers all day. 

Nimah Gobir: When dress codes come into question, sometimes the response is to put kids in uniforms – almost half of schools and preschools use uniforms now. It makes sense… If everyone has to wear the same thing that means no more problems right? Well… not necessarily.  Here’s Nia again.

Nia Evans: From a growth standpoint, you’re taking an opportunity away from students to be able to express themselves. Uniforms are often gender specific, which means, again, we are enforcing what we think girls should look like, boys should look like. We’re not creating a lot of space for any in between any type of spectrum. 

Nimah Gobir:  The students that Nia worked with offered a few solutions.

Nia Evans: A lot of them recommended that schools create dress code task force forces, where teachers and administrators and parents and students can come together and really start with the question of what is the goal of this? Why do we have a dress code? What is the point? Is it achieving its goals? And if it’s not, do we need it?  

Nia Evans: So it really ignited, I think, a long overdue issue in D.C. And we saw a lot of student and parent activism as a result of it. And some teachers and administrators listened.  

Nimah Gobir: News of this report reached the principal at  Zya’s former school – Alice Deal middle school. And when we get back from the break we’ll hear about what THE principal did when she took a closer look at her school’s dress code. Her reaction may surprise you.

Nimah Gobir: When I talked to Principal Diedre Neal from Alice Deal Middle School she said that moments ago there were three young women in her office. One was wearing ripped jeans, another was wearing a tube top, and another wearing a spaghetti strap tank top. Ordinarily, they all would have gotten dress coded, but something amazing happened: Principal Neal didn’t care. 

Nimah Gobir: And that’s significant because dress codes used to be a situation…

Diedre Neal: Every spring when children wanted to shift from, you know, long pants to shorts and skirts, there would be either commentary or and I’m smiling because there was always a petition. It was always a petition. And I remember saying, “I can’t wait until we solve this issue, and then you can move on and give me a petition for something else.”

Nimah Gobir: After reading the dress code report, Principal Neal recognized that it was probably time for dress codes to change.

Diedre Neal: Over time, like enforcing it. I would say there was cognitive dissonance. People were being sent out of class to address what they had on. So they were in class , they had their work, they were engaging, they were learning, and so we took them away from their learning to have a conversation about what they were wearing. 

Nimah Gobir:  She needed to figure out what it would take to make Alice Deal’s dress code work in favor of learning. To get started, Principal Neal partnered  with a parent named Debb Zerwitz.

Debb Zerwitz: We announced that we were going to be creating a task force to review and update the dress code.

Nimah Gobir: They created a little set up outside the school cafeteria .

Debb Zerwitz: We put up big poster boards with questions like.

Debb Zerwitz: What changes would you make to the dress code? What do you think about school uniforms? And what should the consequences be for violating a dress code?

Nimah Gobir: They had post-it notes in all these different colors so students could stick their ideas to the poster board. And they had 4 listening sessions where they would get feedback and input from students, administrators and parents. They had conversations with parents who wanted to keep the dress code for really valid reasons. For example, a lot of schools don’t let students wear hoodies. Black parents didn’t want their kids wearing hooded sweatshirts out the door because of Trayvon Martin.

[News clip

Reporter: Trayvon Martin was wearing a gray hoodie the night he was killed, a fact that caught the attention of neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman. 

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good or he’s on drugs or something. 

Dispatcher: Did you see what he was wearing? 

Zimmerman: Yeah. A dark hoodie. Like a gray hoodie. 

Reporter: A few minutes later Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin, he claims, in self defense.]

Nimah Gobir: One Black parent in one of the listening sessions, said she liked having the support of the school dress code, to keep her child from wearing hoodies . 

Debb Zerwitz: She said I can point to the policy and say you’re going to get in trouble and you’re going to get you’re going to have to change your clothes and it’s going to be embarrassing that that helps me at home if there’s a policy. Who the hell am I to, like, dismiss this mother telling me like, I like the dress code? And this is one of the reasons why. Like, of course I hear you. You know I do.

Nimah Gobir: Another thing that surfaced in the listening sessions were some generational differences. In many cases it’s older Black adults telling younger black kids that they need to look more presentable. In other words, they leaned into respectability politics, a way of trying to navigate prejudice and discrimination by making oneself match the visual standards set by those in power. . It’s basically saying, “Hey, look, we’re just like you, so you should respect us and treat us better!”

Nimah Gobir: Nia — she’s the researcher who made the dress code report with students — noticed respectability politics in dress codes too.

Nia Evans: You also have a deeper layer of Black teachers and young people and parents who love each other, who are really struggling with how to keep kids safe. And the same way the solution to sexual harassment isn’t to get girls to cover up. The solution to police violence and racist violence is not to punish black boys for wearing hoodies. 

Nia Evans: I don’t think you can dress your way out of racism and sexism. I don’t. And I also think that sometimes in wanting to protect our young people, we end up reinforcing the very inequalities that the world puts on them.

Nia Evans: Dress codes actually hold a lot of our values and fears and anxieties as a culture. It says a lot about how we want students and young people to move through the world, how we want to protect them, how we want to set them up for success and our baggage as a culture around race and gender and sexuality and different identities. 

Nimah Gobir: Based on what she learned from all the feedback , Principal Neal with the help of Deb and the National Women’s Law Center ended up changing their dress code to be more casual and gender nonspecific. Technically, students are required to wear clothing that covers the core of the student’s body including private areas and midriff, with opaque fabric. But no one really says anything about crop tops. Even if a student is in violation of the dress code they are not supposed to be taken out of class. 

Nimah Gobir: When the dress code changed, students had an enthusiastic response. All the clothing they couldn’t wear before was on display. Here’s Principal Neal again.

Principal Neal: It was just on parade and then they ran out of the completely outrageous things and it leveled off.

Nimah Gobir: A student even mentioned  in their graduation speech the way Alice Deal middle school’s student body had worked together to change the dress code. It was clear that being part of creating meaningful change at their school felt really empowering to students. 

Nimah Gobir: To find out what Alice Deal Middle School Students are wearing these days we went straight to the source. These students may be walking down hallways instead of the red carpet, but I still wanted to know “Who are you wearing?” “How did you achieve this look?” 

Student 1: I like to put on something that’ll make me comfortable and also make me feel good. 

Student 2: Jewelry is a really big part of like, what I wear. 

Student 3:  I’m wearing leggings right now, but that’s kind of just because it’s kind of colder right now than it normally is.

Student 2: I have a lot of bracelets on most of the time.

Student 1: Right now I’m just wearing sweatpants and my Reeboks, which are the shoes that I like to wear because they’re comfortable.

Student 4: I mostly wear crocs.

Nimah Gobir: Sweatpants. Crocs. Leggings. They sound pretty unburdened. And you know what else….they sound comfy.

Student: I feel like, in a sense, we don’t really have a dress code like we’re allowed to wear what we want. But like to a certain point. 

Nimah Gobir: But not all teachers and administrators are fully on board. Some students mentioned that there are still teachers at the school who call them out for what they’re wearing.

Nimah Gobir: It’s one thing to change a policy, but it’s another thing to change the hearts and minds of all the administrators and teachers. Here’s principal Neal talking about next steps.

Diedre Neal: We’re still working with staff. I now know that I need to check with students and see if people are dress coding them. 

Nimah Gobir: Some might call what Principal Neal did intellectual humility. It involves recognizing the limits of what you think you know. When Principal Neal learned more from students, parents and research, she realized the dress codes might be doing more harm than good. 

Nimah Gobir: Alice Deal Middle School set out to re-evaluate their dress code and even though they’re still working with teachers on changing their mindsets, it is a step towards better reflecting the needs and identities of their students. It’s important to involve students in the process of creating policies that impact them. While it may not solve every problem, it is an essential step towards finding more equitable and inclusive solutions. 

Nimah Gobir: Thank you to Lawrence Lanahan, Zya Kinney, Leora Tanenbaum, Nia Evans, Debb Zerwitz, Principal Diedre Neal and students at Alice Deal Middle School

Nimah Gobir: The MindShift team includes Ki Sung, Kara Newhouse, Marlena Jackson Retondo and me, Nimah Gobir. Our editor is Chris Hambrick, Seth Samuel is our sound designer, Jen Chien is our head of podcasts, and Holly Kernan is KQED’s chief content officer.

Nimah Gobir: MindShift’s intellectual humility series is supported by the Greater Good Science Center’s “Expanding Awareness of the Science of Intellectual Humility” project and the Templeton Foundation.

Nimah Gobir: MindShift is also supported in part by the generosity of the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation and members of KQED. Thank you for listening!

Big Ideas, COVID-19, Podcast

Play Is Crucial for Middle Schoolers, Too

15 Comments

Unstructured time and playful learning are as essential for middle school students as they are for younger children, say researchers and educators. Play offers an opportunity for students to bond with their friends and learn “soft skills” that will serve them well in college and beyond.

Adolescence, MindShift Podcast, Podcast

Middle schoolers are social. What opportunity does that create for learning? 

Audio

You can listen to this episode of the MindShift Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, NPR One, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.

Adults who look back at their middle school years can very clearly identify experiencing hard times, such as embarrassment, conflicts, changing friendships and getting made fun of. We remember the way we felt in that period of our lives in part because of all the changes occurring in the body as we enter puberty. Plus, changes in the brain’s limbic system trigger tweens to feel every emotion more strongly. It’s also why there’s so much clarity about our memories of this time, for better or worse.  

This period of brain development is also a time when trauma and bad habits can become deeply wired. It’s well established that the younger people are when they start engaging in substance abuse, the harder it is to quit. It’s also the age during which mental health issues begin to become more visible.

While every parent should be cautious about these worst case scenarios, the flip side of having such an emotionally charged brain is that it’s also very receptive to positive experiences, like developing a deep interest in a hobby, the feeling of accomplishing something meaningful to you, the joy of friendships, the influence of a mentor or the thrill of performing in a band. 

“Ignited passions is really a key part of this window of time,” said Ron Dahl, a UC Berkeley professor and founder of the Center for Developing Adolescent at UCLA. “It’s a time of learning exploration, acquiring new knowledge and skills, habits, really the shape of an individual, identity development, intrinsic motivations,” he said. 

While many passion-igniting endeavors happen outside of the classroom, Dahl said that applications in the classroom can make learning much more exciting and meaningful for tweens whose hunger for relationships can richly influence their learning. 

In middle schools, that means the shift in learning after elementary should be about more than having a homeroom and six periods with different subject-matter teachers. The way curriculum is taught must also address the social needs of middle schoolers, according to 8th grade humanities teacher Sarah LeDuff, who was teaching at Downtown College Prep Alum Rock Middle School in San Jose when I visited her class in the spring. 

“Their hunger for relationships is not only with each other, but they’re hungry for adult mentorship and adult connections as well,” said LeDuff, who is also a California middle school teacher of the year. “They’re just these vessels of emotion in every way that is beautiful and complicated.” 

Students in class working through a problme
Students sit in groups as they work through a quiz together while their teacher Sarah LeDuff looks on. (Vanessa Arroyo Chavez)

In order to align curriculum with middle schoolers’ emotional and social needs, LeDuff makes sure her classroom is welcoming in climate, design and instruction. Students enter class to music, like Pharell’s “Just a Cloud Away,” which has lyrics that can create a soundtrack to a kid’s day. The partially lit overhead fluorescent lights in her bungalow are balanced by a string of soft outdoor bulbs. Students sit in pods of four desks – they’re not lined up into rows – and there’s a small potted plant in the middle of each pod. 

“Her class is very homey,” said student Brianna Gonzalez. “Once you walk into her room, it’s very relaxed and there are bean bags and couches and everything. It feels like a safe place to be.”

Listen to the MindShift podcast to hear a day in the life of Sarah LeDuff’s class


LeDuff wants students to let down their guards in order to let learning in. After remote learning, which was followed by returning back to school buildings, students had a lot of anxiety, which can get in the way of learning. She wanted to make room for well-being, and that included shutting down mistreatment of one another.

“I do want my students to take risks academically, be that working on their public speaking, getting up and performing a poem that they wrote, participating in a debate,” said LeDuff. “These are very vulnerable things. If I don’t make them feel safe out the gates, it’s extremely difficult to tap into any of that creativity they need for authentic learning.” 

Students like Ivan Martinez noticed these differences with LeDuff. He said other classes feel “plain” and joyless and that “once you walk in, the vibe is different. It’s like you walk in and you just sit there for more than an hour or just listening to what the teacher is saying.”

Gaining Autonomy

One aspect of adolescence is that the call for autonomy gets louder on the part of the child. At home, this might appear as conflict or wanting to be left alone. 

“They want freedom,” said Dahl of kids in this period of early adolescence. He said parents can be proactive in how kids get freedom by asking them to demonstrate their good judgment to prove that they’re ready for more independence. And while this transition to greater independence might be confusing for parents who are wondering about their role in their child’s life – especially as friends gain more prominence – Dahl says adults still matter. 

“It’s a myth that parents become irrelevant and it’s all about peers,” he said, adding that there’s always room for warm supportive environments with high standards and boundaries. “Combining that with caring that feels like it’s honoring their values and desire to be independent is really, really important. It’s extra important in early adolescence, not less important.” 

When it comes to school work, middle school students are expected to be self-sufficient as they receive less adult attention than in their elementary school years as class sizes get larger and students go from class to class with different teachers. But there’s also a way to scaffold the lessons of autonomy for students. For Sarah LeDuff, it comes in the form of teaching students how to self-advocate and self-reflect. And in order to scaffold student autonomy, the curriculum must be designed for those opportunities. One area she changed was how she grades. 

“I have really reworked my grading system to value student input so that grades are not just something that happens to you; your teacher is not just your evaluator deciding if you did your work right or did your work wrong, but that grades are something that we co-create together,” LeDuff said. At the end of every quarter, she does self-reflection rubrics with each student and they have teacher-student conferences to discuss priorities like classroom contributions, collaboration or reading skills. One rubric is self-advocacy, so the student will reflect on their own work and grade themselves and present why they feel like they earned that grade – with evidence.  

“They will think about things such as, ‘Do they come to me and ask for feedback? Do they ask for help when they need it from both me and their peers?’” said LeDuff. “And they’ll reflect on their ability to do those things and they will give themselves a score.” 

LeDuff knows she also has areas of improvement so she’ll survey the class to ask what they think could be improved and then share them back to the students and look for ways to implement those changes. 

“I think it’s a very important part about making sure that they understand that their voices are being heard,” said LeDuff.