Berckemeyer's Book is Over-Priced, But His Podcasts are Interesting

http://www.nmsa.org/Publications/TodaysMiddleLevelEducator/tabid/1409/Default.aspx

Some serious charges of non-blog-reading have recently been levied against members of our course. Never let it be said that Amanda Street is among that number! My current post is a podcast I located because I was reading and then listening to Sunny’s podcast post. It is the same website, but you need to click on the third podcast down, entitled “Building Positive Relationships with Your Students”, in which Jack Berckemeyer interviews Howard Ormond, a principal and frequent speaker for NMSA.

I had the opportunity to hear Berckmeyer speak at last years NMSA convention in Baltimore, and in addition to being uproariously funny, he is an educator who CLEARLY values young adolescents and is prepared to teach them. After listening to the podcast, it was evident that Howard Ormond is cut from the same cloth. Everything he says speaks to the affective development of middle schoolers, as has been emphasized many times in our textbook. He states that teachers must show respect to get respect, and that students are human beings first and foremost. He encourages teachers to take an interest in the students’ interests, even if it means occasionally watching MTV, so we can feel comfortable engaging with them on topics they care about (he calls this ability to seamlessly engage and then disengage with students “verbal judo”).

There is a substantial section where he talks about teaming, which goes to organizational structures that foster purposeful learning and meaningful relationships. He states that co-teachers can be a valuable tool for figuring out students, as “somebody in that school has their finger on the pulse of that student.” Berckemeyer responds with an anecdote in which he arranged with his team to keep a student who was not completing work for him rather than letting him change classes when the bell rings (he says many students have figured out that when the bell rings, they can leave even if they haven’t done any work). He kept this student all day, and when he STILL didn’t complete the work, met him when he got off the bus the next morning (then the kid did the work). This kind of effective management strategy would not have been possible had the teachers not been demonstrating collaboration. This podcast was very interesting, and I encourage everyone to check it out!