دانلود کتاب آموزش دپلاریزاسیون – کمک به دانش آموزان و معلمان برای رسیدن به خطوط اختلاف

For 20 years, like an undercover agent, I embedded myself among middle schoolers. Occasionally, I would emerge— to attend jury duty or renew my driver’s license— and the escapes would leave me disoriented. People rode trains. They strolled. They occupied offices— doing what? They drank coffee, seem¬ingly whenever the spirit moved them. They appeared oblivious to the structures that bound my day- to- day existence. Is this what people do? I would wonder. The world outside of school and the people who inhabited that world were remote and unfamiliar.
My domain was middle school, its schedule the rhythm of my life, its occupants the focus of my attention. These people could be awkward to the point of incapacitation, but they were endearing and funny. They were curious, and their energy was breathtaking. They were intensely social. They would save seats, crack jokes during class, and sometimes, like bull walruses, smash into each other in a feverish attempt to secure their slot in the social order. Their fortunes could change quickly. Monday morning might find them unaccountably excised from a pre¬viously secure group of friends, leaving them bewildered and bereft. To guard against such eventualities, they would lock arms as they marched down the hallway like a steamrolling wave of social security. I learned many lessons during my two decades as a teacher: that I’d be sick by the second week of school (no pan¬demic required) and unavailable on weekends until mid- June; that taco Tuesdays were overrated but chocolate- milk Wednesdays worth the hype; that snow days still mattered. Above all else, despite my affection for them, I learned that middle schoolers were a different breed. It was not until I had taught these children for 20 years and coached 41 seasons of sports (including that one regrettable basketball season) that I realized, however, that I had been mistaken. In fact, the intense need for social affirmation and acceptance that defines middle school is not a stage through which one passes. It is not a skin to be shed on the way out of adolescence. It’s training. We are the products of that training.