Are we seeing a change in adolescents? What new characteristics have emerged post Covid? Join us for a realistic and funny overview of the new attributes of 10-15 year olds. Jack Berckemeyer will share his insights on what he is seeing in middle schools all across the country and he will share ideas that are working for administrators and teachers.

Are we seeing a change in adolescents? What new characteristics have emerged post COVID? Join us for a realistic and funny overview of the new attributes of 10-15 year olds. Jack Berckemeyer will share his insights on what he is seeing in middle schools all across the country and he will share ideas that are working for administrators and teachers.

The C3 Framework by the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) has had a positive impact on best teaching practices in the K-12 social studies classroom. In this seminal document, NCSS advocates that social studies teachers need to develop their students' content-area literacy, thinking, and argumentation skills in economics, history, civics, and geography. Social studies educators have earnestly taken up the call to develop students' historical literacy, thinking, and argumentation skills. However, the same cannot be said for economic, civic, and geographical thinking, literacy, and argumentation skills.

In this webinar, we will explore four classroom-ready activities that can be utilized by middle school social studies teachers to strengthen their students' economic, geographical, civic, and historical thinking, literacy, and argumentation skills. The steps and resources for these four activities are provided. The graphic organizers, analysis prompts, and writing prompts used may be adapted by audience members to be implemented with other social studies topics. By using activities like the four discussed in this webinar, middle school social studies teachers help to build their students' interdisciplinary social studies thinking, literacy, and argumentation skills simultaneously because social studies disciplines do not work in isolation from each other. The types of activities discussed in this webinar allow middle school students to explore the layers and nuances of an issue, event, or historical figure while being able to also see the ripple effects that people's actions can have on all aspects of society.

In this webinar, we explore how trauma and adversity impact the developing brain during heightened times of stress. We discuss strategies and practices that dampen down our stress response systems while building engagement, connection and regulated brain states.

David Hayward and Stephanie Howell, Instructional Technology Coordinators in Pickerington Local Schools moderate a Q&A session on the successes and challenges of transitioning from a face to face classroom to a remote learning environment during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Terri Golden leads a discussion on how to bring strong engagement, relationships and fun into your virtual class. While we’re sheltering at home, let’s use this opportunity to make our students raving fans of online learning, while ensuring they are learning the curriculum.

When it comes to school improvement planning and middle school redesign work, how do you know what your school needs? AMLE's Successful Middle School Assessment is a statistically validated tool schools and districts can use to drive meaningful continued improvement by analyzing staff, student, and family perspectives on the implementation of middle grades best practices. Though taking only about 30 minutes for staff to complete, the Assessment provides schools with detailed, anonymized results and recommendations for continued growth. For schools interested in continuing to evaluate and celebrate their school improvement efforts, AMLE's Schools of Distinction program recognizes and celebrates schools that are actively implementing the essential attributes and characteristics of successful schools through a robust application process, beginning with the Successful Middle School Assessment. 

Transform ordinary back to school activities into engaging, active learning experiences.

Today’s students crave “real-world” experience and want opportunities to apply learning and gain experience in careers at increasingly younger ages. Formal experiential experiences, like internships, apprenticeships, and job shadowing have traditionally been reserved for high school and college students, but some organizations and schools are redefining work-based learning in the middle grades space. Join panelists from Apprentice Learning and Big Picture Learning as they highlight their innovative programs unique partnership to pilot work-based learning opportunities for middle grades students.

AMLE and American Student Assistance® (ASA), a national nonprofit changing the way middle and high schoolers learn about careers and navigate education-to-career opportunities, have partnered to make this panel discussion free to all schools.

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As a teacher leader or administrator, have you ever felt isolated or unheard? In this webinar, members from AMLE's Teacher Leader Committee will discuss ideas to break down barriers between teacher leaders and administrators to help students and schools be successful. We will discuss creative ways for each group to overcome challenges and learn to work together. Join us as we engage in authentic discussions and role plays to build empathy and effective partnerships.

This webinar is one of 3-part series to support aspiring and current teacher leaders. Attend all three to receive the Growing Yourself as a Teacher Leader certificate.

It just wouldn’t be right to launch our newest publication, Successful Middle School Student Voice, without the help of middle grades students! They join author Dr. Sandy Cameli for a robust discussion on the importance of student voice, what we actually mean by that term, and ways educators can foster it in their classrooms. Can’t join live? Sign up to receive a recording and summary the next day.

Teaching our students social-emotional competence is key for their future success. What if we taught our students (and ourselves) how to change mindsets and look at stressors differently? LeAnn will share the details and examples of this stress mindset and the 20 tools that your students can use daily to empower their thoughts, actions and resiliency. We’ll look at numerous examples of how teachers can cultivate this more positive mindset and model it when they encounter stressors. Be prepared to design your own “Stress Toolkit”.

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AMLE leaders, award winners, and former CMLA members discuss what they’ve learned while teaching through the COVID-19 crisis, and advice for new teachers, student teachers and those who will be starting during and after the pandemic.

The abrupt transition to online instruction has led to serious questions about how we assess and grade students equitably while they’re quarantined from the classroom. Rick Wormeli, celebrated author of Fair Isn’t Always Equal: Assessment and Grading in the Differentiated Classroom, 2nd Edition, leads a conversation on what is and is not helpful when it comes to assessment and grading during COVID-19.

As schools quickly move to remote learning, you may be overwhelmed by the number of online resources available to help. How do you sort through them and find ones that are particularly good for young adolescents? Todd Bloch and Erin Scholes provide tips for selecting remote learning resources and how to effectively use them to keep students engaged outside the classroom.

Students’ brains are hijacked emotionally versus academically right now. Hopes for normal springtime school experiences have been replaced with anxiety, frustration, and despair, especially as families struggle economically and are challenged by illness. School work may or may not be students’ top priority, and understandably so. What can we do, then, to help them invest in their own learning for the remainder of this year and perhaps longer, especially when they feel isolated and grades may or may not matter? No matter what type of distance learning experience you’re providing for your students. Watch this provocative and practical Webinar with LeAnn Nickelsen and Rick Wormeli as they bust motivation myths and provide specific insights on how to plan online learning experiences to maximize students’ motivation during this challenging time.

If you reduce down what’s known about quality middle level education, belonging and becoming rise to the top. Schools must create a place where students feel they belong and are respected and valued and develop places where students can become, where their academic and personal potential is recognized and nurtured. During this webinar, Laurie will share practical strategies to ensure your school is a place where students can belong and become.

In response to recent proposed legislation, particularly that seeking to limit the supports available to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) students in their school communities, AMLE will host a panel discussion to discuss ways educators can support students and create educational environments and learning experiences that are inclusive, diverse, safe, and caring. In addition to a discussion among panelists, there will be an open space for attendees to share their own thoughts, strategies, and ideas for how to best advocate for young adolescent students.

Mention writing to a non-ELA teacher and the first thing that often comes to mind is "report" or "essay." Join me to think about daily and weekly writing strategies that anyone can implement to ensure that writing is happening in fun, easy, and natural ways across all content areas!

The most challenging aspect for any teacher or school is helping students retain new math skills the entire school year. Erica Martin, Director of Training for Get More Math and 14-year math teacher, shares data-validated results on how her students saw increased long-term retention and decreased test anxiety on the end-of-year test by implementing two key strategies: daily spiral review and consistent cumulative testing. Prioritizing daily spiral review over the constant push to practice new content transformed her students' long-term retention to the point where her students were better prepared and less anxious about their large end-of-year assessment.

Discover, Ideate, Create, and Evaluate ways students are engaged through Designing Thinking as a process for learning in the classroom. In this session, Janine will showcase how to structure lessons, build on student voice through choice, and create a climate of creative exploration in the middle school classroom. Examples of student work, lesson structure, and thematic units will be shared.

In this interactive presentation, participants will learn what makes for effective online learning for students in the middle grades. A focus will be on the instructional design elements that connect familiar, traditional face-to-face instruction with perhaps the more unfamiliar, online components.

In successful schools, decisions reflect the distinctive nature and identities of young adolescents. In this session, we will share highlights of recent research on development and offer inspiring examples of responsive practices from great teachers. Participants will learn more about general patterns of development and identify ways to collaborate with students to better understand them as groups and individuals.

Session Slides

Join AMLE and a panel of middle school leaders as we discuss how to foster and support authentic family engagement this school year.

Multiple years of COVID restrictions directly impacted family engagement, limiting who could come on our campuses and how our schools could engage with our communities. It's time for a reset. Our panel of school leaders will discuss how to assess the current level of family involvement, set a vision for improvement, and explore innovative, high-impact ideas for authentic family engagement.

The parent-teacher relationship consists of the adults our children spend most of their day with, the adults with shared goals for helping the child develop healthy relationships with themself, with learning, with peers, and with the school community. The parent-teacher relationship is not without its challenges as we often disagree about how to meet these shared goals. And because of the segmented relationship, we avoid engaging in challenging yet important topics. Potentially this important relationship will be strained even further by COVID-19. In this webinar, Jen Cort shares ideas for strengthening the parent-teacher relationship at any time and specifically during COVID-19.

Are you looking for notes pages that fit your teaching style and meet your needs? Have things you found online not quite met your needs? Come with your device, we will be using Google Slides to create your own notes or activity pages that you can take back and use right away. You will learn how to use Google Slides to create visual pages for your students, easier to manipulate than a word doc. Together we will walk you through various features of Slides, and you will leave with your own creation!

Free Project Based Learning & SEL Lessons
Lead4Change – this is exactly the phrase that describes what students want to do right now! They want to have a purpose, be empowered with voice and choice, and make change happen. In this hybrid season of virtual and in person learning, the Lead4Change Student Leadership Program is a perfect fit for middle level students! Register at: http://www.lead4change.org/join for instant access to lessons, alignments ( ie: PBL & SEL) and resources to begin this Free leadership/service program. If you have student teams who complete the program and a service project, (yes, even virtually) you can enter their work in the Lead4Change Challenge for the opportunity to win up to $10,000 for your school or community organization. Plus, all students who are part of a challenge team will receive Certificates of Completion and are eligible for Graduation Honor Cords. Join us for this informational AMLE webinar!

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Teaching in a virtual world can be a challenge and yet, it can also be a great opportunity. Come discover ways to engage your students with pre-recorded lessons. Learn how to make connections and how to laugh along the way. Jack will provide humor and great advice on how to do virtual teaching even if you have a face for radio.

Learn more about how implicit bias and how microaggressions are subtly thwarting your equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts. Discover what you can do as a bystander or target of microaggressions. Recognize your implicit biases and learn not act on your biases as if they are facts.

We have a big announcement for middle level education! With the release of the fifth edition of The Successful Middle School: This We Believe, AMLE is on a mission to recognize schools that demonstrate a commitment to the essential attributes and characteristics of successful middle grades schools as well as continuous improvement. More than just a recognition program, AMLE’s Schools of Distinction will support middle grades teams with invaluable tools and resources to continue their journey to reach every student and create a great school. Join us to learn more about the program, its anticipated launch, and how you can get involved.