Making a middle school student happy sounds like an impossible job, best left to someone with super powers. In my experience, it can be as easy as 1-2-3.

The first trick to getting your middle school students happy is to be enthusiastic. As educators, we want to make sure our students feel successful at what they are doing and we hope we are encouraging them to be lifelong learners. We want to see all our students' graduate high school and go on to college. If we can instill a sense of love for learning in them, we can accomplish this. In my sixth grade classroom, I get excited about the silliest thing. The completion of a long multiplication problem, a complement I heard another student say, or even a small accomplishment in my own life I share with them. I noticed in the third year of teaching that my most successful lessons were on subjects I liked myself. My students were more successful at learning long multiplication then long division because I myself, like multiplication better. When I started my fourth year of teaching, I thought if I change my own attitude about division, maybe my students will learn it better. Sure enough, they scored they same on both multiplication and division assessments.

The second trick, my favorite, is give students choices. That might sound scary, especially in middle school, but I learned to give them choices about things that didn't really matter to me. For instance, I don't care if I give them their social studies test on Thursday or Friday. I ask my students, "Class, I am going to let you pick what day you want the test, Thursday or Friday." They get so excited that they can have that extra day, because they always pick the latter of the two. I also give them choices on assessments. I might write three essay questions about the story they read in their literature books. All the questions focus on the same skill I want to assess them on. I tell them, "I'm in a good mood, you only have to answer one instead of all three, but you have to answer to your best ability." I always get longer, more in-depth answers because the students know they could have had to answer all three instead of just one.

My third trick to making your middle school students happy is social time. I have a 60 minute math class. I tell my students that if we get through the lesson and everyone has a good start on their homework, I will give them the last five minutes to talk to their neighbors. They eat this up. Most of the time, they work and talk the last five minutes because they want to finish their homework. Giving them a set time to talk to their friends, makes them pay attention more in class. Some days, if the students are especially chatty, they don't get their five minutes, and they know why and try harder the next day.

When I overheard one of my old students say to another, "Our teacher lets us pick when we want our test and never makes us answer all the questions on it," I knew I was on to something. It is not often you hear a middle school student talk positive about a teacher. I love teaching middle school and I find that these three tricks will help make any middle school teacher successful and their students happy.

By Ann Bidle, as seen on her website, http://www.andyandann.com