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Middle School Honors Classes
Is Your Child Ready?
By Sue Marquette Poremba
There are children who are ready for more advanced classes in middle school, and Brownell and DeBroff agree that those children should be encouraged to take those classes. Brownell says that middle school curriculums need to be designed with the students in mind. Children who are ready to be moved into a more complex academic structure will likely thrive from the challenge. The problems arise when kids who are not ready are pushed into those types of classes. "Parents and teachers need to see how the child is performing before suggesting honors classes," DeBroff says.
Even children who are academically ready for more challenging classes may end up stumbling more than expected in middle school honors courses. It is not uncommon for middle school students to struggle in school because they are struggling with many other areas of their life.
Lisa Brinkley's middle school daughter is a case in point. Brinkley's daughter was in honors classes for eighth-grade English and social studies, based on her excellent grades from the year before. However, "she rollercoastered this year," Brinkley says. "I had to tell her to study, and she'd pull her grades up. Then she'd let the pressure get to her, and they would go back down again." Brinkley, from upstate New York, believes that her daughter would have handled the work just fine if she had tried harder.
Brinkley's daughter had proven in the past that she had the ability to achieve at a high level in school, and her biggest concern would be adjusting from coasting on easy work to pushing herself harder with challenging work. But many parents believe that when their child is underachieving in a regular classroom situation, it is due to boredom or a lack of a challenge. These parents push their children, sometimes too hard, into classes for which the children aren't ready.