Personalized Professional Development Plans

Nancy Ruppert is the past-president of AMLE and past-president of NAPOMLE. She is the chair of the education department at UNC Asheville. Her current areas of interest are in advocating for middle school alumni and creating resources to advocate for middle level education. Here she invites readers to contribute to ideas for ongoing professional development

What Drives your Spirit and Commitment to Middle Level Education? Exploring a Middle School Mindset

Over the past two years, middle school advocates have been sharing their thoughts on the following prompt: “What drives your spirit and commitment to middle level education?” The purpose has been to capture ‘the spirit’ of middle school* educators?’ From these stories five characteristics emerged that can help us consider how to promote the next generation of middle school leaders. Perhaps using the findings from this exercise can help us advocate for the next generation of middle school leaders. * For the purpose of this study, middle school refers to those who work with 10-15 year olds and includes intermediate schools, a K-8, middle schools, junior highs, or 9th grade academies

Teaching Candidates to Assess Student Learning: A COVID Collaboration with Arts and Sciences Faculty

In the fall of 2020, due to COVID, our candidates did not have access to student work samples early in the semester. In order to learn how to assess student learning I reached out to an Arts and Sciences faculty who teaches a freshman course. The Arts and Science faculty was a former middle school teacher who was scheduled to talk about the teaching of writing in our methods class. We decided to add using work samples from her current students to provide an assessment experience. This exercise allowed candidates to create a one-point rubric, analyze student work, give feedback, examine patterns of learning for the whole class, as well as give suggestions for each student based on their work. The practice prepared them for their own fall teaching assignment and all were able to analyze their students\u27 works successfully

Collaboration in the Middle: Middle Grades to Higher Education Promoting, Advocating, Igniting Support for Middle Schools

The authors provide an overview of the Southeast Professors of Middle Level Education Symposium, which was held in Greenville, SC, May 17-18, 2018. This is the introduction to the proceedings from the Symposium

Celebrating 25 Years of the National Association of Professors of Middle Level Education

The National Association of Professors for Middle Level Education has been focused on middle grades education since 1997. This is an introduction for the CIMLE Journal in celebration of NAPOMLE\u27s 25 anniversary in 2022

Introduction to the Issue: Preparing the Next Generation of Middle School Leaders

The articles in this issue of Current Issues in Middle Level Education are based on a Symposium that did not take place as planned. In May 2020, middle level educators and researchers from across the Southeast and beyond would have gathered in Asheville, NC, for a Symposium sponsored by the Southeast Professors of Middle Level Education (SEPOMLE). Due to COVID-19, however, the in-person Symposium was canceled, and accepted authors were invited to submit manuscripts based on their work for this issue. These articles represent ideas on the Symposium theme of “Preparing the Next Generation of Middle School Leaders.” Across the articles, a theme of connection emerges. This idea of connection is linked to middle level concepts about curriculum and teaching, and it is also linked to a professional goal of meetings like the Symposium to connect with one another, share ideas, and build a community of learners. The idea of connection also relates to our national context and the importance of building bridges and looking forward together: to include diverse voices and perspectives, to connect across distances, to strengthen education. In the words of the late John Lewis, “You must be a headlight, not a taillight.” We thank the authors of these articles for shining light on ways for middle level educators and researchers to connect and to prepare new leaders. SEPOMLE is planning a Symposium in 2021. Please check the website for the National Association of Professors of Middle Level Education (www.napomle.com) for information in the months ahead

Uniting Students with Literacy Connections in Mathematics

Literature provides opportunities for students to connect to mathematics, as well as each other. Reflecting on personal identities, storytelling, and place-based connections are avenues to enhancing the relevancy of content across the curriculum. Literature can bridge the divide for students reluctant to see the beauty in mathematics. It can also be the impetus in helping unite students as they gain a better understanding of cultures and places beyond their own. Stories, along with interactive tasks, give context for collaborative experiences. This article shares resources and strategies for building understanding and collaboration among students using cross-curricular connections between mathematics and literacy

Applying a Reflective SWOT Analysis to Examine Four Pillars of Culturally Sustaining Practices

Teacher educators and preservice teachers are increasingly tasked with ensuring that their classrooms are safe and respectful environments that encourage metacognitive reflection and modeling best practices. With this in mind, this paper uses a SWOT analysis (Orr, 2013) tool that employs the Four Pillars of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy framework established by Diaz et al. (2023) to invite educators, teams, and schools to contribute their own work to uplift and share strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, as well as resources and experiences they engage in with a community of those who share their vision for a more equitable, inclusive teaching and learning environment

Collaborating with the European League for Middle Level Education

Collaborations between the National Association for Middle Level Education (NAPOMLE) and the European League for Middle Level Education (ELMLE) can be mutually beneficial. This article reflects on NAPOMLE’s past experiences with our global affiliate ELMLE and promotes future partnerships expanding our commitment to supporting the development of middle schools and middle level leaders. We advocate a global approach to preparing and empowering the next generation of middle school leaders

Analysis of shared heritability in common disorders of the brain

ience, this issue p. eaap8757 Structured Abstract INTRODUCTION Brain disorders may exhibit shared symptoms and substantial epidemiological comorbidity, inciting debate about their etiologic overlap. However, detailed study of phenotypes with different ages of onset, severity, and presentation poses a considerable challenge. Recently developed heritability methods allow us to accurately measure correlation of genome-wide common variant risk between two phenotypes from pools of different individuals and assess how connected they, or at least their genetic risks, are on the genomic level. We used genome-wide association data for 265,218 patients and 784,643 control participants, as well as 17 phenotypes from a total of 1,191,588 individuals, to quantify the degree of overlap for genetic risk factors of 25 common brain disorders. RATIONALE Over the past century, the classification of brain disorders has evolved to reflect the medical and scientific communities' assessments of the presumed root causes of clinical phenomena such as behavioral change, loss of motor function, or alterations of consciousness. Directly observable phenomena (such as the presence of emboli, protein tangles, or unusual electrical activity patterns) generally define and separate neurological disorders from psychiatric disorders. Understanding the genetic underpinnings and categorical distinctions for brain disorders and related phenotypes may inform the search for their biological mechanisms. RESULTS Common variant risk for psychiatric disorders was shown to correlate significantly, especially among attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder (MDD), and schizophrenia. By contrast, neurological disorders appear more distinct from one another and from the psychiatric disorders, except for migraine, which was significantly correlated to ADHD, MDD, and Tourette syndrome. We demonstrate that, in the general population, the personality trait neuroticism is significantly correlated with almost every psychiatric disorder and migraine. We also identify significant genetic sharing between disorders and early life cognitive measures (e.g., years of education and college attainment) in the general population, demonstrating positive correlation with several psychiatric disorders (e.g., anorexia nervosa and bipolar disorder) and negative correlation with several neurological phenotypes (e.g., Alzheimer's disease and ischemic stroke), even though the latter are considered to result from specific processes that occur later in life. Extensive simulations were also performed to inform how statistical power, diagnostic misclassification, and phenotypic heterogeneity influence genetic correlations. CONCLUSION The high degree of genetic correlation among many of the psychiatric disorders adds further evidence that their current clinical boundaries do not reflect distinct underlying pathogenic processes, at least on the genetic level. This suggests a deeply interconnected nature for psychiatric disorders, in contrast to neurological disorders, and underscores the need to refine psychiatric diagnostics. Genetically informed analyses may provide important "scaffolding" to support such restructuring of psychiatric nosology, which likely requires incorporating many levels of information. By contrast, we find limited evidence for widespread common genetic risk sharing among neurological disorders or across neurological and psychiatric disorders. We show that both psychiatric and neurological disorders have robust correlations with cognitive and personality measures. Further study is needed to evaluate whether overlapping genetic contributions to psychiatric pathology may influence treatment choices. Ultimately, such developments may pave the way toward reduced heterogeneity and improved diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders