Q&A |Teaching Elementary School vs. Middle School

hello everybody welcome back to my channel my name is Latonya I am the host of the channel smarty style and if you are new to this channel typically I upload vlogs on a weekly basis that primarily focus on my life as a teacher but every now and then given the circumstances or the time of year I sprinkle in other things as well and on occasion I do a sit-down video that is specifically geared towards a particular topic and this happens to be one of those videos so in this video I'm going to talk about the differences in teaching elementary school versus teaching middle school so for those of you that are new to the channel or this is the first video that you've watched at mine I am in my or I just completed actually my 15th year of teaching and 14 out of those 15 years I taught elementary school so this past school year was my very first year teaching middle school I taught eighth grade social studies and language arts and so when I made the transition to middle school I knew that at some point I was going to be making a video where I compared my experiences in the two different levels of schooling a just because I wanted to Mb because I know a lot of teachers would be interested in something like that because as you teach for a couple years you start to think about changes you might want to make and I know a lot of teachers think about making the switch from elementary school to middle school or middle school to elementary school so my hope is this video is helpful for those of you that came to it for that reason and if you're just curious then I also hope that this video gives you some information that you we're curious to learn so without further ado what I'm going to do is I actually opened up some questions or open up the opportunity for people that follow me on instagram to ask me questions that they have specifically in relationship to my experience teaching both elementary and middle school and so this video is going to be focused on me answering those questions before I do that I do think it is important for me to give you a little bit of background about Who I am and how I came to this point in my career and I did take notes because I didn't want to leave anything out and I wanted to make sure I had all the questions in one place so me looking down and just me referring to those notes that I've taken so first I just want to kind of explain my personality in general I have been described as being a very like direct person in terms of my communication style I'm not aggressive but apparently the way that I speak comes across as very direct to people but not in an intimidating way if that makes any sense I also have a very dry sense of humor which I've always known I enjoy some good sarcasm and I like kids but I'm not someone that when I see babies or little tiny kids that I feel like compelled to go and like talk to that kid or pick up that baby and that may seem like a weird thing to say but it will make sense as I like kind of talk about my journey and like why I made some of the choices that I made I did not grow up thinking that I would be a teacher this was not a profession that was even anywhere near my consciousness I thought I was going to be a lawyer and I didn't decide to teach until I was in my late 20s so even though that's relatively young this wasn't a path that I knew I was going to go down you know when I entered into college so that is kind of some background on me I have taught very briefly a summer school stint and in kindergarten I've taught third grade for a few years fourth grade for a few years but the most of my teaching career was spent teaching fifth grade at the elementary school level and then last year was my first year teaching eighth grade so let's just talk about the early part of my career so my first year of teaching I taught in a different district than what I'm in now and I interviewed and got hired on the spot to teach fifth grade with another new teacher there were only two of us in the great level at that time and it went well I don't remember like having any sort of traumatic experiences and even when I told I was told I was going to be teaching fifth grade I was with it I was a little disappointed because prior to that I had spent a lot of time just observing and volunteering in like second grade classes and even some first grade classes and I just kind of envisioned myself being in that environment making all these cute little projects and doing cute teacher things but I was still okay with teaching fifth grade my second year teaching I transferred to the district I'm in now because it's closer to home it is a district that is tied to the high school that I went to and I had a lot of connections to the neighborhood and so when I got to my second school I started off teaching fourth grade and I taught that for a few years and some conversations I would have with the principal at the time she and one of those conversations told me that she would never ever like and she was so adamant about it she would never ever put me in a grade lower than third grade and at the time I was like I don't know why like why are you saying that and I was off you know low-key a little like offended because I didn't know why she was saying that but I didn't really say anything back because I was a newer teacher and I wasn't going to like become argumentative with the principal but like it it was just odd to me that she said that so she moved me eventually from fourth to fifth grade and that was a blessing because I enjoyed fifth grade I loved the age I loved the team that I work with I spent I want to I think I taught fifth grade for about seven years or so and it was just an amazing experience like it was the perfect place for me to be like the age was right the curriculum was right I loved it and during my years teaching fifth grade I eventually got to the place where I knew it was inevitable that at some point I was going to teach middle school I didn't know when and I didn't have any specific plans in place but in the back of my mind I always knew that at some point in my teaching career I am going to teach middle school and there were times during that time where the middle school teacher or the middle school principal I should say at the middle school that I worked now she no longer is the the principal because she's moved on but she was actively like you know encouraging me to come on over school along with a friend of mine because she thought like our skillset and our style of teaching would just do very well at the middle school level but I was very happy where I was at and I kind of put it off so just keep that in mind like I always knew that I was going to teach middle school I just didn't know when so eventually I leave that school and then I go to a new school because this was a brand new school in the district and I wanted the experience of opening up a new school because at the time I was very certain that I was going to go down the administrative path which now I'm not so certain that that is something that I want to pursue but I was more certain of it then so I wanted to have the experience of opening up a brand new school because I thought it's a great experience it's a good resume builder so I went to the new school in my district I ended up being placed in third because there was only one fifth grade class at the school and several teachers wanted to teach that fifth grade class and the principal chose to put me in a third grade class she chose to put me in a third grade class which I thought was kind of odd because I was one of the most experienced teachers with this new staff that was being put together and the teacher that she gave the fifth grade position to was relatively new to teaching and I had had several years of experience teaching fifth had success with fifth and so I just was not sure why she made that choice not hopefully that doesn't come across as like arrogant but I was surprised but when I talked to her she just felt like because of my experience that she can kind of put me in any great level and I would be able to handle it and so that was her decision behind it and so I said okay so I taught third at that school for two years and that is when I had the understanding of why that principal said to me I will never put you in anything below third grade because she was right because I taught third grade the beginning of third grade for me was very rough the beginning of the year because you're essentially teaching big second graders and they need a lot of reassuring and a lot of hand-holding and a certain tone of voice in a certain way and a certain sweetness that I just don't think comes as naturally to me as it should if I'm teaching kids that's small now that's not to say that as time progressed and the kids understood like my sense of humor and my personality and my demeanor and I kind of understood them in that age group it was a it was a really good experience I really enjoyed the students but the beginning of the year was always rough just kind of getting third graders acclimated to the type of demands that I was putting on them that I feel were age-appropriate but I think some third graders are just not accustomed to someone like functioning in that way and honestly I was teaching third grade with a fifth grade teacher mindset like for me I know where they need to go having been that fifth grade teacher so I really operate it from I'm getting them ready for the greats to come I'm getting them ready for their first year of standardized testing and so it was challenging sometimes because of that so I did that for two years my first year was rough teaching third and being at a new school because I had left a school that I was just so happy at and so thankful to be at and then this transition was just rough because that family and community feel that I had in my previous school just wasn't there at this school and I'm having to prove myself to parents that don't know me and then having to prove myself to parents I think I'm a little too too much for third grade but after that first year I said let me give it a another year because maybe it's just rough cuz it's your first year so give it another year and see how you feel and then after that second year of teaching third grade at that school I knew like it's time for me to go ahead and make a move and this is the perfect time for me to try out middle school so for those of you that are debating between should I go to only elementary school or middle school and you're wondering if I can give you the thought process I took to get there I'm saying all that to say I always knew I was going to go there so me making that transition just wasn't hard for me it was just a matter of time but I will say if you know that you tend to be a little bit more rigorous in your instruction that you're very into the career you teach you set pretty high standards that maybe you have a certain demeanor and a sense of humor that is a little bit on the drier side or sarcastic side you know middle school is a good fit for you that's not to say that that doesn't work at the elementary level because it does but me making a transition was not difficult at all so that's just a little bit of background as to how I got there from elementary school how I got to middle school from elementary school so when I looked at all the questions people submitted on Instagram they were really kind of all focused on the same two broader topics and then there was like just the set of miscellaneous questions so the two broad topics that they were really set on were the comparisons of big kids versus little kids and then questions about workflow and time management so I'm gonna go through the questions that all fall under the same category starting with big kids versus little kids then I'll move on to time management and workflow then I'll talk about some of the miscellaneous questions and then excuse me at the end I will give you my pros and cons for both so the first question that I got with the big kids versus little kids is is there a difference and difficulty working with younger versus older kids for me in my experience there is it I don't feel like one group was more difficult than the other I think for my personality when I worked with younger kids I had to be a little bit more conscious about things like tone of voice facial expressions demeanor sarcasm just because at that age they may not pick up on things the way an older student might pick up on things so if I had to say any sort of difficulty I guess that would be it but any glaring increase in difficulty in dealing with kids and the to varying ages I haven't experienced that the second question is asking what is the be hit are the biggest behavior management change the biggest behavior management change is that in middle school I really just don't feel a need to have a specified system in place so for many years when I tell elementary school especially in the fifth grade level there was a very specific and defined behavior management system that I had one year there were magnets on a chart and kids are movie magnets up and down and then several years there was a ticket system that was correlated to the citizenship categories and report cards and kids had to pull tickets and there were reports and parents at the sign and all of that was going on and it worked well for me at the time don't get me wrong it was a very solid system that kept me accountable when it came to citizenship grades kept parents informed it was very straightforward when I taught the two years of third grade at the new school I got to a point where I was just tired of that I was tired of managing clip chart managing points on classdojo thinking about a treasure box thinking like all of that I just am not good at it because my mind is just focused on other things so by the time I was rolling into my second year teaching third grade and even maybe towards the end of my first year I took the clip chart down and we just didn't have one like we just didn't have a management system where I was sending a report home to parents in third grade now jump to eighth grade I definitely didn't have one I don't have like you do this then this you do this then that if you do this three times and this happens now there are school rules that kind of deal with some of that would like cell phone usage or language or fighting at school but in terms of my class there wasn't that what I told my eighth graders and this if anyone asks what is your classroom management system in eighth grade was I said to my students I'm chill until I'm not and that was really it like they understood what I meant they knew that what I was saying is I'm pretty laid-back I'm pretty chill until it becomes clear that I can no longer be and so that's not to say the kids were perfectly behaved but the nice thing about middle school is when someone's doing something and you know they shouldn't be doing it and they know they should be doing it you really only have to say so-and-so seriously and then they just kind of look at you like yeah I know I know and then they'll stop I didn't have anything really some well I take that back I did have one student who had some more pronounced behavior issues that needed a little bit more monitoring and I was able to quickly revert to some of the things I did in the elementary school or at the elementary school level so I had to chunk his day in two sections of time he had three yellow cards and his goal was just to maintain those three yellow cards and as juvenile and as basic as that sounds it worked because it was a visual and it really helped him to self-regulate and kept me from just being on his case the whole time so I I had to say which one's easier for me behavior management and middle school is easier it's less tedious less paperwork involved next question it's kind of the same it says how is classroom management different I kind of just touched on that with my response to the previous question but I will say at the elementary level after recess after lunch you're gonna have to deal with some kind of drama that happened on the playground someone said wouldn't let the other kid play a tetherball someone so took their purple pencil so-and-so said I was mean and so I really believed when I tell elementary school it was important for me to allow kids to say their piece say their story talk it through with them let them do a little talking it out together and so a lot of time would be spent after recess and lunch kind of you know talking kids through like okay this is what you said this is how it made her feel let's apologize and there really isn't much of that at the middle school level there's definitely drama at the middle school level but it rarely is coming into the classroom to the point where I have to stop instruction to handle it or smooth it out the next question I thought was pretty interesting and came up a couple of times and some people wanted to know is it more difficult to make connections with students in middle school versus elementary school and I would say no I think that if you're a teacher who you're one of your primary goals is to connect with students to enrich the experience they have in your classroom then that will naturally translate regardless of what grade level you're teaching you're connecting with students on is probably going to be different so when I taught elementary school me connecting what the student was you know just me like talking to them about their friends and recess and just like really light-hearted things just taking an interest in their life and what they like and you know laughing with them and playing a game of tetherball with them stuff like that where is it the middle school level it is a little bit more of you kind of giving them like an adult perspective on life and friendships and their future and you know maybe sharing some of your experiences that you had at their age and how you work through it so the level and the depth of what you're talking about is definitely different but the ability to do that should translate very well if that is something that just comes naturally to you or that is something that you really make a priority in your teaching and I think that is one of the biggest things I want people to know that have apprehension about going to middle school is that you definitely can still make connections with students and I think it's probably more important and more beneficial to you as a teacher when you're putting in that effort with middle school students than it is in elementary school students because at the elementary level there's still a good portion of kids that want to please the teacher that want to come to school that want to do well they're not disenfranchised just yet but when you get to middle school especially at eighth grade kids have had experiences kids don't identify themselves as students they don't like school they don't want to be there they think all the teachers are out to get them and the moment they realize oh this teacher is really actually taking an interest and Who I am and what I'm about and trying to help me then it is it's very fulfilling and it makes it makes it just makes a huge difference is what I would say so that is one thing that I would definitely say don't be frightened of the next question says what kinds of or what kind of question or discussions about identity have you had with middle schoolers that you did in elementary and this kind of goes in with what I just said you know at this age teaching eighth grade their middle schoolers are really trying to figure out who they are in all aspects of the word so who they are as a person what they stand for in terms of friendships where they fall in terms of relationships with the opposite sex or even the same sex so there have been moments where those kinds of questions have been brought up but I don't get very involved in them because that is really you know dangerous territory the couple of times that I've had conversations like that all I did was make sure the student knew that no matter what the issue was or what they were going through that I was here to support them and help them in any way that I can and that was really just kind of how I left it because that I'm not trying to overstep my bounds as a teacher and you know say something to them that may go against what is happening in their household all I can do is say I'm here for you I offer you support and I kind of left it at that because I you know I don't want to be called up to the district office quite frankly but I did have some of those conversations this year never really had those conversations at the elementary level but that's not to say that elementary students were not experiencing that I just don't think they're as vocal about it at that age because they may not even know how to vocalize those kinds of things just yet the last one is kids attitude in general towards school well I don't think it's surprising in elementary school kids generally speaking I know not every elementary student they they like school they want to go to school they have fun they like their teachers they want their teachers are like them that is not always the case in middle school most not most that sounds bad a lot of middle schoolers will report that they think school is boring it's not fun they don't think their teachers like them so it can be a challenge to get some kids motivated the first day of school I do remember saying okay I want you guys to turn to your partner and discuss and it was like crickets they just we're looking at me like no we're not going to discuss and so there was a lot of me begging like guys like come on and that still happened throughout the year but you definitely have to work towards finding ways to engage them with things that are relevant to them and being real with them and making content accessible to them and relevant to their day-to-day lives but it is harder to motivate students in middle school because they just are not liking it as much as they did when they were in elementary school now there are some kids that still love it and they enjoy being there but those are fewer and far between at the middle school level and all honesty all right the next of the questions focuses on workflow and time management so a lot of people have questions about like am i spending more time less time which one requires more time outside of the classroom versus the other so the first question says what systems do you have in place to manage both classes so just to back up and just I should have set this in the intro in my district I teach eighth grade and I did not have to go back to school to be rique radenso so my multiple subject credential allows me to teach from kindergarten through eighth grade and the way our middle school is set up is you have a partner teacher so I have a partner teacher that teaches math and science and then I teach social studies and language arts I have a homeroom class which is one group of kids and then I have a switch class which is another group of kids I have an elective and then I have a universal access class the elective and universal access class doesn't really require a whole lot in terms of grading so that's never really a factor in me managing my time on my elective class is leadership which is like the equivalent of ASB and there are definitely things I have to do outside of the classroom hours to handle that but I get a stipend for that so it doesn't really bother me too much so as far as systems that I have in place everything in my class is separated by homeroom and switch so I have mailboxes that one set is for the homeroom class one set is for the switch class I have record books for my grades set us for the homeroom class once that is for the switch class and I just keep it that way I have a Google classroom one is for homeroom one is for switch so I just great things and chunk things based on those groups the two classes are never intertwined the assignments are relative not even relatively the assignments are the same but sometimes one class is slightly ahead of the other and at times that could be a challenge just to make sure I'm keeping track of okay in this class we left off here but in my switch class we left off there but just making sure everything is categorized by homeroom and switch is really how I kept things organized and in place this past year the next question says is there more work in the elementary or middle school prepping grading etc for me I think there's more work at the elementary level and I had so many teachers when I was going back and forth on when I was going to apply to go to middle school and what it was gonna be like so many teachers that had taught them both that were like once you go to middle school you are going to kick yourself in the butt for not doing this sooner because there's just less prep less copies just it's just different like when you teach elementary school there's some prepping you have to do you have to cut things for them copy things a certain way just a lot of energy is spent getting that done and when I started with the district we did not have a prep period there was no in some states you guys call them specials we didn't have specials we didn't have PE we had a minimum day every Monday but sometimes those minimum days were taken up with staff meetings so you didn't always have that Monday so you were just always looking for that time to copy prep rip out pages of a workbook or whatever it was you were doing and you aren't really doing that for middle school students I'm not you know ripping pages out of a book for them I'm not cutting things for them because it's things that they can do on top of that I get an hour prep every single day so 50 minutes every day it's just to vote it to me to like grade and get caught up and so I I don't think one because I have been asked this question which one works harder I don't think one works harder than the other I think it's just a different kind of work and a different level of demand so while you're prepping a lot at the elementary level and cutting a lot and ripping workbook pages out and you need parents to do this this and this because the smaller kids can't do it at the middle school level especially teaching social studies language arts the volume of grading sometimes is increased but at this point in society there's so many things you could use that are digital that self grade that that has also helped so I would definitely say that it's it's a little bit more work intensive at the elementary school level in terms of prepping differences the next question says are there differences in Perry involvement absolutely there were time in the elementary school where I'm like I need you all to go home I don't have anything for you to do there's too many adults in the classroom right now I don't need you to volunteer anymore and at the middle school level I'm just kind of like where are they so and I didn't need them to volunteer for a lot there was something that I wanted to do this year I wanted to have different cultures represented throughout the year and so I sent out a message saying if you are from one of these backgrounds and you would like to come in and share your culture with us I would really appreciate it and I didn't get really any response I got a few donations in class from a couple parents and it was typically the same parents yeah whereas when I taught elementary if I sent out a message and said hey I need some Kleenexes or I need this or that I could pretty much guarantee that I'll get some but at the middle school level I couldn't really guarantee that the parent involvement in terms of communicating with parents it was a lot of just kind of like my son has this grade can you tell me why but yeah they weren't really in the classroom I think at that age a lot of parents just assume well I think a lot of it is at that age either the parents are assuming they don't need to be involved that way or I know this has happened because I'm parents have told me their kids have explicitly said do not come into my classroom I'm going to be so embarrassed so you definitely see less of them in the classroom at the upper grades or in the Middle School's how do i balance grading is there more work at home um I have to balance grading this year because the difference in elementary and middle school at least with my district is that middle schoolers have been trained here to check their grades almost on an hourly basis so a lot of them think well I just took a quiz so within the hour that quiz should be in the gradebook how come it's not there so I would get emails from kids all the time saying we're not gonna update grades when are you gonna write this how come you haven't gotten that done and I would get so frustrated because I would want to say excuse me you just took the quiz yesterday I haven't had a chance to look at it but at the same time at this age it is important for them to be aware of their grades and whether or not they need to recover credits so I got to the point where I realized I just have to be more timely with getting things graded in elementary school there will be times where I would have just stacks of things that needed to be graded and I would just spend like a marathon day grading and entering grades and it wasn't really a big deal because parents and kids weren't really checking their grades there would be like one or two parent that was hyper into checking grades at the elementary level and so I would just kind of tell them yes I'm gonna integrate as soon as I can but it wasn't really a big thing here it was a big thing cuz in both classes kids were just like when are you gonna put this in one even put this in they would be comparing to how fast I was putting grades in versus my partner teacher and I would have to tell them like guys teachers do have lives like when school ends there's meetings I'm going to heaven forbid I should want to exercise eat take a nap and I would try and remind them that my partner teachers teaching math and science and that grading is very straightforward in a lot of ways but when you're grading social studies and language arts and their short responses the type of person I am I want to read your response and I'm going to give you some feedback on your response so that just takes time but as the year progressed I got better with it and just had to force myself to sit down and get things just grate it in a timely fashion and entered into the gradebook and it ultimately made my life easier because then it minimized the emails that I was getting asking me when I was going to update my gradebook so the next category was just miscellaneous questions they didn't really fit under the big kids versus little kids or a time management and workflow the first one says have you changed your teaching style and I would say absolutely not I think the most rewarding part was to know that myself teaching really can translate at the elementary level and the middle school level I am the same teacher that I was when I taught third graders that I am when I taught eighth graders of course the content is different maybe we're choice and rigor is obviously different given the different ages but the core of Who I am as a teacher and what my focuses are on and my like level of expectation hasn't changed at all on that that has been rewarding to know that I can just be me best and worst part about both the best part of elementary school is just like being surrounded by a certain level of innocence throughout the day like just seeing little first graders even if you didn't teach first she's happy to see you happy to be at school and like just living the simplicity of their life through their eyes like they don't a lot of them don't have major stresses they're not like sad or depressed about much generally speaking because we do know they're small kids that are going through things but just it allowed me to just kind of stay really young and be silly at the elementary level the worst thing about elementary school um I think for me just dealing with like like overbearing parents like parents that don't trust that you know what you're doing and that you truly have the best interest of their child at heart and that because they're members of PTA or they do this on campus that they then have the authority to come in and kind of tell you how you should run your classroom and just feeling like you have to like defend yourself to them that is my least favorite thing about elementary school the best part about middle school is I think I really do like eighth graders I like the age and I like being able to talk about real and relevant things to them and really kind of getting them to think about things in a broader sense and I did that in elementary school but there's only so far they can go because they're young I like being able to just be sarcastic and give kids a hard time and them understanding sarcasm and like being able to like return it and just being pleasantly surprised by just the fact that they really are just nice people they're sweet people as long as they trust that you have their best interests in heart at heart and that you're really there for the right reasons they really are fun to work with the worst part about middle school is this is gonna sound trivial but a 30-minute lunch when I taught elementary school we have 40 minutes middle school we have 30 minutes and that 10 minutes makes a huge difference so that I would say is the worst part about teaching middle school the next question talks about having kids all day when you teach elementary school versus switching things I like about having kids all day is that if less is run longer than what I anticipated 4 I feel like it's easier for me to make up the time or by the time somewhere else throughout the day when I have them all day versus when I switch kids if something's running long it stresses me out because now not only am i behind today but now I'm going to be high be behind excuse me now I'm going to be behind tomorrow because this is probably going to have to roll over in tomorrow so the pros of having kids all day is just a lot more flexibility as far as cons associated with it a con of having kids all day is that some days you are just off with a student like you and that student are just not feeling each other on that the other day and that students going to be there all day no matter what so there's a certain amount of energy that's going to be required you're going to be a little bit taxed by the end of the day and that just makes for a stressful day so that's the con of having kids all day whereas with middle school if I'm having that kind of feeling or that kind of vibe from a student I just have to tell myself well in a short matter of time you'll get a break they'll go to their next class and then you guys can come back tomorrow and try again so you know there is that the easiest and hardest transition the easiest and hardest transition the easiest transition was just the teaching itself like the teaching the connecting with students the building a good classroom community I felt like that went very well for me this year the hardest was just time management with grades and just getting adjusted to new websites like everything was new to me like the language arts site was new the social studies book was new so just adjusting to all the different platforms that I hadn't used before and having a loss of like confidence because I don't have familiarity with those things so that made that was the hardest thing for me to adjust to how did I prepare to make the transition so again mentally I was prepared because I knew it was going to happen but the other thing that I did is when I found out I was going to be teaching eighth grade I reached out to the principal before the prior school year started and said hey can I come down for a couple hours one day I just want to observe an eighth grade class just so I can see what they're like what they do what they sound like how bigger they are smaller they how the teacher interacts just so that I could see it for myself and I'm glad I did it because when I left that day I just felt like yes this is the right place for me I love it I wanted to jump in there and get in those conversations and then I just read better than carrots or sticks I think is what it's called to just kind of get a sense of what I should be thinking about now that I'm dealing with older students and I also talked to a friend of mine whose son had just finished eighth grade and he kind of gave his perspective on his experience and his relationships with teachers and what he felt like teachers should do and I just listened to him and took that to her and I think it helped me out quite a bit last differences and staff connections I will say it as different now hopefully if your middle school teacher you don't take this the wrong way but middle school teachers are definitely a different breed of teachers than elementary school teachers they're much more outspoken from my experience much more comfortable saying no elementary teachers seem to be a little bit more and turn more elementary teachers seem to be more people pleasers and are willing to kind of do things that they really don't want to do and as far as me getting fully entwined with the staff this year I didn't really do that I actually ate lunch in my room during the school year just because I need it like a minute to decompress everyone's friendly but you can just tell they're a little bit more like about the business and then in closing their questions that we're asking is there anything I miss about elementary school yes I just miss having the fluidity of the day of having them all day I miss like the the routine of the day like being able to know after recess I'm gonna read a picture book and that's gonna happen every single day the same way I missed the innocence of elementary school students the cuteness of them so yeah I do miss that but at the same time I feel like middle school is definitely the right place for me to be which leads to the next question which I prefer and why I prefer middle school honestly I think it's just more natural for me and there's also part of me that wants to teach high school but I would have to go back to school to do that and that's really the only thing that's stopping me which is why when I went to middle school I specifically said I wanted to teach eighth because that was as close as I could get and just like the reasons why I teach and the the things that I'm really into are just more conducive to middle school students so I prefer middle school if I were to go back and teach elementary I wouldn't teach anything lower than fifth that I know was making the transition hard not really it was the best decision for me it was relatively smooth with the exception of transitioning during a year that we had a pandemic I had great supports it was great and then do I have any regrets I have no regrets I love it you know it's hard to jump out and like take a risk not knowing what's going to happen I was pretty confident that I was going to like it so it didn't feel all that risky but you never really know that first day of school I was like let's see what happens and luckily it went well and it just got better from there so I have zero zero zero regrets in my decision to leave elementary and go to middle schools so that is my Elementary versus middle school video if you are in the middle of like debating this for yourself or thinking about it for the future I certainly hope that it helped if you have any additional questions that I didn't answer go ahead and leave those in the comment section below and I will answer them as best as I can if you are not subscribed to my channel please go ahead and do that but if you liked this video and you found it helpful please do give it a thumbs up and I will see you guys in the next one until then have a great day and I will talk to you later you

Channel: SmartieStyle

Views: 9,504

Rating: 4.9761906 out of 5

Keywords: middle school, elementary school, q & a

Id: 2tKK5E6SXo4

Length: 41min 7sec (2467 seconds)

Published: Sat May 30 2020