What happens when middle school teachers stop functioning as separate classrooms and begin thinking and working as one team?

In Episode 4 of The Middle School Culture Blueprint: Reflections from the Field, Dr. Denise Ball welcomes Mary Peters, a veteran middle school educator at St. Anne Catholic Grade School in the Archdiocese of Detroit, for a practical conversation about collaboration, consistency, and building a strong middle school team.

Mary shares several practices her team is using to strengthen the student and teacher experience. One especially powerful example is a common middle school assessment template built around the Claim, Evidence, Reasoning (CER) format. By using a shared approach across content areas, teachers provide students with greater consistency while still maintaining the uniqueness of their individual di ...