Joe Berg Middle School Clubs
The middle school years are challenging for most young people.  Middle schoolers are no longer exactly children, but not quite yet adolescents.  Hormones are beginning to rage. Their brains are changing rapidly.  They are surrounded by new peers, and the social pressures that come with that are exacerbated by social media.  The result of all of this is that they will tend to gravitate toward a group of like-minded peers with similar interests, and this could be a good thing or a bad thing.  Depending on the other students they associate with, their lives can take a turn in a positive or a negative direction.  We believe Joe Berg Middle School Clubs could help steer middle schoolers in the direction of a love of learning and critical thinking that would help them to make a positive contribution to society.  The clubs would be modeled on The Joe Berg Seminars high school program, with some important differences:
  • They would be housed at the middle school.
  • They would be open to any student who wanted to become a member.
  • There would be no separation into Science and Humanities tracks.
Speakers would be drawn from the teachers and students at the school, professionals from the community, and Joe Berg Scholars from the high school program.  Joe Berg Scholars would help organize each club and would receive community service credit for this as well as for speaking at the club. The point is to have the middle schoolers get together on a reasonably regular schedule with a group of peers who all love to learn and think, hear a talk about something interesting...and learn and think!
       This will require approval of the schools, of course, and there are a variety of other issues (funding,
personnel, transportation, background checks, parental approval, etc.), so this program cannot be implemented immediately.  But we believe that if they do become a reality, Joe Berg Middle School Clubs would be an innovative way to foster learning and critical thinking skills in the middle schoolers who participate.  These middle schoolers may or may not go on to become leaders, but we think that even if they do not, the experience would translate into benefits both for themselves and for society.
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