Ch. 1 of Turning Points 2000: A Decade Later

Ch. 1: Turning Points 2000
Turning Points—A Decade Later

Turning Points worked as reform of education. It was a changing process that ensured success in young adults. Is it ferocious to say that through this one report, this one plan of action, we will find success across the board? After reading this chapter, one would realize that every step in the Turning Points step-up is backed up by numerous facts and accusations that prove this method of teaching is the most crucial and beneficial in the young adolescent mind. Turning Points was first published in 1989 where change was emerging and the foreshadowing of what an adolescent education looked like deemed clear and possibility driven. Whereas previous in 1986 the CCAD was primarily established as a “place to challenge adolescents” per say. This challenge presented new materials in which students were unable to grasp right away. And in 1987 the council established a Task Force on Education of young adolescents. This Task Force examines 10-15 year olds and identifies promising approaches in improving their education and promoting their healthy development. At this particular time period it is heart-wrenching that middle schools are falling short of meeting educational and social needs of millions of its students. The Turning Points report was established for these particular students with 8 essential principles in mind (all of which are important and located on page 2). Through this model, students, parents and teachers are able to see the whole picture, a starting point and an ending point where all goals are attainable. Through the configuration improvements and pull, we find an urge to change structurally and organizationally. Teachers provide math manipulatives and extended writing assignments to make work more adhesive. Through the change middle schools became warmer, happier places. Overall, adolescents are tough, trying years where self-esteem drops and self-discovery begins. As teachers, we must open our students up to think creatively, identify and solve meaningful problems, communicate and work well with each other and develop a base of factual knowledge with the key focus of equity. We are all the same. We cannot judge. Our expectations must be the same across the board. “Teachers cannot come to expect more of their students until they come to expect more of their capacity to teach,” reminds me so much of the movie Freedom Writers where the students have to grade themselves and Mrs. Gruwell takes the “F” one of the students placed on his own paper as an “F you” to her because it is universal that teachers are and should be accountable for the performance of the students’. After all, they are the ones providing the material. Turning Points, in my eyes seems to work and make each person seem as a pendulum working off each other and collaborating to achieve a goal instead of simply having a teacher dictate what should and should not happen.