One afternoon in December of 2012, I was leading my middle school students through a discussion of an article in the New York Times. I had the image from my laptop projected onto the wall of the classroom.

I don’t remember what the article was, but the themes were age-appropriate and we were slowly working through it to get a handle on the language and structure.

As we finished up, I refreshed the home page of the Times. And that’s when I learned, along with a roomful of adolescents, that a large number of children had been killed in a school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

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I’m not meaning to call anyone out, I promise.

Off the top of your head, do you know where a comma goes in a compound sentence?

Do you know how to calculate a 40% discount in your head, standing in a store?

Can you explain the impact of the Black Death on the economy of Europe?

These are all things we learn in middle school. These are all things that, I would argue, are highly useful things to know. And they are all things, that, in my experience, a lot of adults don’t know. What are the implications?

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The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust us into a global experiment in distance learning and online education. Suddenly, millions of children and adolescents are no longer attending school. What do we do with them?

With Rulerless Academy, I have adapted the traditional middle school curriculum to one that can be delivered fully online. It works! Here are some shifts that I recommend in order to make online education successful.

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When I tell people that I run a tiny academic program for middle schoolers (aptly named The Little Middle School), the reaction is almost always the same.

“Middle school? Oh, middle school is awful.”

Or worse, “middle schoolers are awful!” 

Why does middle school have such a bad rap? Why do adults have such miserable memories of these early years of puberty?

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Every morning (along with lunchtime and after school), the piano at The Little Middle School is overtaken by a series of students. Each one informally shares the music they can play. This ranges from video game themes, classical pieces, folk songs, songs we’ve learned in class, to just messing around. Each student will continue to play until they have run through their repertoire to their own satisfaction or find themselves jostled off the bench by the next person (usually the latter).

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