As the new school year begins, we have stories from all over the
country about people lurching their way through their middle
school years – the years when you're figuring out so much.
We go to school dances, classrooms, and down to the Mexican
border.
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(00:00:00) Prologue: Host Ira Glass interviews a 14-year-old
named Annie, who emailed us asking if we would do a show about
middle school. She explains why exactly the middle school years
can be so daunting. (4 minutes)
(00:05:42) Act One: In an effort to understand the physical and
emotional changes middle school kids experience, Ira speaks with
reporter Linda Perlstein, who wrote a book called Not Much Just
Chillin' about a year she spent following five middle schoolers.
Then we hear from producer Alex Blumberg, who was a middle school
teacher in Chicago for four years before getting into radio.
Alex's takeaway? We shouldn't even try teaching kids at this age.
Marion Strok, principal of a successful Chicago school,
disagrees. (6 minutes)
(00:11:59) Act Two: We sent correspondents straight to the
epicenters of middle school awkwardness: school dances. We spoke
with kids across the country during the nervous moments leading
up to the dances, and even ventured inside, to the dance itself.
(9 minutes)
(00:21:51) Act Three: When Domingo Martinez was growing up in a
Mexican-American family in Texas, Domingo's two middle
school-aged sisters found a unique way of coping with feelings of
inferiority. (11 minutes)
(00:33:40) Act Four: We realized that there are already reporters
on the ground, embedded inside middle schools: the kids who
report the daily announcements. Producer Jonathan Menjivar
wondered what would happen if instead of announcing sports scores
and the daily cafeteria menu, the kids reported what's really on
their minds. Students at Parkville Middle School outside
Baltimore, along with their journalism teacher Ms. Davis, agreed
to try out this experiment. (7 minutes)
(00:40:01) Act Five: Producer Sarah Koenig reports on a kid we'll
call Leo, whose family moved away from Rochester, NY, leaving
behind all of Leo's friends and stranding him in a new — and in
his opinion, much worse — middle school. (10 minutes)
(00:50:41) Act Six: Ira speaks with Shannon Grande, a teacher at
Rise Academy in Newark, about a seventh grader who had all sorts
of problems with behavior, hygiene, and schoolwork. To help turn
him around, Grande had to harness the power of peer pressure for
good. (7 minutes)
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