Essay: The Influence Of Teaming In Middle School

Since I was four years old, I have been a part of a team. I have been on a dance team, softball team, basketball team, volleyball team. Through my times with the sports team, I learned how to work collaboratively with others and learn how to look at things from others perspectives. I realized that others may have different ideas than me that might actually be better than mine. What I learned when I was on a sports team when I was seven to when I was seventeen were very different. However, I was always learning how to be a better team player and help others. What I did not realize was that I was actually part of a team in my middle school. In the middle schools today, teaming benefits teachers and students at such a high level that they should

However, there may be some disadvantages as well. In “Social Consequences of Academic Teaming in Middle School: The Influence of Shared Course Taking on Peer Victimization,” Leslie Echols writes about a study that “examined the influence of teaming (i.e., sharing academic classes with the same classmates) on the relationship between social preference and peer victimization among 6th-grade students” (Echols 2015). There were 1,000 students randomly chosen from five middle schools that differ in their approaches to academic teaming. The students received their teaming score based on the classmates that they moved from class to class with. The reports of victimization were both self and peer evaluated. After they were analyzed, “the results of 2 path models indicated that students with low social preference in highly teamed classroom environments were more victimized than low-preference students who experienced less teaming throughout the school day” (Echols 2015). This means that students who did not feel very comfortable with their peers felt victimized. These students are stuck with their class for every class, every day, for the entire year. If they feel victimized by their classmates, their academic results may suffer because of