Taking Center Stage – Act II (TCSII)

A Portal for Middle Grades Educators

Relationships with Peers

Peer influence (sometimes negatively labeled “peer pressure”) is another powerful developmental force. However, rather than being inherently negative, resilience research has documented the positive power of peers and the need to belong. Studies have shown that supportive friendships and positive peer role models are critical protective factors for youths, who need many opportunities to form positive, healthy peer relationships both during school hours as well as in after-school programs.1

"Peer helping” strategies in schools combine the adolescent needs for peer relationships with adolescents’ need for meaningful participation. Peer helping strategies include one-to-one helping relationships, support groups, tutoring, service learning, conflict mediation, peer education, cooperative learning, and all services of a helping nature. Peer helpers who serve as tutors improved their academic achievement in terms of test scores, grade point averages, and course pass rates.2

Peer Assistance and Leadership (PAL) (PDF; Outside Source) is a peer helping program that combats problems such as violence in schools, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, gang participation and school dropouts. PAL is listed as a promising program by the U.S. Government Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA) (Outside Source). Additional information about peer helping is available from the nonprofit Peer Assistance and Leadership (Outside Source) Web site.

Schools play an important role in channeling peer influence in a positive direction—providing another reason for the establishment of small learning communities.

From a developmental perspective, the middle grades are generally a time of growing concern for popularity, with students placing increasing importance on interpersonal relationships. This shift in emphasis often results in increasingly nonconforming peer values, social competition, and mean behavior. The issue is more problematic in middle schools, some argue, because adults in the school do not have as much of an opportunity to know what goes on among students, as instruction is structured such that students move from classroom to classroom, limiting student-teacher interaction. Similarly, students spend more time outside the classroom, which means that adult intervention in the social arena is scarce.3

The middle grades are a time when students experience a growing need for belonging.4 As a result, seasonal events such as school dances and Valentine’s Day require a different kind of sensitivity to relationships. Such events tend to be highly charged with expectations. Teachers and staff need to make sure that students are positively included in schoolwide events and provide alternatives if students cannot participate due to religious, medical, or other reasons. Successful school communities find ways to involve all students and to help them feel that they belong. In one school, officials organized a project for students to write Valentine’s Day cards to a local senior center so that the focus moved from the haves and have-nots of teen romance to a “feel-good” service project.5

California schools face the additional challenge of helping immigrant students and English learners to feel included. One way to do that is to recognize the resources they bring into classrooms. Although most reports focus on the services English learners need, immigrant students can also provide their classmates with valuable lessons. For example, recent immigrants can bring stories, food, and dress to help students understand other cultures and countries. Students at multicultural schools have an opportunity to learn about other cultural perspectives, which will help them in the global community of work.6

Possible projects that involve middle grades students with their peers include:

• Writing and research projects on standards-based essays
• Service-learning projects in teams (see the section in Chapter 4, “Relevance”)
• Visual and performing arts projects such as dramatic presentations, choir, band, poetry readings, or school beautification murals
• School gardens as part of a life science unit

Additional resources to help build relationships among peers include the following external Web links:

• “Building Community Among Tweens” (Outside Source)—An ASCD Express online article about how teachers can create a learning environment that meets the adolescent need for community.
• “On the Minds of Middle Schoolers”—An ASCD Express online article about helping tweens achieve academically by asking them what they need.

Previous Section
Small Learning Communities

Next Section
Opportunities to cooperate (cooperative learning)

Footnotes
1Youth Development Strategies, Concepts, and Research (PDF; Outside Source). Prepared by WestEd and the Safe and Healthy Kids Program Office. Sacramento: California Department of Education, n.d., p. 22.
2Ibid., 22.
3Christopher C. Weiss and Lindsay Kipnes, "Reexamining Middle School Effects: A Comparison of Middle Grades Students in Middle Schools and K-8 Schools,” American Journal of Education (February 2006).
4Resilience & Youth Development Module (PDF; Outside Source), p. 1; Getting Results: Developing Safe and Healthy Kids Update 5 (PDF; 895 KB; 80pp.), p. 43.
5Judith Baenen, “The Valentines Conundrum,” Middle E-Connections (January 2006).
6Eileen Gale Kugler, “What We Owe Immigrant Children,” Education Week (May 17, 2006).