Brent – 7th and 8th grade teacher Name of school: Sequoyah Middle School School City and State: Broken Arrow, OK Hi! My name is Brent. I'll be taking you into my classroom as I introduce Schools Attuned to my students and incorporate it into my own practice. I teach 7th and 8th grade English at a middle school (grades 6-8) in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, a town of about 75,000, next door to Tulsa. Broken Arrow is a classic hometown where kids are definitely the priority. Our school, one of five middle schools in the district, serves about six hundred students who, despite their cultural homogeneity, come from a variety of economic backgrounds (about thirty percent participate in the free or reduced lunch program) and domestic circumstances (about forty percent live in households with only one parent or without either parent). What all of our students have in common, though, is the support of adults at school and at home who will try almost anything to help their students achieve some success. I have each student for two periods each day, literature and language. The extra time I spend with my students really helps me get to know them better and allows me to make connections between reading and writing almost continuously. I also loop my students, so my 8th-graders this year were my 7th-graders last year, and this year's 7th-graders will stay with me for 8th grade. It's afforded me a panoramic view of how students develop individually and of how difficult and far-reaching the phases of early adolescence can be. Still, I feel I can take nothing for granted. To reach them as effectively as I hope to, I have to be very well tuned-in to what they need and how they perceive themselves as learners and as members of the group, class, and school. Last spring, the Tulsa World ran a feature about how the Schools Attuned approach had revolutionized classes at a well-respected local private school. The article described how high levels of student engagement and achievement were reached as the result of real differentiation in teaching strategies. I had to know more. It touched on a persistent struggle for me: How can I tailor the "how" of my teaching (my methods and practice) to give each student best access to "what" I teach (skills and curricula)? The success that I was reading about in the World sounded like the kind of success I wanted for my students and believed I could stimulate in my classes. That brings us to the beginning. I completed Urban Schools Attuned in New York last July, and I'm now at the starting point of attuning an individual student and incorporating more Schools Attuned strategies into my own repertoire. Over the next few months, I will share my experiences and results with you as I select a student with whom to begin working through the attuning process and as I introduce All Kinds of Minds into my classroom practice more consistently. I hope that some of the discoveries we 'll make in my classroom will help you decide how All Kinds of Minds can be included in yours. Until next time, take care and take time to make the difference!