UNDERSTANDING MIDDLE SCHOOL UNDERACHIEVERS: AN INTEGRAL DIMENSION OF OUR EDUCATIONAL DISCOURSE

Abstract

The middle school movement was developed in the 20th century which emerged as a cohesive institution. This article highlights the psychosocial needs of these teenagers where they exhibit an inability to understand their personal and social selves. These early adolescents in this article are denoted as middle School ‘Underachievers’ to open up the reasoning amidst the teenager’s societal educational institutions. This would reinforce an educational discourse by first recognizing the strained psychosocial attributes of middle school underachievers and then working on collective solutions towards their personal growth. COVID-19 has led to a digitalized form of learning that has made schools all the more unaware of the affective and social concerns of middle school teenagers. Hence, this article further suggests the involvement of these teenagers in the academic system by grooming their inner potentials through support groups like school, family, and peers that resembles the community and by using the available resources instead of thinking of scarcity. There is a need to visualize these teenagers beyond academic achievement in strengthening their life-skills approaches through experiential learning and virtual co-curricular activities. Policymakers, educators, caregivers, community professionals, and other stakeholders need to collectively decide on merging these teenagers, thereby encouraging participatory learning. This article further suggests the integration of three constructive methods that include the strengthening of support systems, embeddedness of experiential learning and implementation of virtual co-curricular activities in preventing the psychosocial issues of middle school underachievers. Further research needs to be done by integrating virtual psychosocial programs for middle school underachievers.