Meet Me in the Middle (Chapters 1,2,17)

I felt overall that this was a self-help book for any pre-service teacher. It does a good job suggesting pedagogy and different techniques for being successful within the classroom but the tone of it was something that I could not get into. Since starting in secondary education I have read a lot of books similar to this but as with everything I must take it with a grain of salt. There are some suggestions made that sound like very risky legal problems if the advice is taken. The examples of touching the students to establish comfort or "find out that he is real" is something that we have to be very careful of in the times we live in. Or the bit about visiting a student at their home as a sort of enviornmental and ethical risk that can actually hurt our reputations or sever ties with our students. I felt like the approaches and suggestions made towards motivation and attitude were something that I will be able to refer back to and it is surprising to me how even with the change of emphasis (from high school to middle school) a lot of the methods of gathering attention and making your environment more accessable seems more universal then I had originally atticipated. I found myself referencing methods and theory courses as well as moments in practicum that I could recall learning or using such strategies in order to better connect with my audience. Overall these chapters were more like a review then anything strickingly new to me but I think anything that makes us as educators sit back and rethink our game plans is a great investment of our time.