Middle School

by Ira Glass

Ira Glass is the host of WBEZ Chicago’s public radio show This American Life, which uses interviews and real-life stories to examine different topics each week. On October 28, 2011, This American Life spoke with a mixture of middle school students about their experiences as adolescents. - Description from CommonLit

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About the author

Ira Glass is an American public radio personality, and host and producer of the radio and television show This American Life.

Reviews

[Ann]

In this transcript of the public radio show "This American Life," the host as well as other radio show workers interview middle school students about something they are experts on: middle school. Each student gives different perspectives on the ins and outs of middle school, with a specific focus on middle school dances. The first interviewee, Annie, has recently graduated from middle school and discusses how people get made fun of for almost anything they do.

Students fear being called out for being different, even if it is for something they enjoy or are proud of. As adolescent students struggle to define themselves they are afraid of being genuinely different. Using this transcript in a study of identity would allow readers to think deeply about how identity shapes the middle school experience. The middle school students describes not wanting to stick out. Uniqueness and individuality are things that make you stick out, and these are encompassing factors of identity. Middle school students would clearly be able to relate to the speaker in this interview because they are currently in their middle school years. The transcript is funny and light, but also provides good insights into middle school that would be useful in creating discussions about defining yourself in middle school.

Because of how applicable this text is to middle school students, I would pair it with a writing strategy from Chapter 7 of Gallagher's Write Like This. The strategy where students write a list of five things to__ would be good for this, because they could use what they read in this interview to think about ways to make Middle School better, or more bearable. This could be both humorous as well as freeing for some students as they think about the ways they could improve their experiences in middle school Hearing what their peers say would also allow them to think about the experiences of their peers instead of just their own.