Two Years in Middle School, Now Back to High School!

Summer holidays are over and we head back to school next week. I am excited to start this new academic year because I’ll be returning to the age group I feel more at home teaching — high school students. For the past two years at AIAN, I taught Middle School Social Studies (Grades 5–8) alongside AP Economics. This year, I will continue with AP Economics, but instead of teaching middle school, I’ll be working with high school students (Grades 9–12). I’m excited about this change because my expertise and interest have always been in working with older learners. Before joining AIAN, most of my teaching experience was with high school and adult students. So, I am excited to go back to teaching age groups I feel better equipped to cater to. Moving from middle school to high school is more than just a change in grade levels — it’s a shift in how I approach teaching, how I engage with students, and how I design lessons.

Shifting the Teaching Approach

Middle school teaching focuses on building strong foundations. Over the past two years, I spent a lot of time helping students develop essential skills — from understanding basic historical timelines to interpreting simple graphs and maps. In fact, teaching in a school where many students are English language learners meant I often used Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) strategies to ensure all students could access the material. Lessons needed a careful balance of structure and creativity, with activities that kept energy levels high and attention spans engaged.

High school, however, offers the opportunity to work with students who have already developed many of those foundational skills. While I will still use CLIL strategies when necessary, I won’t need to rely on them to the same extent as in middle school. Instead of focusing heavily on language scaffolding, I can place more emphasis on developing higher-order thinking skills — guiding students toward evaluating the reliability of sources, detecting bias, and synthesizing multiple perspectives into coherent arguments. Discussions can go deeper, debates can be more nuanced, and assignments can require more independent thought.

In middle school, a lesson might end with a short paragraph or a creative project; in high school, the goal might be to construct well-supported essays or carry out extended research. I’m looking forward to this shift in pace and complexity, as it allows for richer discussions and a more advanced level of critical thinking.

Diving Deeper into the Content

The other exciting change is in the content itself. In middle school social studies, we often cover a wide range of topics at an introductory level — from ancient civilizations to modern globalization — giving students a broad understanding of how the world works.

In high school, the content allows for more depth and critical engagement. Topics like political theory, historiography, and international relations can be explored not just as facts to memorize, but as ideas to analyze, challenge, and connect to current events. Primary sources take on a bigger role, and students can be encouraged to form their own interpretations of history, supported by evidence.

This opens the door to designing lessons that link past and present in meaningful ways. For example, exploring the French Revolution can lead to discussions on modern social movements; studying the Cold War can spark analysis of today’s geopolitical tensions. High school social studies is not just about knowing what happened — it’s about understanding why it happened, and what it means for the world we live in now.

As I step into this new role, I feel both challenged and energized. The return to teaching high school is a professional change but more than that, is a chance to contiue to deepen my practice, engage with content I love, and help students take the next step in their own learning journey!