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Abstract

In the early 1980s, John Swaim was the president of the NMSA Board of Trustees. John Lounsbury, then editor of The Middle School Journal, collaborated with John Swaim and the Board of Trustees to commission the writing of the original document, This We Believe. In the spring of 2020 [Author] contacted John Swaim to tell the story of how This We Believe was conceived. They collaborated using an interview format. The most recent version of The Successful Middle School: This we believe (Bishop & Harrison, 2021) was also recorded with input from leaders in middle level education providing preservice and inservice teachers with tools and inspiration on the best way to respond to the needs of young adolescents. John’s story provides a backdrop for professors to use with preservice teachers to honor and acknowledge the work of those who have come before us, and highlights the power and value of collaboration in support of middle level education.

Author Bio

Nancy Ruppert developed middle school teams at the University of Florida laboratory school and in Duval County, she taught math in middle, junior high, K-6, and K-8 settings in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. She served as the president of NAPOMLE from 2010-2012 and president of AMLE from 2016-2019. In 2020, she received the AMLE John H. Lounsbury Award. Currently Nancy is the Chair of the Department of Education at University of North Carolina Asheville.

John Swaim directed the Laboratory School at University of Colorado in the 1970s. He served as president of NMSA from 1981-1983.

DOI

10.20429/cimle.2021.260104

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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