I had one of my colleagues at my new school describe middle schoolers. She said they are like working with ping pong balls in the dryer. After I thought about that analogy for a moment, it made perfect sense. Middle schoolers are back and forth between adulthood and childhood. They can cross that line several times in a day...or in an hour. They can have a wonderfully mature insight into the theme of a story in Language Arts and 20 minutes later be poking the kid beside them until said kid has had it and either "tells the teacher" or pops the poking kid.
They can be wonderfully happy for half the day and crying over a splinter for the other half of the day. Boys in middle school can be chatting up that pretty girl in class one minute and zooming an eraser across the desk like a toy car the next minute. Girls can be the best of friends in the morning and mortal enemies by the afternoon.
Middle school enthusiasm is contagious, and that enthusiasm is what I like about working with this age group. Keeping up with the roller coaster of changing emotions and maturity levels can be exhausting. In PE we try to keep things moving, active and upbeat as much as we can. I feel I always need to be even more aware of safety issues (because kids this age think about that stuff even less often than their more mature high school counterparts). I also try to ride the changing tides of emotions and hormones that can lead to disagreements, temper flares and the occasional meltdowns. If I can stay on top of such things, I can avert many a crisis and hopefully even get some concepts across each day. Ping pong balls in the dryer are hard to keep up with, but they sure can make for an interesting load of laundry!
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