During my visit at Northview Middle School, we were having a discussion with the

principal, Thomas Hakim. This conversation was about general information about the school and
about himself, before we were going to witness a passing period. Early on in the conversation,
there was a talk about gaining students' attention in the right ways. Thomas described a story
about a student at Northview. He told us that there was a student who used to graffiti on the
toilets. The school wasn’t happy with what he was doing to the bathroom, but they really liked
his art anyways. Moral of the story, the student was caught and had to do some after school work
for it. They were asked to do after school cleaning with the janitors. However, they offered him
to help with some new murals in their new building they will be moving into afterwards.
This story about this student really touched me. Because not only did they redirect his
creativity to somewhere else, they gave a student a new opportunity. This is shown with not only
teaching the student the wrong, but making it a right. Thomas described it as bringing out the
positives. Northview is taking a new approach with a focus in SEL learning. Hearing how they
wanted to help the student still make art, but learn about the repercussions and direct it
somewhere else. It shows their value of wanting the student to still be themself and do things in a
new and positive way.
During this trip, my emotions were a bit all over the place. In general, I was so excited to
be visiting a middle school. That is because I personally believe I want to teach middle school
myself. Which made me quite interested throughout the trip. I wanted to learn as much as I could
during the trip, and was determined to get as much information that I could. Which in the end,
made me sad at the end of the visit. Myself and other classmates asked a lot of questions about
the school. Whether it was their “Drop Three” schedule or technology at school. We spent so
much time talking and asking questions, I wasn’t observing classes much. In general it wasn’t
long at all and I felt like I couldn’t interact while observing since there were about 9 other
classmates, including myself, in each classroom. At the end, I was really sad I couldn’t see more
of the two classes we were in and felt okay to interact with the students. I hope I will be able to
visit again.
During this trip I was most impressed by the principal, Thomas Hakim. When
introducing himself to us and during our discussion, his demeanor stood out to me. He was very
genuine and you could tell he really cared about the students. Besides, his journey to becoming
principal shows how much he has experienced in his teaching years. Not only did he not
graduate with a teaching degree from college, he went on to teaching in charter schools, teaching
at Northview, becoming a principal at an elementary school, to becoming the principal at
Northview Middle School. His journey shows the amount of time he has enjoyed being involved
with students and the background of Northview. Not only from the story of the student and
Thomas Hakim overall, it made me realize that Northview is focused on responsive learning. Just
like in Butler’s College of Education, stating, “Embody Inclusive and Responsive Teaching,
Learning, and Mentoring.” This is done by creating a good school environment and involving
students in a positive learning light.
 Which leads me to my next point, the overall curriculum and learning involved at
Northview Middle School. During our discussion with Thomas, he described how they used to
follow the International Baccalaureate Curriculum. However, they recently have changed their
curriculum up. He expressed that after the COVID pandemic, they wanted to change the school’s
curriculum to benefit the students. By now focusing on a wider lens of diversity and inclusion
among students, and social emotional learning. This opens up more opportunities to change up
what can be done for these students. Not only did they change up the curriculum, they created a
new schedule called “Drop Three”. Even Thomas Hakim was still learning the schedule.
However, the schedule is a customized block schedule that has certain class periods and they are
certain days over others. But in the end, the schedule has worked out for the students to learn
productively and they see each class three times a week. The whole new learning schedule was
quite interesting. However, learning is quite important to Northview.
Throughout the discussion filled with questions from myself and my classmates, we got
to a point talking about technology. It was surprising to learn that they avoid technology for the
students to have, unless needed. They realized the importance of bringing students learning like
how it was before the pandemic, to let them have a break from technology and learn more
productively. They had many concerns with students breaking the laptops during the pandemic
and not truly learning, only memorizing material. Even with many schools trying to implement
technology into learning, Northview’s idea of learning is using technology for only necessity. For
example, they have 4 elearning days preplanned into the schedule for the teachers. To give them
that difference in teaching and step back and reflect on their teaching and the students learning.
Which reminded me of ABT thinking from Change The Way You See Everything by Kathy
Cramer. Because of the idea that looking back on your day, or teaching, in this scenario, finding
the positives and thinking of the things to improve on, to help yourself and your students in the
future.
Lastly, I wanted to discuss the role of a teacher inside of Northview Middle School.
There were two main focuses Thomas Hakim expressed: learning and safety. When experiencing
the passing period, I noticed that teachers were directing students through the hallway. I was
quite surprised by that, since my middle school mainly had teachers outside of their classrooms
making sure people weren’t messing around. I asked him about this, as he explained they really
focus on safety. They want all their faculty to notice the value of safety of their students. Because
not only do they want teachers having students feel safe in the classroom, and rewarding the safe
behavior of students with Falcon Bucks. Northview also focuses on the safety of students when
using school technology. Thomas explained to us that for their safety online, the technology has
“Bark Alerts.” Which is notifying staff if students are searching inappropriate things or sites, or
typing specific things that deal with dangers of mental health. The school takes mental health
quite seriously, so in the end the student will get a referral to speak to their grade level counselor
or the social worker at Northview. Overall, it was great visiting Northview and seeing the value
the staff had towards their students.