My first internship directive was to present a lesson on the characteristics of middle school students and the philosophy of middle school. It is important to note that I designed and taught this lesson before reading chapter five of Ramsden's (1992) text. As a result, my reflection on the journal and subsequent evaluation of the experience are significantly different. To guide my lesson design, I established three student learning objectives: (a) identify characteristic emotional, physical, intellectual, and social constructs specific to the middle school student; (b) analyze the associations between the characteristic constructs and possible obstacles to the learning process in middle school; (c) generate adaptations and teaching strategies that respond to the explicit needs of the middle school student. I also identified a broad teaching objective; incorporate a variety of instructional methods and classroom management strategies into each of my lesson plans. My intention was to model appropriate middle school pedagogy within content-rich foundational knowledge contexts. I envisioned concluding each class session with a whole-group dissection and exploration of the individual elements of the lesson in order to prompt students to reflect on: what they were learning, its purpose, and its connection to their understanding of the learning process and approach to teaching. During our initial class meeting, I asked students to reflect on their history as middle school students or their interactions with middle school students. I then asked them to write three adjectives to describe the characteristics of a middle school student. I have collected the descriptors and compiled them into a word illustration to use as an active opening lesson......middle of the paper......assuming in-service teachers are able to connect the dots between reasoning for understanding student characteristics and the need to modify one's teaching based on this appreciation. I think it is rather ironic that I did not personally follow the primary principle of teaching that I was trying to promote, which is that “teaching is understood as a process of working cooperatively with students to help them change their understanding. It makes student learning possible. Teaching involves uncovering students' misunderstandings, taking action to change them, and creating a learning context that encourages students to actively engage with the subject matter” (p.114). My lack of knowledge and evaluation of student misunderstandings thwarted my attempts to encourage active engagement with the lesson content, resulting in a theory-based teaching approach..