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We set out to create a middle grades program and to inform the field about the perceptions of our teacher candidates on teaching middle school. To accomplish these twin goals, we sought to better understand our teacher candidates' perceptions of teaching middle school and how these perceptions might be changed if necessary. Our review of research included three themes to frame this work: (a) middle school philosophy, (b) motivations to teach, and (c) middle school teacher preparation. We chose an emergent, qualitative research design to cull rich data from diverse stakeholders including open-ended survey data. We found an overarching deficit narrative about middle school students even though teacher candidates expressed admiration for middle school teachers. Our teacher candidates professed a need for coursework on classroom management and adolescent psychology as well as more field experiences to better prepare them for careers in the middle grades. Implications for middle grades programs are discussed, including the structure of field experiences and teacher preparation curriculum. We explain specific revisions to our own program in the attempt to generate analytic generalizability.

Perceptions of middle level learners vary, and unfortunately, some are deficit-oriented, labeling young adolescents as "hormonal" and "erratic" without a deep understanding of their emotional and physical development or the knowledge and skills that they bring to a classroom. In this paper, we provide empirical evidence for this deficit narrative--including the marginalization of middle level learners--from interviews conducted with teacher candidates in elementary, middle, secondary, and K-12 programs in two different states. Three themes around perceptions of teaching middle grades students are shared: adult needs and interests, resistance to student agency, and challenging the deficit narrative. We posit that developing a broader understanding of young adolescents might inform and inspire teacher candidates to choose to become middle school teachers. Thus, we encourage an asset approach to recruitment of middle level teacher candidates entering teacher preparation programs, and we offer recommendations for middle level recruitment into teacher education programs with an explicitly asset lens.