My Student: Malcolm from Malcolm in the Middle

So, my student that I choose was Malcolm from Malcolm in the Middle.  This show ran all throughout my high school years and I grew up watching it.  It was one of the first shows I thought of before beginning this blog post.

Malcolm is a great student in that he's very smart, even "gifted" if you will, especially in math.  He is even placed in a gifted classroom at his school. However, considering it's a sitcom and his family is constantly filled with drama, he often times is distracted.  This is often seen by the "asides" he does, breaking the fourth wall, when communicating with the audience.  If this were real, it's almost as if he were daydreaming and wouldn't be paying much attention in class.  Malcolm, for the most part, does well in school even though he's sometimes distracted.  In addition, he is often left out and doesn't quite fit in with his other classmates.  In addition, the wiki page even goes as far to say that Malcolm's large ego causes him numerous problems throughout his upbringing.  Because of this ego, he is also known to have a short-temper.

He comes from your typical middle class family (I would even possibly argue upper-middle), although the family members themselves aren't very typical.  Although his grades are fine, as already stated, he does distract himself but at times he does distract others, especially when he is with his brothers Dewey and especially Reese.

Malcolm has a wide variety of interests.  Considering he's a growing teen, he often times has interest in the romantic side of life, at least on the show.  His other interests include hanging out with his friends and sometimes going above and beyond in school.

If Malcolm were in my class, given my class was a mainstream classroom and not a class for gifted students, I would have to alter my lesson plans in order to challenge him more.  I would let him use technology, like a computer with access to the internet, and give him a topic to research in Spanish and let him learn that topic, or even revue vocabulary words in order to strengthen his vocabulary.  For his qualities that could use some help, like his anger, if I ever saw him getting angry while working together with the class as a whole, I would suggest that he take a few moments and work online again by himself to calm himself all-the-while staying on task with learning, even though it might not exactly be the task at hand.  In a foreign language classroom, I will create flashcards and other vocabulary exercises that will be readily available at any time for my students' convenience, and in this case, for Malcolm's "calming down".

Malcolm is extremely college ready, at least in the academic sense.  His personality and people skills would need a little work, though, especially with some of the more intense group projects that he could face at the college level.  Malcolm's genius and readiness for college is quite evident in the scene below during the school fair, where he shows off his photogenic memory for numbers.