That "like" thing is annoying.
I dont know how US middle schools are, but I guess, they should emphasize on reading, learning synonyms, learning to express things in different ways ...without "like" lol.
I was in middle school back in Romania and I remember that our romanian language/literature teacher would give us everyday the task to bring a list of 10 words & their synonyms and some sample phrases using them. Simple exercise but very useful. Besides that, we would get a comprehensive list of books to read over the summer vacation and we were asked to come up with essays. This was back in the day when school was school and there were not many distractions around...Now it might be different.