Does middle school have to be miserable?
Are we accidentally teaching the youth of America to trust no one? (Image by tlparadis)
When I tell people that I run a tiny academic program for middle schoolers (aptly named The Little Middle School), the reaction is almost always the same.
“Middle school? Oh, middle school is awful.”
Or worse, “middle schoolers are awful!”
Why does middle school have such a bad rap? Why do adults have such miserable memories of these early years of puberty?
Well, for one thing, they’re the early years of puberty. It’s a time in our lives when the ground seems to be shifting beneath our feet. We’re confronting aspects of our identity that for the first ten years of our lives seemed settled. We’re growing and changing almost as rapidly as we did as infants, but we feel as though we’re forced to do this in an onstage performance, with every awkward moment catalogued and documented by our peers.
And often, this is sadly the case! Adolescents often deal with their discomfort by making other people miserable.
After all, there is so much going on. Middle schoolers are terrified of not fitting in with their peers. They may be dealing with parental pressure. They’re carrying baggage from their elementary school learning experiences that leaves them feeling stupid or helpless; as a result, they may be overly invested in protecting their image as “the smart kid” or “the kid who doesn’t care.” They struggle to ask questions and ask for help. They are overwhelmed by activities and social media and the difficulty of processing new emotions. When you feel vulnerable, it’s tempting to make someone else the target and get the attention away from yourself (or to get attention for being the Vito Corleone of middle school).
While we can never insulate kids from discomfort (and we wouldn’t want to), we do have our work cut out for us if we want to create a healthier learning environment. However, we can solve or ameliorate many of these issues by working together as a team: parents, teachers, and students.
At The Little Middle School, teachers and students work together to create an atmosphere of unity and belonging, where everyone feels that it’s safe to be who they are (or to figure out who they are). Instead of leaving kids to figure out the subtext of middle school, we address it directly. We talk about how awful it feels to not be able to ask for help; we talk about how to handle it when someone’s talking about you behind your back (and how to stop doing it yourself); we talk about how it’s okay to not be the person making the whole group laugh at lunch. We help them organize their backpacks and their schedules; we give them second chances and the benefit of the doubt, but we also ask them for more when we know they are capable of it.
And when everyone is squirmy and having trouble concentrating after four days of rain, we go out and play.
Our goal is for these kids emerge from middle school with a strong sense of self and a high standard for how they want to feel. We want them to know that not only do they not have to be miserable in middle school, they don’t have to be miserable in life.
If our set point is, “Oh well, I guess things will just be unpleasant,” that’s what we’re going to continue to get. If we believe that things can be better, we’ll be more motivated to keep pushing until we make them better. We can learn to do this at age twelve and set up a lifelong pattern of creating more joyful experiences for ourselves and others.
Middle school is hard because growing up is hard. But when you’re surrounded by people who understand that and make space for you, it can still be a joyful experience.
As I tell the skeptics more about our program, they often change their tune. “Wow, I wish I had had something like that when I was in middle school.”
“Me too,” I say.