Writing Club (Because middle schoolers really are the most fun:)
During the 2023-2024 school year, we had a particularly tough group of seventh graders. I’ve only had one other group like it during my career in education, and when they graduated in June 2020 (from their cars, due to the pandemic), everyone else in the school was glad to see them go.
They were like chickens in a coop. I don’t know if this is common knowledge, so bear with me, but chickens can be cruel to one another. If a member of the flock doesn’t fit in for some reason, if it’s sick, lame, or just different, the others will peck it to death. Slowly. Over time. When introducing a new chicken into an existing flock, it’s helpful to do it in the middle of the night when the others are asleep. When they all wake up in the morning, it’s as if the new chicken had always been there. If done during the day, the other chickens will most certainly torment the latest addition in a most gruesome way.
The Class of 2020 was the same. Horrible to each other. They were seventh graders when I had them in class the first time, and because it was a small, rural school, I continued to see most of them in my room in one way or another, year after year. I also coached some of them in track. I once told the meanest girl during a private conversation in the hallway that she was in danger of being the person no one would want to see at their future class reunions. She had no true friends- the girls who did her bidding only went along with it because they were scared of being singled out by her.
The meanest boy got away with all manner of hatefulness because he had an intimidating older brother in the building. When the brother graduated, he’d hit his own growth spurt and didn’t hesitate to use his size to get his way. He was openly racist in a most direct and derogatory manner, and targets were abundant for him, considering 25% of the student population was Ojibwe/Anishinaabe.
One day, when they were in tenth grade, I arranged the classroom desks in a circle for a Socratic seminar: a student-led discussion focused on inquiry of a given text. I don’t remember his exact words, and I wouldn’t want to put them out into the world if I did, but he called out a classmate- a shy, kind, and brilliant student- with a racist remark that left everyone speechless. I asked him to step into the hallway, and he refused. What happened next still makes me sick to think of it. Several of his classmates stood up for him, not the victim, citing freedom of speech. I couldn’t believe it. But that was the culture of their group—survival of the fittest. Only look out for number one. Cruelty over kindness, more often than not.
Although the behavior of the 2023-2024 seventh graders wasn’t quite that severe, they’d developed a reputation such that teachers warned each other that the only thing to do with them was to endure them. And that’s exactly how it felt, like an endurance exercise. It felt that way for their teachers and their classmates who just wanted to learn in a drama-free environment, which is why I decided to change things up at the end of that school year.
To be clear, as a mom, teacher, and human being on the planet, I believe with absolute certainty that all kids are good kids. Sometimes good kids act out in ways that aren’t good, so the job of adults who work with children and young people is to help them figure out why they’re acting out. I have a theory about why this particular group of kids struggled more than most with challenging behaviors, but that’s a topic for another post.
Instead of the culminating unit that I usually do at the end of the year, we did a creative writing unit based around students working on self-directed projects at their own pace. Because everyone was exhausted. Physically, intellectually, and especially emotionally. And creative writing turned out to be the right thing at the right time. I began class most days with a mini-lesson on a type of writing, then I’d turn the lights down low, put on some background noise, and let the students get busy. Sometimes they collaborated, but most of their endeavors were solitary, and it was lovely. Everyone was busy. The thing is, this group was as intelligent as they were challenging, so teacher as facilitator worked best for them then and probably works best for them still.
The only problem was that as we moved into the final days of the school year, many students were nowhere near finished with their writing projects. They didn’t want to be done and neither did I. So I asked if any of them would like to meet over the summer, and it turned out that the students who were most excited about the idea were the ones who’d received the least attention from me during the nine months of class. They’d been neglected because the students with the tough behaviors had demanded nearly all of my time.
Thus began Writing Club. We met once a week the following summer, and I could have never predicted that 1) kids would be so determined to get there each week, 2) they’d develop friendships that would carry them through the next school year, and 3) that seeing them each week would become one of my summer highlights. When school started again last September, we decided to keep things going by meeting every other Friday in my classroom during lunch. There wasn’t enough time during lunch for creative pursuits, but there was just enough time for connection.
At the end of this past school year, the Writing Club students decided that a second summer of meetups was required, so we’ve been at it again. We meet at a local coffee shop once a week for two hours, using an app to communicate, which allows parents to be as involved as they want to be. The coffee shop has large tables that promote collaboration. Students from the grade below them were invited to join, and several have taken advantage of the opportunity. Some work on writing projects, some draw, some crochet, and some play games. It has its own alchemy; it’s creative and magical.
I work on writing each week. The kids know that my goal is to transition from being a full-time teacher to a full-time writer over the next several years. Although I’ve shared only a small amount of my writing with them, they’re ridiculously supportive and don’t see any reason why I wouldn’t be able to make it happen. They believe in me as much as I believe in them, and I believe in them the most amount. Lucky us!