NAIS - Finding Joy and Balance in the Middle

Spring semester is usually the worst, of course: Deadlines come faster, academic stakes are higher, and neither students nor teachers feel there are enough hours in the day/week/school year to get everything done. Stories begin to circulate about students (and teachers) who are sick with worry or whose immune systems buckle under stress and fall prey to the “flu” or some other opportunistic illness. With all this swirling around, how can concerned faculty and staff be sure they are helping students and families most effectively?

This was the question posed by Suzanne Nagy, the middle school division head at Heathwood Hall Episcopal School, an independent day school serving 695 students in Columbia, South Carolina. Nagy, who has served as both a classroom teacher and assistant division head, felt strongly that wellness should be a key component of teaching middle schoolers in particular. “We spend a lot of time on academic lessons, of course,” she says, “but we also need to spend time preparing hearts and minds to receive lessons.”

As anyone who has interacted with middle schoolers knows, understanding and engaging with the whole student — mind, body, and spirit — is an essential part of helping them navigate middle school and beyond. Growing out of this desire to more fully support students in all aspects of learning and development, our middle school is working with one of the school’s counselors, as well as with other partners, to develop a support program to empower faculty and students to handle the stresses of middle school and beyond. “The step up to middle school is significant,” Nagy says, “because not only is there a step up in academics but also in social and emotional growth, and often increased involvement in extracurricular and supplemental experiences both in school and out.” This is all good, but it also means extra pressure on students at a time when they are learning to navigate socially and are also acutely aware of the “imaginary audience” of their friends, classmates, and ever-present social media.

Ask the Right Questions

One of our first initiatives was to establish a shared starting point for the discussion. The faculty started by reading Middle School Makeover by Michelle Icard, and parents were encouraged to read the book as well. Faculty discussed the book, and there was a roundtable discussion and further conversation during Move-Up Meetings with lower school parents whose children would be entering the middle school the following year. Icard’s book emphasizes the stresses both middle schoolers and their families face. “Middle school is a game changer,” Icard states. She continues:
At around age eleven, kids begin the long process of developing their adult bodies, adult brains and adult identities. That’s a lot of stuff happening to them at once! It’s a fascinating and sometimes frustrating time. Adults often lament they wish middle schoolers would be more responsible, more mature, more reasonable ... but our style of managing kids must change in middle school to meet their new developmental needs. It’s important to learn how to work with these changes, rather than against them, or the stress of middle school gets compounded. Once everyone can get on the same page, things go much more smoothly.¹

Taking these factors into account, the middle school leadership team (i.e., middle school faculty, middle school head, and upper/middle school counselor) developed a set of guiding questions for each grade level as they developed their wellness initiative:

Fifth grade: How might we inspire middle school students to embody greater awareness of themselves and those around them?
Sixth grade: How might we create middle school experiences that balance the intensity of middle school students with their natural energy and need for peaceful growth?
Seventh grade: How might we inspire middle school students to be grateful and giving without making them feel guilty?
Eighth grade: How might we engage middle school students with issues of social justice in ways that play on their natural desire for and understanding of fairness?

These questions will inform decisions throughout the middle school, guiding group activities, advisory or homeroom activities, and curricular and extracurricular programs and strategies. The program’s goals are to help students slow down, practice self-care, and tap into gratitude as often as possible — finding not only new challenges but also joy and balance.

The leadership team is also working to support key strategies such as mindfulness, breathing exercises, and gratitude. This means that in addition to yoga classes, there are also specific programs and visiting speakers on substance abuse prevention, social media issues, and the introduction of the “Girlology/Guyology” informational programs on human growth and development. Offering a variety of information, techniques, and outside resources gives the entire school community a valuable common frame of reference in assisting students with their progress through this important life stage. The benefit, Nagy points out, is that “by having common language, common understanding, and a common goal, families and teachers are able guide students gently yet firmly through the mistakes, emotions, misunderstandings, and the great joy of the middle school years.”

Enhancing Community

Meanwhile, the middle/upper school counselor worked to develop community and curricular resources to support the new initiative. As a result, all middle school students rotate through a nine-week course that focuses on key components of mindfulness, coping mechanisms, and resilience. The course underscores the value of simple things like getting enough sleep and drinking enough water, as well as work on such things as breathing exercises, recentering, and positive self-talk. In both the course and the discussions with parents, the positive effects of stress, such as helping students remember to prepare for an important or unfamiliar activity, are pointed out. “Stress is a part of modern life, even for kids,” counselor Stacy Gross says, “so learning self-care and when to ask for help are important skills to learn early in life.” These skills are reinforced elsewhere in the curriculum as well, such as during advisory (homeroom) activities and during the middle schoolwide weekly Town Meetings, which bring all middle school students together.

A wellness initiative that involves the entire school population — faculty, students, and parents — leads to the development of students who are better able to deal with their own busy lives, as well as a community that can effectively help one another. Teachers, administrators, and counselors have noticed that, since the program was initiated, students have become more adept at looking out for one another, as well as asking for help themselves. Sometimes that just means a quiet heads-up that another student might be dealing with a particularly stressful situation, and sometimes it is a specific request for help for someone. Either way, Gross says, “Students who look out for one another carry that skill forward into the rest of their lives.”

Notes

1. Michelle Icard, Middle School Makeover: Improving the Way You and Your Child Experience the Middle School Years (New York and Abingdon, UK: Bibliomotion, 2014).