High Schoolers? Scary!
I have a confession, or maybe we can call it a realization. I adore middle schoolers. 6th, 7th, 8th (even occasionally 9th) graders are my jam. One of the reasons why I am so excited to become a middle school teacher is because they are unpredictable. There is always something exciting going on, whether that be the latest trends that they are obsessed with or a crisis that they’re having over what they want to do with their lives. Middle schoolers also don’t play around with any games. Doing something that they aren’t a fan of? “Miss Amy, we’re bored” Playing a game that has everyone up and moving around? You bet that they will let you know that they love it. Of course, this is also the challenge of teaching middle schoolers too, sometimes you just have to do the dull, not-so-fun stuff.
However, my confession is not about how much I love middle school (anyone and everyone who knows me knows this — I talk about it endlessly). No, the confession is … I am so deathly afraid of high schoolers. Okay, maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration. But seriously, nothing makes me anxious like being faced with a classroom of 10th, 11th, or (frantic screaming) 12th graders. They are the opposite of everything I love about middle school. But the thing that makes me the most anxious is that they don’t tell you anything. Am I doing a good job? Does this activity that I spent all last night planning really engage them or are they bored out of their minds? I can never tell because they always seem to have the same expression on their face: placid contentedness usually directed at looking at the wall or down at their phones that they think I can’t see. Sometimes I will ask if what I’m doing is good, would they prefer something else? I will try google forms and one on one conversations (these work a lot of the time) but teenagers are caught up in a world that I am only a visitor to. Sometimes it feels like I need to do something drastic like stand on top of a desk to get their attention and make them care about what we’re doing.
This past week I had a chance to confront these fears and work with a group of 6 high school girls in another one of the PAGE summer labs: College Pathways. This experience was run by Robin Shoor, a professional college counselor who started her own business in Miami, Florida, and moved to North Carolina several years ago. During the workshop, we learned about tactics to apply to college such as writing essays and creating resumes and making timelines of goals for each grade in school that the girls had left. We also worked to make college board accounts, opened some common app applications, and in the afternoon we visited small businesses around Mars Hill. The students really enjoyed visiting the small businesses because it allowed them the chance to hear about the owner's journeys to success. Some of the stories included college, some didn’t, and some talked about how they had gone to college for one thing and decided to do something completely different. One place that we visited, for example, was a local ice cream shop that was run by a former pharmacist. She talked about how even though she did something other than “what her degree was for” she still uses her background to create novel ice cream flavors like peach goat cheese, an unlikely combination but a yummy one regardless.
One of the most rewarding things that came out of working with the college pathway girls for me was that high schoolers are scary a lot of the time, but not all of the time! Two of the girls latched on to me early on in the week and shared their stories with me and I got to help them turn those stories into early essay ideas. Two other girls came every single day but did not often ask for help or volunteer much information about themselves. However, on the last day of the program, they talked about how they wanted to come back next year and what a valuable experience it had been for them. So, maybe even if high schoolers notoriously don’t talk about how they feel unless they are super comfortable around you, maybe I am still making an impact even if they don’t show it.
On Friday, we ended early because of the holiday weekend and the fact that many of the girls were leaving to go on beach vacations or trips with their churches. The interns also had fun this weekend, as we went to the rodeo! Rodeos are one of my favorite things to go to but 4th of July rodeos are a whole other experience in themselves. I have included some pictures from the event below to capture what I mean:
