Cleaning the Middle School Mess with Teamwork

In New Orleans it’s called “mess.” That cancerous, manipulative drama that teenage girls get wrapped up in every year. We dealt with our share of it this year at my school, most of it within the seventh grade. It came to a head with two strong-willed young ladies yelling from behind their desks, exchanging threats and insults.

Our new dean had recently seen a documentary about inner-city American boys at a school in Africa [2]. There, when two boys aren’t getting along, they are forced to spend all of their time together, isolated from the rest of their peers. They camp, cook and work together to solve any challenges that arise. Inspired, my colleague suggested we emulate this experience for our seventh-grade girls.

Our team brainstormed ways to create challenges for these two girls that would force them to work together. We needed to design an environment that allowed each student to share her strengths. We had already exhausted the typical consequences. Our goal now was not to extend their punishment, but to aid in the social development that would be necessary to solve and prevent issues like this from occurring in the future.

We came up with a series of activities that encouraged positive peer pressure. Lunches would be structured and I would eat with the girls, separated from their peers. During this time we would discuss challenges and strategies. We assigned a specific mission for each day of the week (building a garden trellis, maneuvering a canoe through a certain course). Each day, the girls would complete a purposeful reflection. Throughout the week, the girls would be responsible for answering a list of questions about the other. The questions ranged from banal (What is her favorite meal?) to more personal (What is the thing that frustrates her most?). At the end of the week, the girls would present what they’d learned about themselves and each other and what everyone could learn from their experience to all of the girls in the seventh grade.  

As educators, we were enthused to pilot this alternative approach to student conflict, and hoped that the results would be positive and lay the groundwork for use of more alternative discipline [3] in the years to come.

The girls’ participation in our “Teamwork Challenge” was optional, but both were willing to try. Although absences and a mid-week field trip reduced our week-long plan to three days, the girls were able to spend quite a lot of time together. They reflected with maturity on what they found challenging and inspiring in friendships, and in the middle school social scene. After an adventurous morning of canoeing, the girls each shared some of their daily reflections. “I learned my partner is brave,” said one. The other offered, “I learned my partner is strong.”

We counted this “week” of our pilot program as a success. Both girls learned to appreciate someone who wasn’t in her usual friendship circle. They discovered they had some things in common, and that what separated them had more to do with social dynamics than any strident differences.  

More than anything, I am proud that our students saw faculty members pushing beyond the regular rigid system of crime-and-punishment. They were allowed to interact with adults in a discussion of social and emotional realities that extended beyond the classroom and academics. They appreciated that the goal of the week was personal growth, and that they were not being punished [4]. I was also glad that they were able to give us feedback on the whole process and noted that other girls need to do this and it should be more than three days. Their input was regarded with respect, and will help us craft our strategies for the future.  

If we hope to minimize student-to-student conflict, we must teach students the social skills they need. Rather than escalating situations, students can be encouraged to solve most problems on their own. Pursuing alternatives, or supplements [5], to traditional systems of discipline, is one way we can do that.  

Craven is a language arts paraprofessional in Louisiana.