Middle School Friends

What happens in the lunchroom, the hallway, the bathroom, or the bus stop?

When I was in elementary school, the instant the bell rang for a break or lunch or end of day, I flew out of my seat and ran down to the fields for sports. We had a lunchroom but, honestly, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough, with my baseball glove. There were fields and slides and monkey bars right outside, right there. 

When I got to seventh grade, I was bussed up to Manhasset (Junior and Senior) High School (MHS), which consisted mainly of long hallways with long rows of classrooms lined with lockers. We were all thrust together from all over town. Friendship is based upon common and shared experiences and I had very limited ways to cultivate friendships in this setup. The high school and grounds were much larger than we’d had in elementary, and there was no practical way to congregate or organize much of any activity outside of class. 

Middle school age is not a great time to deal with a big place filled with strange people. I had no prior experience with social threat entering middle school. But early on in seventh grade, Billy Green told me he wanted the place in front of me in our squad lineup in gym class. I was unwilling, so he said we would fight by the bus stop. I couldn’t refuse.

Billy Green was from another neighborhood than mine. I was not a big guy by any stretch, weighing in around the 90-pound range, but he was even smaller, and maybe he was ticked off about that. A lot of stuff those days had to do with how big you were. On the other hand, he looked a lot like me. I was an approachable threat. A lot of stuff at that age has to do with how you look. 

So after school, we’re walking over there to the bus stop, him sort of trailing me, but before we’re even in the spot for the fight, he grabs me by the back of the shoulders, completely by surprise, and throws me to the ground. Totally unfair. Then, before I have a chance to even get up or get even, the bus driver comes over and makes us get on the bus. Then there was Donald Perry who, in seventh grade must have been 6 feet, easily. He grabbed me with one hand and held me out the second floor bathroom window for absolutely no reason, laughing, until his elementary schoolmate Ralph Blocker came in and said, “Hey, Donald! What are you doin’ holdin’ Grauer out the window! Don’t throw Grauer out the window!” 

The lunchroom was a gigantic space where the entire school gathered and, once you had your tray filled with the starchy, sugary, mystery meat mess they called lunch, you could only look out at a sea of kids you knew hardly any of, as though you were going to eat your lunch in [folks, I tried hard to come up with a better metaphor] prison. Scary kids would demand money when you were walking by: “Hey, kid, gimme a dime!” 

Notice that none of the above places were classrooms or places with organized activities. 

I still can’t believe Billy Green did that. That’s what can happen in open spaces.

By the time I was in late 8th grade and I slapped Ricky Salmon in the hallway at the lockers, for peer pressure, and went home feeling terrible remorse, I was coming out of this whole phase of life. Around age 14 or 15, humans typically start developing their prefrontal cortex and start to feel the reality of the consequences or our actions, even spiritual and symbolic ones. No guarantees—some kids develop at 12 or 16 or 17, and even delayed students are subject to the natural maturation process which is happening our whole lives. Whatever. You don’t just slap a kid because other kids did, and a prefrontal cortex comes in handy in dialing that one in.

The designers of old MHS’s physical plant and its educational program had probably thought long and hard about how to make classrooms function; however, it is excruciatingly obvious that not a single thought was given to what happens to kids when teachers were not telling them what to do. I wish my school and teachers had put some thought into that, but they did not. For them, lunch was just time off. Sometimes there was a million-year-old lunch monitor lady who was uninterested in children. 

All of the frustrating, humiliating, negative and scarring things that happened to me in middle school (except one) happened either in the lunchroom, the hallway, the bathroom, or the bus stop. When the bell rang at Manhasset High, it was open season for roving bands. 

Since those bygone days, and after some decades as an educational designer, I have come to see those out-of-class times as every bit as important as in-class times. And in some respects, it is even harder to manage those times I have come to call “open space.” I often have made the claim that study hall is the hardest class to teach. See if you agree by the time you finish this column.

Around middle school, especially around grades 6 through 9 or so, “friends,” a very unclear concept to begin with, takes on an outsized influence. Friendship at that age can feel intense. Some kids spend enormous amounts of energy seeming to worry about what their friends or not-friends do or think or say. Those concerns can feel like the whole world. The young brain is at capacity in developing a whole new set of social skills as we learn to deal in wider groups. Of course, in class, this is all managed, but the prospect of eating lunch, an open space of a half hour with no class or lesson going on, no family, and no home or TV can seem vast and confusing and sometimes threatening to some kids. There are whole books written about lunch, whether parents should show up and spend lunch with their kids, or if someone should be in charge. Grauer does not have much lunch parent engagement except by special request, though we feel the longing some parents feel, and some of the pain. 

Had I told my mother about Billy or Donald, I’m sure she would have asked, “Well, what do you want ME to do about it!” I realize there are enough parenting styles and philosophies to go around, especially as U.S. families change in structure: the “nuclear family” was really a phenomenon that happened between around 1950 and 1965, that we have sort of immortalized. We have watched those traditions transform into completely different “family” arrangements. But my prevailing philosophy through the generations has been that kids are up to working things out. The way The Grauer School is designed, we help them by creating the right environment: by including quite a few elements of “family” and “community” in our school design, as I will mention, below.

We do not provide televisions or much entertainment, at lunch, because we want our kids to become great at managing open space. But it can be hard. At The Grauer School, at lunchtime, a few of our teachers (or mentors, really) are on the lookout, subtly nudging select kids, without micromanaging. Sometimes we do create some groups and mentoring to get kids going when we see them struggling—we know the “open spaces” are the hardest. 

Lunchtimes are the longest of those open space times, and they can be deceptively tricky. In class, our lives are managed by teachers and at home we have our comfortable routines. But lunchtime can feel like the Wild West until the kids get the hang of it—and that’s not always quick. We don’t solve kids’ problems in open space, or even protect them from everything, but we do believe social skills can be taught and navigated, in time.

As the circle of social possibilities changes for kids, their concerns over acceptance and rejection swell—how will I be perceived? What’s my image? I’ve grabbed my lunch box or tray, I’m setting out into the world, where do I go? Where do I dare sit? Some kids find it the very worst part of their day. Psychologists have identified concerns that need answering, and they include a variety of questions that parents and teachers can cover while not over-protecting:

Who are my closest friends?
Does this kid or that kid have my back? 
Can I talk to him or her about anything? 
Would they come to my house? 
Will I be bullied? 
Will I see anyone else be bullied?

Instability is almost guaranteed. At the start of the year, kids tend to stay as close as they can to those they already know, in as protected and familiar a comfort zone as they can. Over time, we find two-thirds of the kids are changing friends. Earlier friends might fall by the wayside. Hey, parents and teachers, imagine if two-thirds of your friends changed in a few months. (On the other hand, we don’t try to prevent that because we know that it is developmentally normal for kids that age to be making changes like that.) The relationships don’t have to last. Kids are problem solving and eventually notice that some friendships do not bring them joy or benefit, even if they don’t mind hanging out with those people some. Friendship also takes some work.

“Patience and encouragement” is my mantra. In good time and with some patience (not always easy) and encouragement, something begins happening: our kids settle into life in a new environment, their social horizons expand. They gravitate to things like soccer, theater, or robotics, or just hangouts that begin feeling more comfortable. Similarities or shared activity interests, as always, attract. Any similarities will do! Activities and games help enormously.

One thing that is happening is that kids are developing their uniqueness. Teachers facilitate this in the classroom by making mixed groups and moving the seats around. Jaana Juvonen, a developmental psychologist at the University of California at Los Angeles says, “Their dialogue is much deeper, cognitively more complex, than when we ask kids to work with just any classmate.” [1]

Normally, some hierarchies start to form and kids have to figure out where they are in them—because, in middle school, we need friends. Kids without friends tend to get anxious or unhappy, even if they’ve done little to develop friends. They need validation. Some sensitive kids feel threat even in situations where no other person would sense anything like threat. Maybe they need someone to sit with at lunch and who will stick with them if they feel bullied. And bullying does not mean an overdeveloped big kid pushing you—it includes a fantastic, subtle array of social manipulations, some intended but most subconscious—kids are not thinking, “I’m going to be mean.” “I’m going to be a bully.” They are usually, simply not thinking—at all. We all want status and middle schoolers are learning how to get it. Friends can be buffers against these dynamics.

But not only buffers. Kids do all sorts of unthinking things to be with friends. Some try things like alcohol or stealing when they are seeking friends. Through adolescence, the peer effect nudges them into driving too fast and judging others poorly. Laurence Steinberg, a Temple University psychologist noted, “When kids were in the presence of peers, it activated reward centers in the brain.” [2]  And, we note, parents routinely believe it is the other kids who are the ones exerting peer pressure or the bully. But friends take more risks when they are with friends.

At Grauer, around campus, we create “pods” of comfortable spaces which are right along the regular pathways, so it can be easy to sink into a grouping of tables or bean bags or swings. Kids draw in the art room, and there are some clubs. We leave out a ton of athletic equipment and love seeing the pickup games, ping pong, and pool. We leave musical instruments everywhere, and we even host concerts. We believe that things feel safer and more secure in natural green spaces, as well, and we provide plenty of those. Our teachers are watching around the edges to nudge kids into those pods or activities, and we try to notice when someone is alone and might need a hand. Like everywhere else in life, a few kids elude our best efforts, and some deal with things we may not fathom. But for 30 minutes every day, we muddle through grades 7-9 as a warm and caring community, and we care enormously about those delicate open space times.

After all these years, I feel happy that people will finally know the truth, that Billy Green’s move was completely bogus and I hope none of the other kids watching thought he actually won that fight. Because he didn’t.

[1] Focus on the Wonder Years: Challenges Facing the American Middle School, Jaana Juvonen, Rand, 2004.

[2] The Outsize Influence of Your Middle-School Friends, Lydia Denworth, The Atlantic, January 28, 2020.

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