Middle School Matters

Let’s rewrite the things middle schoolers say

There are a slew of recent TikTok videos devoted to “Things Middle Schoolers Say” and they are full of snide comments, targeted insults, side eyes and insecure groupthink. None of that sounds too far off from my middle school experience. But wait, what if we could get middle schoolers thinking differently, and more positively, about themselves, their friendships, their bodies and their worth. And what if that switch in thinking could have a permanent positive impact on their brain. “Whaaat? Not possible.” you say?

We at Human Better EDU are mid-way through a third semester with a group of middle school girls. Just listen to the things they are saying, all a far cry from the snarky TikToks.

Jay Giedd, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, and a leading expert in the teen brain, says parents and educators need to direct more attention to middle school years. “The brain specializes during these years,” he says. “It is a time of amazing opportunity for learning new skills and for our behavioral health interventions to have maximal impact.”

Sandy Kress, a leading education official from the Bush administration shares a similar view, saying, “The middle grades were the last best chance that we have to get youngsters on the right path.”

So let’s do it. Let’s teach middle schoolers tools to build their self-worth, to flip negative thinking, to stay accountable to themselves, and to have hard conversations with grace, during the period when their brains are formulating important neural pathways. Then these life skills just might stick, because as science shows, middle school matters.

Casey Seidenberg

is a Human Better EDU Program Leader and Executive Life Coach. She leads our popular Take Charge of Your Life course for Middle Schoolers and High Schoolers. She also works with graduate-level educators to Kindergarten teachers and everything in between. Email Casey at casey@humanbetteredu.org.