Click here to listen to this week’s JAM – Where Everybody Knows Your Name.
During a recent Flag, three students – two 8th graders and a 5th grader – shared an invite to Middle School students to join them on Thursdays during lunch for Choir. They described it as an “add-on” club, which in Middle School world means an optional club. This is in addition to the Tuesday “required” Club structure developed this year which creates a space for students to participate in one of a broad range of interest-based clubs, such as math, robotics, drama, social justice, sports, cricket, and Dungeons & Dragons. There is also SOCAH (Students of Color at Hillbrook), an affinity space for students, the Hub Club, which gives students time to explore and play in our extraordinary maker space, and the mural club, which has given students an opportunity to design and paint murals on a wall behind Founders Hall, our gym.
The announcement caught my attention in part because I had just been speaking the day before with one of our Middle School teachers about his efforts to create additional opportunities for the D&D club. He noted how excited he was to create this space for students drawn to the game, and how it provided a different type of opportunity from the coaching he does.
Ultimately what excited him was creating spaces for students to feel known, understood and valued. What he was naming – and we recognize as a school – is that Middle School and high school are times of extraordinary change for young people, a time in life where you are regularly trying to make sense of who you are and how you fit into the world. These years can often feel lonely and confusing, and students are eagerly seeking spaces where they can let their guard down and feel understood. A place where you immediately know you fit in. A place where, as they sang on Cheers back in the 1980s, “everybody knows your name.”
Clubs are examples of a “third place,” a term in sociology that refers to spaces outside of your first place – home – and your second place – work, where you feel connected and seen. In a world where people are increasingly disconnected – think Robert Putnam’s bestseller, “Bowling Alone” – a third place can be a critical space for people of all ages.
In a school setting, one of the keys to enabling these types of spaces is allowing students to have opportunities to design and lead the experiences, to have more and more autonomy in what they are doing. Parents of 8, 9 and 10 year olds might recognize this as they hear about the many different clubs that children create on the playground. These informal, fluid, and continually changing groups are tied to the need for children to make sense of their world and to develop for themselves spaces where they can be connected and seen.
All too often at too many schools, students do not find a place where they belong. At so many schools, students pass through the halls, unknown to the adults and students around them, a nameless face amidst thousands of other students. That has never been the experience at Hillbrook, and as we look to expand into a high school, we know that maintaining the connection between students and their peers and the adults around them will remain an essential piece of our new program. Whether in the classroom, on the sports field, on the stage, or in numerous other spaces on campus, students will be known and valued, challenged to take risks and be the best they can be. And, just like on our JK-8 campus, students will be able to find a place, “where everybody knows their name.”