A Word with Doug Wilhelm

Last Halloween I got an intriguing and mysterious email from my friend Karon Perron. Karon is a creative, high-energy teacher of language arts at the shoebox-sized middle school in Castleton, Vermont. Her eighth graders, Karon said, had been reading my book Falling —and “We have something ‘big’ cooking for the final project. It is pretty big.” The project would, she said, share her students’ “take on what issue is really getting in the way of their education (as opposed to what adults think is the problem).”

Soon, Karon promised, I would hear more. Then, just after New Year’s, Karon wrote again, this time offering to email me Kidspeak.

“I just can’t begin to tell you how much work and conversation has erupted out of Falling,” she said. When their conversation conveyed that many of her students didn’t often feel listened to or heard, Karon gave them a platform: she asked her students a series of probing questions, then collected and exactly recorded their responses. Many came in by email, others written painstakingly by hand. Kidspeak, the 15-chapter compilation of everything the students shared, is a deep look — a look from the inside — at middle schoolers’ minds, struggles, and lives, both in and outside of school.

I was so impressed that I asked Karon and her students for permission to share some of Kidspeak in this blog. The answer came back: Yes, you can — but only if you share what we wrote verbatim, as we wrote it. The kids were already frustrated with adults’ layering of adult viewpoints on top of theirs.

I agreed! It’s too rare that we just invite young people to speak, and then really listen. So here, in the first of two weekly excerptings, is a quoted sampling of what the eighth graders of Castleton Village School had to say. This week, it’s about expectations:

What do you feel is expected of you?
As kids, we need to be able to do things and learn. Not stay at home because our parents are worried … Everything we do is so strict and quiet. Learning would be so much easier if it had a fun project or something to go with it.

My parents expect a lot from me in my schoolwork. My dad threatens all the time that if I don’t do well, he’s going to take everything I own away, keep me in my room, and force me to study.

I think my parents, teachers, and principal expect me to give 100% each time I do something. They expect me to do my best and try my hardest.

I’ve lost track of what people want from me … I’m doing the best I can.

Pretty much, you just want to be a good role model.

What do you expect of yourself?
I expect a lot, sometimes too much, of myself … that I will be the best at things, which is not necessarily healthy because I’m not always the best.

One thing I really expect from myself is to get all As … I also expect myself to be a good person, and not crack when the peer pressure gets too much. This is a very hard thing to do especially in middle school where the peer pressure is bigger than ever.

I want to do well in school but I don’t want to look like a dork … I do not want to be smart and dorky or cool but stupid.

It gets so hard when I know I can do better and don’t try. Besides the fact that I’m juggling everything extracurricular. That also adds pressure and makes life more complicated. But I know I can handle it.

When it is freezing cold, raining, and muddy on the soccer field, I will play until the final whistle blows. I don’t care if I am covered in mud, walking off the field, and there is a group of hot guys, as long as I know that I played my hardest. I also expect to get good grades and do my best in school.

I expect for myself to think positive all the time, like those monks in India. I think it’s the most important thing to be positive, it’s like the best kind of armor. … “Expect” is a negative word in itself for me, because expectations are so fragile and strange, and when you don’t meet them, people get mad at you. So besides my affinity for positivity, I don’t expect much from myself.

Everyone is telling me that I expect a lot of myself. When they say that, I am usually in a state of frustration. I get really nervous about grades and about all of my sports. I know I expect a lot of myself, but I try to handle everything.

What pressure comes from these expectations? How do you deal with it?
I see pressure of all sorts. My pressure is not as bad; I just pressure myself to try. That is all anyone has asked for. I see others turning to bullying or becoming depressed from pressure.

When I am pressured, upset, or stressed, I run. It gives me time to think and let my mind wander. … Sometimes, if I’m really upset, I will go to my “secret spot.” It’s really peaceful and lets me relax.

Another pressure is to join the group of people and pick on someone instead of standing your own ground and choose to not pick on that person … I try to stand my ground, but sometimes it’s hard to do so I crash and join in.

Some take it out on others — for example, at lunch they’ll just completely dump all of the stress and pressure on us and we listen and help. Others keep it balled up inside and you know something is wrong, then all of a sudden, they burst and get angry over nothing.

I know some kids who make themselves sick if they don’t do good.

How do I deal with it? I deal with it just the opposite — if the work is too hard, I just don’t do it, and I know I have to change, but … I just give up, and in the end, I’m the one who has to pay for that decision.

I think that the pressure from parents is the hardest to deal with. This is because they are so fond of you …

Some people that I know resort to things like drugs and alcohol, but other people just do healthy things that make them feel better. Me, I dance and listen to music. Also, hanging out with friends always makes me feel better.

All of these expectations are so incredibly hard to accomplish, and you keep pushing yourself and others are pushing you to do better, and it is all so complicated.

Next week: The eighth graders on social groups, goals, and who they really are.

My young-adult novel The Revealers was published on October 7, 2003. That’s also the date that Ryan Halligan took his own life. In the months and years to come, these two events would remain connected: Ryan’s memory would play a key role in starting the national movement to confront bullying, and schools’ use of The Revealers would become more and more a part of that movement.

Ryan was a warm, sweet, funny boy, an eighth grader in Essex Junction, Vermont. He had friends and people who loved him, but he also struggled with some physical awkwardness, with some learning challenges, and with depression. In fifth grade, some boys began to bully him verbally. At middle school, this bullying — as it often does — grew much worse. In seventh grade, Ryan learned kick-boxing and stood up to his main tormentor … and things seemed to get better. But in summer after seventh grade, Ryan became more and more engrossed with instant messaging. He spent hours online, and appears to have grown depressed at what kids were saying and sending to him.

Led by the same bully, middle schoolers were instant-messaging taunts to Ryan, and spreading the rumor that he was gay. A girl who had made friends with him online told him in person, in front of her friends, that she’d only been toying with him. “I believe there are few of us that that would have had the resiliency and stamina to sustain such a nuclear level attack on our feelings and reputation as a young teen in the midst of rapid physical and emotional changes and raging hormones,” Ryan’s father wrote after his son committed suicide.

Soon after Ryan’s death, his dad logged onto the boy’s AOL account and found the instant messages. In their son’s memory, John and Kelly Halligan responded to his death by leading the campaign in the Vermont Legislature, that winter, to win passage of the nation’s first anti-bullying law. Enacted in July 2004, that law requires all Vermont schools to have a bullying prevention strategy and response procedure, and to take seriously all bullying complaints.

I also live in Vermont — and dozens of middle schools in his state were soon using my novel as the focus of reading and discussion projects aimed at bullying awareness and prevention. One of the first schools to do so was the one Ryan Halligan had attended. Before long I was joining a teacher and guidance counselor from that school to make a presentation at the annual conference of the New England League of Middle Schools — and soon after that, The Revealers began to be used in other states as well.

Today, according to the National Council of State Legislatures [www.ncsl.org/magazine/articles/2008/08sloctnov08_bullying.htm], “39 states have laws aimed at reducing harassment, intimidation and bullying at school.” Hundreds of schools across the country have now worked with The Revealers. John Halligan travels the country working to prevent teen suicide in the age of cyberbullying, and telling his son’s story [www.ryanhalligan.com/].

As the movement to confront bullying grows, the story goes on. So do the impacts of Ryan Halligan’s heartbreaking struggle with bullying online.

After her middle school had worked with The Revealers, I got a letter from an art teacher. I don’t usually hear from art teachers — more often from English teachers, school librarians, and kids themselves — but this one said: “It was quite an experience reading this book to my homeroom. There were kids speaking out who I would not have guessed would be willing to share their experiences,” wrote Mary Lou Massucco of the Bellows Falls, Vt., Middle School.

“The Revealers,” she told me, “touched a nerve.”

The extent to which my book has touched a nerve has astonished me. The Revealers has been the focus of reading and discussion projects, often all-school reads, in hundreds of middle schools across the U.S. and internationally. This is my 10th novel for young adults, and I was just trying write a strong, realistic story that would reach into kids’ lives and struggles, and might also have some funny parts. But over and over since its publication in 2003, I’ve seen my book galvanize young people and those who work with them. It has given kids in grades 5-8 a new platform for openness, awareness, and positive action on the problem of bullying — and this problem, I have come to believe after visiting dozens of schools and talking with many thousands of kids, is the central moral struggle of early adolescence today.

That’s because, whether they’re bullies, targets or bystanders on any given day, virtually every young teen has to decide for him or herself how to deal with bullying. At this intense and formative time of life, the choices kids make about whether to bully, to join in groups that bully, to ignore or encourage or stand up to bullying, and how to deal with being bullied are testing experiences that will critically influence how these people go on to treat others, and to feel about themselves, all their adult lives.

I know that’s saying a lot! And when The Revealers first came out, I wouldn’t have said any of it. I had started this project with my own memories; I had gone through bullying as an awkward middle schooler, and it had been hard and lonely. To help me build the story I had in mind, I asked students at six middle schools to share their experiences of bullying, or to critique a working draft of my book. Still, by the time The Revealers was published, I had no idea how many millions of kids actually deal with bullying, how deep this struggle is, or how powerful and long-term its impacts can be.

Six in ten American teenagers witness bullying at least once a day. About the same portion say they’ve been directly involved at one time or another — about half as targets, the other half as bullies. One in ten teens who drops out of high school does so because of repeated bullying. Kids who are bullied are five times more likely to be depressed, and are more likely to consider suicide. Severe school bullying has been linked to seven in ten incidents of school shootings in the past decade. (For more research-based data, see the Useful Links section of this site.)

In contrast, the things I’ve seen and heard in schools and communities that have worked with The Revealers have been so positive, so inspiring. These projects have sparked discussion, stimulated kids’ honesty and creativity, and built new understanding of what bullying is and how it can feel. I don’t like preachy YA novels, and neither do young readers. The Revealers is, instead, about all sorts of kids who struggle with the pressures, confusion and intensity of middle-school life — and because of this it offers young readers multiple entry points, many characters and situations with which they can relate.

I hear from kids a lot. “I had been having trouble fitting in,” wrote Hannah, 12, of Greenwood, Maine. “The Revealers allowed me to see that it was okay to be myself.”

I couldn’t have dreamed of a better outcome than that.

If you’d like to learn more about how The Revealers has been used in schools, please visit my website at www.the-revealers.com.

“What I like best is a book that’s at least funny once in a while.”

That’s Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye. I like J.D. Salinger’s books of stories much better than Catcher — Holden drives me nuts, and I can’t stay with him for long — but I’m with him on this. I also like a book that’s funny at least once in a while. I’m not sure why, but in the world of YA fiction today, real humor seems not to be so easy to find.

Over the holidays I read Joan Bauer’s Hope Was Here, which a school librarian in Florida gave to me, and I enjoyed it. There is some humor in Hope: when the hero, a teenage girl who waits tables in diners, is about to move from Brooklyn to Wisconsin, her friend Miriam gives her a t-shirt that says “New York Forever” as a goodbye gift and tells her, “There’s a lot of cheese where you’re going, Hope. I’m not sure how this affects people long term. Wear this shirt and remember who you are.”

I like that! Humor, when it is good, somehow does help us remember who we are. It’s humanizing and it shifts us, if only for a moment, out of our boxes and off our defensive protective stances. Good humor finds what is laughable in us as human beings, and what’s ridiculous or absurd in our world — and adolescence today is as besieged by absurdity as it ever was, if not more so. So why isn’t there more laughter in YA fiction? Louis Sachar’s Holes, which is a wonderful book, has a scourgingly comical setup, that delinquent boys are sent to a camp called Green Lake that’s neither green nor a lake, and are made to dig holes all day in the broiling sun and then fill them in again; but Holes doesn’t have many actual laughs. Sachar’s earlier novels, Dogs Don’t Tell Jokes and Someday Angeline, are truly funny, in the gently, warmly, and also puncturingly humanistic way that I really enjoy.

What YA fiction have you found funny? On my table here is a 2008 novel called The Big Game of Everything, by Chris Lynch, and a bookstore manager tells me this is hilarious. I hope so. If you like funny books, what have you found? Is there anything out there that makes us laugh the way Tom Sawyer did when he showed off in front of Becky Thatcher’s house?

Not much, in writing, is harder to do than this. And not much is more worth trying.