A Word with Doug Wilhelm

I recently asked middle schoolers around the country for advice on surviving middle school.

This was actually research: I was developing some ideas for the new book I’m working on, which is a followup story to The Revealers. Both on this blog and during school visits, I asked young people to give me one piece of uncensored advice — something you might tell a younger person who was about to come to your middle school, if no adult was listening.

For the next three weeks, I’m going to post some of their best responses. This week’s first selection deals with the adults in school — teachers, mainly. How do you cope with these demanding individuals?

Here are is some of the most outrageous, entertaining, and creative advice that kids gave. Next week: Dealing with cliques, groups, and social behavior.

If you’re late to class, say your locker wouldn’t open. But after the first quarter, don’t say that anymore. Use your imagination, that’s what I did.

Put a lot of candy in your backpack and secretly put it in your locker and eat some every time you get out of a class.

Always look out for teachers when you are having a conversation with a peer that is inappropriate. Many teachers say they have four eyes (one set behind their head). I would say it’s true. Even though it sounds really weird, they can see just about everything. They can also hear everything.

How to waste time in class. You have to find out what a teacher likes. Mrs. ____ likes talking about Japan and about herself. So ask her a question. After she answers, keep asking questions on that topic. Most of the time she will keep talking.

If you are late to class have your favorite teacher write you a pass saying he had something for you to do that was really important. If you have a teacher that you think doesn’t like you, give her the fruit she likes best or say something nice about her clothes.

If my sister were to come through middle school I would tell her that she has to do her homework. If she does her homework she doesn’t even need to study for tests and quizzes. As long as you do your homework you will do fine.

Act like you are are listening. If you want to chew gum, don’t answer any questions or don’t talk cause you’ll blow your cover.

If you have makeup work and they ask you about it, say “I don’t think so” in a confused voice and start walking away.

Program the teacher’s number in your phone. If the teacher is suspicious, call her number to distract her and quickly put your phone away.

If you want to text, go to the bathroom and go into a stall and you can text all day. If you want to text in class, go to the back corner of the room and you will be okay. Trust me!

Slip your phone into your notebook. It would look like you’re taking notes. You won’t get caught because teachers love when their students take notes.

To text in class: It’s impossible. You get caught 97% of the time. If you get caught your teacher takes your phone and your guardians have to come in and get it. It’s not worth it.

Here is some advice on passing notes in class. Most people will tell you that you should just walk over in the middle of the class and hand the person the note. Or maybe some people have told you to throw the note across the room like a football. Well you shouldn’t do that because it will most likely catch the teacher’s eyes. Or hit someone else and they could read it or take it. You could put it in the flap of your pen and pass the person your pen.

Have a set up time to go meet up with your friends every day by the bathroom. If you every get a slip from the office saying you need to go to the dean or the counselor, that’s the perfect time to go to the bathroom or get a drink.

If you forget to do your homework, do it during another class; the teacher will not come up to you and say, “Is that your math homework?”

To survive in middle school, you’ve gotta first of all keep kind of organized. If all your stuff’s just thrown in a pile, then you’re probably not going to do well.

For gum chewing, you should try to chew red/pink gum. If the teacher wants to check if you have gum just let it blend in.

When you’re on the computer and you are playing a game, when the teacher is coming, press the minimize button. Also to get out of school is to tell the teacher that you have to help another teacher with something, then leave. It works when there are 20 minutes left.

In my opinion, there is a variety of ways to survive some boring classes in middle school. One of the things you could do is bring your iPod to class. To hide the iPod, wear your sweatshirt inside out, and put your iPod in the pocket that is now inside. Next, run one ear speaker up the sweatshirt and into your ear. Make sure to lean your hand on your ear to cover it up.

This next example has to do with more time to hang out in the hallways. Before going to your next class, put the first two numbers in your locker combination. It always works!

The last thing is setting up a time for all your friends to “use the restroom.” This way you can talk for a while and get out of class. In conclusion, there are many ways you can give school a little pop! Good luck!

Before any of these, decide how mad a teacher would get if they caught you.

Sometimes when I visit middle schools where students have been reading The Revealers or Falling, a young reader will ask, What was your message? I think this question means is, What lesson were you trying to teach? After all, these are students! They’re used to everything they’re asked to absorb in school coming down to a lesson of some kind.

But a novel is different. To me, at least, message is the death of storytelling. What makes a book a really good book, for any reader, is meaning — and that is something very, very different.

Here’s how I’ll try to show this. When I’m asked the message question, I’ll often say to the roomful of middle schoolers, “Let’s do an experiment. Raise your hand if you’ve ever started to read a book, a story — and you pretty quickly figured out that this was written by an adult who was trying to teach you a lesson.”

Usually about half the kids in the room, often more, raise their hands. They raise them instantly; this is, to them, a very familiar experience. Many will be nodding. Then I’ll say, “Okay, here’s the second question. How many of you finished reading that book?”

This time, a fraction of the first group, maybe one in ten kids, now raises their hands.

This experiment always goes this way. And it leads me to say, “See what I mean? We don’t want to be preached at in a story. Nobody does. And why should I think I, as the story writer, know the answers for your life? I want to give you an experience. What you get out of it has a lot to do with what you bring to it. What’s your life like? What’s hard for you right now? What’s important to you? You bring all that to reading my story, or any story — and the meaning you get out of a good story has as much to do with you and your life as it does with the story on the page.

In the reading of a story, a novel, the writer is meeting the reader — the story on the pages is meeting the story of your life. Both stories are equally important, and that’s why meaning is personal for you. You won’t picture a character in a book quite the same way that the kid next to you will — and each of you will find a different personal meaning in reading the book, if it’s a good book for you. In fact, that’s what makes it a good book for you: that you find your own personal meaning in it. And if that’s your own personal meaning, then I think no one can tell you that you’re wrong. If it’s true for you, then it’s true.

And this is the magic of a good novel, a good story — it comes to life inside the reader. The reader is the movie screen, and more. It’s in the reader’s imagination and emotions that the story comes to life.

Message is what a writer may try to put into a book — and that will always, in my opinion, be a not-very-good (I mean to say bad) book.

Meaning is something that you get out of a book. And when you do, then that, for you, is a very good book. And no one can tell you that you’re wrong.

I’ve been a freelance or self-employed writer for many years, and long ago in Montpelier, Vermont I shared an office with a close friend from college, a political cartoonist and graphic designer named Tim Newcomb. Tim always knew when I had a writing deadline — because I would suddenly start cleaning something, like the bathroom. I normally was pretty oblivious about the need to clean anything. So Tim would see me scrubbing and say, “Must be deadline day!”

I did that because I was scared. I had something to write, and I felt the fear.

I think that fear is really interesting. I’ve always thought so. What’s most interesting about it — and maybe this, like the fear itself, will sound familiar to you — is that I find I’m not so much scared to write … I’m scared to start writing. The fear for me comes before I begin. I’ve actually learned to see it as something positive, something to be moved toward rather than away from. See, the more scared I am to start on a writing project, the more challenging and risky — and therefore scary — that project feels. So the more scared I feel to start a piece of writing, the more important it is for me to start it.

This is not true of all types of fear. It wouldn’t be true, for instance, about jumping out of an airplane without a parachute — but I think it is true of writing. Our fear is our signpost: you should write this. At least, I think, you should try.

Yet how do we deal with the fear? So many of us let it stop us from writing at all. I certainly have. But once you let the fearful desire to write a particular important or challenging or creative thing go by, sometimes that chance evaporates and is lost. So we need to move through the fear. We need to write what we’re scared to write. If so, then how?

I remember once reading a very short book, one of those self-help type books whose entire theme and content was contained in the title. It was called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. And that’s it! We can feel the fear but not be stalled, or stopped, or dominated by it. We can just feel the fear of starting to write, and then we can just start.

I almost always find that once I do start, the fear goes away. Once I’m writing, I’m in it. The drafting and the rewriting are not so scary: they may go slow or they may go fast, but generally I have left the haze and weight of fear behind. For me what’s scary about writing seems to hang around that space of time before I start. So the key, I find, is to make that space small, limited, and manageable.

This really does go back to cleaning the office bathroom before I’d start on a deadline project. That was when I noticed, after Tim noticed it first, that I seem to need to let myself do something routine or basic, something unscary, before I start to write. These days generally, because I write mostly on the computer, I let myself check the news online, say for five minutes. I’ll generally be specific: “You can read the news until …” And I do, and I enjoy it. Then, when that time has past, I just take a breath and start to work.

As I say, once I start writing it’s generally okay. Sometimes it’s exciting! Sometimes it’s exhausting. Often it’s both. But one thing it almost never is, once I have taken that breath and begun, is scary any more.

This week’s posting is my second and final glimpse into Kidspeak, a collection of observations by the eighth graders of Castleton (Vt.) Village School about their lives and themselves. I promised not to interpret or “translate” in any way — so here are more selections from the kids’ own words, with questions that were posed by their teacher, Karon Perron:

What kind of groups do you see in school?
I see all different kinds … like “popular,” “kinda popular,” and “different.” … I don’t think anyone chooses which of these groups they’re in besides drugs and gangs.

There are the geeks, jocks, snobby people, smart kids, annoying kids, and the crazy kids … The kids think whatever group you’re in, you are basically good, ok, bad, or just losers.

What defines a group is how close you are as friends.

I think it is just groups of friends who get along and understand each other at a different, deeper level … Most of all, I think the people who we hang out with are people who we have known for a long time and who we trust and are comfortable around.

I do notice two types of people: followers and individuals. The followers are like girls who spend all their money on sweatpants and Uggs, and individuals tend to do some following but do what they want.

In school I sometimes see groups that are unpopular groups, and I see popular groups. Sometimes the two groups would be mad at each other and pick on each other.

Then there are the backstabbers, the ones who are always going between sides.

What do you know about yourself? Do you set goals? Are you afraid of failure? Do you worry about succeeding?
I like to be different and have stuff that stands out. For example, I like an offbeat basketball team, I prefer Nike to other brands like American Eagle … I don’t set goals because I think it’s pointless.

If I don’t reach a goal I feel like a failure. I hate failure. I am so afraid of doing something wrong … I have to succeed at something or I don’t like it. I don’t know why exactly but I just can’t take it when I don’t do well in something.

I am afraid of failure because if I fail, I can’t really feel good about myself.

I know that sometimes, I can get really mean and say stuff to people without thinking first.

If I continue down this track that I’m going on now, I am going to fail … unless I change my life around.

I like setting goals for myself, each slightly higher than the other. I like to push myself to do better.

What do you want adults in your life to know about you and kids your age?
I want kids to see things from my point of view, and that just because there is a law about bullying doesn’t mean it’s going to stop. It doesn’t stop. There needs to be action taken, and soon. Learning is fun, but bullying is more complicated than what they make it out to be …

I want adults to know that kids my age are still trying to figure out what it is that we do best. None of us are really, really that great at anything yet … Even if it doesn’t seem like it at times, we are trying our hardest. Sometimes, adults expect too much from kids our age.

We have ideas, insights, and don’t want to be treated like babies anymore. Whether we let it show or not, as eighth graders, we should be able to take responsibility for our actions and problems … Middle school is hard and you learn more than just math and reading. You learn things about yourself and your friends.

Me personally, I think it is easier for a person to learn something when it is presented in a unique way like a project or game. It is hard for some people, especially me, to sit in a classroom and read out of a textbook … It has to be more interactive.

My peers and I are only 14 years old, so we can’t do everything right; we do make mistakes.

We don’t like to stop having fun … I don’t really like to relax because it’s boring.

Parents overthink and run to conclusions without asking or stopping themselves to truly understand what really is going on and why.

Kids don’t always have a great life at home they could be right in the middle of their parents’ divorce or abuse. Sometimes, kids are put in bad places because of a stupid choice the parents made.

I want adults to know that we’re only kids living our lives, not theirs. And we have about five times harder schoolwork on top of staying connected with our friends … Someone made a universal law that if you’re not texting friends or talking online, it’s a minute wasted.

It annoys me when someone is all like “I get you,” and I’m all like, “No way!” Few people even truly get themselves, so why should they learn about me when they should know themselves.

I want adults to know that kids just want to have fun, and that they want adults to be more open to ideas.