Uppers Update- Staying Small in Middle School

It matters how much you get to be a kid while you still are a kid. Can you bring your stuffed animals to school in the Uppers? Yes. Can you play make believe with earnest enthusiasm? Absolutely. Will you be self-conscious about coming across too young or immature to your peers? Probably not in the Uppers. When youth are often in a rush to grow up, it can be tough but still important to rekindle childish play. Play as a part of learning, but also (and mostly) because it's where connection, friendship, and creativity lie. In one of my favorite TED talks, an oldie but a goodie by Ken Robinson, Robinson contends "creativity, in education now, is as important as literacy.” The Uppers program makes a point to invite and proliferate the inventive and spontaneously creative tendencies of younger childhood during adolescence. 

When you get out in the game of passing the ball around and ducking in time with the rhythm of the catch, you need something to do for a few minutes. Catch Orla, Meyer, and Milo just playing in an instant fort. 

At the end of the 8th grade jobs, there is a church service, complete with ringing of the triangle, group song/dance, and a hearty collective spirit. It's part of a larger ongoing buildup of imaginary (but fully enacted) lore of their own making. 

When Eva brought her new animatronic bird to morning meeting (it lived on her shoulder all day that day) of course we had to incorporate its chirps and squeaks into our greeting. No one missed a beat either, everyone was into the idea of a stuffed animal brought from home making the rounds with all the kids who should by most measures be too old for this kind of play. And yet, it was a coming together that prompted a slew of shares from around the class of each favorite stuffy, and also a look at why it felt so good to play with a stuffed animal in middle school. 

Lastly, the eternal game of children, hide and go seek, lives on in games like sardines that we completely relish in the Uppers. Note that it was Meyer who chose this hiding spot but we all lined up in the same way he did. The lack of self-consciousness creates cool. Fun happens when you aren't being normal, boring, or too cool for school. Which, in the Uppers at least, seems to be all the time!