high school – Meg Griswold

As I do every year, I start by writing my students a letter of introduction and asking for one in return.

I’m not sure where the time has gone, but this is my 18th year of teaching, my 7th year at Graded. This year, I teach 9th grade English, 11th grade TOK and 12th grade IB Language and Literature SL. I’m including below my letter to the 9th graders. I have another post coming about TOK and I’ll include my letter to them there.

This year, I wrote the first two drafts of my letter on my Lettera 32 typewriter. My plan was to write the final draft on the typewriter and then make photocopies. Unfortunately, I had a problem crop up with the typewriter. (The platen kept getting stuck and not rolling, and the line spacing when I pushed the carriage lever was either not engaging at all or adding 3 line spaces.) I moved to my laptop for the final draft on Google Docs. Still, all in all it was a lovely composing experience.

See my set up below:

And without further ado…

August 10, 2024

São Paulo, Brazil

Dear students,

Welcome to the 2024-2025 school year! My name is Mrs. Griswold and we will spend this year together. This is my 7th year at Graded, where I’ve been a middle and high school teacher. Some of you have been in my class before. I’m excited to have you back! I can’t wait to see how you’ve grown and changed. I have 3 kids at Graded: a 2nd grader, a 5th grader, and a 7th grader. My husband is a math and computer science teacher here. I am originally from the US, but I grew up in Mexico and Venezuela. I am fluent in Spanish and Portuguese. I went to an international school like Graded and I have an IB diploma. After high school, I returned to the US for college, where I went to undergrad at Case Western Reserve University, and graduate school at NYU. When I am not teaching or responding to “Mommy,” I like to play the mandolin, run, and write.

One interesting way I have been writing recently is on a mechanical typewriter. At the end of last school year, I fell down an internet rabbit hole of antique typewriters and ended up with a 1965 Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter. In fact, the first two drafts of this letter were written on that typewriter.

My mom’s reaction to me getting a typewriter was to wonder why I would want to deal with the hassle of changing the ink ribbon, losing the ability to edit, the loud clacking, and the bulky weight when I have a perfectly nice laptop and Google Docs.

It’s a fair question. First, I just think typewriters are cool. All the complex mechanical parts and no electricity makes it feel like magic. As for the noise, I like it. Typing on it is a bit like playing an instrument—noisy, but expressive. Like an instrument, it’s hard work on the fingers to type on a typewriter. But I feel a sense of power that I can make the words appear on paper as I type. We all know the pain of needing a printer and not having access to one. With a typewriter, my words have immediate mass and presence.

But my mistakes are also immediately visible. I’ll admit it can be frustrating to see a typo or error, but it has two positive side effects. To begin, I have to slow down and think about what I’m typing. I think this is a good thing. We move so fast all day, firing off messages. Maybe if we all had to type a little slower, and see our words on the page, we might be a little kinder, a little more thoughtful. And finally, I have to be okay with imperfection. On a typewriter, you have to accept the mistakes and keep writing.

One YouTuber referred to a typewriter as a portable printing press. I love that. There’s a line from Gutenberg’s invention of the movable type printing press in 1440 in Germany, to me typing at my desk in Brazil in 2024—that’s rad.

And who could resist that little bell that dings at the end of the line? When I first got this particular typewriter, the bell was broken; it didn’t make a sound. I had to watch a bunch of YouTube videos about how to fix it. I took the machine apart, located the bell, figured out the problem and fixed it! I felt like I’d won a gold medal. If my laptop broke, I would not be able to watch a few YouTube videos and fix it. Typewriters are a cool mechanical puzzle, and I love puzzles.

You know what my typewriter doesn’t have? Notifications. I can’t swipe to a different window or get distracted by scrolling. If I need to pause and think, I look up, and in my case as I wrote this letter, out the window. It’s a lovely silent moment. And then I’m back on it, clacking away.

Wow, Mrs. Griswold, you are going on and on about the typewriter, but isn’t this supposed to be a letter of introduction? Okay, okay, but I’m hoping that you are learning something about me through this story.

The typewriter is a symbol of where I am this year and where I want to go. I like puzzles. I like fixing things. I want to slow down and embrace imperfection. I want to disconnect from some things to connect more deeply to others. I’m excited by new experiences. I like taking on challenges.

One big goal is that I want to disconnect from technology and connect more with myself and others. I want to embrace messiness and mistakes. I want to try things that are hard, complicated and slow. I hope you might be willing to join me.

Hopefully you are starting to guess that I might be the kind of teacher who sees learning and students as a fun puzzle to solve. Hopefully you see that I’m not expecting you to be perfect. Maybe you can see that I value a love of challenge and curiosity in my students.

By now, you’ve probably guessed how I feel about the new cell phone policy. 😉

Now that you’ve gotten to know me, will you write me your own letter of introduction? Tell me who you are, what’s on your mind right now, where you want to go. Also, if there’s anything important for me to know about you, this would be a great chance for you to share that. It’s due next class. This is our first formal interaction as teacher and student, so bring your A game and turn it in on time next class.

Now, I know you probably don’t have a typewriter of your own, but in the spirit of slowing down and connecting with your own words, will you write me your letter by hand? Remember what I said about embracing imperfection. And please don’t worry about your handwriting. Anyone who has been in my class before can tell you how bad my handwriting is—who am I to judge? Try to keep it legible, but I’m good at reading handwriting.

Warmly,

Mrs. Griswold

A colleague said to me in passing last week, “I’d love to sit down sometime and hear your thoughts on middle school vs. high school.”

(For background, I’ve ping ponged in my career from MS to HS and back. I spent the first 4 years in MS, the next 7 hears in HS, the next 5 in MS and now I’m back in HS.)

I’ve spent a lot of the first quarter thinking about the differences. What I’ve arrived at is that I think all teachers should do a tour of duty in middle school–metaphor completely intentional. For some teachers this would be a joyful home to stay in forever, other teachers would find it challenging. But that is precisely my point: teaching middle school can make you a better teacher, if you don’t run screaming for the hills first.

First, teaching middle school reminds you of the fundamental skills in each discipline. Far from the anxiety and pressures of college and GPA, middle school is a little island of time where it’s a teachers duty to instill a love of their subject. Teaching middle school humanities, sometimes I felt like I was in a friendly competition to get students to like my subject the most. Science really gives us a run for our money.

Truly, though, teaching middle school English is about the wonders of reading and writing. We watch movies in our heads, we compose things that make other people feel something. What a gift! Teaching middle school you will be reminded about what really is at the heart of your subject, and probably what drew you to loving that subject in the first place.

Next, you can’t be sloppy or unprepared in middle school. They will eat you. Ha, I kid. But you will feel like you’ve been eaten. Middle school students are honest and they also don’t have a lot of self control to spare. So if something is confusing, illogical, rushed, incomplete–they will smell it and let you know. Sometimes they will raise their hand and tell you it doesn’t make sense, but more often then not, they will begin to roll across the floor, do a handstand, cut pencils in half, or make strange bird calls. This is your sign. You must right the ship immediately.

You better have all those photocopies made. You have to get the desks pre-arranged. Doing a group activity? Pre-sort and number the materials. If you lose time trying to sort things or arrange the room during the first 5 minutes, pandemonium will ensue. By contrast, in the high school I share rooms, and I often arrive to a desk arrangement that I need changed. I simply project the seating arrangement on the board, the 9th graders move the desks and then sit, ready to learn. If you’ve never taught middle school, asking them to rearrange the desks is disastrous. They will build them into a pyramid and then begin launching themselves at the ceiling. I kid, sort of.

When I began my last 5 year stint in middle school, in the first semester I went and talked to lower school teachers about transitions. I would transition from a minilesson at the front to independent work time at desks. Except it wasn’t a transition, more like it was a bunch of molecules firing off into infinite entropy. I was completely losing them in the transitions and I couldn’t reel them back in or get them to be productive after the transitions.

I learned that you keep those transitions tight, the instructions clear. If you can introduce a timer or a competition of some sort, even better. No dead air, no breaks, no loose ends. A well-choreographed dance.

If the instructions aren’t written in addition to being spoken, forget it. Make sure there are posters around the room with the concepts you’ve been teaching. Yes, you’ve told them the website for printing 16 times and asked them to bookmark it. They did not bookmark it. Put it on a poster and just point at the wall. Middle school students are easily distracted. They can miss instructions because a cool bird was outside, or their thumb nail is a weird shape. They are like smaller children in that way. While high school students may not need so many reminders, I’ve found they really appreciate the posters around the room that they can consult. High school students often have questions about the instructions, but they might be too shy or self conscious to ask, so putting them on the board is helpful.

In middle school, the attention clock is ticking down so fast. Give instructions efficiently and get them working as quick as you can. They cannot sit through 25 minutes of instructions and explanation. Spend 5 or 10, then get them working and address questions as they come. Middle school students often can’t envision an activity until they are doing it, so if you let them ask endless questions, they can can caught in the bog. Give instructions verbally, project the instructions on the board, and send them off, ideally with a timer or a ticking bomb or some kind of fun device to get them working.

Even though high schoolers have longer attention spans, they also don’t love endless instructions. They also appreciate getting to the work quickly.

In middle school, you need to save middle school students from themselves. I learned very quickly that if they are working on computers, they need to turn so that their screen is facing me. They don’t have the self control to resist games, YouTube, whatever is currently obsessing them. Are middle school students starting to sound like manic squirrels? Yeah, that’s not too far off. But as soon as they know you are watching, and you’ve told them three times to stop playing Fortnite, they get down to work.

Turns out that high school students might be more tech savvy, more mature, but they also need to be saved from themselves, technologically or otherwise.

Middle school students make you realize that if things don’t go super well, it’s probably your fault. Sorry to break this to you, but middle school students are basically doing the best they can, and if that lesson didn’t fly, you need to rethink the way you did it. In high school, it can sometimes be easy to shift the blame to the students. That sounds harsh and judgy, but I don’t mean it that way. Yes, high school students can be held to a higher standard, but it’s worth reflecting on how you as a teacher could have done things differently.

I shouldn’t let you walk away from this believing that middle school is just a post-apocalyptic wasteland with more hormones in the air than oxygen. When things go well, students will tell you both with their words and their engagement. They will hug you spontaneously, they will tell you that they really loved your class. The highs are high! And this will give you the feedback you need to find what works.

The growth is huge in middle school. The leaps can be impressive and the victory dances are joyful and unbridled. It’s a heady place to teach, middle school. And while I knew I needed a break, there are so many powerful teaching practices that I carry with me.

Letter of Introduction: 18th Year of Teaching

All teachers should teach middle school at least once