So my fifteen middle schoolers covered quite an age range.
So we let them for the most part settle into their own cliques. These were
mostly age related and there was only a little friction. We occasionally
shuffled them asking the older kids to provide some leadership for the younger
ones. We also succeeded at having an identity as a whole.
So it raises the question whether cliques are always a bad
thing? Cliques provide a sense of safety and security at this age. That doesn’t
seem like a bad thing. The truth is everyone has insecurities and is looking
for affirmation from others.
So when do cliques go bad. Cliques go bad in ways destructive
to the larger community and they go bad in ways destructive to their members.
They hurt the larger community when they become a safe
platform from which one strikes out at others. They go bad when they exist to
exclude and shut out members of the larger community. They go bad when they
embrace contempt or disdain for the larger community.
I think the members of the clique are hurt when the
boundaries are permanent and impenetrable. By that I mean the members of the clique
hardly exist outside the clique. They hurt the member when the member does not interact
with the larger communities as they are naturally inclined to do but do so in ways
that win the approval of the clique.
So writing and cliques.
In Henry on Fire, Henry and his friends see themselves at
the bottom of the school social ladder and therefore would never see themselves
as a clique. Yet they are. By the end of the book they add two friends but before
book two begins those friends have moved away. In book two Henry wants to shut
out of their group a boy he thinks is less cool than they are. Jamal and Fred
are more than ready to embrace this new kid, but Henry struggles to get there.
As I have always said Henry is both the protagonist and
antagonist in my story.
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