If you were to ask Steward students to share a highlight of their Middle School experience, most would tell you about Middle School Community Week. This carefully planned week of activities is designed by our grade-level teams to cultivate our students’ resilience and self-direction. This year, the eighth graders traveled to Wilderness Adventure at Eagle Landing for four days of outdoor activities, followed by a day of service learning at Steward.  The seventh graders learned about healthy living with Edible Education, completed service projects across Steward’s campus, and went on an overnight field trip to Triple C Camp outside of Charlottesville. The sixth-grade students explored the intersection of food and culture with Culture Encounters, visited Woodland Cemetery, a historically African American resting ground to many of Richmond’s historic black leaders, and concluded their week with a Friendsgiving feast. 

Steward’s Community Week brings students together through fun activities. We adopt an ethos of “challenge by choice,” encouraging students to make the most of their opportunity to grow. Community Week invites students outside of their comfort zones and to sit with the discomfort of learning through new experiences. 

The Middle School years bring with them significant growth — cognitively, physically, and emotionally. In this unique period of rapid change, the instincts of parents and educators often trend toward minimizing struggle. Yet, research in middle school education suggests that the path to resilient, self-directed young adulthood requires not avoidance of difficulty, but a deliberate embrace of it.

The principle of “challenge by choice” is based on student agency, in which students are given the freedom to set their own level of risk and participation, because they are the only ones to truly know their limits and readiness for a given task. This concept is supported in the Association of Middle Level Education (AMLE) best practices outlined in “The Successful Middle School: This We Believe.” The essential attributes of a successful middle school should include being challenging and empowering, as well as engaging. 

When a middle schooler successfully navigates a self-selected challenge, they are developing what Phyllis Fagell terms a “superpower.” In her book, “Middle School Superpowers: Raising Resilient Tweens in Turbulent Times,” Ms. Fagell emphasizes that the goal is not perfection, but the development of internal resources. Because students select their own challenges, they feel genuine ownership over their accomplishments. The challenge-by-choice approach also helps to make the process of growth feel less intimidating and to foster intrinsic motivation. Finally, this approach requires students to practice critical thinking as they must evaluate the situation, their skill level, and potential risks before deciding if they will engage, pass on the opportunity, or find an alternate way to participate. 

An equally essential skill is the ability to sit in discomfort. While this will look very different for each student, the growth opportunity during Community Week stems from everything from awkward social interactions or homesickness to fear of failure when stepping out of the comfort zone. During these times of struggle, Ms. Fagell, in “Middle School Matters,” argues against the tendency to immediately remove obstacles or alleviate distress, as we need to teach children to distinguish between what is truly dangerous and what is simply uncomfortable. Allowing students to process disappointment, navigate a tricky peer dynamic, or grapple with a difficult problem enables the development of emotional regulation and resilience. This period of struggle trains the brain to persevere and to recognize that the individual is strong enough to endure. Regularly facing and processing discomfort, rather than avoiding it, builds the resilience necessary to handle future challenges, bounce back from adversity, and foster empathy for others.

Together, challenge by choice and sitting in discomfort are mutually reinforcing strategies. Challenge by choice grants students the autonomy to enter their growth zone on their own terms. Sitting in discomfort equips students with the stamina required to remain in their growth zone when work gets hard and emotions run high. Practice of these strategies during Community Week and throughout the middle school years cultivates independent thinkers who demonstrate the courage to choose difficult tasks, as well as the resilience to stick with them.