A Middle School Enrichment Program That Builds Community

After lunch on Tuesday, a group of middle school students gathered around a microwave, watching as a cake rose above the rim of a coffee cup. In another room, students were learning how to juggle. Down the hall, a teacher was showing students how to make friendship bracelets, while another group headed to beginner volleyball.

None of these activities were part of our traditional middle school curriculum. There were no tests, no grades, and no standards that teachers needed to cover. That was precisely the point.

Middle school classes give students knowledge and skills they will need later. But early adolescence is also a time when students seek connection and begin to discover what interests them, what they enjoy, and who they might become. We wanted to create time in the school week where those questions could matter, too.

We decided to dedicate a 30-minute period each week to enrichment to give students a chance to explore unfamiliar interests while letting teachers share interests that rarely appear in regular classrooms. These 30 minutes have created new relationships, revealed talents we might not have noticed, and given students another reason to look forward to school.

CREATING A MIDDLE SCHOOL ENRICHMENT PROGRAM

Start with what teachers love. To build our enrichment program, we started with what teachers wanted: Instead of listing classes that students might want and finding adults to teach them, we asked teachers what they enjoyed. What could they happily share for several weeks? What might students never guess about them based on the classes they taught?

Their answers gave us courses like movie club, cookie decorating, line dancing, tabletop games, Lego, seasonal crafts, and Broadway musicals. These did not sound like traditional academic subjects, and they were not intended to. Their value came from teachers sharing something they enjoyed. Students noticed that enthusiasm.

Give students choice. Teacher enthusiasm was important, but student choice was equally so. We shared the available offerings and asked students to rank their preferences. We could not always provide a first choice but aimed for a top selection.

Much of a student’s schedule is decided by adults, but the enrichment block gave them a chance to say, “This interests me.”

Keep the stakes low. One of our most important decisions was not to let enrichment become another traditional class. There were no tests, homework, or grades. Students were simply expected to show up, participate, treat others well, and try.

Middle school students are often highly conscious of how they compare with peers, which can make them reluctant to attempt activities where they may not immediately succeed. Enrichment gave students practice doing something they did not already know how to do—and the chance to discover that missing a serve, losing a game, struggling through a dance, or burning a mug cake was simply part of learning.

Accept the scheduling trade-off. Of course, creating enrichment time requires something schools rarely have in abundance: minutes. Middle school schedules are full, and adding anything requires choices.

For us, the question became not whether enrichment competed with academics, but what experiences belonged in a complete middle school education. Academic preparation clearly belongs. Students need literacy, writing, scientific and mathematical thinking, historical and cultural understanding, and the other disciplines we teach every day. But we decided that curiosity, relationships, and exploration belonged there, too.

CREATING STRONG STUDENT–TEACHER RELATIONSHIPS

Schools rightly emphasize student–teacher relationships, but those relationships can be difficult to build. Giving teachers and students something interesting to do together helped them connect in new ways.

A board game creates conversation naturally. So does learning a dance, discussing a movie, making something, or practicing a sport. The activity gives everyone a shared experience, allowing relationships to develop without making relationship-building the explicit assignment.

Teachers also get to see qualities that may not be visible in academic classes. A quiet student may patiently teach someone a complicated game. A student who struggles academically may show remarkable creativity during a craft project. Someone who rarely leads in class may step forward during an activity.

Students likewise get to see teachers outside of their usual roles. A student who has never taken a teacher’s class may connect with that teacher through enrichment. Later, when they pass in the hallway, they have something to discuss. Those small interactions accumulate as teachers and students develop a fuller picture of one another.

GETTING STARTED WITH YOUR OWN ENRICHMENT PROGRAM

To bring an enrichment program to your school, you don’t need to start with a yearlong weekly program. You can look for an existing advisory or flex period, offer enrichment every other week, or start with a short pilot instead.

Once you identify when the enrichment block can happen, it is then time to figure out what the actual offerings will be. Ask faculty what they want to share with students, and from there, create short course descriptions for students to choose from. We let courses run for one quarter and then allowed students to choose a new enrichment course, repeating that process throughout the year.

It is important to consider capacity, materials, safety, food allergies, and supervision when determining the specific courses and how students will participate in them. Those details matter, but they do not require a complex program. What matters most is preserving four elements: teacher enthusiasm, student choice, low-stakes participation, and shared experiences.

An enrichment course may not change a student’s academic trajectory. A few weeks of tabletop games, volleyball, or cookie decorating may simply become a fond memory. But it might introduce a lifelong hobby, lead to an unexpected friendship, give a student who has struggled elsewhere a place to experience mastery, or strengthen a relationship with an adult.

We rarely know which experiences will matter most to our students. The investment in the program has paid dividends across our school community. For us, making a little room in the school week for them to find out has been worth the time.