Keira Schaefer

Lost and alone in the endless struggle 
To wake upon the dawning stars
Lighting the path like a wooden plank
But yet I cannot bring myself to follow it
Connected but isolated 
Together but alone
The journey I trek is miles and miles
For, it has just begun

Poetry

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Keira Schaefer wonders what it means to journey alone.

Alone

Abraham Weitzman

When you part ways with friends you have known for as long as you can remember for a big adventure, it is terrifying and wonderful.

When I left the Henry Viscardi School, I was giving up interesting people, supportive therapists, and wheelchair basketball for the unknown world of New York City public school. I knew it would be completely different from the insulated environment I was accustomed to — at HVS everyone was like me, severely disabled.  It was intimidating to leave my seven classmates for rotating class schedules, packed halls, and new therapists who would need to learn about my communication system. It felt like the only way to the glistening pool was jumping off a cliff. I jumped.

In September, I started Bard High School Early College Queens with a human security blanket, Mahmood Alladadweh. We had been a team at home for seven years, and he agreed to be my para for the first year to make the transition easier. Mahmood knows everything about me, from my physical needs to my favorite band, so I was braver with him behind me pushing my chair. It did not take long to realize I did not need to be brave. I was given a peer mentor. I made friends. I joined the vinyl club. It all sounds simple now, but at the time I was “on” all the time. 

High school is an opportunity to reinvent yourself. I'm in a wheelchair most of the day and I do not self-propel. This means I rely on other people approaching me. I cannot speak to call out, “Hey, how’s it going?” I needed to attract people to come over to see what I was writing on my communication system. In middle school, everyone knew me and understood that it took a while for me to write. I needed the new kids to see I was worth the wait. Being smart and funny and kind and troublesome (having a reputation for speaking truth to power) all seemed essential to social success. I worked at creating a persona in class that would make me someone to sit with at lunch. 

Defining myself as willing to listen ended up being important, and luckily it is one of my specialties. First I listen carefully and then I ask questions so people know I’ve been paying attention. I use the workshop method I learned at Writopia. It starts with finding something to appreciate in what they say and then wanting to hear more. I recommend this plan to anyone looking for new friends. The friends I made the first week of school are still my friends today.

In the corridors, I was invisible and obvious at the same time. In my wheelchair I am shorter than the eye notices, but I was, and still am, the only wheelchair user at school, so I felt like a pest needing everyone to make room for me in the crowded halls. I had heard nightmare stories of kids blocking the way in other schools. I had nothing to worry about; Mahmood is just as big as the seniors and the other students could not have been nicer.

Hearing the story now makes me wonder what I was so worried about. At the time I thought I might not be able to handle the physical nature of being part of a competitive high school. As I am writing this, I am using my six-switch array to type. I need to stand to hit the switches with my chest. It is slow in producing words, and after half an hour and one paragraph, I need to sit down and rest. I thought I would struggle to keep up in class and social situations. It was difficult but not impossible and it was rewarding in every way. 

Bard was all new to me. My middle school had a strict format for classes designed for students with disabilities who need time to prepare responses to questions. This was comforting but not exciting. At Bard, the students led discussions. The ideas came out of other student responses and you never knew where the conversation might go. I had no trouble thinking fast but writing fast was not possible. The first day I struggled to create answers to questions raised several minutes earlier. For a comment to be relevant, I had to find a way to relate it to the last speaker. I started to listen to the theme instead of individual ideas. This made my comments fit into the flow of the seminar. Once again listening helped me find a place in my new community. This year Bard gave me support to further integrate disability into the school culture. My brother and I started the Abled-Disabled Alliance, and our advisors helped us bring in speakers and add to the library. We increased the visibility of disabled writers and their narratives. This was possible with a team of students and faculty.

When I jumped off the cliff four years ago, Bard gave me a soft landing, with teachers who were flexible and students who treated me like I was a friend even before they really knew me. Mahmood was right next to me giving me support and the confidence that I would succeed at fitting in academically and socially. I listened and the others waited to hear what I was thinking. This fall I will be going somewhere bigger, Columbia University. Bard has prepared me well to make friends, join an academic community, and share my disabled culture. It is a little daunting but there is no cliff. This time I will roll in nervous like everyone else. 

In a KidSpirit Awesome Moments article, teen writer Abraham Weitzman remembers his big leap to high school and discovering disability is no obstacle to a sense of belonging.

Jumping Off a Cliff

Olga Phaedra Pouppis

In the Cypriot culture I have grown up in, “community” is perhaps one of the most important concepts. 

Cyprus is a small country that was occupied by different nations for the majority of its history and became independent just a few decades ago. You might not have heard of it before, and that’s understandable, as on many maps it’s not even represented. Perhaps as a result of its long subordination and sudden freedom, Cypriot people developed a very strong sense of patriotism and fellowship. It is, of course, nice to be surrounded with this kind of unity, to feel that you’re part of a group, that you’re not alone, that you belong somewhere. On the other hand, this can also be problematic. In order to be in a community, you need to fit certain norms, follow certain rules, and believe in certain things. If you don’t, then you might become an outsider, a person who does not fit in. And while publically those “outsiders” are not really shamed, still they are excluded from most social groups. At most times they are unwelcome in our community, even though generally there is no hate toward them.

I first experienced this when I was around six or seven years old. My friends and I called an “emergency meeting” on one of the school breaks to discuss a very serious and confusing problem. Our classmate, let’s call her Alice, turned out to have a different religion than my friends. It was possibly my friends’ first encounter with the fact that people they know might believe in gods different from theirs. We were left with a question: “Should we still be friends with Alice?” Looking back, it didn’t really matter what we chose, as we weren’t friends with her in the first place. But, for us, whether we would let Alice into our group, our environment was a matter of principle. Thankfully, in the name of world peace, we made the decision to let her be our friend, though when we informed her about it, she genuinely didn’t care. 

This experience represents the whole system of how we’re raised and educated. In school, we are taught about equality, acceptance, and diversity. We are constantly told that we are equal no matter our religion, tradition, race, or way of thinking. But the situations we are told about in lessons are abstract. The teachers refer to people different from us as something isolated from us, something that has nothing to do with our reality. The educational system often seems to try to separate us from people different from us, even though we are learning that they’re equal to us. They are represented as something that is not bad, but not a part of our culture and community. We understand that somewhere on the globe there are places where people are unlike us, and we are OK with that, but we aren’t taught that those people may also be among us, part of our culture. As long as they have nothing to do with us, we are ready to accept them very easily. They are not part of our life experience, so it’s easy for us to talk about fairness and justice when we don’t really have to be fair to them. When we face diversity in our life, we don’t know how to react.  

So was Alice actually part of our community, of our culture, or was she outside of it because of her beliefs? Am I excluded from society because I do not necessarily agree with all the morals and ethics that are valued in my culture? Does someone need to absolutely rely on everything they are taught in their community? On the one hand, what shapes a group are the things we have in common. However, a community is going to surround you for most of your lifetime. It is linked to many aspects of our life, and even if we are not part of it, we will still have to interact with it. A community is not just a group of similar people, it can also be a place for different people with different ways of thinking, different beliefs, and different philosophies to come together and unite around some key ideas. People in a community can be different.

A big part of being open to variance is seeing that variance in real life. For me, this was exactly what made me start questioning how fair our system was to people unlike us. I first came across the term LGBT+ community in sixth grade, when the bullies of my class “upgraded” from calling their victims stupid and “pigheaded” to the worst (from their point of view) insult: gay. And despite how bad and ignorant this experience was, it was the first time I was exposed to the fact that people can love others of the same sex. I didn’t necessarily understand the nature of this, but I still started questioning why there is so much hate for those people, and why society is literally fighting love, a feeling that is so romanticized when it’s heterosexual. I started asking these questions and thinking about this topic only when I learned about homophobia and got the chance to observe it. In my life experience,  I have worked on being inclusive after learning about the oppressed groups. My family also helped me with that a lot. They are always accepting of people, no matter their nationality, sex, or religion. They not only talk to me about inclusivity but also try to give me a good example of how to treat people. Most importantly, they do not ban me from meeting people unlike us, and always encourage me to learn about the oppression of different groups. I am so grateful to them for raising me this way. Personally, I believe that a common mistake we make is trying to “shield” ourselves from anything different from us. We try to pretend it isn’t there, wishing to avoid any encounter with that topic. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we are against diversity, it’s just that we are scared of the unknown, and we prefer to live in our own little world, pretending that things we do not understand don’t exist. The homophobic slurs that my classmates used to say came from a place of ignorance, as most of those kids didn’t even know what exactly being gay meant. I still can’t say that I myself am always fair and inclusive, but I am working to reach that goal by learning and trying to understand different people’s perspectives. So while the educational system taught me that diversity is something I shouldn’t be in contact with, I learned from my personal experience and from the example of my family that diversity is a part of my life that I can’t and shouldn’t ignore.

 I believe that a community simply cannot function if it requires all members to be the same. Diversity is what makes a community stronger. By cooperating with people who are different from us, we can learn, get inspired, and help each other. We can start looking at things from a different point of view. If we stop avoiding our dissimilarities and accept them, we will finally be able to destroy the boundaries that are holding us back as a society. Difference shouldn’t just be allowed outside of a community, it should be welcomed inside of it.  We are different whether we like it or not, so why do we constantly try to fit norms and standards to become one with the masses? Why do we have to diligently hide anything that may make us stand out, why do we put on masks to please the public? A community should help us find our true selves and express them to the world, not forbid us from doing so. Instead of just talking about diversity, we should try to accept it in our own lives by building a society where being different doesn’t mean being alone. A community where people can be diverse without being evicted. A place where everyone feels involved even if they stand out. A place where diversity is welcomed not just to exist but to enter the public.

In this KidSpirit Interfaith Connections article, teen writer Olga Phaedra Pouppis challenges the belief that social inclusivity is in tension with community unity and national pride.

Isolated Diversity

Katie Lamm

Imagine having an orchestra, a band, a singer at your fingertips, bending to your every whim. Your goal is to make one single song. There are no rules or confinements, no genre or message to abide by. What would your music say?

Despite being a creative and artistic person, it’s extremely difficult for me to create as a teenager: I have millions of ideas but so few avenues and methods to carry out these ideas. It’s not only logistically difficult — it’s emotionally difficult. For me and other young musicians, it's so hard to fully express ourselves and be vulnerable without extreme amounts of validation from the people who are creating with us. 

You could provide a lot of gifts to a teenager, but, personally, to give me the gift of truly listening to me, understanding me, and supporting me would make a world of difference. Maybe the world would be a little different if we listened to what the younger generations have to say.   

Hear Your Song is a nonprofit organization that does just this: it lets children and teenagers that suffer from serious illness write and create their very own songs. Volunteers from around the country help these children create a song with whatever instrument, style, or mood they desire. 

Dan and Rebecca, a KidSpirit alumna, started this journey halfway through their sophomore year of college, and have since grown into a nationwide nonprofit organization. Despite recent events, they continue to amplify the voices of these children and teenagers through the medium of music. 

Katie: In your own words, describe Hear Your Song and what you do as an organization. 

Rebecca: Hear Your Song is a national nonprofit organization with the mission of empowering children and teens with serious illnesses and complex health needs to make their voices heard through collaborative songwriting . . . Hear Your Song volunteers work with pediatric patients and young people who are experiencing serious health issues, and we help them write their own songs.

Katie: What is your relationship with music and how did that influence the creation of Hear Your Song? 

Dan: I am a composer of mainly musical theater and opera, but also some choral music, and I play piano and sing. I really came up with the idea for Hear Your Song out of wanting to create a space for our college community to create without worrying about who was writing the best music . . . I really do believe the basic idea of having someone write words, listening to them, and listening to them with enough clarity and purpose to be able to respond musically . . . shows them that you see them as a full human being and you can respond in your own art to their art and that is at the core of what happens in the Hear Your Song process.

Katie: Walk me through the process of songwriting and recording.

Dan: In case you have kids or teens reading this who feel like they would qualify for this . . . if kids or families reach out to us through our website, they can set up one-on-one sessions. 

It’s really going to look quite different depending on how comfortable or how much experience each kid has with songwriting already. . . . The overarching structure is just exploring a variety of topics that kids could write about. We really encourage whatever kids want to write about themselves and their stories. Then once we do that brainstorming, we do a free-writing process where kids can kind of just share whatever’s on their mind about that topic and write it down. Then we move into a stage where we are more focused on taking those ideas from the free-writing and organizing them into more of a structure that could be chorus and verse or more free. The next part of our songwriting process is focused on the music-making, which can look different in most of our sessions. We ask kids about what musical style they want, what instruments they want, what tempo. It’s a back and forth process. It’s whatever can most effectively give each kid access to express themselves that makes the most sense for them.

Rebecca: We use something called Soundtrap, which is a virtual recording app where you can set up tracks and everyone can record and see in real-time how the different tracks are coming together. There was a learning curve in the beginning, but we’re pretty used to it now. The other thing that it’s really enabled us to do is tap into our entire volunteer base. For example, if a kid at our chapter at Wellesley College wants a song with a harpsichord in it, we can send out a big email blast to all of our chapters and say: “Wellesley needs a harpsichord player! Does anyone play harpsichord?” And then it happens, so it has been in many ways a pretty useful way to work with people.

Katie: What song and story has touched you the most? Why? 

Dan: I was helping to lead a session with a girl who uses a lot of affirmations like  “I am strong, I am sassy, I am funny” to just give herself self-confidence, and she decided to use those as lyrics for her song. The way that she wanted to work she would hear the lyric and the college-aged singer would sing it back to her. We were practicing this on a Zoom call and it was a really beautiful moment of a girl under 10 who was giving herself this confidence, and what could be this older voice singing it even more confidently and more elaborately, confirming: “You are strong and you will be strong 10 years from now,” and it was really beautiful.

Katie: How has this process changed you as a person? 

Rebecca: For me, it's really a huge blessing to have an opportunity to make music outside the professional musical theatre world, and every time I lead a session or listen to an HYS song or get to work on an HYS song it reminds me why I love music and why I think music is really important and really powerful, so it reminds me why I wanted to make music in the first place. Seeing it pass from our hands from when we were undergraduates to the next undergrad leaders, and now it’s a nonprofit, seeing other people leading chapters at colleges and volunteers and leading songwriting sessions was such a cool moment because it was this thing we had built that was just taking on a life of its own and affecting other people and changing other people’s lives. 

Rebecca and Dan have continued to work through the pandemic, now able to reach more children and teenagers around the country, but they are eager to get back together in person to make music and connect with their clients face-to-face. Hear Your Song has helped orchestrate over 100 songs, and they will continue to make plenty more.

Interviewing Rebecca and Dan was an experience I will never forget. They were not only charming but also committed and passionate. I could tell how happy Hear Your Song made them feel, and I could not see anyone leading this wonderful organization except them. 

I personally think one of the most fascinating aspects of Hear Your Song is that the organization strives for a very pure goal regarding music: giving a stage to those who have stories to tell yet who are often unheard.  That is something sacred and should be kept for as long as humanly possible. 

In this KidSpirit Helping Hands article, teen writer Katie Lamm interviews Dan Rubins and Rebecca Brudner, the founders of Hear Your Song, a national nonprofit organization that empowers children with serious illnesses and complex health needs to make their voices heard through collaborative songwriting.

Giving the Gift of Music

Nanyee Lin

A loner like Galileo
Was starstruck
By none other than the mighty stars above
He buried his face in books
And cast people away from his roof
Isolated and aloof
He could only look up
And wonder what it’s like
Up there 


One particular gas ball
With orange and yellow mist
Twisted and intertwined
Drifting in the wrath of the Dark
He is lonely
But he’s most definitely not alone
He is accompanied by lovers who lurk in the shadows
There’s Io, Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto
Four sisters with differing personalities and poses
Around around around they go
They’re starstruck by Jupiter, although he still doesn’t know

In this KidSpirit poem, teen writer Nanyee Lin imagines the friends to be found in the cosmos.

Starstruck

Melanie Zavala Mendoza

Confetti, rainbow, color.  The book Confetti Girl is by the author Diana López. This book is easy to understand, has a good format, mostly deals with common middle-grade issues, and is suitable for middle school readers and elementary readers. 

This book is suitable for elementary and middle school readers because it's simple to read and the words aren't difficult to pronounce at all. The first main character you will meet when starting this book is Apolonia Flores, or as many people call her, Lina. The name Apolonia is the girl form of Apollo, the Greek god of the sun. Lina lives in Texas. Lina lives with her dad who is obsessed with books, but Lina has noticed that his book obsession has evolved ever since her mom passed away the year before from Staphylococcus. Staphylococcus is a blood infection that Lina’s mom got after she fell and they had to amputate her leg.  

Confetti Girl is relatable and funny because the book talks about a lot of things we have all encountered in middle and elementary school. It made me think about the old memories I forgot I had. I could feel the emotions that the author expressed very nicely. At one point in the book, I could feel second-hand embarrassment for Lina (a volleyball hit her and she fell to the ground at a volleyball game, and her crush was there). 

Lina and her best friend Vanessa have many similarities but also differences. For example, Lina is a  "sock enthusiast." She has a collection of "daily socks," "lonely socks," "holey socks," and "sock heaven." On the other hand, Vanessa is now totally boy crazy.  For example, Lina has a big crush on a boy named Luis, like most of us have had crushes. For example, we have all had crushes if we want to admit them or not. When Lina was talking about her crush Luis, I was reminded about my old crushes and it made me laugh.  

Vanessa's mom, Ms. Cantu, became obsessed with making cascarones (hollowed eggshells filled with colorful confetti) after she had her divorce. Lina and Vanessa came up with a “brilliant” idea to stop her obsession. Will their idea make Vanessa’s mom more obsessed with cascarones or will the idea be perfect and make her stop? 

My favorite part about this book is how each chapter of the book starts with a dicho, a short Spanish proverb. Three of my favorite dichos are in this book. The first dicho is “Un amigo es el mejor espejo” (“a friend is the best mirror”). That could mean many different things, but, for me, it means exactly what it says. When your friend looks at you, they see something that nobody else can, because nobody will ever be like you. The second dicho is “Una acción buena enseña más que mil palabras” (“Actions speak louder than words”). To me, this quote means you can say you want something or will change something but words are nothing compared to you actually doing it. The third dicho is “Dime con quién andas y te diré quien eres” (“Tell me who you are friends with and I'll tell you who you are”). This quote is my all-time favorite one because when I read this the first thing I thought of was being a follower. For example, if one of your friends is doing bad things and you want to fit in, you will not only be a follower, you will be the bad person. If you were with friends who were doing good things you wouldn't be a follower, you would be an achiever.

One of the most important things the book Confetti Girl taught me was to be honest with my friends. For example, Vanessa's mom would call Lina a “poor baby” and Lina hated it so much she would even try to avoid going through the front door when she went over to Vanessa's house. What do you think the outcome would have been if Lina would have just spoken to Vanessa about it? I personally believe that Vanessa would just have a talk with her mom, but at least Vanessa would know and Lina would not have to hide that feeling. I would give this book a rating of 5 out of 5 because sometimes I can get bored of just one topic, but this book conquers different topics, like Lina's mother’s death, Lina’s crush, and Vanessa’s amazing ideas. I wouldn't change anything. 

Confetti Girl didn’t teach me a lesson that I didn’t already know, but it did give me an amazing memory. I started reading the book during the lockdown and now when I think about it, I remember how this was my escape from everything that was happening. It made me feel almost normal again because I’m in middle school and this book had a lot of common middle school problems. All in all, Confetti Girl tackles some very tough issues, like Ms. Catu’s divorce and Lina and her fathers’ grief over her mother's death, but this book is still lighthearted and cheerful

In this KidSpirit media review, preteen writer Melanie Zavala Mendoza recommends "Confetti Girl" by Diana López.

Confetti Girl: Who Am I?

Oscar Luckett

Truly connecting isn’t just applying generosity globally; we must dissolve the membrane between the self and the collective.

At the very start of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's fictional alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, reads through an index in the fold of his geography pamphlet.

“Stephen Dedalus
Class of Elements
Clongowes Wood College
Sallins
County Kildare
Ireland
Europe
The World
The Universe”

The slowly expanding context in which he places himself gets to the very heart of what it means to be a human, and ergo, a global citizen: we are only as connected to one individual as we say we are. Truly connecting to someone means following worldly Dedalus in defining the geographic lines that distinguish us, in hopes of being able to appreciate how those lines gradually fade at a larger scale.

Stephen Dedalus is not a unique critical thinker capable of situating himself in a worldly context, nor would he list the Universe as his return address. He is quite typical in merely cataloging his home in expanding concentric circles. To understand connection and its limitations, we must first understand the nature of human differences. Connection is only difficult because of the human condition to catalog differences. With an awareness of the negligible differences between people, humans skew towards nepotistic tribalism: constructing structures along the lines of gender, nationality, language, political identity, etc.

While Dedalus uses geographic identifiers, any term we use to relate to each other necessarily scales from granular to global. These arbitrary constructs don’t just define and divide, they stratify. Every dominant group is inclined towards persecution as a form of self-preservation. The result of this is a philosophical departure from the global citizen ethos towards a more localized form of connection.

In reality, this era is the most primed for global connection in the history of humankind. With globalization has come an increasingly recognizable, corporatized, and homogenous culture. As Chinese, Spanish, and English become more dominant, language barriers crumble. And all of this has been hastened by technological advancements.

It has become almost cliché to say, but technology has led us to a more connected world. At my fingertips, I have the capability to connect not only to my immediate peers and family members, but to people from every corner of the Earth, stories from every era, and nearly every kernel of recorded human knowledge. The Library of Alexandria’s entire contents could fit onto a hard drive the size of my thumbnail. Even inside the echo chambers of our curated news and social media feeds, it is nearly impossible to ignore and remain apathetic about current events. Anyone who has Wi-Fi can not feign ignorance about the state of the world.

So if we have the means to understand others, what’s standing in the way of connection?

In his book The Life You Can Save, philosopher Peter Singer poses an all-encompassing theory of human connectedness. Starting from the axiomatic assumption that human suffering is inherently bad and that, given the opportunity, most of us would minimize that suffering, he questions why we don’t. This, he claims, isn’t an indication of naivety but self-inflicted obfuscation of tragedy. We avert our eyes from the sickly child on the news because it in some way implicates us if we are aware of suffering and do not act.

He renders this philosophy in a thought experiment: say you are leaving a fancy gala in an expensive tuxedo and you walk past a child drowning in a lake. He postulates that almost anyone would not hesitate to jump in the pond anyway, ruining their clothes and bearing a financial burden to clean or replace them. Yet why do we not send the money we would spend on dry-cleaning (or five percent of our incomes) to aid organizations? That alone would directly save multiple children from death and suffering.

The obligation we have towards other humans, including those outside our immediate circles, is what the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope would call “cosmopolitanism”. Analogously to Stephen Dedalus viewing the widest definition of where he lives as the “The Universe,” cosmopolitan translated literally from the Greek is a citizen (πολίτης) of the universe (κόσμος). Although in antiquity there was not yet the conception of the modern nation-state, we each in some way or another are already connected to each other given the lowest common denominator of living on this planet. 

It’s our bias toward helping those within our more immediate circles of connection and our hope to receive praise that stand in the way of true connection. Helping others, exclusively locally and for self-serving measures, makes a positive impact on the world but creates a false sense of community and connection. A perfect case study of this is in the “performative activist,” whose posts, donations, and marching may tangibly support a cause but whose motives are ego-driven. Again, while it may yield net positive support for a movement, because the activism is not in good faith authentic connection is not able to form between benefactor and recipient. Ungenuine charity that exists only between those who are alike does not create or strengthen bonds but insulates participants away from the rest of the world. For the Greek thinkers, connecting means contracting our circles of connection, realizing that everyone is kin; for Singer, it means broadening our circles to include more and more people.

Just as any good philosophy (including that of Singer and Diogenes) should maintain relevance spanning different ages, our outlook on connection should be able to span and survive disparate historical and cultural contexts. For the two thinkers, the world they were writing in and that formed their positions has only grown more connected. It is an inevitable caveat that each thinker's work can no longer fully speak to modern conditions: the levels of polarization through mass connectedness. Even still, the form of connection they are speaking to isn’t situational but speaks to universal truths about human nature. The form of connection they are proposing isn’t reliant on human categorization. This form of connection exceeds the realm of political ideology and personal preference.

Finding true connection comes from applying those principles to our individual interactions, and acting on the compassion we owe each other. Truly connecting isn’t just applying generosity globally; we must dissolve the membrane between the self and the collective. To truly connect is to help a friend move, share a good joke, or listen deeply, and to extend that geniality to strangers as well. By collapsing the rigid definitions of who and what we are, we grow closer to those who share those definitions. To truly connect we must approach interactions with friends and strangers alike.

In this KidSpirit Big Question article, teen writer Oscar Luckett surveys competing theories to determine how humans can achieve true inter-connectedness. 

Truly Connecting

Jaden Flach

Parasocial relationships can be a comforting and helpful aspect of our lives, but the 20th century created a society in which they can grow too powerful. 

Before civilization, we hunted and lived in packs. Centuries later, we established cities and became even more socially dependent. Before the explosion of media we live in today, people were forming one-sided bonds, or parasocial relationships, with the characters in books. Now we live in a world that amplifies these relationships tenfold. The evolution of media has consumed so much of our world and our psyche that some have questioned whether these fabricated bonds have reached their limit. Parasocial relationships can be a comforting and helpful aspect of our lives, but the 20th century created a society in which they can grow too powerful. 

Before we can delve into the threshold of dangerous parasocial relationships we must understand what they are. As defined by social researchers Horton and Wohl (1956), parasocial interaction (PSI) is a term used to describe the human response to characters in media. More committed and long-term feelings towards such fictional or nonfictional characters are called parasocial relationships (PSRs). When trying to understand these psychological phenomena, it is best not to get these terms confused or use them interchangeably. While PSI just describes the emotional response you can experience while watching the nightly news or your favorite Sunday cartoons, PSR is a long-lasting relationship that will reach beyond the screen. Contrary to the abundance of stigma placed upon such relationships, they are not mere symptoms of loneliness or an illness of the anti-social. It is at the core of the human psyche to form relationships. We are afraid of rejection and isolation so we strive for a strong social network. Thus, PSRs are so similar to real relationships in that those who strive for more belonging in their lives are more likely to form PSRs than those who do not. This should not be confused with people who are lacking in friends or family but rather have a need to please and form bonds with others. Their social appetite is projected onto the screen, resulting in the formation of social relationships with figures on television or on social media. Just as real relationships require upkeep, people will maintain PSRs by regularly watching their favorite talk show host. 

Though PSRs have existed throughout history, emerging media types have altered their importance in our lives. The most glaring example is, of course, social media. The constant and all-access nature of social media allows us to be much more heavily dependent and committed to our idols than seeing them for an hour weekly. Most importantly, social media makes it almost impossible for us to discern between reality and fiction. This is not limited to social media; reality tv shows such as Keeping Up with the Kardashians trick us by advertising completely scripted interactions as the true lives of the characters. Influencers and reality television stars are, in fact, only actors. The new ability to “interact” with these figures through social media makes us feel even closer to influencers. New forms of communication in the digital age leave us with many questions about PSRs defined by a lack of communication. 

When not overused, PSRs can be as normal as finding similarities between yourself and a character on your favorite show. A large part of these relationships is the concept of treating certain celebrities or fictional characters like “old friends.” These personas provide comfort and stability without fear of rejection. We use favorite shows or favorite influencers to form bonds with others and form part of our own identities. PSRs can help boost self-esteem and confidence. In short, Justin Bieber or Harry Potter can't let you down or hurt you. 

This being said, we must remember that though there are benefits to PSRs, they are limited. Relying on a scripted reality can confuse us into having unrealistic expectations of real social interactions which are nothing like those depicted in classic 80s rom coms. Since hiding behind screens is so easy, the “fear of rejection” that fuels so many PSRs has not had to be dealt with head-on in life. It has also been amplified by constantly seeing perfect bodies and lives every day on our screens. Our society makes it okay for people to get lost in the digital world, so connected but completely isolated. These factors create dangerous dependencies on PSRs that can lead to long-term problems. Additionally, we must begin to question the effect of the praise received by famous people on the internet. As social media influencers and celebrities become younger and younger, the fans' admiration and worship can, in turn, isolate them. These creators have the opposite of normal teenage lives and are instead expected to act like adults. PSRs are also the perfect target for advertisers to profit off celebrities. PSRs cannot replace true social interaction which is vital for fulfillment. 

The changing impact of social media is impossible to predict. It feels impossible to come back to the real world once we fall too deep down the rabbit hole of media in general. I fear that my generation in particular is most at risk of being overly dependent on PSRs. We have never known anything other than to trust what we see on the screen. I am afraid of how my psyche has been altered and how it will affect my future, but I am also hopeful that more research will be done to fully understand PSRs. Humans are always searching for relationships, but the bonds that fill us with love and fulfillment can only be found in the flesh.

Howard University Doctoral Students. “Parasocial Relationships: The Nature of Celebrity Fascinations.” Find a Psychologist, 18 Feb. 2020. www.findapsychologist.org/parasocial-relationships-the-nature-of-celebrity-fascinations/. 

Knowles, Megan L. “The Nature of Parasocial Relationships.” Northwestern University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2007. https://www.proquest.com/centralk12/docview/304816234/312799D1CD1F41FEPQ/1?%20accountid=51599.

Schramm, H., & T. Hartmann. "The PSI-process scales: A new measure to assess the intensity and breadth of parasocial processes." Communications, Volume 33(4), 385-401, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1515/COMM.2008.025.

Choi, Annette. “The Parasocial Phenomenon.” PBS, 5 Apr. 2017. www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/parasocial-relationships/. 

Jarzyna, C.L. "Parasocial Interaction, the COVID-19 Quarantine, and Digital Age Media." Hu Arenas, 7 Nov. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42087-020-00156-0. 

In this KidSpirit Feature article, teen writer Jaden Flach reckons with the costs and benefits of parasocial relationships' increasing prevalence in contemporary society. 

The Friend Behind the Screen

Pahal Bhasin

In times like this,
We symbolize a rainbow,
Holding not each other’s hands but hearts.
Not physically attached yet emotionally connected,
Just like the ends of a rainbow,
Far apart yet close and beautiful.
We are the different colors,
Loving ourselves and embracing each other,
Beautiful alone but perfect together.

When we signify a rainbow,
We signify peace, prosperity, and justice.
Amidst this pandemic,
Peace and justice is all we need.
Let’s not lose hope, 
And keep looking for a rainbow,
Around us,
And inside of us.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Pahal Bhasin paints a metaphor for human connection during difficult times, like the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Rainbow in Our Hearts

Abigail Webster

Desperately you try
to stay afloat, swallowing
water on your way down.
Trapped
in your own isolation. 

Bright lights burn your eyes,
loud voices singe your ears,
but silence stifles your heart. 

Disorientated you stop 
in the middle of the path.
Calling for help,
no sound coming out. 

You stumble. 
Searching for something, 
anything,
to cling on to. 
Finding nothing. 

Why is there no one, 
to be your someone?
 
And yet 
people continue walking past. 
Not because they don’t care,
but because they don't know. 

Yet someone must grab on.
Unless you want to be eaten alive . . . 
by your own loneliness. 

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Abigail Webster evokes the stifling feelings of loneliness and isolation.

Loneliness

Sofia Mesh

Last April, I found myself feeling lost, distraught, and unmotivated. My school turned completely asynchronous, I moved from my home temporarily, and there was no sign of normalcy approaching any time soon. 

Recently, I have been hopeful for the future as more and more people are getting vaccinated. Yet I find myself questioning how I got through those tough months last April, May, and June given how abruptly everything changed and how uncertain that felt. I've come to realize that it was because of a few special people I was able to stay close to during those times. 

When I think back to those first few months of quarantine, I see flashes of different days. Many blur together, but the ones I remember are filled with low lows and high highs, not really much in between. 

Some days I would wake up at 1:00 pm, unmotivated to do my coursework or really anything at all. I would turn on my phone and scroll until I felt like I couldn't anymore because of the anxiety I felt for my family, friends, or for the rest of the world, which was in a state of disarray.

It was not until 6:00, when my dad got off his conference calls, that I finally felt a little relaxed again. It was then that I could finally ask him to take a walk with me to the empty park at the high school across the street. There we would spend an hour and a half of every day walking, listening to music, and throwing around a basketball. The rest of my family didn't want to walk with me, but my dad made an effort after his long day of work, something I truly appreciated. Every day, even if I was anxious or down, having that time to get out of my house — and my head — was something I really looked forward to. 

Had it not been for my dad, I don't know what I would have done to keep myself grounded and sane. I was grateful, but it took a lot to ask him to go out with me every day. Like I said, a lot of my days were filled with anxiety and sadness, and even though I knew going out would make me feel better, I didn't always want to leave my bed. After starting my day at 1:00 and eating breakfast, there was a huge part of me begging to stay right there in bed and not do anything at all. However, taking the initiative to push myself to leave the house and having someone to accompany me made such a difference in my mental state during those months. 

Another thing I had to look forward to were my late-night FaceTime calls with my friends. It would be about midnight when one of us would FaceTime our group chat, and those calls are the brightest of my memories during those months. I don't remember much about the content of our calls, because we all weren't really doing much. Still, I do remember staying on the phone until 4:00 am every morning and laughing at whatever ridiculous things we were saying in our sleepy states of mind. The whole day I would say very few things because everyone was busy with their own online classes or work calls, so those late-night calls let me have the human contact I so desperately needed. Also, my family had never spent as much time together as we did in those months, so with all that time together and the stresses of COVID, we would bicker a lot and get agitated easily. Being able to connect with people who I wasn't obligated to see every day made all the difference. In a time when I could have lost contact with everybody and self-isolated, I stayed connected. It was a conscious reciprocal effort between my friends and me since we knew we needed each other to make those painful times bearable. 

I have realized that it is not that hard to isolate yourself, especially during these times. But I know that it isn't helpful to my well-being. Although having alone time is important, it's very different from cutting people off from your life because of an overwhelming feeling of anxiety or sadness. Especially early in the COVID pandemic and even now, it's so vital for me to maintain my connection to the people I care about, to let them help me as I try to help them. 

In a KidSpirit Helping Hands article, teen writer Sofia Mesh shares how her family and friends supported her through the loneliness of quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Father and Friends

Dr. Kelly-Ann Allen

This article was originally published by Frontiers for Young Minds and has been adapted for KidSpirit. 

We all have a natural need to feel a sense of belonging and connect with others. 

Feeling accepted and valued can lead to healthy psychological outcomes which are essential for adolescent development. However, many young people feel isolated, particularly at school, where they spend the majority of their time. If you do not think you belong, you are not alone. But research shows that this feeling is not permanent and is often normal, and there are many ways to feel a sense of belonging.

Imagine for just one minute that you have found yourself in a room, on your own. There are no windows, there is no furniture, and there are certainly no people. The room is stripped down to nothing. The floor is exposed, the walls are bare. There is nothing in the room but you and the clothes you are wearing. You stop whatever you are doing and try to clear your mind. What is the first thing you think about?

Chances are you think about someone you know — another person. That is because, when we are seemingly at rest, our brains work in the same way they do when we are engaged in interacting with other people. This occurrence is explained by something called the default mode network.1 The default mode network is a large brain network that becomes active when our brains are not focused on anything in particular. Researchers now understand that the default mode network can still be active even when we are engaged in other tasks. It enables us to think about others, our self, and our past or future. The default mode network reflects our need to belong and interact with others.

Even though we sometimes want to be alone, most of us strive to connect with other people — to fit in and to belong. Have you ever eaten something you did not like, to avoid offending someone? Perhaps it was your Nana’s home-cooked tuna mornay? Have you ever stopped yourself from doing something because you knew that it would be met with judgment or disapproval? Like singing a favorite song out loud when it came through the speakers at your local supermarket? Have you ever been unsure about a particular situation and looked around the room to see what other people were doing? Perhaps it was an activity at school or in a new country you traveled to? The reason why you might have decided to “go with the flow” and hide your real feelings or wants is because of the natural urge to belong and fit in.

A sense of belonging has been described as one of our most important needs.2 In fact, belonging means that you feel accepted, included, or a part of something else. People can feel like they belong to a school, a friendship, a sporting group, or even a classroom.3 And we know two things: belonging feels good, but we tend not to realize this until we miss it. But what does belonging feel like, exactly? It is hard to say, but we know that the feeling of not belonging can feel like physical pain for some people, like jamming your thumb in a car door or burning your finger on a hot stove.4 Not belonging can be linked to feelings of worthlessness, self-doubt, isolation, and sadness. It can affect your relationships with others and even your grades. Belonging is important and can be experienced differently by different people. Because many young people around the world attend school, schools are a primary place for most young people to feel a sense of belonging.5

Many Students Do Not Feel Like They Belong at Their Schools

If you look around the average classroom, at least one in every three students would not feel a sense of belonging.6 When some researchers asked students if they recently felt like they belonged at their schools, 29% of them said they did not feel that way, and this percentage has been steadily increasing since 2003 (Figure 1). Feelings of not belonging and loneliness are a part of the spectrum of human emotions. There is nothing wrong with feeling these things. We all move through different waves of belonging, especially at school. Some days we may feel more connected than others. Some days we may feel lonelier than others. Your feelings of belonging may sometimes be high, and sometimes be low, and sometimes they may fall somewhere in between. Belonging is a unique experience and my own research has found that there are a lot of things that can influence it.7 The main point here, however, is that feelings of not belonging can be temporary. They can be changed.

When students feel that they belong, they are more likely to get good grades and otherwise perform well in school. A feeling of belonging also positively affects students’ psychosocial functioning, meaning their ability to perform daily activities and interact with people around them. Research has found that a sense of belonging is an important factor in students’ motivation, and how they cope and learn in school. A feeling of belonging fosters positive attitudes toward learning, improves wellbeing, and improves your confidence in your ability to do well in school. Additionally, a high sense of belonging is related to less misconduct in school and more positive social relationships.7

Everyone Has a Role in Helping Other People to Belong

There are lots of reasons why other people may not feel like they belong to your group of friends, to your school, or to another group you may be involved in. It is important to remember that “belongingness can be almost as compelling as the need for food.”2 That means that nearly everyone you know will want to be included and feel a sense of belonging — even your teachers, parents, and caregivers.

Research has found that there are many things that can influence a sense of belonging for young people at school and these things can be found within school and outside of school (Figure 2). Some of the most important factors stem from the relationships young people have with parents, teachers, and other students. Building strong and healthy relationships with the core people in your life will help create a sense of belonging. Young people who feel close to and supported by their friends, in terms of both schoolwork and personal issues, are more likely to feel like they belong at school. One of the most powerful predictors of school belonging is teachers. When young people feel liked and cared for by teachers, and think their teachers are likable and fair, they are more likely to report feelings of school belonging. Young people with parents who support them at school, who have positive conversations with their kids about school, and who take an interest in their kids’ education have also been found to feel high levels of school belonging. Parents also have a role to play in helping their kids maintain regular school attendance and participate in school-sanctioned events, which also helps kids have good feelings about school.

Interestingly though, it is not just other people who help with belonging. You can help with your own sense of belonging as well! Young people who are resilient (able to bounce back from problems), who can cope well with challenges and stress, and who are flexible and adaptable are in a good position to feel a sense of belonging. Young people who are happy and have good mental health are more likely to feel like they belong. And there is one more thing that might surprise you. Those students who are motivated at school, who see a purpose and value in learning, and who have good study habits also feel like they belong at school. To summarize, peers, teachers, parents, mental health, personal characteristics, and academic motivation are some of the building blocks of strong school belonging that can be found in the scientific literature. As I am sure you will agree, we can see from these findings that there are many things that can be done to help improve the sense of belonging for young people.

What Can Schools Do to Increase a Sense of School Belonging in Students?

We know from our own research that most schools want their students to feel a sense of belonging.7 Some schools have even made great strides to create an improved sense of belonging in young people. However, there is little research evidence available that has examined which programs and interventions are available to schools and whether they work. We do know that teachers who take an interest in getting to know their students, who find similarities with their students, and who are available to support students personally and academically are doing a number of things to support a sense of belonging in their classrooms (Figure 3). Interestingly, a teacher’s sense of belonging in school has also been found to predict a student’s sense of belonging in school. School leaders who take an interest in the staff’s feelings of belonging are also helping students to belong. Creating a culture of belonging is therefore something that everybody has a role in.

Sense of Belonging: Feeling of being accepted, included, and part of something.

Psychosocial Functioning: Ability to perform daily activities and interact with other people.

Well-being: Refers to the experience of being healthy, happy, and comfortable.

School Belonging: A sense of affiliation to school that may also involve teachers and peers.

Mental Health: A state of mental well-being that relates to how a person can cope with stress and be productive.

Personal Characteristics: Reflects a person’s individual traits, characteristics, and skills.

Academic Motivation: Desire to perform well in school.

The author wishes to thank Kathryn Kallady for her illustration of the Rainbow Model of School Belonging.

[1] Li, W., Mai, X., and Liu, C. 2014. The default mode network and social understanding of others: what do brain connectivity studies tell us. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 8:74. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00074

[2] Baumeister, R. F., and Leary, M. R. 1995. The need to belong: desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychol. Bull. 117:497–529.

[3] Allen, K.-A. 2020. Psychology of Belonging. Abingdon: Routledge.

[4] Kawamoto, T. 2017. What happens in your mind and brain when you are excluded from a social activity? Front. Young Minds 5:46. doi: 10.3389/frym.2017.00046

[5] Allen, K., Kern, M. L., Vella-Brodrick, D., Hattie, J., and Waters, L. 2018. What schools need to know about fostering school belonging: a meta-analysis. Educ. Psychol. Rev. 30:1–34. doi: 10.1007/s10648-016-9389-8

[6] Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 2019. PISA 2018 Results (Volume III): What School Life Means for Students’ Lives. Paris: OECD. Available online at: https://www.oecd.org/publications/pisa-2018-results-volume-iii-acd78851-en.htm

[7] Allen, K.-A., Kern, M. L., Vella-Brodrick, D., 2018. Understanding the priorities of Australian secondary schools through an analysis of their mission and vision statements. Educ. Admin. Q. 54:249–74. doi: 10.1177/0013161X18758655

[8] Allen, K.-A., and Kern, P. 2019. Boosting School Belonging in Adolescents: Interventions for Teachers and Mental Health Professionals. Abingdon: Routledge.

In a KidSpirit PerSpectives article, Dr. Kelly-Ann Allen shares her expertise on belonging and offers tips for connecting with others in our community.

Do You Long to Belong?

Emily Leimbach

It's hard finding  joy in being stuck at home
These halls were something I liked to roam; 
Until . . . I learned new things
Like baking
And painting.

Opportunities were
Brought from the inside.
From the Pandemic.
I thought being stuck at home was Fantastic.

Sometimes you need to look on the bright side of the bad things.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Emily Leimbach highlights the upside of self-isolating during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Bright Side

Samarth Jajoo

Because otherwise, we’re essentially monkeys who don’t like bananas as much.

Alright, maybe that’s hyperbole — we’re also self-aware, have big brains, and manage energy consumption and depletion efficiently. However, being social beings is often an overlooked factor in the evolution of humans.  Becoming social was essential to our evolution and brought us so many attributes that we now associate with being human. Let’s talk about how socialisation helped with our very survival, how it helped us become the alpha species, but first, let’s explore what socialization actually is and how it came up.

Many other animals are social, but they’re usually communicating about the lion coming their way or broadcasting information about where they found the best fruit. They only talk about things essential to surviving. We Homo sapiens, however, have a much larger than usual neocortex, the part of the brain responsible for language, emotional processing, and other tasks of social importance. With that big neocortex, we became the dominant species of the planet through our ability to socialize beyond the essential or, to go one step further, beyond the natural world. Take nations, for example — countries are made-up ideas; the earth didn’t just naturally get divided and produce different laws for different regions. Still, any two people from the same country can immediately have a shared sense of identity and work together towards some objective to serve the idea they both believe in. 

This is a very unusual phenomenon in nature. For all other mammals, there is a cap on the number of social relationships you can maintain. In the 1990s, Robin Dunbar estimated this cap to be around 150 for humans. That would mean every single person is only capable of maintaining 150 social relationships. However, that number becomes much bigger when humans find themselves to have shared beliefs. If two people believe in the same idea, they can work together. Take religion, for example: two people who know nothing about each other but know they believe in the same god will instantly feel a connection and work with each other on their religious duties. People who know nothing about each other and go to a concert led by their favorite artist will dance together. Now, people don’t even have to meet physically to work together — programmers who don’t even know each other’s names work on projects simply because they believe that the free, open-source software they create will benefit the world. We’re faster when building things together. Our products are more robust. Best of all, when we’re working together, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time. 

And, of course, there have always been prehistoric benefits to working together! Humans in groups have always been safer and better fed, and it’s no surprise that we evolved to have brains wired to be more social. How did the change in wiring actually happen? The theory is that offspring whose parents had strong social affinity were more likely to be raised better, and hence natural selection occurred over several thousand years to give us the neocortex we have today. Social development started within couples, then loose groups, then tribes, then villages, then cities, and, now, it is international! This allowed the creation of an interdependent society. Every family used to hunt for themselves, clothe themselves, and cook for themselves. Eventually, we realized that not everyone has to do everything for themselves by themselves. You could specialize! There could be people who only focus on doing one task, and our socialization skills allowed us to coordinate this new sort of system where you depended on several different people, beyond your blood, for your livelihood. 

Becoming social beings was a big deal, but what took humans to the next level was how we had persistent collective memory. Stories were passed down. Knowledge was passed down. Every generation stood on the shoulders of the previous, and relationships could be built beyond lifetimes. The social progress made several hundred years ago hasn’t just disappeared, and the networks started then continue to exist and, in many cases, even prosper and expand. You don’t have to look far to understand how mindblowing this is —  just think about when you read a book. The author could have died a hundred years ago, but they’re still talking to you through their words and, in turn, building a relationship with you. Every physicist today is working with Isaac Newton even though he passed away centuries ago! Thanks to him, they don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Standing on the shoulders of giants has allowed us to progress rapidly.

Our social evolution has reached the point at which not seeing other people is especially difficult, and this is something all of us have had to go through for the last year. Now that we’re getting back to socialization, let’s appreciate it for all that it brought us and continues to bring!

Dunbar, Robin. “Dunbar's Number: Why My Theory That Humans Can Only Maintain 150 Friendships Has Withstood 30 Years of Scrutiny.” The Conversation, June 23 2021. theconversation.com/dunbars-number-why-my-theory-that-humans-can-only-maintain-150-friendships-has-withstood-30-years-of-scrutiny-160676. 

In a KidSpirit Feature article, teen writer Samarth Jajoo explores how social connection has shaped and defined our species. 

Why Have Humans Evolved to Be Social Beings?

Edmund Reddy

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Edmund Reddy describes living with Tourette Syndrome.

Tic Tic Boom

Izzy Weitzman

When someone devotes their time and energy to something, they do it because they want to accomplish something. But one’s time is limited, and there are many things in the world that one needs to address. 

So if one wants to accomplish something large, one must find a group of like-minded individuals to assist. The larger the plan, the larger the required network. I found this network in an afterschool program called Global Kids, which taught me a number of lessons regarding the state of affairs in the world and new ways to absorb information. It is a powerful community, and my time in the program has given me extended knowledge about the system.

Global Kids is an organization that provides free afterschool programming to a number of middle and high schools in the United States, mainly New York City. I started participating in Global Kids when I began middle school. The workshops were interesting, each covering different social issues and using different ways to learn about them. Everyone at Global Kids, students and staff alike, is there because of the knowledge to be gained and the community to be formed. The adults always feel less like teachers and more like friends, despite usually teaching more in 45 minutes than some teachers do in a week. Their combined role puts them in a mentor-like position. They present themselves as complete people, not just paths to information.

Once a year, around April, Global Kids holds the Annual Youth Conference. It is planned by a group of high school students who select the topic, plan the workshops, and facilitate on the day of the conference. When I began high school, I joined the conference planning team. I felt a little nervous, but it was a healthy community and a good choice for anyone interested. The continuing Global Kids structure made the transition simple. 

The process is similar every year, but this was my first time experiencing it from the inside. We made shortlists after researching in groups, before developing a few proposed topics. We took a vote, and the winning subject was gender equity. In my opinion, this was the best choice among the finalists, because there were a lot of different avenues we could look into; also, information would be fairly easy to find, so we could focus on crafting workshops, not just research. 

The next step was research. We each took different parts of the topic and researched them in small groups. The student area of our meeting space is a larger room designed to seat 30 to 40 people easily. There is a conference room adjoined to the student space, a printer room adjoined to the staff space, and a kitchen unit between the two. It is a large enough space to house many different conversations, yet homey enough to house a community. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, one of the documents that guide the organization, is painted onto the walls of the rooms. All in all, it's a good place to plan a conference. 

After the research phase, we began to write the workshops. We split into groups of two to four, each with a different topic to cover. The topic I was assigned was “gender equity in the legal system.” A Global Kids workshop follows a distinct formula. The first step is the icebreaker. It's designed to make everyone in the room comfortable. The next is the warm-up. It introduces the topic of the workshop, before getting to the more serious version. It can be a lot of different things, and it should begin the workshop. It's the first time critical thinking comes into play, and the level of discussion is still rising. If someone is a little confused by the workshop, they can think back to prior Global Kids workshops and know where to look for meaning. This formula provides a common framework from which ideas are constructed, and anyone familiar with the larger system can ground their understanding in this template.

 There are a couple of warm-ups used time and time again. The most common is goosimo. Goosimo involves running to a piece of paper taped to the wall and writing the answer to a question. Everyone groans when someone says it is the activity because it is overused, but, in reality, it is overused because of how well it works. It gets people excited and competitive. It easily throws off workshop timing plans, as one needs to plan for arguing over which group finished first or whether what was written on the boards is a lowercase “a” or just a scribble. Surprisingly, the issue of people running into a wall comes up less than one might think.

The main activity is where the magic happens. Part of the Global Kids philosophy is to avoid the system of listening to someone teach. Global Kids' main activities are just that: activities. Each workshop tackles the activity in a new system, or at least a new variant. Since we were focusing on the court system, our workshop’s main activity was a mock trial. We researched three court cases pertaining to the topic of gender equity, and the workshops took different sides and argued for their case. Each case, as well as the full activity, was followed by processing questions. 

When it came time to host the conference in April of 2020, we ran into a problem, that problem being the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The conference was pushed back to June, and we had to rewrite the workshops. The arguing of court cases became reading the case aloud and talking about it. Also, we lost the sandwiches. Every year at the conference, lunch is provided by a shop called Potbelly Sandwiches, and they are delicious. If I were to rank my favorite parts of the conference, the sandwiches would be near the top. Of course, virtual sandwiches don't work too well, so lunch was eaten at home. 

Finally, the conference day arrived. The whole conference was in one Zoom room. The workshops were in small groups. The main activity did end up working fairly well, but it was not as originally intended. All in all, it wasn’t the extravagant event I had hoped for. 

My five years with Global Kids have taught me a lot, both in the sense that I have learned more about the world around me, and more about learning itself. It has reinforced the idea that learning does not require a textbook, that classmates do not need to compete, and that we learn not only to gain knowledge but for the experience of learning things. When I transitioned to creating workshops, I learned new ways to engage with people, to make the shift to teaching others in creative ways. Collaboration was also very important. I was able to learn a lot from others’ experiences. 

While the conference suffered due to the pandemic, it happened. Despite the isolation felt by everyone during 2020, we were able to create a nexus of connection. The Global Kids method of learning is robust. It can work anywhere, anytime. And despite everything, we all walked away with something from the conference. Facilitating a workshop has helped me learn to expect the unexpected, and be ready when any one of a million things goes wrong, because nothing goes off without a hitch. It is like running a marathon. It is difficult, requires months of planning, and will exhaust one, but when it is completed, one feels impervious, as if there is nothing one cannot do. The conference was unstoppable and made us all feel the same way. 

In a KidSpirit Interfaith Connections article, teen writer Izzy Weitzman shares what he has learned about connection and isolation from working with the organization Global Kids. 

A Network of Connections: Global Kids

Brianna Saevitzon

Drenched from the rain 
Not from the sky 
Everything’s so wet 
But now so dry 

The first drop on her, 
The next in the dirt 
Her expression, complex 
As if she’d never seen rain before. 
Her eyes are red, she’d been up all night 

Immersed in sadness, 
Her tears fall heavily into her lap 
She falls to her knees, 
her numb hands quiver. 
Through the light, 
But now through the dark 

Unaware of what’s happening 
She turns away 
You could see the intention in her steps 
As I watched her walk away

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Brianna Saevitzon paints a picture of sadness and isolation.

Rain

After a year that kept many of us apart, KidSpirit contributors unravel questions about the ties that bind us together. How does isolation affect our wellbeing? Can it be helpful? How do we create true connection?

Alone

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