On Creating ADVICE FOR 9TH GRADERS

Advice for 9th Graders

Most adults seldom actually listen to teenagers—even those of us who claim we do. Sometimes we complain that we can’t listen over their music, or we dismiss them because we’re made uneasy by their language, their moods, or attitudes.

And most teenagers, while pretending to listen to us adults—whether their parents or teachers, neighbors, or casual strangers—often find it hard to pay attention to what we think it’s vital they hear.

We knew all that eleven years ago when we first launched POPS (Pain of the Prison System), a club-style, school-based nonprofit to support teens impacted by incarceration, detention or deportation. We knew both because we’d once been teenagers ourselves and because as daughters, teachers, parents and nonprofit leaders, we had spent a lot of time with teens. 

And so, we decided that in our club meetings, we were going to try to flip the script.

In other words, we decided we were going to shut up and listen to the teens. 

Once we began to listen, what we heard was so meaningful and so wise and so unexpected, we decided others needed to listen too. And so, in order to amplify these young peoples’ voices and visions we began to publish their work. Beginning in 2014, we published an annual book collection of their poetry, essays, stories, collages, paintings, drawings and photography. From the start, the books earned praise from adults of every stripe. But perhaps more importantly, other young people gobbled them up. It was clear to us that they recognized that in the pages of these books was the wisdom they needed and wanted to hear. 

In early 2023 POPS the Club and its affiliate program, The PATHfinder Club, decided to merge, and for our first co-publication, we chose to focus on prompts that had, year after year, inspired some brilliantly simple, sharply astute, straight-from-the-heart writing and artwork. The prompts were these: What advice would you give to incoming 9th graders? or What advice do you wish someone had given you as you were entering high school?

Within weeks, we had received so many deeply felt submissions, that this volume, Advice to 9th Graders, was born. The teens, and pre-teens too, offered stories of friendship, tales of teachers, wise words about homework, home life, their hearts and souls, and even transportation. Their words about love and worry and how to learn to be proud of yourself, poured in. “In life it’s crucial to jump,” wrote Sara Ivonne, “…a leap of faith is what we need.” “Grades are important,” Oliver Green wrote, “…but personal happiness is far more meaningful than your six different percentages.” Photographs like Rachael Galper’s Biased Comparisons expanded our vision as much as did her words: “I advise incoming 9th graders not to change themselves to fit the expectations they feel from those around them. These are the years of their lives to find their true, authentic selves and to express that without fear of judgment.”

Kai Salazar wrote, “I want to leave a mark on everyone I meet,” and we came to understand that that is what every one of these young people long to do. They want to be seen. They long to be heard. They ache to make each other feel both safe and seen. Even the middle schoolers, one or two years from entering 9th grade, had some advice to offer, the kind of things, they said, they want to hear, like Brody Storey’s, “I’m a 7th grader … and I want to say this: Don’t let things stop and stress you out—like gaming, relationships, grades. Stay calm.” 

As the earliest pieces came in, Advice for 9th Graders turned out to be just that, but as submissions continued, it grew to become something more. What began as a book we had imagined would be thinner than previous volumes—both in size and scope—grew and expanded. As they offered guidance for others, they began to offer what we came to see was guidance for themselves, and for all of us. They wrote about dreams—big and small. Even we, decades beyond high school, began to see ways that Advice for 9th Graders was offering us new ways to see:

“is my body meant for love or for labor?” wrote Jimmie Harmon. “is it a weapon or is it a flower?

It was teaching us new questions to ask ourselves, as Avel’s poem offered:

“Who am I?

A person who is falling apart or

One who helps others love their hearts?

Maybe I am just someone 

At war with her thoughts.”

They provided us new insights, new ways to find inspiration and comfort, as in Jess Sandoval’s Somewhere Between Then and Now. 

“Between then and now I stopped thinking about a world without me and imagining what the world would be like with me in it.”

The writers and artists featured in this volume rewarded us with work so much more profound, funny, sad and sincere than we had imagined we might receive that we scrambled to keep up with them, closing the submission window only in order to meet our publishing deadline, a Valentine’s Day gift from young people with so much to offer the world. 

Amy Friedman, Editor & Leticia Longoria-Navarro, Executive Director, The Pathfinder Network

Advice to 9th Graders: Stories, Poetry, Art & Other Wisdom, Amy Friedman

Early in this volume of poetry, essays, stories, and wisdom from the youth of The PATHfinder Club and POPS the Club, Tamira Shany advises readers that we have just two options: “Take pride and fail or endure and succeed.”

As you dive into Advice for 9th Graders (designed to guide 9th graders as they navigate high school but equally inspiring for the rest of us), we begin to understand that these young people, whose lives have been impacted by incarceration and other systems, are steering us toward endurance.

As Rachael Galper’s photograph, Biased Comparisons, so beautifully illustrates, the best course is to find a way to express yourself without fear of judgment.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing