We are pleased to announce that our current sixth grader, Martha Jane C. won second place in the fourth annual Write The Hook contest hosted by the Hamilton-Wenham Public Library.

We’ve been talking a lot about the tween years and how messy they can be. It’s true, the road through middle school can be bumpy! It’s awkward and uncomfortable, but it is also equally exciting and joyful. These years are also some of the most profound, developmentally.

I have always loved school and learning for its own sake, and this is the kind of philosophy and way of thinking that I try to cultivate with my middle school-aged students. I want them to learn to enjoy the process of learning, even when it is difficult and frustrating and when the material is challenging and not easily grasped on the first pass.

The White Shirt Project, created by Dawn Southworth almost thirty years ago and specific to GUS, asks students to become more culturally literate while also thinking about who they are, where they are, and where they are going, core themes of a GUS education.

The TWEEN years can be tough. The good news is, we’ve got some pointers for surviving this tricky time. The bad news is that the only ‘normal’ thing about being a tween is that everything feels (as your tween might say) ‘sus’, and we mean EVERYTHING.

Grace Bertagna attended GUS for sixth through eighth grade. From GUS, she went on to graduate from Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School and then UMass Amherst. This fall, she began a year of service with AmeriCorps through which she is currently working at a community health center in East Boston.