You don't have to suffer to be a poet.
Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.
Our policies tell junior high kids that their active participation is too risky an enterprise. It's safer to keep them passive and under control, thereby avoiding the certain discovery that our students' tastes and values are alarmingly, not our own. First, teachers of junior high have to accept the reality of junior high students. Next, we have to recognize that adolescence is as special and important a time in students' intellectual developments as any other in a child's life. Finally, we have to organize our junior teaching in ways that will help our kids begin to understand and participate in adult reality.