Now that I’ve wrapped up the content from my storytelling bootcamp for middle schoolers, I thought I would take some time to reflect on how things went and what I’m planning on doing in the future.

Even though these classes were on a topic I’m deeply passionate about, I still struggle with severe social anxiety. So, even though each of the classes was only an hour long, it took hours to mentally prepare myself before each class and I was basically useless afterward. That being said group of kids I had for this class was overall really great (the social anxiety just doesn’t care about details like this). A couple of them reminded me of myself at that age in very different ways, and honestly, those two alone made it all worth it. They were both so sweet and engaged in the content and so excited for everything we were doing. They were great.

None of the kids were awful, though of course, being middle schoolers, some were better behaved than others. My point is, none of them sent me running for the hills.

I did however, learn some very important things to take away.

Always Plan Stretch Activities

My brother and sister-in-law both work in education, and I asked them for advice while planning these classes. My brother’s was: plan for less than you think because you never get through as much as you hope. Which, over all, is pretty good advice, and something I was already doing with my classes.

What I didn’t plan for was: What do I do if the kids just aren’t talkative and we get through everything way faster than I planned?

The first class we ended less than 10 minutes early, but the kids wanted to show me what they’d written and were chattering with each other, so that was fine. The second class, the kids were all really low energy (this was during one of the awful heat bubbles that have been hanging over the midwest this summer), and didn’t talk much during class, and when we finished, they all just sort of sat in silence. I scrambled for something to fill time, showing them some examples of how I use the same sort of exercises we’d just done in my own writing, but they just weren’t that into it.

The third class we ended again less than 10 minutes early, but this time none of the kids wanted to hang around and show me their work. They all just left, the standard of ending early having already been established.

I have some thoughts on how I can avoid this in the future, but first, another issue:

My Own Flagging Energy

I already mentioned my struggles with social anxiety and how much it took out of me to do these classes. I’ve struggled with social anxiety my whole life, so let me just prelude with one thing: I’ve tried every strategy to “fix” my social anxiety. I’ve done individual and group therapy, DBT, CBT, ACT, exposure, “putting myself out there,” etc. You name it, I’ve tried it.

But my social anxiety isn’t some irrational fear. It’s the product of CPTSD and a lifetime of living as an autistic person in a world that routinely rejects anyone who’s different. And the exhaustion I feel isn’t just from a general sense of social anxiety. It comes from having to mask through social interactions and overstimulation.

So there’s no way to “fix” the exhaustion that comes with putting myself into situations like these. I’m always going to be exhausted. What I can do is find ways to limit prolonged exposure to situations that overstimulate and exhaust me. These classes were one hour each, two days a week for two weeks. I thought spreading them out would help ease how much they took out of me, but it ended up being the opposite. Because I had to mentally prepare myself before each class and had to spend hours winding down after each. The night after each class, I didn’t sleep very well because I was so tense, which meant I was even more exhausted the next day at work.

The first week, I did my class Monday and Thursday and then I took Friday off as a recovery day because I didn’t know what to expect. The second week, I couldn’t do that. Then I had some things shift in my work life that caused that to become a whole lot more stressful while at the same time, I had an unexpected influx of things to handle, and suddenly my carefully planned strategy for spreading out the exhaustion from my classes turned into something that depleted my already empty stores.

Planning for Next Time

Which brings me to what I plan to do differently next time. Because, yes, there will be a next time. I’ve already signed on to do the classes again during the community ed’s fall course offering. But not without some changes.

Fewer Days

The main change I’m making if fewer class days. Instead of 4 1-hour classes, I’m doing 2 2-hour classes, both in the same week. That way, if I need to take off time from work to recover, it’s condensed into one week.

Doing longer classes but fewer over all will also help me fix some of my pacing issues that led to classes running short. I can do two lessons in each class and plan to have free-writing time with any extra time we have left over.

Changing Up Some of the Content

Before I did these classes for real, I tested them out on my own nieces and nephew to see what worked and what didn’t, and that really helped me to fine-tune a lot of the content. But my nieces and nephew are all a lot like me and they all know me and are comfortable being their goofy selves around me. So some of the things that worked really well when I did it with them just fell flat when it came to the classroom. Also, some of the things that fell flat with my nieces and nephew, one of the students flat out asked for when I asked for their feedback.

I made notes as I went through the class and have already made some of the changes. Part of the problem of creating classes that work for everyone is simply with the age-group. Kids at this age are at vastly different levels of skill and engagement with things like writing and reading. Some kids have been really into writing stories for a long time, and are already writing novel-length stories and posting them online. For others, this is their first introduction to all of the concepts I’m presenting. Creating a class that speaks to all of them is a challenge, but I think the changes I’m making will really help with that.

I already know I’ll be combing the character creation class with the conflict class, since the conflicts I focus on are at the character level. This will allow the students to run with the same character through all of the activities and hopefully be a little more cohesive.

Then I just need to come up with more around world-building that’s age-appropriate for the second half of the second class, as my 4th class was just free-writing time.

Put in More Prompts for Engagement

The last major change I know I need to do is put in more prompts for direct engagement from the students. This is something I struggle with as an autistic person. My learning style is just to get the information and then take it off on my own and play with it. But I know that’s not the case for everyone, and I know the class will be more fun with more time for them to talk and give their ideas.

I had some of that in these classes, but in running through them this first time, I realized I was relying a lot on the group being like my nieces and nephews, who will just talk when they have something to say. But, of course, it wouldn’t be exactly like that with a group that doesn’t know me (or, for the most part, each other). So, because my brain doesn’t work that way once I get rolling on things, I need to build it into the presentation to prompt myself to offer the opportunity.

I learned so much going through these classes and it was so rewarding for me to be able to share a little bit of my knowledge with kids who are interested in telling stories. That’s the whole reason I wanted to do this in the first place. I want to be for young writers, the person I wish I had at that age.

So even though it was stressful and exhausting, it was so, so good, and I’m gonna push myself to keep doing it as long as I can.