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**** Below is a situation that happens in the lives of middle school students. Read through the whole piece, then reflect and answer the questions at the end. Take your time on this — don’t just immediately react. There are no right or wrong answers — try to be clear in your answers and provide justifications for what your write.

Mary is an eighth grader and, until recently, pretty popular at school. Lately, she started finding notes in her locker and in her backpack that were really upsetting. The notes were unsigned and mean. They said things like: “ We don’t like how you’re treading on our territory.” “ You act like a bitch.” And even, “ You better watch out because we’re watching you…”

Mary had no idea who might be sending the notes but she had an idea why. In the last few months she had started accepting invitations to high school parties. She had also fooled around with a couple of sophomore guys. She had a feeling that the notes were from some of the high school girls. She knew how gossip got around and how mean other people said the sophomore girls were.

What was she supposed to do? Almost every day this week she received a note. She felt angry, scared, and hurt. She showed the notes to two of her friends. One of them said that whoever is sending them was probably just jealous and she should just ignore them. The other friend said she should show them to a teacher.

Mary felt like there was no good choice. If she tried to ignore the notes she was afraid they would just continue, and she was not only scared, she was mad. She wanted them to stop. But if she turned in the notes, she was sure the whole school would find out and she would probably have to name names as to who she thought was sending them. If the gossip was bad now, wouldn’t’ it be worse then?

**** Below is a situation that happened in the real lives of middle school students in some school in the U.S. Read through the whole piece, then reflect and answer the questions at the end. Take your time on this — don’t just immediately react. There are no right or wrong answers — try to be clear in your answers and provide justifications for what your write.

Maria was worried about her good friend Pam. Pam was always talking about how fat she was and what she was trying to do about it. But the truth is that Pam was not at all fat. In fact, she was downright skinny. Since their freshmen year Pam had lost at least 15 pounds. Now, they were juniors and Maria was afraid that Pam had an eating disorder. Maria was also getting frustrated. Where were all the grown-ups? Who was watching out for Pam besides Maria and her friends?

Maria knew that someone from their school had talked to Pam’s parents last year, and that Pam’s mom had gotten angry about the school poking its nose into family business. Pam’s mom claimed that Pam had a dancer’s body and a high metabolism. That was last year. Now things were worse and Maria felt like she was literally watching her friend disappear.

Finally, one Monday afternoon Maria had had enough. As she watched Pam take three diet pills and eat four grapes for lunch she decided she had to do something. As helpless and scared as she felt now, how would it compare to how she would feel if Pam actually ended up in the hospital…or worse? Pam would be furious if she found out the Maria had talked to someone behind her back. So, Maria had two problems–should she tell someone how bad things were, and if so, whom should she go to?