Grandmothers Circle program helps provide support for middle school girls on Chicago's Northwest Side

Middle school can be a tough time for kids, just ask anyone who's been through it.

But some Chicago grandmothers are stepping up to give young girls support when they need it most.

When you mix generations in one classroom, they end up teaching each other a thing or two.

"They taught me a lot of things about my phone that I didn't know," Esther Siver said jokingly.

Esther Siver and Carol Anne Been are retirees reliving their middle school days by choice.

"If you don't learn from the young, you get old real quick," Siver said.

They volunteer each week at Goethe Elementary School in Logan Square to work with kids like 13-year-old Ahkira White.

"They're caring, and they're thoughtful," she said. "I learned how to do a lot of stuff. I learned to listen. I learned how to talk about my feelings. I learned to express myself." 

It's part of the Grandmothers Circle program. The Juvenile Protective Association brought the program to Chicago Public Schools.

"We call it structured but unscripted. We provide the activities. We provide the materials, but it's unscripted because it's organic," said program coordinator Erinn Boone.

Besides the subject of boys, Been also shared what the middle schoolers talk about.

"They talk about things that are on their minds, and sometimes what's on their mind is what happened an hour earlier during recess or this morning at school," she said.

"If you don't talk about it, then you're not going to get it out, and then you're just going to think about it," White said.

Those seventh graders are in their second year of the program—and their assistant principal, Crystal Andrews, can tell.

"They're totally different kids than the ones I had last year. They're not in my office as much as they were last year," she said jokingly. "They've learned how to kind of navigate things a little better."

A little guidance from a couple of grandmas goes a long way.

"It's really nice to see. It's like watching my own grandkids. How they grew and became adults," Siver said.