Here’s how a social services specialist is nurturing a culture of girls supporting girls at Aldo Leopold Intermediate School and beyond.
Every Tuesday and Thursday during the lunch hour, Cree Webb’s office at Aldo Leopold Intermediate School fills with fifth- and sixth-grade girls skipping recess for Girls Group.
Lunch trays in hand, they pick a spot. For some, it’s the couch in the far north corner. Others prefer one of the three tables nearest the door. Some settle into bean bag chairs and others sit criss-cross applesauce on rugs.
“This is their safe space,” Webb said. “I tried to make it as girly in here as possible.”
Seated below twinkle lights and a blanket-turned-banner displaying messages of self-acceptance and grace, the girls dig into their lunch as Webb launches into the day’s discussion. On this particular day, self-love was the topic.
“A big thing that we’re going to work on in this group is loving ourselves, regardless of what people say to us, regardless of what people think about us,” Webb said. “You are all wonderful in your own way, so regardless of what the world thinks — because sometimes the world is going to be hard on you — we are going to learn to love ourselves a little bit more and different ways to love ourselves. But the flip side of that is also to put out what you’re getting.”
With that, Webb planted in their young minds a seed that quickly took root and sprouted in the form of heartfelt flattery and words of encouragement. The girls began to exchange phrases like “Yas, queen” and “baddie” (which means good unless used in reference to the bad guys in video games). No longer were they holding back; they were speaking their minds and they had good things to say. A girl’s girl culture was beginning to bloom.
“I feel like a lot of women, young girls in general, struggle to be girls’ girls,” Webb said. “Like they compare or they just don’t feel good about themselves, and so I really decided just to build a culture where we are girls supporting girls.”
A Growing Group
Webb, a social services specialist for Aldo who also happens to be a 2007 Burlington High School graduate, first launched Girls Group five years ago in an effort to provide outreach to girls who were identified as struggling by either social workers or the Panorama social-emotional learning assessment.
That changed following the Iowa Legislature’s adoption of a new law in 2023 that made such assessments more difficult to administer. Without the assessment tool, Girls Group became open to any girl who wanted to be in it, so long as they had a signed permission slip from a parent.
The resulting turnout showed that word had spread and interest had grown. In the program’s first year, about 15 students regularly attended Girls Group. By the end of the 2023-24 school year, that number had grown to about 70.
Not only was the group larger, but it had also grown more diverse.
“We have really high-functioning girls, we have low-functioning girls, we have everybody, which I think helped them feel comfortable to come,” Webb said. “They feed off of each other, so I think being able to allow anybody who wanted to be in it to join was really a good shift for Girls Group. We still get the girls with low self-esteem, but then they’re mixed with girls who have high self-esteem who are doing well in school, and they might foster some healthy relationships out of that.”
Finding sisterhood and self
As the year progresses, Webb notices a change in the girls who attend Girls Group. They begin to hold themselves and their peers to a higher standard.
“It starts with me holding them accountable, and then you’ll see a shift where they are holding each other accountable,” Webb said. “They kind of wear the invisible Girls Group badge with honor, and I think that’s so cool when I can kind of pass the baton and they’re handling it.”
“It was like a sisterhood,” Maleah Gilbert, now a seventh-grader, recalled fondly of Girls Group while seated at a table in the library of Edward Stone Middle School, where she was joined by fellow seventh-graders and Girls Group grads Jaziah Carter and Mya Wells.
“And Ms. Webb, she’s like the mom of the family,” Carter added.
The three said they learned a lot in Girls Group, not just from Webb, but also from their peers, their experiences and how they cope.
“I would, like, always have self-esteem problems about how I looked and stuff like that, and being in there, in Girls Group, it helped me,” Gilbert said. “I learned about how other girls handle their problems and how I can handle mine.”
The three also said they learned a lot about themselves, that it’s important to show themselves the same kindness they show others, and that nothing — not boys nor friends — should come before their education.
“If I could tell my fifth grade self something, I would definitely tell her don’t listen to what nobody got to say (about you), always just get your work done, stay on task, love yourself, you’re beautiful just the way you are,” Gilbert said.
She had a similar message for current and future fifth- and sixth-graders: “I would tell them, like, y’all should really do your work, stay on task, get your grades done. Don’t worry about boys, don’t worry about friends, because people come and go in your life and that’s the last thing you should be worried about. Worry about yourself, worry about your grades and remember that you’re beautiful just the way you are.”
A safe space to talk about tough stuff
Gilbert, Carter and Wells had a lot of fun in Girls Group. They enjoyed Girls Group parties, their trip to a nursing home where they painted residents’ nails while visiting with them, and the competitions between Girls Group and its boy counterpart, Man Club, which is led by student success advocate Antonio Redd.
But it’s not all fun and games. As the year progresses and Webb gets better acquainted with the girls, she is able to recognize their struggles. Sometimes, those struggles align with the latest social
trend; other times, they’re more unique.
“Even for the girls who seem OK, who are in sports, who are good in school, you’d be surprised how many worries they have behind all the things they do,” Webb said. “They’re great students, but they still need to come to Girls Group and share the things that they’re struggling with and be human and then go back out and give it all they’ve got.”
She starts the year by building a foundation of self-love and gradually moves onto more complex topics, such as healthy relationships, dating (and why they should wait a few more years before they start dating), social media safety, and the importance of always putting school first. Her lessons are responsive to the Girls Group members, and she adjusts quickly if more pressing issues arise.
Through it all, no matter the topic, Girls Group remains a safe space.
“We know girls struggle, teenage girls struggle, adults struggle, so Girls Group exists to have a safe space where we can talk about girl things without being judged and embrace being a girl,” Webb said.
Writer’s Note
One day, early on in my time with BCSD, I was coming out of the stairwell at Edward Stone Middle School when a girl randomly
complimented my appearance. My initial reaction was panic. Did I have a stain on my shirt? Had the eyebrows I had so carefully drawn on that morning been smudged by my glasses yet again while I was taking photos?
I found my way to a mirror, relieved to see that everything appeared to be in order.
The next time I was at Stone, it happened again. This time, I didn’t panic. These girls, I quickly began to realize, were simply being nice. Things had changed since my middle school days (not that my peers were mean, but I don’t recall anyone, myself included, being particularly quick to dish out compliments).
I would leave the middle school after these encounters feeling just a little more confident, and soon I found myself looking for things to compliment other women on in the hopes of filling their cups as the students at Stone had done for me.
Sitting in Girls Group for this story more than a year after that initial exchange, it became clear where at least part of this contagious positivity had taken hold.
