Middle School Valentines, Ranked

Honestly they are all #1 in my heart.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I don’t have strong feelings about this holiday one way or another. I think it’s always fun to celebrate the people you love, but I understand the holiday can get really tied up in commercialism, can make people feel sad they don’t have specific types of love in their lives, etc. I think something we can all come together on, however, is a love of the Valentines my middle school students made last year.

I was an assistant English teacher at a secondary school in Spain last year, which meant working with kids and teenagers who were about 12-16 years old. Many people that age, in my experience, spend a lot of time trying not to seem uncool or childish. Even so, my students would rather make Valentines than do a grammar lesson, so their personalities and creativity really shone in activities like this one. ¡Feliz Día de San Valentín from me and these crazy tweens and teens.

10. I love my family, I love my dog.

This one is so pure and relatable. Both loving your family and your dog, and the struggle of trying to draw the concentric hearts and them coming out a little crooked. Who among us has not been there?

9. Being single is better.

For some, cynicism about romance develops at a young age. I really like that this one is on graph paper, because it adds to the “I don’t care about romance” aesthetic.

8. I love you, BTS

This is a perfect example of how Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to be about romantic love. Or at least reciprocal romantic love. If you want to take the day to celebrate your feelings for a Korean boy band, then I think that’s beautiful.

7. The smile is mine, but the reason is you.

Okay, I think that this is a phrase people say in Spanish (la sonrisa es mía, pero el motivo eres tú). but it doesn’t quite sound normal in English. This is something that can be really frustrating about languages, but also makes me love the learning process. All of these little nuances make all the difference. And I think it’s so cool. I mean really, why not say “The smile is mine but the reason is you.” That’s so cute!

6. You are ALL / I think a lot about you.

To be honest, I think this first student didn’t care about the Valentine assignment and threw this together with as little effort as possible, but I think it’s sort of poetic.

And “I think a lot about you” is so sweet. It’s not always easy to be vulnerable! I am SORRY to quote David Foster Wallace. I know he’s not everyone’s favorite, but I liked it when he wrote “What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human [...] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic.”

And I think that’s what Valentine’s Day is all about! Being unavoidably sentimental and goo-prone, and, sure, maybe sometimes, naïve or even pathetic. That’s love, baby!

5. I love football, I love my family.

I’m not sure what happened here, because these Valentines are almost exactly the same, and seem to have the same handwriting, so I guess one student made two? As someone who also loves my family, my friends, summer, and eating, I mostly relate to these sentiments. But it makes me laugh to think of this kid including his friends in the first draft and then deciding, “Wait, I love summer more than my friends, let’s try this again.”

4. I don’t have a boyfriend, but I’m in love / Love is temporary, but the friends are forever.

“The friends are forever” is such a sweet sentiment, but really I’m just including it here because it’s in the same photo as the one below it. What does it mean? Who is she in love with? Is it an unreciprocated crush? Is it herself? Is it paella? Obsessed with the air of mystery this tween is cultivating.

3. Self Love

The first one is cracking me up for how realistic it is. I mean, we can’t all be expected to LOVE ourselves; are you kidding? Good for this kid for keeping it real. The second one is also vaguely mysterious. You’re telling this to your body? Why? Obviously something lost in translation, but I’m not quite sure what.

2. Motherly love

This is so sweet and pure, no words needed.

1. Pun bonanza.

I tried to teach my students about puns a few different times through the year, and they weren’t always having it. In fact, I was not explaining puns very well, so I think even my coworkers were a little bit like, “… what do you mean the rabbit was having a bad hare day???”

There’s also not a direct translation for “pun” in Spanish, somehow? You just say something like “word game joke” which is not satisfying. Anyway, for Valentine’s Day, I showed my students 400 examples of puns and forced them to laugh at the jokes. And some of them laughed for real. Or at least they used the puns because it was easier to copy one I wrote on the board than to think of their own idea for what to write on their Valentines.

My absolute favorite of these is the student who completely missed the point of a pun and used the text “I love you berry much” along with a drawing of an owl, which was supposed to go with the text, “Owl always love you.” The result is delightfully nonsensical.

Love you all berry much! See ya next time.

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Recommendation of the Week: Here are two books I’m excited to preorder (Happy Valentine’s Day to me!)

Jane Marie’s “Selling the Dream” all about the horrors of multilevel marketing schemes. Jane’s podcast “The Dream” takes a deep dive into the worlds of MLMs and wellness, and it’s one of my all-time favorites.

Geraldine Deruiter’s “If You Can't Take the Heat: Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury.” She’s the blogger behind The Everywhereist, which is iconic and hilarious and a gift to humankind.

Question of the Week: Do you like Valentine’s Day? Do you think it’s more annoying to be really into this holiday or to be really into hating it? Have you ever gotten or sent a particularly memorable Valentine? Where does “Junie B. Jones and the Mushy Gushy Valentime” rank among your childhood favorite books?