In “Essential Life Skills for Girls,” published on April 23, Rye residents Lisa Quirk Weinman and Megan Monaghan draw on their experience as educators to provide advice on essential life skills for 10- to 14-year-old girls, offering words of wisdom on everything from organizing a calendar to having better conversations to packing properly for a trip.
Weinman and Managhan, both Rye High School graduates, (Weinman Class of 1992 and Monaghan Class of 2000) worked together at Sacred Heart Greenwich. Weinman was Dean of Students and Monaghan an English teacher. Their offices and classrooms were across the hall from each other for 10 years, which led to a good working relationship. One day while commuting together to school, Monaghan said to Weinman, “We should start a business.”
They had noticed after the pandemic that students were struggling with things like communicating with each other, academic habits, and just being in the classroom. Teachers are under pressure to focus on academics and don’t have time to teach those softer skills to students. So “Middle Years Matter” was born, a business that creates workshops on the middle school experience for faculty, parents, and students.
Middle school gets a notoriously bad rap, Weinman said. “We wanted to flip the conversation, to see middle school as an opportunity,” she said. “Middle school kids are amazing — they’re so willing to try new things, to explore. They’re creative, they’re silly, they can think outside the box. We want-ed to help people recognize and capitalize on all that.”
Their passion for the age group is palpable so it’s no wonder that Random House found them through social media and approached them about writing a book aimed at girls ages 10 to 14.
“They said they got a vibe for our personality and the way that we give instruction and connect with kids, and felt like we had the right voice,” Monaghan recalled. “It really was amazing that this kind of fell into our lap.”
In short easy-to-read chapters that are divided into three sections, the book covers “At Home,” “At School,” and “Out in the World.” Readers get advice on everything from how to tighten a screw, do laundry, and stay healthy. Tips on organizing homework and resolving conflicts, both with peers and authority figures, fill the second section while in the third, readers learn how to manage finances, pack a suitcase, and practice good manners.
The Random House editors presented a list of the topics they wanted covered and Weinman and Monaghan found there was a natural division of labor. “
Lisa is really so experienced discussing social-emotional skills and building personal wellness practices, because that’s what she has focused on professionally,” Monaghan explained. “I was a classroom teacher for so long that I felt confident on the chapters that covered study strategies, organizing notebooks, and how to approach academic life.”
Still, they laughed that some of the more practical skills, like laundry and cooking, required them to research the correct way of doing things, even though as moms they’ve done their fair share of both. They realized that perhaps they themselves had not always been doing things the most efficient or best way.
“Essential Life Skills” offers so much to girls, in addition to being an excellent resource guide. Weinman likes author Mel Robbins’s definition of confidence: the willingness to try. “
I’m so hopeful that girls will read this book and think ‘Oh, I can do that.’ That in turn leads to confidence and independence,” she said. “The more strategies and tips you have, the more you can take the ones you need and go after your goals and achieve everything you want to achieve.”
Monaghan pointed to a recent study at Boston College that linked the decline in independence among adolescents over the last several decades to the rise in anxiety over that same period. Empowering girls has a positive impact on their emotional well-being, she said.
In the book’s acknowledgments, the authors thank the Rye teachers who taught them and their children (Weinman has two teenaged sons and Monaghan has three children, 10, 8, and 4) for their support, kindness, and inspiration.
“Essential Life Skills for Girls” was more than just a writing project — it was a passion project and, Weinman said, “a way of giving back to a community that’s given me so much.”