Stephanie Kirmer ran a high school freethought group in Lawrence, KS.  She is now finishing her Masters degree in Oregon.  She helped a lot of high school students run groups at their schools while working with the SSA, and has a few ground tips for those groups.

1.  Get Help.  Having a sympathetic faculty member or teacher is very useful.  Ideally, this is someone who would go to bat for you if the school administration gets in your way, but even just having someone who doesn't mind signing forms or paperwork to get official recognition of your group is helpful. Think about the science or math teachers, or anyone you think might be sympathetic, and approach them one-on-one about the issue.

2.  Stand Strong.  Be prepared for resistance, especially in more conservative areas.  If you're intending to seek out official status as a group, you may run in to trouble from school administration, parent groups, religious student groups, other students, or even the school board if it gets to that. You might get lucky and find that no one is bothered, but these are the areas I would watch out for just in case.  If you do run into one of these obstacles, Stephanie is glad to offer advice and can be reached at .

3.  Why Are We Here?  Figure out what the purpose of your group is. Do you want to talk to other, nonsecular students about freethought? That can be tricky: oftentimes in high schools they will frown on 'proselytizing' (for anything other than Christianity). If you do go that route, many schools have the caveat that nobody outside the school/student body can make overtures about these things to students, so keep that in mind if you invite anyone from the community or farther afield to speak. (Again, these rules rarely are applied to Christian groups. Unfortunately.) But if you want to just be a group for freethinking students to get together, that's a lot easier. Also, if your group is non-offensively present, and visible, you'll recruit purely by being there. People who are questioning or explicitly secular will join you once they know the group exists, whether via word of mouth or flyers or whatever.

4. What To Do?  Finding times to meet is part of the challenge; finding what to do during those times can be another.  My high school had a period once or twice a week where you had study hall/group meetings and students who were in groups could have that time to talk. Your school may or may not have the same sort of system; you may have to meet outside of school time. The system you have will determine a lot of what you do.  In school time, you can have group discussions about topics of interest and relevance to secularism – that list is about endless.  Read an essay and discuss it, or share personal experiences being freethinking teens, etc. Outside school time, you can do many other things – a field trip to a science museum, visiting the nearest university to talk to philosophy professors, or meeting with the nearest college secular group, etc.  Darwin Day parties are fun, as well as plenty of other things (secularseasons.org is a good resource). If you think creatively, you won't get bored.

5.  Where is Everyone?  Another problem you may run into is member turnover. In college, some people are around forever – they just stay in the area, whether they graduate or not, and they form the base for a lot of groups. In high school, generally only people who are actually current students are allowed to be members of groups, so after four years or less, they're gone. That's one reason that I highly recommend writing down what you do and what your plans are.  The more you have on paper, documented, the easier it is for the next set of students to hold things together.

6. Mind your Manners.  If I may be so bold, please don't let your group become an arguing club. There's a debate team for that. But members of secular groups, at any age level (and especially females), often find groups where it's all yelling and bickering unpleasant. Make it a group where you're in it together, not fighting against each other. Most secular teenagers have few enough sources of support as it is.