Just Girls Discussion Flyer

Humaira Zakaria
ENGL B6400
Just Girls
Hidden Literacies and Life in Junior High By Margaret J. Finders

This study was based on the Northern Hills Community District
-The school observed is homogeneous: Euro-American, affluent students.
-Socioeconomic status is 70% professional, 15% working class, 15% trailer park (families living in trailer parks receiving government aid).

Sociocultural Perspectives on Literacy
“Since language is a social event, communications can be understood and explained only within their connections to a concrete situation.” p. 8
-Speech mediates thought; what one thinks is based on social interrelationships (self is created through community).
-When people speak or write, they engage in a dialogue that is socially situated with power.
-Social roles shift depending on who is present.

Adolescent Girls: Shifting Conceptions
-Adolescence is a period of “storm and stress” (time consisting of conflict and mood swings).
-If there is a lack of stress, then there is a reason to worry.
-There are three factors that separate adolescent peer culture and adult society.
(1) Teens concern themselves with youthful hedonism instead of societal contributions.
(2) Popularity criteria- devalues academic achievement.
(3) Parents and children have opposite views on friends and dating partners.
-Gender attitudes are based in language and social practice.
-The “hierarchical structure of schools works against girls.
-Roles for girls falls under two categories; good girl or bad girl.
-Social role of a child has to be unlearned. Child was always dependant, subordinate and socially asexual, when children become adolescents, they have to unlearn these characteristics and develop new characteristics to cope with oncoming adulthood.

“Just Regular Girls”: Presenting Social Roles
Margaret J. Finders enters a 6th grade classroom. She observes that desks are clustered together and each cluster of desks had a friend circle. Each friend circle had a common genre of books being read.
-Two “jock” tables were reading Sports Illustrated, The Guiness Book of World Records, Beckett’s Guide to Baseball, and local newspapers.
-Two “nice girls” tables were reading Green Gables, Otherwise known as Sheila the Great and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
-Two “popular girls” tables were reading The Babysitter’s Club and Goosebumps.
-one “techno trio” table were reading science fiction and fantasy books.

The nice girls were categorized as being quiet and complacent.

The popular girls were categorized as being outgoing and participated in school sponsored functions.
-Literacy events in and out of school are where girls learns to read and write their roles and relationships. This is a passage into adulthood. Girls use literacy to control, moderate and measure their growth into adulthood.
Social Queens vs. Tough Cookies
-Go to games -live in trailer parks
-go to dances -stands up for themselves
-go to social events -family has public assistance
-have sleepovers -spend their time at home
-have an outgoing nature -aware of social groupings
Their literate choices are declarations of cultural masculine and feminine identification.

Official Expectations and Literate Underlife
Two Literate Systems
(1) Sanctioned literacies- those literacies that are recognized, circulated and sanctioned by adults in authority.
(2) Literate Underlife- the practice that refuse to accept the official view, practices designed to and enacted to challenge and disrupt the official expectations (break away from authority).
-this provides playtime away from adults to try on adult roles.
Girls use literacies to entertain themselves and avoid boredom.
-Jokes and Puns
-Create Signs
-Parody adults
-Design symbols with multiple meanings.
-The tough cookies and queens are regarded as good girls (ideal if they are nice, kind and helpful). Literate underlife is a way for girls to counter expectations.

Language Arts at Northern Hills Junior High School
-Teachers have common collaboration periods.
-There is a Language Arts office.
-Language arts curriculum includes workshops and writing process pedagogy (all student centered philosophy).
-Connects reading and writing to one’s personal background. This causes students to be comfortable with who they are).
-Reading, writing and speech activities build appreciation for themselves and others.

“What Junior High is All About”: Social Roles and the discourse of Adolescence.
(1) Adolescents sever ties with adults.
(2)Peer groups become increasingly influential social networks.
(3)Resistance is a sign of normalcy.
(4)Romance and sexual drive govern interests and relationships.
Due to these four factors of discourse, teachers direct themselves to be less personal and more academic.

Adolescence creates a screen. Attention is taken away from the reality of what the students live.
-“Terministic Screen”- filters attention toward and away from a version of reality- causing behaviors not seen by school personels.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1)On page 26-27, an overview is given of the Language Arts program at Northern Hills Junior High School. The curriculum is “student centered” by connecting reading and writing to one’s background. Students are to “gain fluency” through the readings they choose and what they choose to write about. Teachers have noted that students are enjoying their writings and will eventually improve their skills and learn to appreciate themselves and others. How is this type of method both positive and limiting? What other approaches can a junior high school teacher take to help develop skills and appreciation within students?

2) On page 28- 29, Mr. Stone had “constrained the kinds of relationships that he had formed with his seventh graders in comparison to his sixth graders. With his seventh graders, he told fewer stories about himself and became more guarded. For instructors, what are the possible advantages and disadvantages maintaining professional (and emotional) distance from girls enrolled in their junior high school classes? What is gained and what might be lost when instructors maintain professional/emotional distance from young female students in junior high school classes?