Child Study: I am the weird girl.

Uploaded April 9, 2001

Jennifer Suesse
TE505: The Study of Children in Diverse & Inclusive Settings Through Observation & Recording
Prof. Ellen Wong
Child Study
December 19, 2000

"I am the weird girl."

I am the weird girl. I am the one girl in school who wears the dark make-up and disses the preppy kids and is blamed for everything that is wrong with the world. I made myself this person. And yet I don’t want to be her. I want to be a normal kid. Now that I’ve set up this reputation, I can’t change. I have this weight that I have to carry as the girl who sticks out. I think that most of the kids are freaked out by me but they also respect me for being everything they never had the guts to be. And still I’m jealous of them because they have the guts to do the one thing I can’t…be themselves. Free of hypocrisy and self-consciousness.

- Lena (PB, p4-5) I. Abstract

From the first moment I saw Lena (all names and identifying details in this study have been disguised), an eighth grade student at River Middle School (RMS), she stood out. With her electric blue hair, silver chains, studded collars, and tight black clothes, Lena made a statement without opening her mouth. My first fleeting impression of Lena—which tells you more about me than it does about her—was of a tough, apathetic punk. I chose to study her because her world—as a teen immersed in New York City’s punk subculture—seemed tremendously foreign to me. I could hardly imagine what her experience of school and of life must be like. I was curious to know more about why she chose to dress like she did. I wondered what she was like underneath her armor of black attire.

As I got to know Lena, I realized that I had misjudged her. Not only did I find Lena to be a smart, street-savvy intellectual who loves to learn and explore ideas, but I discovered that her struggle to find a place in the hard-edged world of middle school echoed heartbreakingly of my own. Through observing Lena at school, speaking with her one-on-one, talking to her teachers, and reading her work, my admiration and respect for her grew. In analyzing my encounters with Lena, I quickly focused on the issue of belonging. Erikson defines adolescence as a time when individuals wrestle with identity formation, which means they must work to answer not only "Who am I?" but also "Where do I belong?" Watching Lena, I saw an active, articulate, responsible student. Talking to her revealed another dimension, which she best captured in her own words: "I am the weird girl." Attempting to weave connections between the two Lenas, comprises the work of this child study.

This chronicle begins where I began, on the surface. I introduce some basic information about Lena, including her background and the context at RMS. Then, after presenting some typical adolescent developmental challenges and highlighting the tremendously complicated social landscape facing today's adolescents, I explore how Lena’s developing self-awareness, maturity, and judgement enabled her to negotiate conflicting social expectations and emotional pain while succeeding in school. After reflecting on the process of studying Lena, I share how this work will change the way I interact with kids in my classroom. Finally, I describe how I would modify the RMS environment to better serve Lena's learning.

II. The Child in the Setting/Background

Lena: Looking at the Surface

Thinking of a child’s Physical Presence and Gesture, be attentive to what stands out to you immediately….Take note of size and build, but also of style of dress, color preferences, prized possessions, and so forth. -Patricia F. Carini (2000; p58) Whenever I describe Lena, I always seem to begin with her surface, even when I know that so much more lies beneath. While much of this child study will be devoted to exploring the person who wears these clothes, I want to begin by recollecting some of her outfits, which so captured my attention—and molded my initial assumptions—as I watched Lena move around the classroom over the tenure of my student teaching at River Middle School (see Exhibit 1 for a summary of my seven formal observations). Since fashion is one of Lena’s primary means of self-expression, I thought she should have a chance to introduce herself and come alive in your imagination through her own "words." Try to picture Lena in your head as we look into the world of her RMS classrooms: Lena walks into the classroom before most of her classmates with the strap of her taupe totebag slung across her slight body…With surprising ease and agility given the limited floorspace, this approximately 5’ tall girl makes her way across the room…she is dressed nearly all in tight black clothes. Her cropped cotton blouse is untucked, and the neckline of a pink undershirt peeks out. Her pants are like none I have ever seen—they are covered with shiny silver zippers laid on red fabric swatches and have two red canvas bands criss-crossing from one back leg to the other (see inset diagram). Her usual silver studded belt graces her waist. Her dark black hair is tinted with electric blue dye, and she is wearing heavy black lace-up boots. Her nails are cut short, and painted black, and she has rubber bracelets on one arm. She also wears a silver ring on one hand. She appears of Asian descent, but has some faint freckles also…She wears small glasses which have blue and gold tints, and heavy black eyeliner (O1, p1-2).

Lena sits at her desk facing the wall of cabinets with her feet tucked under her chair using both hands to pull her chin-length black/blue hair into a ponytail….[Then she] fiddles with the 6 bracelets on her right arm. They are brightly colored—pinks, baby blue, red, yellow plastic shapes—and also the stretchy elastic bands in black and other colors….She is wearing black again today; the same pants as last week (without the funky straps), a slinky black top (almost looks like a slip) but is also wearing a black cardigan over her shirt. She has a spiky silver "dog collar (?)" with pink highlights and another necklace. She wears the high Doc Marten black boots, laced up, and the silver studded belt (O2, p2-3).

Today she is wearing a lacy black skirt, a grey t-shirt, lots of bracelets, and her trademark Doc Marten lace-up boots. She has two necklaces around her neck—one, a pink and silver studded "dog" collar, and the other a plaid plastic band (O3, p1).

She nods, and taps her blue- and green-rimmed glasses with her fingertip…Lena lowers her hand, and tucks it into the arm of the enormous navy-blue hooded sweatshirt that she is wearing today. Instead of her "usual" black, she is also wearing tight, faded jeans that are frayed at the hip and with a hole in one knee. She has on Doc Martens, and her hair—still blue—is pulled back into a short ponytail. Many bracelets peep out from under the over-sized sweatshirt (O4, p1-2)

She was dressed in a tight black, long sleeved shirt with a tight white ribbed tank-top worn over it. She had on jeans and I didn’t notice her shoes. She had yet a different bookbag—today’s was a faded powder blue shoulder bag, almost like luggage (N5, p6).

She is wearing a small, but not tight, black t-shirt with white writing across the top. The writing is in calligraphy, and I cannot decipher the message. She has on fishnet stockings, black boots, and a short red skirt. She has an old striped men’s tie around her neck. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail and she is wearing her glasses…As Lena works at her seat, she scratches the back of her hand, which is covered in writing. [I am too far away to read it]. There are perhaps ten words written in black ball-point ink on her hand (O6, p1-2).

Compiling this list of words, I am amazed at how little—and how much—Lena’s clothes reveal about her personality. Unlike many of her classmates at RMS who wear what I call the "adolescent- Gap-uniform: jeans, khakis, tee-shirts, sweaters," Lena dresses like someone who is much older than thirteen, reflecting her maturity. Although a few of Lena’s peers have dyed hair or wear black clothes, she recognizes that her choice to wear punk/goth clothing is distinctive. In her personal biography (excerpted above) she wrote, "I am the weird girl. I am the one girl in school who wears the dark make-up and disses the preppy kids and is blamed for everything that is wrong with the world. I made myself this person…I have this weight that I have to carry as the girl who sticks out" (PB, p4). This level self-awareness is striking for a thirteen-year-old and, like her clothing, sets her apart from her peers. Moreover, Lena’s ability to think abstractly about the messages she sends with her clothes indicates that she is capable of higher-level thinking and beginning to develop more advanced judgement. Finally, the profusion of plastic bracelets reminds me that Lena, despite all of her sophistication, is still a child. Much more will be said about these themes as I share my observations of Lena and her world in the pages ahead.

A Note About My Methods and Some Background Information

From the beginning, our emphasis was on obtaining students’ perspectives—specifically, how adolescents view and define what is significant in affecting their school experiences. We operated from the premise that understanding the meanings students give to events, discerning the ways in which they view their circumstances, uncovering their perceptions about the people with whom they interact, and clarifying their interpretations of actions and attitudes could help illuminate…[an] insider’s view of students’ lives, concerns and experiences. - P. Phelan et al. (1998; p5) Before I go further, I must acknowledge that without the fortunate level of access I was granted at RMS, few of the insights I will share about Lena would have been possible. As I explained in my Environmental Study, I was lucky to have nearly ideal conditions from which to observe Lena during my two months as the student teacher in her homeroom: While I spent most of my student teaching time in Garth’s eighth grade American Studies classroom, I was also invited to observe and participate in many different activities throughout the school, from one-on-one conferences with children to all-school meetings. Other teachers took me in to observe their classes, attend their field trips, and work with their students; so I felt an unusual freedom to access information as well as a sense of belonging. Thus, in writing this environmental study, I draw upon not only my seven formal observations, but also anecdotes jotted in my student teaching journal, conversations with RMS teachers and students (both informal and formal), and relevant literature to describe the setting for my focused observations of Lena, an eighth grade student in Mr. S’s homeroom (ES, p2). From Lena’s teachers and from her personal biography I was able to glean even more. So much, in fact, that in combing through my field-notes, class-notes, and the stack of books piled high on my floor, I struggled to know where to begin sharing. There was so much to explain. I thought back to my interview with Lena (see Observation 5), which shifted my entire understanding of Lena dramatically. I recalled the classes I observed and sat mesmerized as I read, for the umpteenth time, Lena’s personal biography. She is such an articulate soul, I chose to intersperse her thoughts with my own and the work of other theorists as much as possible throughout this paper through epigraphs and excerpts. In presenting Lena, I was ever aware of my own limitations as an instrument. Instead of answering the question "Who is Lena?" the following child-study attempts to share some of my thoughts as I reflected on all I’d seen.

Some basic background information about Lena might help orient you as we continue forward. Lena lives with both of her parents in one home on 96^th and Central Park East. She has two brothers, one younger by two years and one elder half-brother who is "twenty-four years older" (C, p1). She attended public elementary school and like most of her classmates entered River Middle School (RMS) in the sixth grade. She has lived in New York City "her entire life, [which] has influenced her greatly in her style and tastes. Lena’s parents have also helped to shape and change her personality by teaching and raising her with alternative views" (PB, p1).

Young Lena has had already her share of tragedy; she attempted suicide during sixth grade, her uncle recently died of cancer, and during October, her father was diagnosed with a similar cancer, "and evidently the prognosis is not good, something about asbestos and the lungs" (N4, p3). With all this to handle, it is small wonder that school is not always Lena’s first priority. This is not to say, however, that Lena is not a good student. Indeed, her grades are good despite the tough competition at RMS.

River Middle School: Preparing Lena for the Future

Especially in the eighth grade, the school focuses on learning sufficient material to gain entrance to prestigious high-schools…The pressure to compete and excel is evidenced by Lena’s complicated schedule…play-time is not high on the RMS agenda…Not only is the schedule challenging—both logistically and academically—but there is also no time allotted for passing between classes…There is no time for socializing or even going to the bathroom. RMS students are supposed to be focused on school…I saw RMS teachers trying all different strategies to compensate for these challenges presented by scheduling, timing, and transitions…The friendly tone that I sensed from my first moment at RMS carries throughout all levels of interactions at the school. Nearly all the encounters I saw between children, teachers, administrative staff were good spirited….For Lena, however, much of her energy seemed to be directed towards her high-school entrance preparation. She was concerned about this. - (ES, p10-19) RMS is a public middle school offering academic, extra-curricular, and social services to nearly 400 sixth-eighth graders in New York City. A well-regarded institution, entrance to RMS is competitive and the curriculum is relatively traditional. As I observed in my Environmental Study, "Getting into high school, and then college, seemed to be a major motivating factor at RMS" (ES, p19). The following summary of RMS highlights some of its unique attributes: River Middle School (a pseudonym) is located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, near the East River. One of fourteen public junior-high/middle schools operated by NYC Community District 2, RMS enjoys special status as a "School-Based Option" (SBO) school. As a SBO school, the RMS school community exercises local control over its admissions and hiring criteria. Graduating fifth grade students are selected to attend RMS according to test scores and personal interviews. The admissions committee also considers the school’s commitment to a diverse learning environment by attempting to balance the class ratio by gender, race, and ethnicity. Residents of all five boroughs are represented in the student body. Consequently, although RMS is not a "magnet school" by definition, the selection process yields a student body that generally exceeds city-wide grade-level standards. In addition, teacher’s union regulations are also subject to local membership approval. Thus, the notorious NYC Board of Education’s bureaucracy is slightly modified at RMS (ES, p1). Each grade level at RMS is taught by one team of four teachers, with additional language, arts, and movement specialists. The student/teacher ratio is 28:1 school wide, although according to one teacher, there are "35 students sitting in an average class" (T, p1). In the eighth grade, which has four sections, the average class size is 30. More girls than boys (approximately 60%) attend RMS. Lena’s class is typical: there are 30 students (19 girls, 11 boys). In the classes I observed, both formally and informally, there seemed to be a combination of lecturing, discussion, and student-led group work.

The following excerpts from my formal observations paint a picture of an educational atmosphere in which students are encouraged to participate within a teacher-directed structure:

Lena’s class is about halfway into a ninety minute English class. The first 35-40 minutes have been taken up by a whole-class discussion about how to conduct effective book talks, the first of which took place on the previous day. The class listed some of the challenges they faced in groupwork (e.g. "equal" participation; finding relevance to real life). They are now about to spend approximately thirty minutes discussing their plays in small, pre-assigned groups (O4, p1).

Mr. S. is sitting on a chair conducting this discussion (O2, p3).

Ms. S begins calling on students, as they recite the answers to the homework, which seems to be a list of adjectives describing people. Ms. S points to subsequent students, calling on people in rows around the room… [Then she] begins calling on people randomly, to add vocabulary to the list on the board. (O6, p3).

Looking at these two classes is particularly interesting in light of Lena’s comments about the two teachers. She once said that Mr. L often spends the "whole time giving instruction," while "Mrs. S is very strict and moves fast" (I, p2).

Other sessions I observed included formal note-taking during more traditional lecturing, as well as some student-led seminars and debates. During these latter sessions, when students play a more active role in the classroom, the qualities that RMS looks for in its sixth grade selection process become evident. Unlike my personal middle school experience (and the reality at many middle schools around the City), all of Lena’s colleagues are capable of reading and writing at grade-level. While their skills and abilities within these areas range widely, nearly every student has demonstrated their potential to perform the required work. In addition, by eighth grade, RMS students have been trained to stay focused during content-based discussions and can hold lively and spirited debates. My supervising teacher, Garth S. described RMS as:

…a special place because almost the entire staff is dedicated to the idea that a teacher must always remain a student. Our school thrives in squalor conditions. Our building is 105 years old and is heated with coal! We are understaffed and overbooked but we work hard. Perhaps most importantly our student body really has no ethnic majority. All races, creeds, etc. are represented. This makes for lively debate in class (E, p1). In sum, some of the most salient aspects of RMS for Lena can be summarized as follows. RMS is a small school, where the teachers know all the students. Class size is large, and students must squeeze into confined spaces. As a public school which enjoys a school-directed admissions process, the student body feels somewhat hand-picked, and is also a relatively diverse. Particularly in the eighth grade, there is an emphasis on preparing students for high school, so note-taking and frontal teaching are not unusual. There are also class debates, small-group work, and laboratory sessions. As I noted in the conclusion to my Environmental Study, RMS is suited to its adolescent population: Through the process of compiling my environmental study, I find myself staring at a list of contrasts and contradictions: an atmosphere that I found friendly yet confined; a confusing building housing a spirited and creative staff; a student body which was diverse yet selective; teaching styles that were conventional yet spontaneous grounded in a philosophy of communal learning for competitive high-school preparation; students who seemed bored yet engaged, pressured yet comfortable. All in all, an atmosphere striving to meet the needs of adolescents who, according to Stevenson (1998), are "predictable yet uncertain" (p123) (ES, p20). III. What I Know about Early Adolescence I think everyone feels on the outside—this is kind of a cliché, but I think that’s what being a teenager is all about…it’s about feeling left out, I mean, you can’t really know yet where you’re supposed to belong. It’s about figuring that out. - Lena (I, p3) Spending eight weeks with RMS’s eighth graders was a wonderful way to re-discover the developmental landscape of early adolescence. Often, this stage of life is described as one of turmoil, loss, and change. Indeed, G. Stanley Hall (1916) termed it a time of "Sturm und Drang, storm and stress." For Mary Pipher (1994), "adolescent girls are saplings in a hurricane" (p22). William Pollack (1998) talks about "the Big Impossible—to survive the peer pressure, gender straightjacketing, and the other tribulations of adolescence" (p173). For Chris Stevenson (1998), however, adolescence does not necessarily carry such negative connotations. Instead, he characterizes adolescents as individuals who, like many adults, want "1. …to believe in himself or herself as a successful person; 2. …to be liked and respected; 3. …to do and learn things that are worthwhile; 4. …physical exercise and freedom to move; and 5. …life to be just" (p4-8). With all these conflicting perspectives, many other researchers have echoed Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1984) who once observed that "Of all stages of life, adolescence is the most difficult to describe. Any generalization about teenagers immediately calls forth an opposite one….During adolescence all bets are off" (pxiii).

With Csikszentmihalyi’s disclaimer in mind, the following overview briefly highlights four issues facing ten-fourteen year-olds that are particularly relevant to Lena. First, I look at development of self-awareness and identity, which lies at the heart of Erik Erikson’s theory of adolescence. Next, I discuss how adolescents’ tendency to experience intense emotions and feelings affects their developing judgement and struggle to make sense of the world. Then I show that girls tend to mature before boys. Finally, I examine how adolescents’ increasing sophistication helps them to apply their emerging self-awareness and multi-faceted judgement across their webs of relationships and negotiate conflicting social expectations within their communities.

Developing Identity and Self-awareness: Who am I?

"I am uninhibited, but with dignity, if that’s possible." This may be what sums up the focal point of Lena’s life up to this point. When one looks at her life there is a constant element of individuality. From when she decided to change her religion in second grade to when she started to dress "differently" in seventh, Lena has striven to be her own person….

Throughout Lena’s life she has been a unique person. Especially during the time when she started middle school to the present, she has been on a crusade of sorts. She has spent so much time and energy trying to discover who she is and how she affects others. It is a crusade to identify herself so that she may help others understand all of those many opinions Lena has on how to save our world.

- Lena, (PB, p1, 6) Adolescence has been characterized by Erikson (1950) as the period in the human life cycle during which the individual must establish a sense of personal identity and avoid the dangers of role diffusion and identity confusion. Identity achievement implies that the individual assesses strengths and weaknesses and determines how he or she wants to deal with them. The adolescent must find an answer to the identity questions: "Where did I come from?" "Who am I?" "What do I want to become?" Identity, or a sense of sameness and continuity, must be searched for. Identity is not readily given to the individual by society, nor does it appear as a maturational phenomenon when the time comes, as do secondary sexual characteristics. Identity must be acquired through sustained individual effort. Unwillingness to work actively on one’s identity formation carries with it the danger of role diffusion, which may result in alienation and a sense of isolation and confusion. -R.E. Muuss (1996; p51) During adolescence, individuals’ increasing self-awareness and cognitive abilities enable them to begin asking themselves the essential identity questions (quoted from above): "Where did I come from?" "Who am I?" "What do I want to become?" These are big questions, which when successfully answered, according to Csikszentmihalyi (1984) yield a "stable feeling of confidence that one knows who one is" (p8). Finding one’s way to this stability, however, presents a big challenge for everyone. As Csikszentmihalyi notes, "In a constantly changing and diversified society such as ours, it is not easy to attain a consistent, comfortable interpretation of oneself" (ibid).

Part of the adolescent’s challenge of finding a consistent, comfortable identity springs from the fact that 10-14 year-olds are changing on many dimensions simultaneously. As Stevenson (1998) observes, individuals are trying to develop confidence in their sense of self while coping with changes across five domains of development—introspective, intellectual, somatic, communal and familial (p80). This is tremendously taxing. For Stevenson, the introspective domain is preeminent:

Of all the changes taking place during these transition years, none is more central to a child’s growth than the continuously shifting product of introspection: how she perceives herself. Self-assessment in the light of previously unrecognized personal or family conditions or societal expectations and possibilities is a complex undertaking at any age. Ten- to fourteen-year-olds are not very experienced at such introspection, especially when it becomes pressing in the midst of so much change….What is distinctive about this identity introspection at this time is that…she has become aware of issues and possibilities previously unnoticed. She is growing up with a new consciousness of what being a unique person really means. She is coming to grips with the abstract concept of self. As Mary Pipher puts it, this is the time "when many battles for the self are won and lost." (Pipher, 1994, p264) (Stevenson, p81-82). Flashes of Intense Emotion and the Development of Reasoning I was with my friends one time (probably yesterday…somehow my life transcends time, in a very inconvenient manner) ANYWAY…I was talking and all that shit and I was thinking about you guys and I realized that I am closer with you and Liz, etc than I am with some of my closest friends. I mean, I love them all and we hang out and stuff but we don’t really discuss anything that has to do with our thoughts. We scream and yell about how society sucks blah blah blah but I don’t think they know as much about me as I feel you do. … Even when I am down @ st. marks place I feel good and everything but punks and goths are so self-involved. They all want to pretend like they are better than everyone else because they refuse to take part in the normal life cycle, really though, they are in denial because they were rejected when they were in high school and they realize that working in a tee-shirt store with holes in your face when you are 45 is no kind of life at all. Do you have any idea what I am talking about? Its all fun to just sit around, be contemptuous of the conformists, go to shows, have conversations you pretend are deep and philosophical, and party but eventually you get over the hill and start walking around asking little girls like me for change because you are a homeless alcoholic who can only afford hair dye and gel…not even bothering to get a job while you curse the government that gives you social security. WOW! I SOUND LIKE A STIFF! Hey I think I will type up my wonderful vocab story (the won that explains God…lol) K…I love you so much fellow mediocre intellectual - Lena, (PB, p5-6) One remarkable facet of adolescence is this groups’ tendency to experience emotions with unparalleled intensity. They can experience pain, boredom, rapture, hurt, and ecstasy all within a short span of time. Csikszentmihalyi’s (1984) study found that while not all adolescents display extreme emotions, many experienced "quick alteration of activities and moods. In a matter of minutes, a teenager can switch from elation to the deepest blues, and then back again…While adolescents may experience a wider range of states [than do adults], these are short-lived; they are more like flashes of emotion" (p108-121). These adolescents exhibited intense flashes of emotion "not only in the extreme moods they reported, but also in their marginal comments, as well as the looks in their eyes when we reviewed their records at the end of the week…[reflecting] the passion and raw feelings of these teenagers’ lives" (p50). Adolescents’ emotions tend to run the gamut of intensity, with the only change the only constant.

For many adolescents, their emotions are their reality. Mary Pipher (1994) observed that "teenage girls engage in emotional reasoning, which is the belief that if you feel something to be true, it must be true" (p61). Not only do many adolescents use emotion reasoning to reach faulty decisions, but they can also make bad decisions just because they are in the learning how to exercise sound judgement. They are still inexperienced at integrating their growing sense of the world with their growing self-awareness. Daniel Keating (1993) observed that their cognitive abilities are growing, as adolescent thinking "tends to involve abstract rather than merely concrete representations; to become multidimensional rather than limited to a single issue; to become relative rather than absolute in the conception of knowledge; and to become self-reflective and self-aware" (p64). They are just learning how to make good decisions, as they discover the complexity of the world and learn to distinguish between the superficial and the profound. Such dramatic developmental changes in cognitive ability enable adolescents to grow beyond the moral reasoning they used when they were younger.

Unlike children’s thinking, which is neither self-reflective, nor capable of responding to multiple perspectives simultaneously, Susan Harter (1990) notes that, "With the advent of the ability to relate attributes to one another, [adolescents] can now determine whether they are internally consistent. As a result, opposing attributes become very salient and very troublesome" (p359). As adolescents’ perception of their world becomes more sophisticated, they want to make sense of what they see. But, their judgement is not yet fully formed and is often based upon emotion. Relational thinking is developing, but not yet matured.

Growing Up: Girls Tend to Mature Before Boys

After school I go home…But on days when I don’t have school or on weekends I go down to the Cube on Astor Place and hang...I could go there at anytime and meet at least five people I know. Everyone I know hangs out there. It’s a real community, everybody knows everybody, ya know? …it’s small. Probably like 120 people. Of course I’m always meeting new people, and I’m probably one of the youngest, at age 13. But there are people there who are maybe 40. There are some really funny people there. Like this one squatter, who is probably 35-40ish and he’s homeless a bum. But he’s nice. - Lena (I, p4) To add yet another layer of complexity to this picture of adolescence, theorists emphasize that individual development does not conform to any set schedule. These young people are changing simultaneously on many dimensions at different rates. Indeed, as Stevenson (1998) observes, "Young adolescents don’t begin changes at the same time, nor do they progress at the same rate through the same developmental periods. What can be said is that individual variability is the norm" (p79). In general, however, girls begin to mature sooner than boys. Research shows that girls tend to hit puberty one-two years earlier than boys. As Muuss (1996) reports, "from the junior high school up to the end of high school and the beginning of the college level, young women tend to be significantly more advanced in their ego development" (p259). Cole and Cole (1996) add: A glance around a seventh-grade classroom is sufficient to remind even the most casual observer of the wide variations in the age at which puberty begins. Some of the 12- and 13- year-old boys may look much as they did at the age of 9 or 10, whereas others may have the gangly look that often characterizes the growth spurt. Among the girls, who on the average begin to mature sexually somewhat earlier, some may look like mature women with fully developed breasts and rounded hips, some may still have the stature and shape of little girls, and some may be somewhere in between (p632). Where do I belong? Finding Peers in a Complicated World For me, the social element is totally outside of school. Here, I’m "the different girl." I dress differently. I listen to different music. I think most people relate to each other based on music, but I don’t have that. Most of my friends are outside school. I used to have some friends here, but we kind of grew apart. I got in fights with some of them. Kids in this school are always in each other’s business, which is really annoying. Instead of solving problems, it creates more and makes us more stressed out I think…Basically the social situation here is about cliques… It’s the reality of life…there are the kids who listen to rap and hip-hop. It’s pretty racially divided, this is the black group. It really shouldn’t be like that, but that’s the reality. There are also some white guys who want to be in that group, but they aren’t really accepted by the black guys and so they kind of hang out together. The girls’ groups are "cute." I don’t really know if they listen to the same music, and some of the groups aren’t really cliques, because they are composed of girls who are just friends, who aren’t really exclusive, or mean, but they hang out together all the time….Then there are other groups with R & D who’ve been friends since the sixth grade. They are sort of a clique, and they think they’re popular. Not everyone agrees, though, on who the popular kids are… - Lena (I, p2-3) Because every child is changing in a peer population where everyone else is also changing, previous answers to the question "Who am I?" may no longer fit as automatically and comfortably as may have been the case in the past. It becomes increasingly difficult to be satisfied with simply "I’m Peter. I’m nine. I play soccer. I have a dog." Now comes the ability for Peter to think about himself as a particular entity and to think about the way he thinks. These realizations generate self-examination if not some uncertainty about personal identity…While trying to realize personal identity at this time is a highly individual and private process, it doesn’t take place in isolation. - C. Stevenson (1998; p82) Adolescents not only work to discover who they are from within, but they also struggle to negotiate the transitions between their different worlds. Since an individual’s introspective development is accompanied by a corresponding increase in intellectual capacity, adolescents are able to see their peers, families, and environments in new ways. They notice more. Robert Selman notes: "children and adolescents apply more advanced cognitive skills and social strategies to understanding interpersonal situations and social problem-solving tasks" (p211). Adolescents can be more sophisticated than children in interpreting the world around them.

As adolescents "new consciousness of what being a unique person really means" (Stevenson 1998; p82) develops, they start to wonder where they fit in. In today’s world, fitting in involves negotiating transitions across many boundaries. As the Adolescent Worlds study (1996) found, "students began to reveal an inherently complex picture of their daily lives and to discuss a multitude of factors emanating from their family, peer, and school worlds" (p8). Phelan et. al. observed that adolescents worked to develop identities—including "meanings, perceptions, understandings, thoughts, feelings, and adaptation strategies"—that enabled them to function successfully amidst the potentially differing "norms, values, beliefs, expectations, and actions" of their family, peer, and school communities (p8).

Negotiating conflicting social expectations is complicated no matter what your age. This situation is made even more difficult by the fact that in many cultures, including our own, adolescents get very mixed messages from the outside world about their capabilities. Glen R. Elliot and S. Shirley Feldman (1990) observe that adolescents face an array of ambiguous social expectations when they write:

…adolescents typically pay adult fares by age 11 or 12 although they are restricted from seeing certain movies until after age 16. …Teenagers are deemed mature enough to decide whether or not to continue their education at age 16, but they receive markedly different treatment in the criminal justice system until they are 18 years old. Neither the logic behind nor the appropriateness of each restriction is as relevant, perhaps, as is the sense that the total array conveys of societal uncertainty about adolescent capabilities (p4-5). Adolescents sense this societal uncertainty in a variety of ways, both conscious and unconscious. They also feel uncertain about what they can do. While adolescents are increasingly independent and capable of taking care of themselves in a wider range of situations, they are also insecure about who they are and what kind of person they want to become. This kind of growth makes them very vulnerable. I think one of the most difficult parts of adolescence is trying to bridge appropriate social behavior with what is going on inside in such a way that feels authentic. Nobody figures out how to do this overnight.

Adolescents want privacy, as they try to figure out their thoughts—but they also want to be perceived consistently by others. No longer children but also not yet adults, adolescents struggle to reconcile the disparities between the person they are becoming inside and the ways they are treated by others. While they are in transition, adolescents are stuck in between the old rules for childhood behavior and the new rules for adults, and they must search for language to articulate their emotions, feelings, and rationales in ways that span both worlds. Having huge gaps between one’s self-image in one situation and another is distressing. Adolescents are anxious to protect the person they are becoming, but also wanting to experiment with ways of presenting themselves to others. Thus, adolescence is a time when individuals become increasingly aware of the many ways that they are being perceived by others, and begin to develop coping strategies for these different situations. For some adolescents, especially middle adolescents, being perceived differently by different people is problematic. Susan Harter’s research describes this problem when she writes that in adolescence, especially middle adolescence, "individuals not only detect inconsistencies across their various role-related selves (with parents, friends, romantic partners), but are also extremely troubled and conflicted over these contradictions" (p358).

Thus, many adolescents are vulnerable and sensitive to external criticisms and misunderstandings, especially if surrounding adults have passed judgements about an adolescent’s character that are inappropriate or wrong. Such misconceptions place tremendous pressure on the adolescent to communicate the incongruity. Trying to figure out how to be heard, especially when the adults and other people around you treat you in ways that are not consistent with your emerging sense of internal self, is a huge challenge. This challenge is magnified since adolescents are still forming their sense of self. They are growing on so many dimensions and developing so many new capabilities that they can seem adult one minute and child-like the next. Adolescents are inconsistent in how they present themselves. They are still too insecure and unfamiliar with their own thoughts, abilities, and changing physical selves to be entirely coherent. While it is at this point that Piaget suggests adolescents "begin to take into consideration the viewpoint of others and to appreciate the reciprocity of relationships" (quoted in Muuss, p178), making sense of inconsistencies in other’s perceptions of oneself demands a coherent sense of internal self, and as research has shown, adolescents’ inner selves are not yet fully formed.

All this change, both internally and externally, makes adolescents difficult to assess at a glance (or even many glances!). One minute they are confident and the next self-conscious; one minute aware, and the next oblivious. This oscillation is all part of normal adolescent identity development. As Stevenson (1998) concludes:

[Adolescents] are passing through a period of profound introspection and continuing vulnerability to failure and self-doubt….For the identity formation process to be complete, the individual must successfully rework the previous resolution of the needs for trust, autonomy, and failure. Through this process emerges a revised sense of self that enables one to function comfortably and effectively in multiple roles (p84).

IV. What do you know about this child?

…Paint a picture of the child by looking carefully at the child’s stance in the world through her gestures and disposition, her relationships with others, the choices and selections she makes, and how she approaches learning and making meaning in the world. - C. Ullman (p.14) As I shuffle through the pages of data I’ve collected about Lena, I am at once baffled, impressed, daunted, excited, and at a loss. Where do I begin to share what I know about this child? Although I have already begun, what stares back from the black and white typeface only scratches the surface of this amazing child. I want to bring her alive for you, so, again, I will try to let her speak for herself. I will share what I saw, and what I didn’t see, in an attempt to share the insights she can bring about children’s experience in the classroom. I will follow Claudia Ullman’s (1998) structure by beginning with descriptions of what I saw in Lena’s gestures, and then moving on to report "her relationships with others, the choices and selections she makes, and how she approaches learning and making meaning in the world."

Gestures and Dispositions: Lena’s hands show an active, sensitive student

Anyone can observe that a child walks into a room or out of it, raises his hand or drums on his desk, answers questions or remains silent. But keen observers go beyond this. They study facial expression, note the steady and the shifting look, the tightly or loosely held jaw and lips, the grimaces and the smiles. They hear not only words, but tones, pitch, strain, hesitation, and pauses. They note body posture, slumping shoulders, and puppet-on-a-string gestures, as contrasted with flowing, graceful movements and accurate, efficient coordination. They see all these details in relation to the settings where the behavior takes place the clenched hands and intent frown seen in the reading period are different from the freedom and joie-de-vivre of the playground. These finer details, this attention to its quality, provide clues to the meaning of the behavior. - Almy & Genishi (1979; p40) Watching Lena in the classrooms and hallways of RMS, I was most often struck by how rarely she was completely still. Descriptions of subtle, but nearly constant motion—from the restless tapping of her foot to the habitual smoothing of her hair—represent a significant portion of my running records. Even in my second observation, I became aware of the limitations of research as a participant-observer: Being unable to see Lena’s face made it much harder to feel like I could "see" what she was doing. So, I focused on her body language…the fiddling with the wrists, her looking up at Mr. S. occasionally, her posture, etc. It was not as fun or as engaging as I’d hoped it would be, but it was a good example of how "real, living children can be of interest." Unlike the researchers Graue and Walsh (1995) talk about who either try to "see children as either windows onto universal psychological laws or as indicators of treatment effects," (p. 136) the sheer mundane quality of this observation forced me to focus just on what was happening (N2, p5). Indeed, Lena’s hands tell much of the narrative. Confined within the metal desks, hands and feet are one of the few avenues of expression available to RMS students during the day. From my first observation, Lena’s hands appeared often in my notes. As I watched, Lena often touched her hair and face, stroked the book she was reading; or gestured into the air. Since I often did not hear Lena’s voice (usually due to the level of noise in the classroom) or see her face (as despite my efforts, she often had her back to me), I paid attention to her hands and gleaned volumes from her hand motions.

For example, RMS students raise their hands to be called upon by the teacher, which allows me to begin to make inferences about Lena’s level of interest (or at least participation) in a class. Sometimes she is involved in classroom discussions:

Lena sits at her desk facing the wall of cabinets with her feet tucked under her chair using both hands to pull her chin-length black/blue hair into a ponytail...Lena raises her hand, and Mr. S. calls on her. "I was going to say something else," she says wringing her hands together and fiddling with the brightly-colored elastic and plastic bracelets on her wrist. "New York has resource recovery plants, which are plants where they can recycle …" "Are they in NYC?" Mr. S. asks. "No, but there’s one in NJ," Lena responds. The classroom discussion continues, and Lena again fiddles with the 6 bracelets on her right arm. They are brightly colored—pinks, baby blue, red, yellow plastic shapes—and also the stretchy elastic bands in black and other colors (O2, p2).

After a moment, she looks back down at her wrists on the desk and leans over to the side. Her feet are still under the desk. Her left hand is now lightly holding her right elbow. She lightly strokes her right arm with her fingers….She raises her hand when another student mentions the "resource recovery plant," but Mr. S. calls on another student sitting on the other side of the room. She puts her hand back down, and then rests both elbows on her desk and puts her chin in her hands…. (O2, p3).

Ms. S begins calling on people randomly, to add vocabulary to the list on the board. Lena raises her hand, not all the way, but about a ninety degree angle so her hand is just above her head. Ms. S does not call on her, and the next time hands are raised, Lena's goes up a bit higher than before. While she waits to be called upon, she tucks her hair behind her left ear. Ms. S, after taking perhaps 10 words, calls on Lena who offers "furiosa, furious." Then her head goes down as she writes in her notes. She holds her hand in front of her face as Ms. S calls upon another student…(O6, p3-4).

And sometimes she is not: Lena continues to play with her bracelets, arms on her desk, and hunches over a bit more. She does not look up for the discussion. A moment later, Lena leans her head on her palm (O2, p2).

Now Lena has tucked both hands into the arms of her sweatshirt, so her hands are no longer visible. She leans her chin on her hands, which are propped up on the desk and stifles a yawn. Then she leans her nose onto her hands. One hand peeps out from the sweatshirt, and goes back to smooth her pony tail. Then Lena reaches both hands into the air for a stretch, before propping her elbows on the desk and leaning her cheek against her hands. She then strokes her cheek lightly with one finger, and turns to face the blackboard. Her brow furrows (O4, p2).

Sometimes Lena’s hands give a hint at where Lena might be focusing her attention, as in each of the following excerpts where she is equally intent at cleaning her locker and stacking cans in the classroom as she is doing work at her desk. She hunches inside her low locker and cleans it swiftly. Then she tosses out the paper towel with a dainty movement of her wrist, flounces back to her chair, and returns to her book. She is reading it now, intently. As she reads, she gently strokes the page with her fingertip (O1, p3).

Lena's notebook is out and she has her glasses pushed up on her forehead. She is copying down notes that one of her classmates, who is "teaching the class" has written on the board. As she writes, she rubs her hand lightly across her cheek. She continues copying as some of her classmates continue filing in….Lena leans over her notes, sitting up. Her back is hunched slightly, and she appears to be looking over the homework assignment belonging to one of her groupmates. I think they are grading each other's work. As she reads the paper, she tucks her hair (which, still blue--though slightly faded from last week--is pulled back into a ponytail) behind her ear. She takes her glasses off her head and lays them on the desk (O6, p2)

When next I look up, [some students asked me some questions, as I work with Mr. S] Lena and X are over in the far corner under the window stacking cans that the homeroom has brought in for the food drive. Lena, who is sitting with her left foot tucked underneath her on the floor, carefully picks up one can at a time, stacking one on the other. She shifts the piles around, meticulous in her movements. She is talking with her friend about how the cans should be arranged. Together they consolidate the stack of assorted canned food items (O7, p2-3).

While other times, her hands reflect Lena’s intense engagement in a discussion. Y says something, and Lena looks over, asking "What did he do…?" As he answers, she nods, and taps her blue- and green-rimmed glasses with her fingertip (O4, p1).

Then she leans her head against her hand again, nodding slightly as she talks. She sits up in her chair a bit, and turns to look at Y, who is speaking. She rubs her neck, and pushes her glasses up on her face. Her hand rubs her face, and she leans forward focusing her gaze intensely on her groupmates. She then says to Y, "If you say it, you have to support it." She squares here shoulders, and smiles slightly as she looks at Y.

She puts her hands on the desk, and her eyes follow Y as he opens his book. Her pen taps lightly on her copy of the play which lies in front of her on her desk. As Y explains his point, Lena nods and shakes her head from side to side. Her hands tuck back inside her sweatshirt. Then, I hear her say, "…that doesn’t say anything. … But it’s redundant."…Lena fingers her bracelets as she talks. She takes one silver bangle off her wrist and holds it in her hand. Both she and Y remain intent on their conversation, despite the increasing noise in the classroom (O4, p2).

As Y talks, her mouth opens slightly, and then she interjects with a more impassioned comment. Her eyebrows raise and she begins gesturing with her hands. She looks up and down, and laughs at something C [heretofore silent] comments. Lena’s hands clap down on the desk, and she extends her arms, stretching back in her chair. She raises both her hands to make her point, and she is saying something with great expression. She grins, and continues gesturing with both hands. Both she and C nod, and Lena rubs her eyebrow. She pulls at her sweatshirt strings, rhythmically, while continuing to talk (O4, p3).

Throughout the conversation, Lena leans on one hip, and keeps her hands or elbows on the desk between us. Her fingers are often interlocked, and she weaves and un-weaves her fingers without looking at her hands. She looks at me when she talks, but also looks around the room (O5, p2).

Sometimes Lena’s hands show that she is relaxed in the company of her peers: Lena’s nails are cut short, and painted black, and she has rubber bracelets on one arm. She also wears a silver ring on one hand….She leans back, her left elbow perched on the desk behind her, with her right arm resting on her crossed legs in front of her. Her eyes glance around the room and she turns back to talk with A…As they speak, they both notice a fan that is blowing nearby due to the hot weather, which has made the fifth floor a sweatbox. Lena reaches down and lets the air blow through the fingers of her left hand. Then, she leans across the narrow aisle to talk to M., another male classmate. As they speak, she scratches her cheek (O1, p2).

Lena then does a seemingly unrelated little mime with her arms, bringing a smile to the faces of the students in front of her. Her spine is relaxed and she looks comfortable as she speaks casually to her friends, who are reading the blue pages in the high school guide. They are intent, and she leans in to listen to the conversation. She is engaged in what is happening (O1, p3).

She reaches back with both hands again to smooth her pony tail. "My friend’s brother just didn’t go to school at all," I hear Lena say twisting her left hand in her hair. She is animated now, eyebrows raised and speaking quickly, while still holding her hands up to her head. She leans in to the desk. Then she nods casually. Her foot has sped up its rocking (O2, p4).

She fingers her bracelets, and then leans across the space between her desk and the next desk to her left to chat with her friend (O6, p3).

Lena reaches back and picks up a tiny can of Pringles potato chips, listening to her friend's animated talking (O7, p1).

Other times, Lena uses her hands to set boundaries for her friends: One girl reaches over to Lena's right arm to play with her colored bracelets. The girl reaches to pull one off Lena's arm, and Lena yells "NO" and raises her arm (with the girl's hands still on the bracelet) making it impossible for her to remove them (O7, p2). Lena also uses her whole body to show her displeasure at being disciplined in the classroom: The volume of noise in the class is slowly rising, although Lena herself is not saying anything and suddenly, Mr. S raises his voice to say sharply, "Excuse me, but this behavior is not acceptable." He looks over them. Lena continues to play with her bracelets, arms on her desk, and hunches over a bit more. She does not look up for the discussion (O2, p2).

Mr. S. is lecturing about punctuality, and Lena shifts both of her legs to rest on the floor, balancing lightly on the tips of her toes inside those heavy boots. Mr. S. says, "Whatever you are doing that makes you late…Stop doing those things." Lena looks down at the chair. "Okay?" Mr. S says (O3, p2).

From her gestures, one can also begin to guess that Lena pays attention to her appearance and that she has an intense preoccupation with her hair: She reaches back again with both hands to smooth her hair into its pony tail, spending time playing with the shortest hair at the nape of her neck (O2, p3).

She reaches her elbows out, reaches up and touches the red band in her hair. Then she puts both hands on her a taupe attaché tote bag, and leans down to it….Now, Lena sits on her right leg tucked under her on her blue metal desk chair, and smoothes a thumb across her lip, smearing something off. She sits for a moment, and then reaches back to put a barrette into her hair, which is worn back in a pony-tail today. She smoothes her hair back with both hands….Lena takes two hands to her t-shirt, one on each shoulder, and stretches the material across her collarbones, releasing it to rest lightly on her shoulders. Then, she leans her right elbow on the back of her chair, and turns her head to look outside in the hallway. Her right hand moves from the back of the chair to the seat of her chair, with the middle finger outstretched and the remaining fingers curled underneath (O3, p2).

Finally, there are times when Lena is just fiddling around: They finish in about three minutes, and then Lena stands up, saunters across the room, hips swinging, and then turns back to her friend who is playing with a rubber band. They pass the elastic back and forth, rubbing it between their fingers.

Then Lena reaches over to a plastic cola bottle that is sitting on a desk and opens it, letting out the fizz. (O7, p3).

To me, these above snapshots tell the story of someone with a lot going on inside, who is also not unaware of her surroundings. In all of these examples, Lena proves herself to be everything but the tough, apathetic punk I first expected her to be. As I looked more closely, a picture began to emerge of a sensitive, diligent student. Her engagement in the classes she attends, her relationships with her peers, and her general level of energy suggest that she is quite the opposite. Lena's gestures show a student who is involved in the classroom, and socially comfortable with both teachers and peers. Her behavior also indicates that Lena does not like confrontation, especially when a teacher is disciplining a class. Lena’s hands themselves express one snapshot of her fashion sense, while also hinting at the child who still lives within her adolescent body. While Lena is not often grandly demonstrative, much can be gleaned from her hands and gestures. Observing her relationships with others, yet another side of Lena appeared.

Relationships with Others: Lena displays an articulate, confident persona

Picture to yourself the range of the child’s relationships with other children…think of how the child falls in with more loosely connected groups that may form around games or other classroom …activities….think about when the child prefers to be alone or left to her or his own devices. Now you might shift your attention to the child in relation to you or other adults…Think, too, about what the child’s preferred ways of being with you or with other adults and what the child expects back from you….what makes the child feel safe, trusted ,respected, and secure with adults (or not). - Patricia Carini (2000; p59) Watching Lena, I was most struck by how comfortable she seemed to be with her peers and teachers. One of my assumptions at the beginning—which was quickly proved wrong—was that punk-dressing kids didn’t talk in class or hang out with their peers. As the weeks unfolded, I observed her laughing and chatting easily during appropriate times: When she reaches her seat, she says something to A. and then slouches back into the same position leaning back on the desk. Her bag sits next to her on the floor. She starts flipping through the book, casually. She reads some of the first few pages, and then flips some more.

"Oh my God," I hear her say. There is something about requirements. A conversation breaks out among 5 students including A, M and two other girls (O1, p2).

Lena turns back to the desks, and has her hands on the edge of the desk while she speaks with L, the girl across the table from her. They are sitting and speaking easily, taking turns… They are talking about what time high school starts. Lena’s right foot continues to swing and lightly tap the chair leg. She appears intent on the conversation, nodding her head frequently. She reaches back with both hands again to smooth her pony tail. She is animated now, eyebrows raised and speaking quickly, while still holding her hands up to her head (O2, p3-4).

She leans forward focusing her gaze intensely on her groupmates. She…says to Y, "If you say it, you have to support it." She squares here shoulders, and smiles slightly as she looks at Y…She puts her hands on the desk, and her eyes follow Y as he opens his book. Her pen taps lightly on her copy of the play which lies in front of her on her desk. As Y explains his point, Lena nods and shakes her head from side to side. Her hands tuck back inside her sweatshirt. Then, I hear her say, "…that doesn’t say anything. … But it’s redundant." (O4, p2).

Lena, half-sitting, half-leaning on the edge of a desk, with her feet on the floor, talking to her friend X. She is leaning back, hips perched just on the edge of the metal desk, with one hand supporting herself behind her on the desk.

"Whatever," she exclaims gesturing with her hand near her face…

Lena is eating chips and talking easily with her three friends…

Then Lena turns to her friend X, who puts her hands on Lena's arms. Lena pushes back, lightly, and goes over to Mr. S's desk (which is not where he is sitting) and picks up a pencil from his organizer. X says, "Look, this is soo cool. You can see the holes in my pants." (O7, p2).

Lena was also confident when speaking in class, and I recorded her verbal participation in every observation. Unlike some of her more reticent classmates, Lena often raised her hand and was prepared to answer a teacher’s questions in class. For example in Spanish I observed, "When Ms. S gets to Lena, she calls out querte, strong. Her accent in Spanish is confident and easy sounding, unlike some of her classmates (O6, p3). Moreover, as noted above, Lena also participated in group discussions with classmates—both school related and informal

Lena smiled a lot, and appeared comfortable with peers, if not smiling, in every observation. In my first observation, I first saw Lena grin (in response to discovering that one potential high-school she’s considering doesn’t start as early as RMS!). I wrote in my fieldnotes, "She comments to her friends, and smiles when one answers – "This one doesn’t start til 10am!" Lena grins" (O1, p3). Not until my third observation, however, did I realize that Lena was often light-hearted. As I wrote in my fieldnotes for that observation aptly titled, "A Glimpse of Joy After Lunch," "I turned around and saw such an unexpected side of Lena that I picked up my pen and found myself writing before I knew it" (O3, p1).

Lena is standing near her chair, which is pushed under her desk, with both of her hands linked to another girl’s (A.). Hips turned toward each other, they are pushing and pulling each other’s arms back and forth and laughing together…Lena’s head tilts back and a grin lightens her face. Knees loose (not locked), the two girls’ enthusiasm radiates around them (O3, p1). This was the first moment that I realized that, despite her veneer of adult sophistication, Lena is still only thirteen. As I reflected in my fieldnotes: One of the main reasons I decided to include this brief observation was that it had a profound impact on me: in this brief encounter, I ran smack into some assumptions I was making. First, I was forgetting that Lena is a still a child, and it was good to see her laughing with another student and releasing the shell I feel is around her at most times. Second, I realized that because Lena dresses in black, I was thinking that she was somehow morose. There is really no evidence of that, however, and it is good to be reminded that I was making that assumption based on an extremely superficial assessment (N3, p3). After this, I began to notice how polite Lena was with her teachers, and how she seemed to take up very little space. Her movements around the classroom were noticeably contained and respectful of those around her. I often observed her waiting patiently for others to pass, so she could make her way through the crowded classrooms and hallways. She rarely showed frustration or impatience. Someone crashes into her desk in his haste to get the paper towels [they are cleaning the lockers as they are assigned]. Lend doesn’t make a fuss, and then does a seemingly unrelated little mime with her arms, bringing a smile to the faces of the students in front of her (O1, p3).

Mr. S. is standing between Lena and her locker, and there is not enough room to get around, but she peers over his shoulder. She does not try to push through, but waits. Once Mr. S. moves, she hunches inside her low locker and cleans it swiftly (O1, p3).

The three girls pass where I am sitting to crowd around Mr. S, the teacher, who up until this point has been surrounded by students (all girls). While they wait for him to finish, Lena stands on one leg, which is bent slightly, with the other black-booted foot resting lightly on top of her foot. Her hips tilt to the side. As she waits, she shifts her feet. Her friend has a hand on Lena's hip (O7, p2).

Finally, during out interview, I was awed my how articulate and mature Lena was in sharing her thoughts and insights. As I wrote in my fieldnotes, "Almost instantly, Lena was friendly, open and ready to chat. She did not seem guarded, or apprehensive. After posing a few basic questions, we settled into an easy conversation" (N5, p6). Looking back on the interview, I wrote: I felt like Lena and I had a real conversation. I felt like she is someone I want to know as a person. I found myself wanting to put aside the pen and just talk to her and listen, without the barrier of "research."…She is obviously very bright, as are many of her classmates at this "magnet" school, but she is not flaunting that intelligence….Her tone throughout this interview was confident, and she struck me with her ability to articulate her thoughts in a coherent and sensitive way. She understood what I was getting at, especially when I asked such an awkward, open-ended question and the end…and really came through with a thoughtful response (N5, p6). In sum, observing Lena’s relationships with others, I discover a plethora of adjectives to describe her: cheerful, friendly, responsible, confident, comfortable, patient and articulate. These characteristics were reflected in Lena’s actions around the room.

Choices and Selections She Makes: Reflect a responsible, independent participant

Surface questions are coded to speak to larger issues "Can I dye my hair purple?" may mean, "Will you let me develop as a creative person?" - Mary Pipher, (1994; p54). The more I watched Lena, read her writing, and reflected on her situation, the more impressed I became at her gutsy choices. She is a responsible, independent participant at RMS. As many of the examples cited above depict, Lena is not afraid to speak up in class. In my second observation, she engaged in a dialogue with Mr. S, and confidently shared her knowledge about recycling with the class. Although I was unable to record all of what she said, I remember being struck by the depth of her knowledge regarding the topic. Even in my fieldnotes, I mention the "detailed" quality of her answer (O2, p2). Unlike some of her classmates who remained silent during this discussion, either due to shyness or boredom or apathy or a million other potential reasons, Lena chose to engage and share her opinions.

The same held true during the English class observed in my fourth observation. Although her classmates were ill-prepared for a productive discussion (one child was suffering from laryngitis and the other had not read the required text), Lena did not hesitate to take charge of the discussion. Twice in five minutes, I overheard her reprimand her forgetful classmate for his substandard participation:

She then says to Y, "If you say it, you have to support it." She squares her shoulders, and smiles slightly as she looks at Y. …As Y explains his point, Lena nods and shakes her head from side to side. Her hands tuck back inside her sweatshirt. Then, I hear her say, "…that doesn’t say anything. … But it’s redundant." (O4, p2). Lena’s willingness to take responsibility in class was also evident in other areas. During my final observation, I was able to see Lena taking active responsibility for her classroom environment, when during her recess time, she and a friend began re-stacking cans that had been collected for New York’s hungry in Mr. S’s room. When they finished, on their own initiative, they looked around to see what else needed doing: The shelf is right near the recycling bin, so Lena and X take it upon themselves to sort through the cans and drop some off at the central recycling center at the school. They each take about four bottles, collect their gear, and head out of the room (O7, p3). Lena’s willingness to take initiative reflects a general quality of independence that I observed in her. Her unique style of dress, already discussed at the introduction of this child-study, deserves mention again here. Nonconformity does not frighten Lena away from making an unusual choice, although, as she herself wryly observes in her personal biography: Now that I’ve set up this reputation, I can’t change. I have this weight that I have to carry as the girl who sticks out. I think that most of the kids are freaked out by me but they also respect me for being everything they never had the guts to be. And still I’m jealous of them because they have the guts to do the one thing I can’t…be themselves. Free of hypocrisy and self-consciousness (PB, p4-5). In one sense "trapped" by her maturity and self-consciousness, Lena nevertheless continues to express her individuality through fashion. She also diverges from her peers in another pivotal arena: music. When Lena described to me the cliques at RMS, she said, "I think most people relate to each other based on music, but I don’t have that" (I, p2). I got the impression that the reason Lena likes her "punk music" is that it speaks to issues she cares about. She said: Well, I love punk music…Not really the thrash stuff, but you know there are just way too many categories. I’m sort of a tribute to the Sex Pistols, but also more hard core stuff like Black Flag. [I listen] all the time. I mean it. I have to listen when I’m doing homework, and when I’m on the bus, and when I’m going to sleep, even when I’m watching TV I’ll have music on in the background. If I could, I’d listen when I’m eating.

The Clash [is my favorite band], the original from ’77…[because] They sound really good, musically they are better than most punk bands and they have good lyrics. They’re not just up there screaming AHHHHHHH the whole time. They actually have something to say, which sounds good. They aren’t violent, like some punk bands. A lot of bands are really elitist, can’t accept anything. I think all this music is sort of a rage against society, like most punk music, but the Clash isn’t mean and like we want to kill you kind of music. It’s more like we want to ditch this and start over (I, p3-4).

That last line, "It’s more like we want to ditch this and start over," is so powerful, and so adolescent. How many times did I come home and echo that sentiment when I was in middle school? Caught between the expectations of adults and the concrete reality of childhood, Lena has turned to music and fashion to express her independence.

Approach to Learning and Making Meaning: Creative, intellectual engagement

Rather than finding it hard to talk with youths, we often experienced difficulty in getting away. In almost all cases, students expressed a desire to share their thoughts, discuss their views, and examine their own reality as they rendered descriptions of events, circumstances, and relationships. - P. Phelan et al. (1998; p6) While Lena’s gestures, relationships, and choices that I observed in the classroom helped me to work towards an understanding of her perspective, simply talking with Lena provided the most useful, fascinating insights into her character and situation. I think this is partly due to Lena’s strengths in communication—both verbal and written—and partly due to serendipity: I happened to be in the right place at the right time. Without Lena’s personal biography, for example, some of the insights into her world would not be as enriched, while others would be completely absent. Lena’s willingness to share her experiences, her candor and openness provide important clues regarding her approach to learning. In all of our exchanges, Lena demonstrated that she is not afraid of challenge. Unfortunately, RMS is not providing that for her at the moment. In Lena's own words: Like right now, school’s pretty boring. In math especially, we’re doing graphs. Which is boring. Today we started working with calculators, and that’s okay...R says if I have the ability, why am I not getting the best grades, but nobody really wants to spend the effort…Spanish is pretty good….Mrs. S is very strict and she moves fast. Right now, she has us teaching the class to each other. I like having friends teach you. We’re reviewing stuff for the proficiency exams, which is kind of boring, but the kids make up the worksheets and teach the lessons which is cool. Also, Mrs. S is also teaching us some stuff separately. CA, though, is really boring. It drags on for an hour or an hour-and-a-half. Mr. L talks for like a really, really long time. It’s tiring. The other day, he wanted us to talk about a Goethe quote that he had hanging on the wall. It would have been a good discussion, but he spent the whole time giving instruction (I, p2). "Boring." "Tiring." None of these are sentiments educators would like to hear from students. At RMS, Lena says that she does enough to get by. As I observed in my field notes: The Lena I have encountered thus far has not decided that school is worth her effort and energy for total engagement. In her own words, it’s "boring" and unrelated to her life as she sees it. This is not to say that I don’t think she is doing "fine," I just don’t think she is being challenged to grow in the academic environment, instead I think she feels like she is just biding her time (N7, p7). Fortunately for Lena, she had an opportunity last summer to experience a different kind of academic setting: a CTY program offered at Hamilton College in Upstate NY. Her descriptions of that experience paint a telling portrait of her intellectual maturity, her social awareness, and sheer cognitive acuity: Over this past summer, I did the Johns Hopkins CTY program, there was an ethics course taught at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY…Well, you know how tiny that town is. When I first got there, I freaked out. I was scared at first, now that I look different, people don’t want to be friends. I used to have no trouble making friends, but now it’s totally different. These girls on my hall were young, my age, but really naive. They didn’t understand me at all. But then I made friends, and we were all really tight and close. The class itself was really good. Imagine ten kids, having a lot of fun. If I could be in class with only my friends and work that hard together…the time just went so fast. It was totally different. We wrote papers, held debates, talked about so many theories, I usually don’t like school. Here it’s mostly tedious work, not work that helps you learn. But that was fun….

I think we could really bond on the fact that we were "all dorks." We were an all-dork camp. We could just relate to each other. When I started talking, they could just understand the same things. Even if they didn’t listen to the same music, they could relate to me cuz they understand the world like I do. We had a blast –watched all weird movies, including all the Monty Python movies, … some of the girls in my class were older. I hung out with them, not the girls in my dorm. They were older (I, p5).

From these comments, and from my observations of Lena working in small groups, I would argue that she learns best in small groups, where she can express herself verbally in the company of her peers. she likes intellectual challenges that offer her the opportunity to be creative. She also has a tremendous vocabulary, and seemed not afraid to use it one-on-one and in writing.

Thus, while my observations found Lena to be an active, sensitive student, I would wager that she was exponentially more so at CTY. Furthermore, the articulate, confident person who appears at RMS exhibits only a fraction of the insights that I found in speaking with Lena one-on-one and in reading her personal biography. Due to her ability to work independently and responsibly, I think Lena would thrive in a place that challenged her more. From what she said about CTY, I conclude that given the right academic supports (like any child), she would be free to express her love of learning in the exploration of new ideas. The final section of this paper will discuss what type of school learning environment might suit Lena better. The following section will focus on the issue of belonging.

V. Focus of the study

There are pieces of this and pieces of that, but none of it fits together. And yet, very strangely, at the limit of all this chaos, everything begins to fuse again. - P. Auster (1987; p35) In sifting through the piles of evidence, I begin to feel that I have reached something of an impasse. For, on the one hand, I have seven observations that show a confident, cheerful girl making her way through middle school. On the other hand, however, I have Lena’s testimony describing herself as an "outsider" at RMS. When I begin to feel inclined to discount, or at least to downplay, her declarations as the extreme thoughts of a typical adolescent whose judgement is still forming, I am stopped in my tracks by an irrefutable fact: less than two years ago, Lena felt isolated enough to be hospitalized for attempted suicide. While I don’t wish to dramatize this point, her description of this situation—included without prompting by Lena herself in her personal biography—must be part of this child-study.

Recovering from Tragedy: Acknowledging One Adolescent’s Pain

Most twelve-year-olds know they can be hurt. - Mary Pipher, (1994; p61) As you will read, the typically inexperienced introspection of an adolescent described above by Stevenson led in Lena’s case to a sense of isolation and confusion. Her development of self-awareness and emotional sensitivity only amplified her sense of alienation as she faced the "Who am I" question. For Lena, concurrent growth of cognitive reasoning, social awareness and emotional depth came crashing together with nearly disastrous results. Lena came to believe her impression that "no one really knows who she is," which led her to take drastic measures. Lena herself described her suicide attempt and subsequent recovery in staggering detail in the following excerpt from her personal biography: In the winter of sixth grade, Lena withdraws herself from her friends and family. She writes in her diary entry of February 19^th (her birthday) "I can’t believe how alone I feel. Everyone moves around me. I can spend all my time faking being happy and interested when I really don’t care at all. The other day, I was in CA class and J and E and J and me were talking about something and they were really excited and I was too…only I wasn’t really. I mean, I can’t even remember what was so special." No one seems to notice that Lena is retreating into a private world. In January she starts to make various attempts at "suicide." Suicide is in quotation marks because the diary entries indicate that Lena was not trying to kill herself, but trying to get attention from her peers and/or family. She tries to explain to herself that no one really knows who she is; they only know the Lena that she portrays. Lena writes a letter to R, telling her what is happening. R writes her a letter back and soon Lena calls R after each attempt she makes. She writes, "I don’t even think I’m telling R what’s really going on. I’m only telling her what I do but I have no idea how to say why. I don’t even know why." On March 5^th, 1999 she tells some of her friends what she is going through. They all react differently. She writes in an online conversation with R, "They didn’t get it. I was crying and trying to tell them but they didn’t get it. E said, ‘Oh, I tried to suffocate myself in the fourth grade with a pillow. Everyone tries it.’ Then she was crying and everyone was comforting her and they totally forgot about me."

On March 6^th, Lena gets called to the school office of RMS…The principal tells her that he has received a phone call from one of her friend’s parents about her "suicidal ideations" as he calls it. He calls her mother and they go to the emergency room to get Lena a psychiatric evaluation. Lena’s mother said in an interview "it was a shock. I had no idea anything like this had happened." The doctors at the emergency room decide to hospitalize Lena and send her to St. Vincent’s psychiatric ward for children. Lena spends a week (6 days) there and is released. She has been prescribed Prozac. In her first diary entry after she has left the hospital she says "I don’t think anyone could get better because of a place like that. You only force yourself to get better so you can leave." I can only interpret this as meaning that the hospital didn’t offer any sort of solution or help when it came to Lena’s problems. This may also mean that Lena had to find the strength within herself to recover. I consider this to be a significant example of her individuality. When she couldn’t rely on anyone else to ease her pain, she was able to find an inner resource and pull herself out of the slump and back into her normal frame of mind. [Her mother] said she "seemed like a more mature person afterward. Not that she had become more adult, but she was changed in a way that only she could have done. She had been forced to grow up so that she could get better." This is true. She was forced to mature in order to save herself. This is also a component of Lena’s individuality (PB, p2-3).

A full analysis of this tremendous narrative is certainly beyond the scope of this child study; however, I wanted to include it because it so beautifully captures the intensity of Lena’s experience, her quest for an identity, and her developing reasoning. Fortunately, Lena found a way to "mature in order to save herself" by reaching within. I am awed beyond words by her courage and tenacity. Thanks to Lena’s harrowing tale, I will never forget how pivotal an adolescent’s quest for identity can become. As I commented in my fieldnotes: I think what I take from this, is to never underestimate what sadness or situation may lie behind the façade a child (or anyone really) presents in school. Lena, facing her father’s cancer, a recovery from depression (or whatever spurred the suicide attempt), and coming-out in a relatively homophobic society, certainly has a lot on her plate. Yet, the person who appears in school is composed, somewhat reserved, yet confident (N5, p7) Lena’s current challenge, therefore, is to find a way to share her internal triumph over suicidal depression in a way that effectively bridges her many worlds. However, she faces many obstacles, most notably an uneven playing field amongst her peers, since she is so intellectually mature, which is a common problem for smart girls. Although Lena herself does not display the physical characteristics of a mature female, her advanced cognitive development places her far beyond many of peers. Her comment that she "hangs at Astor Place" with people who are much older suggests that Lena may have outgrown the social scene at RMS. The following discussion about Lena’s situation at RMS delves into this issue in more detail.

Lena looks "different," but is she really an outsider?

To summarize much of what has been shown in great detail in the preceding sections, looking at the superficial evidence makes supporting Lena’s "outsider" self-characterization quite difficult. She seemed to be a confident participant in class discussions, and made quality contributions both in small group discussion not mediated by adults as well as in teacher-directed activities. Indeed, Lena assumed leadership roles when working with her peers in two observations. Lena did not appear to be intimidated by her peers, and set limits for them; she did not exhibit the behavior of a pushover. In general, she seemed to often be enjoying herself, as illustrated by her frequent smiles and display of enthusiasm in the third observation. She seemed to be friendly and approachable, not only to her peers, but also to me, an adult and outside visitor (albeit a regular one) to the school.

As an interesting side-note, Lena described herself as a "nerd" only when relating the CTY story; nerds never were mentioned with regards to RMS. In each observation, Lena appeared relaxed in the company of her peers and was often seen hanging out with what looked to be "friends." I never witnessed a snub or nasty remark, both of which are rare due to the respectful culture at RMS. Moreover, her behavior communicated respect and deference to the teachers and regulations at RMS. She took responsibility for her classroom and demonstrated good citizenship by taking an active role in caring for her community.

In reviewing this overview, I am hard pressed to see Lena as an outsider who doesn’t belong at RMS. Perhaps, however, the problem is that Lena and I are looking at different dimensions when we consider our definitions of belonging.

Rebelling Against the Mainstream: What is belonging at RMS?

Patricia crafts a public "rebel" identity that blends behaviors and speech patterns of her working-class barrio and middle-class school communities. Aspects of her multiple worlds are visible as she crosses the border between her home and school worlds; even as Northside peers see Patricia’s school girl behaviors, youths from the Maple neighborhood see manifestations of Patricia’s Northside identity. Based on her experiences with Mexican family and friends, European-American father and teachers, Patricia prefers not to switch personas: "I value all of the different things equally, it’s not one more than the other. I can’t see myself picking one thing out." Yet, as she asserts her rebel persona, Patricia grapples with disempowering stereotypes and encounters verbal criticism. All around her, people appear to struggle to make sense of this young woman who fails to fit into Maple’s dominant social categories…[Yet] Patricia finds space and opportunity for her resistance to become part of a greater collective statement about the capabilities of adolescents from her community. She is left better able to publicize an identity that goes against the mainstream. - P. Phelan et. al. (1998; p94) The Adolescent Worlds study is useful in considering this dilemma, especially the case of Patricia Schmidt. For Patricia, forming a "rebel" identity enables her to straddle two very diverse worlds. By not conforming to the behaviors and speech patterns of either group, Patricia creates her own place to belong. I think Lena’s situation is not dissimilar. In some ways, I think that Lena might find refuge in her status as an outsider. To say this another way, she might be thinking "by not belonging to any cliques at school, I don't have to belong. I don't have to risk pain."

Fitting in at RMS requires Lena to insinuate herself into a small, but relatively diverse population of students headed for high-school, and most likely college. As she herself observed, there are cliques at RMS, but they don’t completely dominate the social scene. Especially in class, where caring teachers direct much of the learning, there is an obvious effort to move beyond superficial judgements of each other. RMS is generally a friendly place, as I noted in my environmental study:

The friendly tone that I sensed from my first moment at RMS carries throughout all levels of interactions at the school. Nearly all the encounters I saw between children, teachers, administrative staff were good spirited. Of course, there were conflicts—an "inevitable group dynamic," according to Richard and Patricia Schmuck (1997, p177)—but even the majority of those appeared to be handled with direct communication and a problem-solving approach. In general, people at RMS seem comfortable with each other (ES, p14). From Lena's comments, however, this ease may be only superficial. Trying to gauge the "real" situation at RMS was certainly beyond me. However, as Pipher’s insight that surface questions can be coded to speak to deeper issues suggests, there is more to Lena’s fashion choices than meets the eye. Lena is aware that her clothing choices accentuate her difference from her peers, when she says: I just want to be different, and want to be recognized for who I am as different….For awhile last year, my friend K and I wore all black. We stopped talking, and had a huge social life outside of school. Everyone in school called us those "freaky kids." But for me, following along the trends just stopped looking good. I mean I can appreciate now that if someone shows me their cute Gap shirt, yeah, that’s a cute Gap shirt. But it’s not something I would wear. It just didn’t appeal to me (I, p5-6). As I began to reflect on where Lena is trying to fit in, I what her decision not to wear the cute Gap shirt, as well as her choice to prefer the Cure to today’s "hot" rappers, might imply. On one level, she says that she does not want to be the same as her peers.

This leads me to consider the question: "What are Lena’s peers like? I think that Lena’s level of self-awareness distinguishes her, as many eighth graders do not yet share her sophisticated self-reflection. Indeed, Lena’s maturity across many dimensions: cognitive, intellectual, emotional, social, sets her apart relative to her classmates. Not only is she more likely to be ahead of schedule as a girl, but her brush with suicide and death has also deepened her awareness of her own vulnerability in a way that is unusual for her age. Like many thirteen-year-olds, Lena has started to define herself, but she has not yet developed a full adult awareness of spectrum of possibilities. As my mom often says, she is able to see the problem, but no solution. Lena says being an outsider is just a part of being a teenager, but I think these deeper disparities lie at the root of her alienation.

Thus, in addressing the inevitable, but unanswerable question: "Why does Lena feel like she doesn’t belong at RMS?" I point to the ever-shifting adolescent social reality. Due to Lena’s maturity, she has not found peers at RMS who can help her work through the issues with which she is wrestling. As she writes to one of her friends from CTY:

I was thinking about you guys and I realized that I am closer with you and Liz, etc than I am with some of my closest friends. I mean, I love them all and we hang out and stuff but we don’t really discuss anything that has to do with our thoughts. We scream and yell about how society sucks blah blah blah but I don’t think they know as much about me as I feel you do. … (PB, p5). Even Lena’s older friends at St. Marks do not conform to her high standards for peers. Not only are they not willing to engage in the level of intellectual discourse that Lena seeks, but they are also older. At her core, Lena is still a child and doesn’t yet belong in the adult world either. Despite the diversity at RMS, Lena stands out in school. By rebelling like Patricia, she is able to magnify her status as an "individual." Thus, her attachment to music professing "we want to ditch this and start over" (I, p4) seems totally understandable. Lena says she feels locked into a role that she doesn’t like, and she confronts the challenge of having a reputation as the "weird girl."

VI. Reflection on your process and methodology.

Teachers cannot possibly use all of the data available to them. Even if they were more perfect recording instruments, and indefatigable, their conclusions still would be tentative. Development never stands still. Even while we study children, they grow and learn. They change, often imperceptibly, from day to day and week to week.

No two people looking at a child see precisely the same thing….Learning to take in all the details of behavior, learning to separate the subjective aspects of an observation from the objective, and learning to rely on accumulated evidence rather than making snap judgements are essential steps in becoming a good observer. But the personal element in observation can never be eliminated completely.

- Almy & Genishi (1979; p35) For me, everything about this study was personal. Although I initially chose Lena because her worlds seemed so utterly foreign, the realization that she also feels like an outsider—a feeling that dominated my own adolescence—transformed what this study meant to me as a teacher by reawakening my empathy for adolescents who struggle with such difficult, conflicting expectations and desires. Like Lena, I often felt older than many of my peers and felt at a loss trying to make sense of my social situation at school. As I researched and wrote this paper, I started thinking about the facades we construct, as children and adults, to hide our vulnerability. In my work in my current classroom (I've since switched placements), I am less willing to see kids as permanent outsiders or to allow superficial qualities to define my understanding of what students can do.

As I look back on this process, I think what surprised me most was how easily I was taken in my Lena’s façade during my first week at RMS. As a quote from my initial fieldnotes reveals, "I hadn’t recognized that my own assumptions about "punk-dressing" kids included that they would not participate in class…I’ve always thought that kids sometimes wear clothes to look tough or fit in, but I realize that I do associate "punk/goth" clothing with anti-establishment behavior" (N2, p5). Luckily, I was quickly able to leave those assumptions behind, although I was glad to realize just how many unconscious assumptions I had made about Lena’s performance based only on her appearance. In looking back on the experience, I recognize that without that realization I would not only have limited what I could see about Lena, but also what I could learn about myself.

Through this experience, I was reminded that I make snap judgements about people based on deeply-embedded assumptions. When I began observing Lena I did not have the depth of information necessary to make sense of what I saw. Instead, I was forced to rely on my scanty presumptions about what punks represented. Or, as the old adage says, "I saw what I was looking for." Of course, like anyone, my initial assessments of Lena were based on her superficial qualities; I had to start with what I could see. The lesson I learned (again) in working with Lena is that the judgements I make from what I see can be wrong.

After weeks of observations, I realized that how I saw Lena changed when I looked at her differently. Seeing her in different classrooms, or with different friends revealed a bright, cheerful, social girl. Reading her autobiography exposed yet another side of this fragile child. The process of research, observing, recording, interviewing, writing, and reflecting enabled me to move past my superficial assumptions and base my understanding of Lena on her behavior instead of upon my expectations. Allowing myself to revise my opinion as new information became available also meant that I opened the possibility of discovering wholly unexpected things; as when I turned my head and saw a flash of sheer joy in Lena’s eyes. Hearing her delighted giggles, I realized that despite her clothing, Lena was still a child. Prior to that moment, my own stereotypes about punks had prevented me from seeing her in that light. As a teacher, I was profoundly disturbed to acknowledge my own ability to miss such a fundamental aspect of Lena as a learner and will be forever grateful for the chance to discover my error.

I am delighted to have had the chance to consider adolescent dilemmas like "Who am I?" and "Where do I belong" from the perspective of such a savvy and articulate intellectual as Miss Lena proved herself to be. I now have a new question with which to wrestle: Just what does it mean to be an outsider anyway? I hope that my experience as an adolescent outsider will foreshadow Lena’s, such that she is not on her way out, but rather, on her way back in.

VII. Implications

Guided by the children, I go behind the scenes to unveil something of the breadth and depth of their curiosity, industry, and imagination—features seldom called upon by schools. Knowledge of such resilience and creativity is a cause for hope and a call for change. - S. Middlebrooks (1998; p18) Even if her behavior does not substantiate her self-defined "outsider-status," the fact that Lena feels that she does not belong at RMS is detrimental to her academic potential. Thus, as an educator, the primary questions I consider as I leave this project is, "What educational strategies could help to support Lena’s reentry?" "How could Lena feel socially comfortable and intellectually challenged at RMS?" Luckily for me, Lena’s positive experience at CTY provides hints of a blueprint for assisting in her success.

My first suggestion is both simple, and utterly complicated. For Lena, I would recommend a smaller class size. Despite the current budgetary constraints on hiring, this seems to me to be the most obvious and important change. For Lena who is an articulate, verbal child, smaller class size means more debates in class where her understanding can be constructed, challenged, and fortified by both her peers and her teachers. Focused attention from a teacher would also make it hard for Lena to feel excluded from the learning at RMS. Moreover, a smaller group can allow non-intellectual differences—like race or cliques or music or attire—to fade into the background, or inform conversations in a productive way, enabling a common academic bond to be forged.

Second, if I were teaching Lena, I would be sure to provide tougher assignments, requiring more intellectual work. Like Sally Middlebrooks suggests, Lena's curiosity, industry and imagination push me to want even more for her at school. I do not believe in "busy work," of which I saw some at RMS. Were I teaching there, I would look instead to create more connections between the curriculum and the students’ lived experience. The personal biography is an example of an assignment that provided that type of connection. I would look to create more opportunities like of that nature.

Third, I would de-emphasize the high-school prep focus , which is putting so much pressure on RMS students. While high-school is important, the crushing emphasis on the future diminishes the value of learning experiences in the present. This suggestion reflects some sage advice from Nancie Atwell (1998), "Middle school students look for in school what matters in life; they don’t look at school as a place to get ready for what matters in life" (p67). In Lena’s case, RMS is providing neither consistent academic stimulus, nor rewarding social opportunities. Thus, something needs to be remedied.

Of course, all of three of these suggestions are relatively impractical, given the realities of implementation at RMS. Were I teaching in her school today, some smaller suggestions might also include sponsoring a debate club or some other extra-curricular activity where Lena might have the opportunity to interact with students out side of RMS on an intellectual level. Another small, but not minor kindness would be to find out how to support Lena as her father’s illness progresses. While Lena may need to outgrow her outsider status, she should not feel neglected during what could be another difficult, and traumatic, situation.

VIII. Exhibits
Exhibit 1: Observation Summary (Field Notes)
Exhibit 2: Primary Source Key

E	Email from GS, June 27, 2000
ES	Environmental Study of RMS, November 21, 2000
I	Interview with Lena, October 20, 2000
J	My student teacher journal
N	Notes on Notes (dates directly correspond with observations)
O1	Observation, September 15, 2000 "Assigning Lockers"
O2	Observation, September 21, 2000 "Homeroom Recycling Discussion"
O3	Observation, September 27, 2000 "A Glimpse of Joy After Lunch"
O4	Observation, October 5, 2000 "Groupwork in English Class"
O6	Observation, October 26, 2000 "Spanish Class"
O7	Observation, October 26, 2000 "American Studies Extra-Help"
PB	Lena’s Personal Biography, written for American Studies class
T	Interview with Mr. Garth S., a teacher at RMS, October 18, 2000

IX: Works Cited

Almay, M. & Genishi, C. (1979) Ways of Studying Children. New York: Teacher’s College Press.

Atwell, N. (1998) In the Middle: New Understandings About Writing, Reading, and Learning. Second Edition. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Auster, P. (1987). In the Country of Last Things. New York: Penguin.

Carini, P.F. (2000) "A Letter to Parents and Teachers." In From Another Angle: Children’s Strengths and School Standards. Ed. M. Himley. New York: Teacher’s College Press.

Cole, M and Cole S.R. (1996) The Development of Children. Third Edition. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. and Larson, R. (1984) Being Adolescent: Conflict and Growth in the Teenage Years. NY: Basic Books.

Elliott, G.R. and Feldman, S.S. (1990). "Capturing the Adolescent Experience," in At the Threshold: The Developing Adolescent. S. Shirley Feldman and Glen R. Elliott (eds.). Cambridge: Harvard.

Graue, M. Elizabeth and Daniel J. Walsh. (1995) In Hatch, J. Amos. Qualitative Research in Early Childhood Settings. Conn: Praeger.

Harter, S. (1990). "Self and Identity Development," in At the Threshold: The Developing Adolescent. S. S. Feldman and G. R. Elliott (eds.). Cambridge: Harvard.

Keating, D.P. (1990) "Adolescent Thinking," in At the Threshold: The Developing Adolescent, S. S. Feldman and G. R. Elliott (eds.). Cambridge: Harvard.

Middlebrooks, Sally. (1998) Getting to Know City Kids: Understanding Their Thinking, Imagining and Socializing. Teachers College Press: New York.

Muuss, R. E. (1996) Theories of Adolescence. "Richard M. Lerner’s Developmental Contextualism." and Robert Selman’s Theory of Interpersonal Understanding." New York: McGraw Hill.

Phelan, P., Davidson, A.L., & Yu, H.C. (1998). Adolescents’ Worlds: Negotiating Family, Peers, and School. NY: Teacher’s College Press.

Pipher, M. (1994). Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Souls of Adolescent Girls. NY: Ballantine.

Pollack, W. (1998). Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood. NY: Henry Holt & Co.

Schmuck, R. A. & Schmuck P.A. (1997). Group Process in the Classroom. 7^th ed. Boston: McGraw Hill.

Stevenson, C. (1998) Teaching Ten to Fourteen Year Olds. 2^nd Edition. Longman: New York.

Ullman, C. (1998) "A Space for New Understandings." In The Prospect Review. Fall Issue #12. N. Bennington, VT: The Prospect Archives and Center for Education and Research, Inc.

Portfolio Home		Table of Contents		Introduction
Caption 1	Caption 2	Caption 3	Caption 4	Caption 5	Caption 6
Artifact 1	Artifact 2	Artifact 3	Artifact 4	Artifact 5	Artifact 6
Conclusion			Bibliography