A Profile

Tall girl, small voice. 

Middle-eastern, dark eyes, a tangle of black hair.

Never wears gym shorts, only sweatpants.

She used to down-cast her eyes 

and press her lips together

when they teased her.

Now she flails out her hand

and smiles confusedly,

uncertain.

For the past few days, my social studies class has procrastinated doing worksheets by sucking our teacher into conversations. And I am sure I am learning more from these conversations than any worksheet in the world.

We are learning about the civil rights movement right now. Our teacher began by asking us, a predominantly white honors class, how we would feel during this time period as a black...and as a white. Everyone cringed. We'd feel awkward, we said, guilty, uncomfortable. She asked us; what if we were raised that way? No one could answer.

She showed us a black-and-white picture of two schools. One was small with a group of black school children out front. The other was large and had well-kept lawns. We looked at the first one. Tell me what this is, she said. It's an old black school, someone yelled out. We talked about it awhile. We looked at the other one. And that's an old white school, someone else yelled. "How do you know?" Our teacher said, "There's no sign, no white children..."

"Well, we assumed..."We all started. We assumed.

For these past two days, that has been the basis for our conversations. We assume. But usually the assumptions we named were ones that we assumed others assumed about us.

Things That We Think Others Assume About Us

-That whites are rich, in all honors, and kind of snotty

-That blacks are rude

-That if your in an honors class (especially if you're black), you're a nerd

-That only blacks have problems at home

-All blacks are 'ghetto'

"Ghetto?" Our teacher asked, "Define 'ghetto'". No one said it was coming from a certain place or a background. Everything that was said was about appearance and actions. So different from the original use of the word.

"Wearing your pants on the ground." Someone said. 

"I wear my pants on the ground," a boy pointed out, "and I'm white."

"Drinking Kool-Aid," someone else yelled. 

"White kids can't drink Kool-Aid?" Our teacher laughed. We all laughed at the absurdity of it. There wasn't really a difference. And yet, if one of the white boys went up to someone and said "Yo, wasup homie", they'd automatically be told, "You're way too white." 

Even the vocabulary, though, is not all that different. Beast, cool, legit, sweet, 'sup...everyone uses them; blacks, whites, and hispanics.

As for whites being rich and snotty; yes, most of the whites at our school are from families with larger incomes, but it isn't as if anyone is proud of it. At one point the student who was talking about that very stereotype named a street with very large houses on it. Another kid, who lives on that street hid under the table. Money is not flaunted at our school.

And here's the other interesting thing. We all assume others assume things about us, but no one said they actually assume something about other people. 

So, do we assume and just aren't telling, or are we assuming without even realizing it? Or are we stuck in a tangle of imaginary assumptions of other people's assumptions? 

But isn't incredible we can all talk about it?

A Highly Interesting Event

A boy wore a skirt to the cafeteria this morning.

In fact, it was one of my friend's skirts. He wore it purely for the attention. And he got it. Almost everyone in the cafeteria has a picture of him on their cell phone, camera, video camera...

Unfortunately, they made him change. I can't see why. The skirt was past his fingertips.

A Middle School Hallway

Full of shouting.

Arms and legs, books and pens, strewn around, bouncing off walls.

Lockers slamming.

Gaggles of tweens.

"Get to your class! Get to your class!"

We just finished Leonardo DiCaprio's version of Romeo and Juliet in drama. Perhaps, however, the more interesting show was the response of the viewers. There is a dread of Shakespeare at school. I think that if that dread was not present, students would even learn to enjoy Shakespeare. If taught well, of course.

Back to Romeo and Juliet; it took a while for it's audience to get over the long lines and odd composition of the movie, in general. It is hard to follow, at first. They were appalled at how quickly everyone drew their guns, and one student asked confusedly "Why are all the words weird?" It took her a while to understand the meaning of a modern adaptation. And then there was the question of "why do they keep talking to themselves? Can't they hear each other?" Welcome to Shakespeare, middle-schoolers.

Most of all though, they laughed.

How They Laughed

At tears, at laughter, at romance, and cruelty.

With anxiety, with embarrassment, with pure joy.

And though they laughed, as Romeo uncapped his poison and brought it to his lips, the entire room broke out with shocked and breathless 'oh my god's, and "No! Don't do it!" Even though we all knew he was.

 

The "popular" group in middle schools are often portrayed as being a gaggle of rich/snotty girls and football jocks. At my school, that isn't the case at all.

There are only a few girls who are full of themselves and exclusive, but it is common knowledge that that is just the way they are. They wander around the cafeteria at lunch, spreading news and lamenting lost boyfriends (it seems as if there are always lost boyfriends), social studies homework...there is always something to complain about. Some at your table will look up and say "Oh, boy. Here comes___." Then ___will slide onto one of the plastic seats and, eyes shining and cheeks flushed, start relaying.

The boys, on the other hand, are anything but football jocks. The boys tend to be athletic, easy-going, and very adept at sexual innuendos. 

And yet, here I get to the phenomenon; there are so many people who are in the inner circles of middle school society who don't fit the norm. Some are extremely immature, others have a strange sense of humor, and others, still, are just quirky.

So, why are these kids in the inner circles? It has to do with the way the school system is set up. There are several elementary schools that feed into my middle school. Depending on where the school is, it's going to have different demographic percentages. In each middle school, groups are already distinguished, and kids are determined as insiders or outsiders. When these groups transfer to middle school, the groups stay fairly intact. They may grow larger, shrink, or merge with other groups, but the kids who are determined as insiders stay in, and those who are outsiders stay out.

I come from an elementary school with only a few kids who are in honors classes- the students in my classes. The few of us who are spent most of 6th grade floating from group to group. Some of my friends have found anchors in one group or another. I'm still looking. My closest friends at school are all in different friend groups, and don't necessarily hang out with each other.

You Would be an Insider if...

• You have a sense of humor that is open-minded and an easy-going laugh

Humor is the largest determinant of insiderdom vs. outsiderdom. Even if you are bossy, you're sense of humor could save you. Middle-schoolers love to laugh. At everyone, everything, every detail. Jokes are half of a middle-schooler's conversation.

The Most Often Remembered Part of Middle School

Health

We are back to the health room for diagrams of reproductive organs and lectures on the importance of self-esteem. My teacher talks as little as possible. Mostly, we watch videos. All of the videos are from a series called Degrassi Junior High. Actually, there quite good. And they're Canadian, so they're even better. And they're twenty years old. 

 

For some reason, many people envision health rooms as being full of shy kids who are afraid to speak up from embarrassment. They have obviously not stepped foot in my health classroom. Several kids are so talkative they have to be suppressed. Also, the Internet has not made teaching any easier. It is so overloaded with information, most of health is correcting information, not teaching it.  

 

Health doesn't stay in the health room. If you walked the halls with a tape recorder, you would pick up many conversations about health subjects. Maybe not with terms like 'self-esteem' or 'abstinence', but the general ideas. Students talk very openly with one another, which is important. However, health class information is also used to insult, make others uncomfortable, or to shout out about in the middle of a test. 

It seems, though, that at least the class makes an impact on it's students, which about as good as it can get, right?