book club post

I am reading Just Girls: Hidden Literacies and Life in Junior High and have successfully read half of it so far. This book will bring anyone back to their middle school years remembering those fun things you and your friends did in class and will also bring up the not so pleasant memories. So far the purpose of the book is to examine adolescent social labels and how these labels tell something about literacy. When my book club met in class we talked about how the labels of adolescent social groups were much more cruel than the social labels from our past. The book states that the good girls at a specific school are called the “woof woofs” because these are the girls that are like dogs, they get barked and demanded at from other peers. Our group remembered the social groups of nerds, popular kids and jocks, band kids, goody-goods, and the teacher pets. Never once were the nice girls considered a target of demand and barks. The woman studying these social roles dresses herself down to look like an adolescent so that the students don’t think of her as an adult or someone to act different around. I really like this book so far because it is easy for me to understand. I remember the social roles of grade school and looking at it from an examining perspective is so cool!