Blog post 5

The book I’m reading for bookclub is “Just Girls: hidden literacies and life in junior high.” The first chapter was boring. The author just talked about how she went about her research, she didn’t really give information that came out from the research. It was more of an explanation of her set up than of the results or what she learned or gathered from her studies.

One thing that I found interesting in the first chapter of the book is when the author talks to both of her groups of girls that she is studying, the “social queens” and the “tough cookies” and asks both groups to tell her how they would like for her to present them and both groups of girls, even though they come from very different socioeconomic backgrounds (the social queens= the popular rich girls and the tough cookies= the smart not so popular girls), tell the author to present them as just girls, normal girls. It would’ve been a good idea for the author to get both of the groups definitons of just normal girls. How would they define what being just a normal girl as?

In the book the author writes about the buzz around the yearbook being such a big thing since mostly 7th grade and above get to oreder one. The yearbook is a distinction between the 7th graders and the grades below them; there is a sense of status surrounding the older grades and being able to order a yearbook. There is also a sense of belonging that follows the yearbook. Kids are always trying to find themselves in photos. The photos present a membership in clubs, which in turn gives certain privleges, awards, duties, and organization skills to those that belong to a certain club. High value is placed on extracurricular activities because participation, membership, competition, academic success, keep kids involved. The author points out that sports, drama, club activities are seen as cocurricular activities rather than extracurricular activities.

The yearbook is seen by teachers and staff as a symbol of solidarity among the student body but some students still see it otherwise, like belonging to a club and other students are considered outsiders when it comes  to who they will let sign their yearbook or whose yearbook they will sign because they still hold class distinctions among their peers. Observing both groups of girls during yearbook signing Tiffany (“leader” of the social queens) says that everyone wants her to sign their yearbook. Tiffany and her friends look to see how many times they are in the yearbook to get a sense of belonging, while Cleo (“leader” of the tough cookies) and her friends didn’t purchase and aren’t signing yearbooks because none of them were in the book anyway. Economic status puts a limitation on some kids and their families in the participation of school activities since they mostly always cost some kind of money to be a part of. One parent of a “tough cookie” girl said why does the school think that they have this kind of money? I agree that there is limitations that keep certain groups of people from participating in school activities and that schools sometimes don’t see that, it’s something that seems to go over their heads.