“By high school, many adolescents report that being part of a crowd stifles identity and self-expression (Larkin, 1979; Varenne, 1982)—a perception that may account partly for the instability in crowd identification during middle and late adolescence. Research with a national sample showed that two-thirds of individuals changed crowds between grades 10 and 12” Kinney, 1993; Strouse, 1999 (as cited in Collins&Steinberg, 2008).

In the school I am currently student teaching, it is common for my cooperating teacher and I to stay in an empty classroom and utilize that time for planning, grading, and just simply regrouping. Sometimes students come by and ask to sit in the classroom with us for their lunch period presenting us with questions/ justifications for not wanting to eat in there such as: “I just hate that loud.”, “I need to study and want some peace and quiet…”, “It smells weird in there so can we please eat in here?”, etc. We typically allow for those few students, sometimes varies, to eat with us and be in a more comfortable space. It’s interesting to get students-many times ones you may not teach or know. Well anyways, relating to this quote, last week nobody had been by and with only twenty minutes left of the lunch period a freshman girl walked into our classroom saying “Can I please eat in here today? I don’t like the cafeteria because I don’t have anyone to sit with”. It goes without saying that of course we let her come in and stay in the classroom. We asked her if her friends are in another lunch period and out spilled all the tea. This little girl went on about telling us how her friends are in that lunch period but ignore her and don’t include her in their conversations. Basically, my CT spent the rest of that time intensely listening to what she was saying. I got to listen to this student express her loneliness and difficulty to fit in at school and even at home. She told us that she is accepting her “place in the world”, which is an individual that must live in social isolation. There is much more to this story than I am here mentioning, but this girl also shared that “nobody cares about who I am” and that she is just a “balloon” on this planet that floats around without a set group of people she can lean on, talk to, or feel accepted by. She quoted a phrase along the lines of “Everybody loves a winner, and I am not a winner” and said “for people like me, in life we have to figure out how to get odds in our favor”. Of course we talked to her and while listening to her, doing our best to guide her towards a thinking that doesn’t undermine the person she is, that she embraces who she is, and pointed out positive aspects of her character, among other things. The conversation overall went well but her struggle with peers and cliques is so real and burdens her on a daily basis to the point where she is hiding. She was a very outspoken, talkative individual, who excels academically (based on what she told us) so as educators I think that it is easy to forget that there is far more than meets the eye. This student might not seem like she is struggling, n o”red flags” may ever appear, but who is helping her? Who is guiding her? How can we be more aware of this in more ways than just theoretically?, and how can we be of assistance/ do the right thing?
Relating back to the quote at the top of this post, the conversation also took a turn towards what cliques are, how they change as time goes by, etc. She said that she doesn’t feel like she “belongs” to any social group in particular right now, and we told her that cliques change and that it’s still pretty early on in the year, and implied the importance of communication. We mentioned the importance of letting those that surround you know how you feel, and practicing the development of this skill of self-advocacy and keeping it diplomatic/not offensive to others (there are also reasons why the CT and I emphasized this) can help her be able to make sure her own needs are met. The point is, the experience I have shared here in the blog was before I had read the article by Collins & Steindberg (2008) and immediately felt compelled to share this story. Social status and social circles can be of utter importance to adolescents and it’s something to keep in mind and not disregard.

I think we have to get the message across to our students that we are not only here to be teachers, we are here to guide them in other facets of life and that we can be here for them if they ever feel they need us/ have nowhere else to turn.
Adolescents, as we’ve learned, isn’t a “black&white, ABC-123” type discussion, and it’s evident that students are in need of support. But I noticed that I felt I need to reflect more on how to respond to students when I either notice something/ they come to me. I want to avoid the deficit narrative and just listen to them if that happens to be what they need.
After speaking with one of my classmates about this actually, I realized that I did kind of begin to fall into the deficit model of worry and assuming things about the child. I need to be careful with that because 1) I do not know the child well enough 2) The way I can be of service is just listening to the child and (depending on the situation) asking them questions to further extend their thinking (I need to get better at scaffolding). Most of my thinking patterns were “What would happen if…” , “Could X be happening to her?” , with an undertone of worry. This was my first experience with a student that came to my CT and I out of the blue spewing out personal emotions and I am now practicing my own self reflection of how to respond.