A Summary of Not Much Just Chillin': The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers - Essay Example

A Summary of Not Much Just Chillin The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers Rachna Jalan Not Much Just Chillin The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers –A SummaryNot Much Just Chillin’ is a fascinating window through which the minds of middle schoolers can be easily viewed. Through her one year observation amidst the lives of a group of suburban Maryland middle schoolers, award-winning education reporter Linda Perlstein has impeccably presented an out of the ordinary portrait of exactly what goes on in the hearts and minds of the hormone-charged world.

Five students along with their friends represent the hidden perspectives of children trapped between childhood and high school (Perlstein, 2003). In her chronicle, Perlstein introduces us with eight-grader Eric Ellis, an unmotivated African-American boy both intense and jaded due to life at home, seventh-graders Jackie Taylor and Elizabeth Ginsburg (Perlstein, 2003). While Jackie who is getting accustomed in dealing with infatuations with opposite gender is shown to be only obsessed with relationships, Elizabeth is an over-attaining only child whose patent reply is “nothing” to every question of her parents (Perlstein, 2003).

Other characters are the sixth-graders Jimmy Schissel, an unhappy chap due to his changing body and Lily Mason, whose sole centre of attention is on wearing and doing the right thing (Perlstein, 2003). The never-before explored navigation of the middle schoolers along with sweeping transformations in their bodies and their relationships with parents, teachers, and friends has been an ideal attempt for understanding their mysterious emotions. “Suddenly they go from striving from A’s to barely passing, or obsessing for hours over “boyfriends” they’ve barely spoken to.

Former chatterboxes answer in monosyllables; free-thinkers mimic their peers’ clothes, not to mention their opinions” (Perlstein, 2003). The chronicles reveals how the transforming years from childhood to adolescence superficially present to be “just chillin’” while the internal picture surprisingly reveals a mishmash of anxiety, zeal, conformity and rebellion. This age of puberty known as the “don’t-touch-me façade” is actually a phase when “children don’t want to grow up, and so badly do” (Perlstein, 2003).

While reading the book one can realize how at such a tender age there arise sudden difficulties in communicating with parents and teachers. Perlstein eloquently describes how the grades of middle schoolers undergo a backdrop due to umpteenth number of distractions emerging out of sadistic gossip, variable friendships, romance, nascent and sometimes even full-fledged sexual instinct (Perlstein, 2003). Extreme observance pressure, fanatical gaming, internet surfing, gay bashing, and “IM”ing also reflect the hidden anxieties and longings of the adolescents (Perlstein, 2003).

Through This We Believe (2003), the National Middle School Association persistently stresses on the fact that schools for young adolescents must be developmentally appropriate. “Every day, twenty million diverse, rapidly changing 10- to 15- year-olds enrolled in our nation’s middle level schools are making critical and complex life choices.” (National Middle School Association, 2003: 1). The developmental characteristics have been described as (Anfara, Mertens & Caskey, 2007):Physical development focuses on various physical transformations like increases in weight, height, heart-size, lung capacity, muscular size, secondary sex characteristics, protruding ears, long arms, etc.

The adolescents are also found to be physically vulnerable to adoption of unhealthy habits, making a move towards risky affairs like drugs and sexual activity. Intellectual development allows the adolescents to develop their own reasoning and problem-solving skills, to accept higher sophisticated levels of humor, to become egocentric and extremely inquisitive. Frequently, they are found to lose interest in conventional academic subjects for wanting to explore new areas of interests.Social development too is intense during adolescence.

There appears a sudden difficulty in communication between middle schoolers and their parents.During adolescence the moral or ethical developments reveal being usually idealistic with strong sense of fairness. “They transition from self-interest to considering the feelings and rights of others, making them interested in participatory democracy”.Psychological development is seen intensely in middle schoolers who long for satisfying emotional attachments. ReferencesAnfara, Vincent, A., Mertens, Steven, B.

& Caskey, Micki, M. (2007). The Young Adolescent and the Middle School. IAP, North Carolina. National Middle School Association. (2003). This We Believe: Developmentally Responsive Middle Level Schools. National Middle School Association, USA.Perlstein, Linda. (2003). Not Much Just Chillin’: The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York.