Shadowing two adolescent girls throughout their school day for this case study, I felt like Hunter S. Thompson reporting from the presidential campaign trail of 1976 -- an intrepid New Journalist, not just reporting as a dispassionate observer, but being there, taking part in the action as well as reporting on it. That was me on the high school shadowing trail, not standing up front in my new teacher spot, but somewhere in back, hemmed in by too many desks, or trailing through loud corridors, looking in vain for a peaceful place to eat an apple. Hunter Thompson called his journalistic experience "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '76." Did I experience fear and loathing in this high school? No, not that. But boredom and fragmentation .... monotony and disconnection ....

The high school is typical of any in this urban school district: a lovely old building, poorly kept. The exterior paint is blistering, the ploughed up athletic field has turned to a quagmire over the winter; the concrete school yard is hemmed in by neighborhood houses, taco and bagel places, beading shops, and retro clothing stores. The interior needs work too: I was struck during my shadowing experience by the sheer physical discomfort of the school day. On hot days, the radiators clonk like timpani, sending up soporific waves of heat; on cold days, they are frigid and silent, and students huddle in wait for a janitor who never comes. There are always great stale piles of Costco muffins on a table somewhere, a fundraising item for the senior class trip, tainting the air with synthetic blueberry and chocolate; there are always pi]es of stray paper, and lost textbooks; there is always a mess.

No sooner do we sit down and warm up to a discussion, than it is time to stand up again and tumble into the noisy flux of hallways; there is, it seems, no space, no privacy, and no time .... The two students I chose to shadow lead complicated lives, as do most adolescents: they fill the roles of daughter, sister, student, friend, team mate, and --perhaps-- sexual partner; they move between school and home and peer groups, making constant behavioral adjustments to accommodate the expectations, scripts, institutions, relationships, and systems their lives encompass. Observing Mia and Megan, I was struck by the rapid-fire transitions and complex interdependencies and interactions, the sheer fracture and flux of their school day. l have used Urie Bronfenbrenner's (1977) ecological approach to try to make sense of the girls' experiences, to identify some of the systems and processes that affect their behavior, and to understand how the interplay of forces in their lives -- family, school, peer group -- profoundly influences their development during adolescence.

The subjects of my case study are two tenth grade students, both European American, both female:

Megan-- pockets full of playdough

I noticed Megan as soon as she walked into the language arts classroom on the first day of a new semester -- there is a kind of nimbus of energy around her even when she is sitting quietly in the back of a crowded classroom. She usually wears long skirts with baggy long johns and hiking boots beneath; and, always, her signature full-length trench coat, all buttons, buckles, and epaulettes whose pockets, I soon discovered, bulge with little pots of playdough. She bears no particular badge of difference -- tattoos or body piercings or radical hair colors -- but she looks distinctive, somehow. Perhaps it is simply that she is so entirely herself, an avowed individual. Once I had chosen Megan for my study, my cooperating teacher told me, in confidence, that Megan is gay. He indicated that she is cherished and supported by her family, seems comfortable and confident in her sexual identity, is open about it among friends, and apparently feels no pressure to adopt a stereotypical lesbian persona. Megan herself, however, did not talk to me about her sexual orientation. Without this prior knowledge, I doubt that I would have picked up on Megan's homosexuality; armed with knowledge, I was sensitive to social interactions and nuances of behavior I would otherwise have overlooked. Although I was not able to talk to Megan directly about this issue, I believe that her sexual identity is a vital part of her, and I have given it a central focus in my interpretation of Megan's development.

Megan told me that she plans to find a college which will offer her three great passions: film, crew, and Chinese. This eclectic mixture of interests is typical of Megan -- she is endearingly individual, articulate, bright, centered. Yet in every class, she is disengaged. She talks to her friends, but not so overtly that she gets noticed; she does the work, more or less, and she contributes as little as possible. Only a tiny part of her rather extraordinary self is there. Often, she pulls the playdough and other small props out of her pockets and builds teetering, baroque towers of pens, chapstick, watch, eyedrops; when the bell rings, she hurls the objects back in her packets and strides off down the hall, greeting and being greeted with evident affection. At lunchtime, Megan met her friend Laura, as she does each day. They greeted each other with a hug and headed outside, arm in arm. Every day, no matter what the weather, they eat outside, just the two of them. In the two weeks I was in the school 1 often observed Laura and Megan together in the hallways or at lunch, walking together with arms linked, greeting each other with hugs. 1 do not mean to imply that this is sexual behavior -- the code of behavior among females at this school clearly allows for displays of affection between friends. And while it is possible that my prior knowledge of Megan's sexual orientation colored my interpretations, my instincts indicated that the aura of privacy and energy around Megan and Laura was evidence of a deeper attachment than peer friendship.

Mia-- huktd on phonics

If Megan crackles with energy, Mia moves within a field of reserve. With her long, straight blonde hair and pre-Raphaelite face, she radiates calm self possession. Mia has dyslexia. Her IEP describes her as an articulate, inquisitive and motivated student with weak visual and auditory/visual recall. The annual goal for Mia's learning program is to increase her reading fluency, word attack, and comprehension skills, and strengthen her perceptual processing. she takes all academic classes in the regular school program; she uses books on tape, has the option to take extra time on tests, and receives extra support through a study skills program.

On the day l shadowed her, Mia was wearing a T-shirt on which was the declaration:

 HUKT ON FONIX  WORKT FOR ME
 
When l asked her about the shirt, Mia laughed. "l guess it is a statement -- it suits me
well." This choice of T-shirt, a public declaration of dyslexia, indicates, I think, the
kind of clear-sighted, wry acceptance of her disability that is typical of Mia.
Although she is an open and articulate person within her peer group and outside of
class, Mia is distinctly passive and quiet in math, in biology, in language arts. She
stays on task, she chats a little to friends, and rarely contributes to class discussion.
Keyboarding seemed to pose special frustrations. Because of her dyslexia,
keyboarding is a laborious process for Mia, and she cannot reach the typing speeds
most of her classmates achieve. Mia told me the business education teacher does not
know she has an IEP. "She just thinks that I'm a really bad typist," Mia said," and
there's no point in telling her the reason why -- after all, it won't be an excuse in the
real world."

Analysis

I was struck by the integrity and strength of character of both Megan and Mia. These are strong girls, girls who are, as Mary Pipher (Reviving Ophelia, 1994) puts it, "steering, not drifting," through their adolescence. They display, I think, an exceptional degree of developmental maturity and commitment to individual identity. Peggy Orenstein (SchoolGirls, 1994) argues that adolescence is a time when "many of today's girls fall into traditional patterns of low self-image, self-doubt, and self-censorship of their creative and intellectual potential." While I believe this to be true, I did not perceive selfdoubt in Mia and Megan. Far from it. And this seemed all the more striking because each girl, because of her sexual orientation or learning disability, deviates from the norm in a developmental period when "difference" often leads to severe identity confusion, conflict, and the erosion of self-esteem. Yet both Megan and Mia seem to have used their differentness to define and strengthen themselves. Cole and Cole (1993) suggest that adolescence is the time when individuals learn how to resolve and integrate multiple and contradictory selves, thereby forging an adult self. Megan and Mia seem very close to achieving that integrated, true self, sturdily preserving it in the face of the intense physical, emotional, academic, and social development they are experiencing. In the crucible of adolescence, they have transformed difference into individuality, "deviance" into uniqueness.

Megan and Mia, then, have managed to fuse their disparate physical, social, and cognitive selves into an integrated identity, and they have done so in the face of often painful issues of sexuality and disability. Bronfenbrenner (1977) defines a mesosystem as encompassing interactions among the major settings in which an individual is found. I believe Mia and Megan's respective mesosystems-- the relationships between their families, school, and peers -- provide them with significant affordances for their development as fully directed and integrated female adolescents.

 Mia's mother is herself dyslexic, and her understanding and active role in Mia's school life have had a powerful effect on the degree to which Mia has positively adjusted to her learning disability. A special education teacher indicated that Mia's mother is exceptionally supportive of her daughter; that she often comes to the school to see how things are going, that she communicates regularly by phone. Mia told me that her mother is an artist; Mia herself has artistic ability, and plans a career teaching elementary school art. Mother and daughter seem to have bonded closely on the basis of their shared abilities and disabilities. The support Mia receives at home extends directly into and interacts with the school microsystem, positively influencing her academic behavior and development. Mia's mesosystem -the joint impact of home and school interactions -- has strengthened her ability to successfully integrate a learning disability into her academic, intellectual, and social development.

Just as the mesosystem within which Mia operates has helped her cope with learning differences, so Megan's mesosystem has shaped her confident individual and sexual identity. As with Mia, the support of family and the active, ongoing connections between school and home appear to have afforded Megan opportunities for healthy sexual and social development. I believe that for both girls, the joint effects and interactions between home and school have strongly and positively influenced their behavior and development, diminishing the confusion and tension they must feel during the identity-forming process.

Cole and Cole suggest that the resolution of sexual identity is one of the fundamental issues with which adolescents must deal in their transition from child to adult. I think it is probable that Megan's school-peer group mesosystem has helped her assimilate her homosexuality into the confident, fully integrated identity she appears to have achieved. It is a significant factor in Megan's development that her ecological environment encompasses a high school which is more supportive of homosexual students than is typically the case. There is a strong gay and lesbian support group which acts as an information and communication resource for families; there is a group of "safe teachers" to whom homosexual students can go for help; and most teachers in the school seem to recognize and fulfill their obligation to counteract stereotyping and prejudice against sexual minorities. Watching Megan as she moved through her school day, it seemed evident that though she is fairly open about her sexual orientation, she is not shunned, but very much liked and accepted by her peers. Richard Troiden (1988) describes four stages in the development of a homosexual identity, from "feeling different" through identity confusion, identity assumption, to full commitment to a homosexual lifestyle. According to Troiden, certain stages are accompanied by such behaviors as trying to "pass" as heterosexual or assuming stereotypical homosexual ways. I noticed none of this in my observation of Megan. And while it is unrealistic (and certainly beyond the bounds of my limited data) to assume that a sixteen year old girl has achieved a fully integrated, mature sexual identity, it seems clear that Megan does not exhibit extremes of behavior; nor is she alienated from family, peers, or self. She is apparently negotiating the development of her homosexual identity with considerable grace and confidence.

Beyond her particular sexual orientation, of course, there is a broader change occurring for Megan which is common to all adolescents: the reorganization of social life and accompanying shifts in interactions among family and peers (Cole and Cole). This reorganization in fact constitutes an important ecological transition for Megan -- one of those myriad shifts in role or setting which an individual experiences in the course of a lifetime (Bronfenbrenner). It is happening for Megan, and for Mia, for all their classmates and their classmates' parents: a sometimes difficult renegotiation of roles, responsibilities, and power relations.

I have argued that Mia and Megan have turned a sexual or learning difference into an organizing principle for the conception of self. This is a critical developmental advance, facilitated by mesosystems which have enabled the growth of unusually integrated, authentic, self-directed personalities. However, when I looked more closely at the microsystems the girls encounter in school, I found a disturbing picture. Megan and Mia move in and out of many classroom microsystems in the course of the school day: each one disparate, relatively rigid in structure, and utterly disconnected from other classrooms and other subjects. There is a complete lack of coherence to the school day. Mia moves from the personal frustrations of keyboarding with a teacher dressed in a fuschia power business suit, to Spanish, where she must sit tight in her seat and watch Julio Iglesias warble lasciviously, to the intense demands of a forty-minute-long math test. In one class she is required to pafficipate in physical activity; in the next she must concentrate on complex cognitive tasks. And all around her gusts the social and emotional life of the class -the random whispered conversations, the notepassing and muffin-buying and surreptitious sleeping. In the face of all this, both girls seem to have disengaged themselves. They were were usually attentive, but quiet and passive. They stayed on task and out of discussion: Megan built her towers, each of them chatted a bit, but not disruptively, with peers; but they remained disengaged and unexcited.

Csikszentmihalyi and Larson (1984) suggest that classes that have concrete, rather than abstract goals, and involve students in physical participation, tend to promote increased motivation and positive affect in students. This was certainly true for Mia and Megan. Mia was more energetic and engaged in a stage production class than at any time in the school day except the lunch hour. She sat happily on the auditorium stage in the midst of hammering and singing, sorting musical scores, chatting with classmates, and eating bagels. Similarly, Megan came alive during a photography class, looking at different kinds of film, talking enthusiastically about the pictures she intended to take. Clearly, the class microsystems which involved sensory activity and offered a less structured, less abstract, and less controlled environment, roused the girls from their habitual apathy.

Csikszentmihalyi and Larson argue that the success of school rests on how effectively it can engage students' interest, motivation, and attention. In this respect, the majority of classroom microsystems in Megan and Mia's lives fail miserably. Both girls are alienated from school. , They are bright and college bound; they get reasonably good grades in all subjects. Each, I think, has a sense of her own innate competence and potential; yet neither has any confidence in school as a place to express and expand her competence and interests. Megan said, "I'm bored all day. That's why I bring the playdough. It keeps me amused."   Like Megan, Mia is disaffected. "All my classes are boring. I hate my classes; it's always like this," she told me flatly. Yet Mia's teachers characterize her as highly motivated and organized. It is true that she works incredibly hard to counteract the effects of her learning disability. "Everything takes me so long -- homework, studying for tests -- it's stressful and miserable," she said. '`That's partly why I like art so much. I'm better than normal at it -- it makes me feel really successful."

It seems clear that while the girls function well enough academically, the various classroom microsystems in which they live do not adequately support their cognitive and social needs. Even in language arts with Mr. Jennings, a popular teacher with a gift for stimulating lively discussion, both girls are alert, but silent. They sit in a far corner in an ethnically diverse female cluster. This is a class which contains several at-risk and behavior-disordered boys, and Mr Jennings is focusing his attention and energy on them. The boys are responding well, discussing male vs. female values in A Raisin in the Sun with gusto, but Megan and Mia and most of the other girls are sliding by, remote pafficipants. Megan told me later that she has noticed that Mr Jennings habitually directs his attention to the right front rows of the class; she deliberately places herself outside this pattern of interaction. Perhaps Megan and Mia have internalized the classroom script that enforces passivity, deference, and silence in female students. And yet these girls have an appropriate sense of their own competence and individuality. l suspect that Megan and Mia are so disengaged because they see school as a place where their creative and intellectual potential will not be realized. They are disaffected because they are in an environment which consistently fails to meet their psychological needs.

Csikszentmihalyi and Larson argue that students need "long periods of stable, patient attention focused on structured topics." What Megan and Mia get instead are abrupt, frequent, and dissonant shifts of setting, activity, and subject throughout every school day. And they react by stifling their own creativity, spontaneity, and eloquence in class: they simply have no confidence in schooling as a meaningful and interesting activity.

As I observed the girls' social interactions throughout the day, I realized that the school environment was also inadequate to the task of supporting their social and emotional development. Cole and Cole suggest that during adolescence peer friendships take on increasing complexity and intensity: adolescents increasingly look to friends, rather than family, for intimacy, affirmation, and a sense of identity. It follows, then, that developing adolescents need school environments which will afford them opportunities for establishing healthy, supportive friendships and sexual relationships as they detach themselves emotionally from their families. Eccles, Midgley et al. (1993) argue that much of the psychological upheaval and dislocation associated with adolescence is not intrinsic to the developmental stage, but may result from a mismatch between the needs of adolescents and the social environments of home and school. My observations of Megan and Mia's interactions, friendships, and social hierarchies -the peer/school mesosystem experienced by each girl -- lead me to conclude that Eccles et al. are correct. Both Mia and Megan appeared happiest, most relaxed and engaged, during those brief periods in the school day when they could be with friends.

Yet the opportunities school affords them to focus on peer relationships are cursory and inadequate: a hug or word exchanged in a chaotic corridor; an uncomfortable lunch hour; an illicit conversation during class. The school environment is structured so that social networks are fractured, constrained, and disrupted rather than nurtured. There are also minimal opportunities offered for intellectual and social interaction with peers during instruction: I observed few collaborative assignments or activities and little use of small group discussion. Rather than harnessing adolescents' social energy in the service of learning, the classroom microsystem fights against it. In almost all of their classes, Megan and Mia are required to listen passively to the teacher,
or carry out individual tasks in isolation. Socializing in the classroom is a
diversion, an illicit activity. Eccles et al. suggest that motivation is negatively affected when students are in environments that fit poorly with their developmental needs. I believe this is part of the reason why Megan and Mia are passive, bored, and alienated in their classes: their intellectual and social needs are simply not being met by the school microsystems.

 Participating in the girls' respective lunch hour experiences provided me with another striking example of the lack of affordances for social development provided by the school. Not only is there too little opportunity for peer interactions provided throughout the school day -- there is no place for students to go to be with friends. The lunch room reeks of hot grease and reheated pizza; it is noisy and heavily segregated. White students, for whatever reason, choose not to congregate there. There is a tiny room with three plastic chairs and snack and soda vending machines -- and that is all. There are no benches outside, no common spaces, no welcoming places for students to be together within the school building or grounds. Every lunch hour Megan and Laura are driven to seek each other's company in a frigid doorway; every day Mia meets members of her clique -- a group of pleasant, affectionate girls among whom she is happy and relaxed -- and because there is nowhere to go, they wander . From the snack machine to somebody's locker to the restroom, where they inspect someone's photographs of the last school dance, chatting and laughing, sharing a bag of pretzels, always on the move. On the day I shadowed Mia, we eventually washed up on the concrete floor of the cafeteria basement, with security guards and janitors stepping over our legs as they went to and fro. It was uncomfortable, disruptive, and inconvenient -- in short, it was school. It is a testament to Mia and Megan's perseverance and self reliance that they develop healthy peer relationships in spite of it all; and it is an indication of the degree to which the school environment consistently fails to meet the developmental needs of adolescents.

Carrying out this case study was an eye-opening, and sobering, experience for me. Even as I shadowed the girls, roaming the halls, figthing sleep in boring classes where the heat was cranked too high, I was recalling John Taylor Gatto's "A Few Lessons They Won't Forget." Gatto suggests that modern schooling methods are profoundly anti-educational, that they engender confusion, debased self esteem, and intellectual dependency among students. Much of what I saw and felt as l experienced Megan and Mia's school day from the inside leads me to endorse Gatto's arguments. l believe that the high school environment, with its endemic monotony, discomfort, and disjointedness, consistently fails to foster the social and cognitive development of adolescents. Schools, after all, are meant to befor students. And yet students are given no privacy, no time, no space, no place to simply be. Gatto claims that schooling actually prevents effective personality development. And yet while my observations indicate that their school is not adequately meeting the needs of Megan and Mia, they show no signs of suffering from distorted personality development. Indeed, I thought they both displayed admirable strength of character and maturity. I have argued that Mia and Megan are exceptional in the degree of identity integration they have achieved. But perhaps after all they are not exceptional: perhaps most adolescents are potentially as resilient, resourceful, and competent. I hope so .... until high schools are restructured to nurture students rather than constrain them, adolescents are going to need all of their considerable resources just to survive school.
 

SOURCES

Bronfenbrenner, Urie. "Toward an Experimental Ecology of Human Development" American Psychologist, July 1977.

Cole, Michael, and Cole, Sheila (1993). The Development of Children (2nd Edition), New York: Freeman.

Csikszentmihalyi, M, and Larson, R (1984). Being Adolescent N.Y: Basic Books.

Eccles, Midgley, Wigfield, Buchanan, Reuman, Flanagan, and MacIver. "Development During Adolescence," American Psychologist, February 1993.

Gatto, John Taylor. "A Few Lessons They Won't Forget." The Sun.

Orenstein,Peggy (1994). SchoolGirls NewYork: Doubleday.

Pipher, Mary (1994). Reviving Ophelia New York: Ballantine Books.