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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Spoiler Alert

If you have not read up through the current posting on this site (Post 15) please be warned that I may discuss some plot spoilers. This is mainly concerned with background information, but there may be some details that slip out in here.

 

Concerning Coyotes:

 
The Standing Up to Life Series is mainly concerned with events during Tiffany’s transition from the boy she grew up as to the beautiful young lady she hopes to become during the mid-1990s. Book 3 occurs more specifically during the 1995-1996 school year. As her life revolves around her time at school, let’s begin with some information about the school she attends.

First of all, here is a map of the First Floor and the Second Floor of her junior high school. There is only a second floor above the original portion of the school. Holden Junior High School began its’ life as the small towns high school, but a larger, more modern high school took its place and it became the junior high school. You may in literature see references to it as Holden Middle School — this is purely brought out by the choice of the speaker. Over the twenty years leading to Tiffany’s time at the school it had officially switched names more times than the students and their parents could count. Both names are used commonly to refer to it. Most recently to the current year of the book the school board designated Holden Junior High the official name on account of its historical relevance to the school.

Due to age of the school it has been added on to many times, with the multistory portion above, and including the office, the oldest section. Next came the cafeteria with the band room, choir room, and gymnasium, then the social studies wing at the south-west corner was the third addition. A smaller addition was added on south of the cafeteria before the last addition to the school, at the northwest side, was built with the only other connection to the second story of the original building. The entire exterior of the building has been built up to match the original stucco exterior that was built on the first portion of the school. Inside is a combination of painted bricks, plaster work, and modern drywall in the newer sections.

The population of the school would surprise many if they did not grow up in the southwest. White Caucasian students only make up about twenty percent of the student body. Forty percent of the population of Holden is made up of Native American students that represent multiple tribes. The Isleta Reservation is one of the larger nearby, but Holden has students of Apache and Navajo descent too. Thirty-nine percent of the school is made up of students of Hispanic descent, and the remaining one percent includes a few students of Asian and African American heritage.

As a result of the racial makeup most of the students of Caucasian descent don’t even notice their minority status because it’s what they’ve grown up with. It does occasionally result in racial problems for Caucasian kids, or occasionally back the other way. The Native American students tend to make many jokes at the expense of themselves, and do occasionally joke with other students that they’re saying something because they’re ‘Indian.’ Contrary to political correctness, that is a commonality in the area where they refer to themselves as ‘Indian’ and not Native American. Let’s be honest… that is a mouthful.

The final important item to know about the student population is that they are largely a poor school. Three of the neighborhoods pull from places like Tiffany’s house which are solidly middle class, two from areas like Amy’s in a bit more upper class, and then dozens of neighborhoods in poorer areas. Many of the students of Native American descent are bused from the reservation or other nearby rural areas where many do not have electricity or running water at home. This has improved some since the time of Tiffany’s tale in the 1990’s, but still is an issue in many places. Many of the Hispanic students also come from economically disadvantaged homes which results in the school being given a status of Title I which gives them additional Federal funds. These funds still leave the school hanging though, and many of the teachers end up spending money out of their own pockets to have the supplies they need for class.

Ultimately this lower economic area status has caused the school to have a relatively high rate of violence within the school due to gang activity. Just prior to the school year Amy’s dad told Tiffany’s parents about a recent police comment to him that forty percent or more of the school was estimated to be involved in a gang. Drug usage was estimated at about the same within the school. The main drug used is marijuana due to its wide availability in the area. Occasionally some of the gang members will gain access to harder drugs or abuse prescription drugs. All of this makes the lower end of the population at Holden potentially volatile. It should be noted that while some of the gangs may be minor, many of them are sponsored by larger organizations that have expanded from areas including California and Mexico as a transport mechanism for drugs to move through the area.

If all of this makes Holden seem like a bleak place to go to school… it can be. Before Tiffany began her transition she regularly ran into some of the members of the gangs. At the beginning of the year though, she became fairly insulated from her problems with the gangs due to one of the leaders saying to keep their hands off of her. Kindness does in fact pay off sometimes!

Lastly the school itself finds itself in a situation where it is being overcrowded. Its population is nearly busting at the seams as Tiffany attends the school, with over 240 students in her grade making the school over 700 in population. Her classes have as many pupils in them as desks, and once in a while that rule is overridden. Most of her classes have at least twenty-five students, some as many as thirty-two. The school district has been aggressively planning to build a third junior high in the district at the time she attended, but it won’t help her. Many of the students have to share lockers and the teachers are fairly overwhelmed in the hallways. Four lunch periods are required to feed the students in the cafeteria.

 

Creating a Safe Environment:

 
Much of the discussion of Tiffany’s plight has centered on Mrs. Henry’s inability to do anything to help Tiffany. Unfortunately she has been left a job that may not be as easy as it seems at face value. Before her predecessor went off the deep end and was ‘asked to step down’ she was in charge mostly of the discipline issues of the school. Her day was made up of attempting to back the teachers up with their many referrals, following up with detention and other consequences, and helping out wherever else there was a fire to put out. With the many gang problems there are always plenty of fires to put out! She has the school resource officer in her office as much as he sits in his.

As of the late part of November though no replacement has started to fill her former spot as assistant principal, so now she’s worrying about her problems as principal and attempting to take care of the problems she used to have. For example she’s had to deal with disciplinary issues with two teachers since she came onboard. She’s also the first contact for parents who are unhappy about anything, and by the time she gets out of meetings with parents, the superintendent, and teachers she’s lucky if she has ten minutes left in the school day. It doesn’t help that her predecessor wasn’t just abusive towards Tiffany, but also was a poor administrator in general, and she’s been left to pick up the shattered remains of the job.

From her mindset she’s just hoping to make it to January when she’s been assured that she’ll have a new assistant principal by then to help her out. She has to worry though that that person will have more experience than her as she just started the previous year as her first year as an administrator. Prior to that, she had a successful ten years of teaching English at the high school.

She has racked her brain about many options, including video camera surveillance, but her budget for cameras doesn’t exist, and in a way it becomes more of a liability. With as many students that are in the hallways during each of the passing periods, for five minutes each time, she doubts that she could even see much on the cameras. It doesn’t help that the school is large enough that monitoring all of the video cameras would be a full time job in itself.

 

Bullying in Schools:

 

School bullying is something that is a very close subject to the heart of this authoress. Most of the events, taunts, and incidents used within this book are either based on her personal experience extrapolated out to a ‘what-if’ scenario, or based on knowledge of other bullying incidents that have occurred that friends have told her about. Junior high school in the United States is generally accepted as the worst time in most students’ lives, even the ones that don’t get picked on. It’s made up of the age group of eleven to fifteen year old hormonal teenagers and that results in some very difficult times.

Kids as a whole do not think the full consequences of their actions out. In fact prior to the 1999 Columbine attack no one really paid much attention to school bullying. While most bullied students do not go out and shoot up a school, most face real psychological consequences as a result of the constant beat down. A student may be bullied for many reasons, but usually it’s like the old saying says, ‘The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.’ In junior high kids are expected to fit within the social norms, if they deviate even a little from that they get taunted.

In Book One Brandon gets chosen due to his small stature and relative immaturity. Barely eleven years old when the year started, he was placed in classes such as gym with boys that were fourteen-almost fifteen. The gap in maturity level there is not easily matched to deal with attacks. His first reaction is the same one he has had since he was a baby, cry. In junior high a boy crying is like blood in the water for sharks. Many boys such as Matt in the first book thrive on seeing such behavior. It makes them feel like they are powerful and much cooler than the victim.

Fortunately for Brandon as the year wore on he cried less and appeared less of a likely target thanks to his two ‘fights.’ After the trip though, and the year began, Tiffany became the target now. Girls are often the victims of just as much bullying as boys, but it’s a quieter affair. The maxi pad and tampon incidents are both things that I am aware of happening to girls at one school. Disgusting, but made to quietly and passive aggressively taunt the other girl. The bully in this case never has to actually do anything directly to the other girl, but gets the satisfaction of sitting back and watching the reaction. They get just as much satisfaction in knowing that they are getting to the other girl.

Girls’ targets are both similar and dissimilar than the boys. They will go after the same ‘nails’ as the boys, but they will also go after targets of jealousy. If they feel there is something that they do better such as Tiffany making the dance team, it will paint a target on them. Subtle taunts or notes tend to be their preferred means of attack, but they may very well get physical or get others to get physical for them. The largest problem is that boys tend to eventually forget a slight against them; girls have longer memories and tend to hold grudges more.

So why Tiffany? Brandon made sense, but Tiffany seems to be in the popular crowd… why is she still being bullied? Many readers have asked if there is an underlying issue here. Mostly it comes down to a combination of the factors from both the boys and girls side. Normally a boy won’t go too far out of their way to bully a girl. It’s frowned on. They might reject her, but they’re not going to actively pick on her. Especially one on a cheer or dance squad. Tiffany however is not seen as a girl by her bullies. They see her solely as an abnormality, the nail that needs to be knocked in place and out of their way. To them Tiffany is just a freak that shouldn’t exist.

The girls however see her as an object of jealousy. She’s not even a natural girl and she beat many of them onto the school’s new dance squad, ‘how unfair is that?’ Her friendships with other girls that are considered cooler and richer than them don’t help in this case. Not to mention the fact that the rumors are going around that she’s dating Kyle, one of the hottest boys in the school. Her participation in the Barbie film that rumors have gone around about her making a lot of money from don’t even help out her friend Nikki either. Unfortunately for Nikki, she is one of the girls who silently is bullied as well because of the film and her own short stature.

What could be done at the time? Not much. During the time of this book research was happening into the issue, but the problem was largely ignored as ‘kids being kids.’ No one really acknowledged the years of anguish and psychological impact that bullying causes. To this day I feel impacted by the bullying that occurred to me as a child. Is it as strong now? No. But there are issues that I often wonder what life would have been like not to have gone through it. Perhaps the gender issues would not have popped up so strongly for me?

The one thing to be grateful for is that at least the issue is being addressed, at least minimally in schools today. In schools that have made an attempt to help bullying, it has been shown to have improved. Nationally the statistics claim that it has gone down across the nation. Does it still happen? Of course! It’s never going to go away. Societies are founded around a set of norms and any time someone is outside of those norms they are going to be ostracized. Just look at history and you’ll see this to be true. What has at least helped is that with the recognition of the bullying as a significant issue consequences are handed out to protect those students better. Unfortunately though, it often catches both students. There are no good answers here.

Would an assembly and a diversity training set help Tiffany in her school? I don’t believe it necessarily would. There is far too much going against her since she is targeted for too many reasons. The group of students behind everything would still be aggressively bullying her. Chances are that the assembly might make everything worse due to a lack of reception by the students. When I was in junior high events like that often resulted in worse problems than helping.

 

Concluding Thoughts:

 

I would like to thank all of you that have commented on the story in the past month. Especially the last week or so I feel like I have indeed hit a nerve that strikes close to many like myself. Please understand that as I write this novel I do not intend to glorify acts such as what have occurred in the novel. Inflicting pain psychologically on Tiffany in this manner is not easy because it reminds me of things from my own past. I think that is largely why this book took so long to write compared to the first two. There are some authors who do in fact get enjoyment on writing items such as these, I am not one of them.

Anything that occurs within this book series occurs only because I believe it is logical that this would occur in this community. It is a fairly conservative community of religions, and that often times results in intolerance to girls like Tiffany. The events are entirely fictional though.

I hope in the end that things work out for Tiffany in her tale. I believe that she embodies many of the hopes and dreams that I and others feel. Thank you all for continuing to indulge me as I tell her story.

Warmly

 

Tiffany Shar