schoolyard as a stage: Missing cultural clues in symbolic fighting, The

Multicultural Education, Spring 2003 by Arriaza, Gilberto

INTRODUCTION

I was walking toward Mr. Stammer, a Mission Middle Academy School vice-principal, who was on his lunch duty in the school's upper yard. That day we had arranged an interview for a report on the school's academic and climate conditions. The sun was bright and the noontime felt transparent and balmy. Then I heard screams at the right corner of the yard coming from a group of about ten girls forming an ominous circle, In the middle of the circle two of them were piercing the calm of lunchtime, calling each other names and getting dangerously closer by the second. Each of the protagonists had her support group encouraging them to fight. They were all Latinas. I clearly heard a girl with long, shining dark hair shouting:

"I'll beat the shit out of this bitch!"

Her tiny body, almost buried into her over-sized khakis and nylon jacket, defied gravity. Her supporters nervously cheered, asking for blood, pushing her to fight. Mr. Stammer approached the group, broke into the middle, and talked to the girl who seemed the most belligerent. He then gently, but firmly, asked this girl to calm down, and after a couple of minutes he persuaded her to accept a face-to-face talk with the other girl, who from a short distance was furiously hurling threats and demeaning words at her rival. The fighters calmed down and agreed to talk. The surrounding group stayed expectant, watching each expression from the protagonists, and observing Mr. Stammer's moves.

Mr. Stammer then asked each girl for an explanation, one at a time, "to clear things up," he stressed. He listened, standing in between the two, and each girl told her story. "She called me scrap!" said the most aggressive, her cheeks like red peppers, to the cheering approval of her crowd.

At this point Mr. Stammer intervened and asked the group to dissolve. They all reluctantly left the scene. Then Mr. Stammer continued the conversation with the fighters alone. He asked them to explain. The girl being accused responded, "That's what you get, for staring at people and laughing." There was nothing relevant to add to the exchange. Progressively the girls lowered their decibels, and the confrontation was deactivated.

Mr. Stammer asked each girl to think about the actual meaning of what each had said, and then to apologize to each other. After some uncomfortable silence they did so and promised not to escalate the conflict. Mr. Stammer demanded that they stay away from each other. The bell announcing the end of lunch break rang. Nothing happened later on that day.

Fortunately for these children, Mr. Stammer was on yard duty that day. Mission Middle Academy School assigns administrators like Mr. Stammer to a series of shifts patrolling the school's upper and lower yards. At times, some teachers and counselors join them. They deal with conflict using their own common sense, educated guesses, and whatever mediation skills they might have, since no institutional conflict mediation program exists.

It was impossible to have known what had happened before the shouting match started. Mr. Stammer and I possibly saw only the culminating act of a process, a snippet of a series of events that came to a clash at that moment in the upper yard.

And yet, one wonders, was this a true violent incident? Or was it a carefully choreographed encounter acted out before a selected audience? This article explores some answers to these questions as it synthesizes key findings of a two-year ethnographic study at Mission Middle Academy, a school located in San Francisco, California.

The research looked at the ways social conflict was enacted, and tried to explain the reasons why the school's staff was issuing enormous amounts of disciplinary referrals even when violent incidents-- physical and verbal-had declined. A central point of this paper is to underscore the value that reading cultural clues-specifically those conveyed through what appears as a fight-might help teachers and educational leaders improve school climate, and thus create a better working condition for adults and children.

In the first section, the article discusses the meaning of symbolic fighting and its impact on school culture; in the second section, the article locates symbolic fighting within the specific context of Mission Middle Academy; and in the last section, the article proposes to redefine the socializing role that social conflict plays in the life of youngsters and adults in schools.

The article's central idea is that climate will dramatically improve in schools once the staff understands the socializing functions of choreographed fighting, approaching it from a pedagogy that sees its potential for transformation, and less from a punitive standpoint.

METHODOLOGY

This study went though two main phases. The first phase took place while I taught at Mission Middle Academy. This experience provided me with the most important entry points into the daily school life of teachers and students, and provided me with lasting professional and personal relationships amongst the staff.