[CALIBK12] Richie's Picks: JUMPED

[BudNotBuddy at aol.com]

Richie's  Picks: JUMPED by Rita Williams-Garcia, Harper Teen, March 2009, 
167p.,  ISBN: 978-0-06-076091-5 
Dominique: 
"I'm just a  baller.  A guard.  A floor general running the show.  Making  
plays happen on the court.  That's from having eyes on the court; seeing  where 
to be; beating the ball for the steal; reading the D; getting the ball in  the 
hot hands; charging into the paint or taking a charge; shooting from the  
high post. 
"All I have to do is  make him understand that I need my minutes.  My ball 
time while I can still  get it.  I'm not dumb.  This is it.  This and Fourth 
Street  is what I got.  I have to fight grown men just to be picked to  play.  
They be knocking me down just to make me sit down.  Ride the  bench.  Know my 
place.  So this team is all the shot I get.  I'm  done once I'm out.  So this 
can't come down to five points in  science.  This isn't 'Do better next time, 
Dominique.'  This is 'Fix  it now.'" 
Leticia: 
"When you're the  outsider, you should know your situation.  Know who you are 
and when you  step out.  Know what you can and can't do.  Know whose face you 
can be  in and whose jokes you can laugh at.  You should know whose man 
belongs to  who, and even if he's on his own, you should know where he was before 
you came  skipping along.  You can't just arrive on the scene and be jumping in 
 everyone's face.  You gotta know where to step and how." 
Trina: 
"No one had used a  word like that for me.  Aptitude.  She didn't have to 
explain  it.  I got it.  I have the habilidad.  I am apt to make  beauty and 
color. 
"'Look at this  brochure.  This is your new school.'  Her last few words 
played like  music.  She said, 'They have an art program.'" 
For generations  there have been drama and bullying and violence in middle 
schools and high  schools.  What is the big deal?  Hormones clash; problems at 
home  fester and percolate; and prejudices -- whether innate, or picked  up 
from parents and friends -- are acted upon.  The weak get  preyed on by the 
powerful, the minority are put in their place by the  majority.  It's nothing that 
doesn't happen in the rest of the real world  every day, so why should middle 
school or high school be any different?   Sure, sometimes there is some big 
ugly deal like a school shooting.  That  is regrettable, but what can you do?  
Even if school district  budgets were all magically increased in order to try 
and "solve"  the problems leading up to such incidents, there would still be an 
 occasional kid who goes wacko.  If we forgo spending hundreds of  billions 
of dollars in such a manner when there is only a  one-in-ten-thousand chance 
that my child's school will  be involved or a one-in-a-million chance that my 
kid will get  shot (or be a shooter), then isn't that money well saved...even if 
it means  accepting the occasional tragedy in somebody else's school  
district? 
...Or are schools  actually the place to invest more money in order to help 
create the sort of  adults who can turn the world around in unimaginably  
wonderful ways? 
A number  of years ago, the school board for our K-8 district decided to stop 
 funding a Vice Principal position (a.k.a. The Enforcer) at our middle  
school and, instead, fund a full-time school counseling position.   Here are bits 
of our Counselor's profile  page:     
"Children in school  today are arriving with a full array of troubled lives. 
Many children need the  support of a mentor adult to be able to focus on 
school... 
"I am available  daily to students and parents.  My goal is to call each 
student by name and  get to know them academically, socially, and personally while 
they are  [here].  The end of the school year is always bittersweet for me as 
I have  grown quite fond of the graduating class and it is painful to send 
them on their  way... 
"I am out on the  yard daily at lunch and in and out of classrooms all day.  
I want to be  visible and easily accessible to students.  I am available to 
help sort out  the big issues in life as well as the little things that can 
really get a person  down on any given day. The role of school counselor is to 
guide through the  little things and know when students need more help.  If and 
when that time  comes, I talk to the child about more help and gain his or her 
permission to  talk with a parent about professional counseling.  We are also 
fortunate to  have ten hours a week of time from [a professional MFT] so 
children with  limited resources can receive counseling services on campus." 
I think about  this, because it is so frustrating to follow Dominique, 
Leticia, and Trina  through the single day in which JUMPED takes place.  There is no 
 inherently "bad guy" amongst this trio.  But their school -- like so  many 
US schools -- is, for far too many  students, a place of frustration and 
trashed dreams and dead  ends.  There is not one adult with authority who really 
gets what is  going on.   
On one  level, JUMPED is a very simple story that will quickly suck readers 
in:  Dominique is totally pissed off because she is no  longer permitted game 
time -- as per the coach's rules -- after  receiving a 70 on her report card.  
Cute and artsy Trina, prancing  along in her pink sweat outfit before school, 
unwittingly disrespects  Dominique's space in the hallway and so Dominique 
announces to  her sidekicks that she is going to jump Trina at 2:45.   Leticia is 
the only witness to the early-morning incident and when  she phones her best 
friend Bea to tell her about it, Bea insists that  Leticia get involved to 
prevent it or at least warn Trina.   Leticia, whose Zero Period math tutorial is 
the beginning of a  particularly agonizing school day of endless frustrations, 
 contemplates whether or not to actually get involved. 
Just as you begin  getting seduced by the reasonableness of the rules under 
which Dominique is  straining, you begin to see hints of the unreasonableness 
of the education  system at play here.  It is epitomized by a scene in which  
Leticia, who has previously completed Spanish I and Spanish II, is  
unsuccessfully attempting to persuade her guidance counselor  to get her out of the 
French I class in which she was placed (because  the Spanish classes are 
overflowing), and into Spanish III. 
That there is no  adult in whom Leticia can place any trust is, arguably, the 
root of the  impending tragedy.  That there is no adult in whom Leticia can 
place any  trust is one more example of the ongoing failure of education in  
America. 
Sure, this sort of  dehumanizing situation is less likely to take place in my 
district's middle  school.  Our counselor does a truly stellar job, knows and 
interacts  sincerely with every single student in the school, is familiar 
with  the families of all of those students, and is always visible, accessible, 
and  approachable.   
But meeting all  of a school district's needs under public  education's 
current funding mechanism is like trying to stay  warm in bed under a blanket built 
for Barbie.   
I have plenty  of first-hand knowledge of how Leticia's wry  observations 
about the lack of janitorial service at her high school is not  only a symptom of 
large urban schools.  Thirty-one years after California's  Prop. 13 began 
systematically gutting educational funding to the 12% of US  students who live 
here, our middle school campus and classrooms are maintained  at an appalling 
level of cleanliness that was unimaginable in my own school  years.  That Barbie 
blanket don't cover very much in  custodial services.   
Nor does it cover  purchases of new books for the middle school library which 
is staffed only a few  hours per week. 
JUMPED is an intense  and intimate look into a day in the life of three high 
school students who  are set on a collision course and at the decisions 
adolescents make or  avoid that can so irrevocably change everything.   
But -- as some  readers will come to realize -- the choices adolescents make 
or forgo are so  often built upon the value (or lack thereof) that society 
places upon teaching  our children well. 

Richie  Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks _http://richiespicks.com_ (http://richiespicks.com/) 
Moderator, _http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_school_lit/_ 
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_school_lit/) 
BudNotBuddy at aol.com
_http://www.myspace.com/richiespicks_ (http://www.myspace.com/richiespicks) 


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