Social Norms By Elfreda Chatman Analysis

Have you ever felt like you act differently at school compared to at home? This is what Elfreda Chatman like to call “small worlds”. Middle school is crawling with small worlds within its own small world. No matter if it is the style you dress or the way you act. Within the small boundaries of the school campus, there is a certain status quo that almost everyone follows.

One of Chatman’s components to a small world is the social norms. social norms means that you should have a clear conscience about the different aspects in your social life. Social norms within a person’s group of friends might be perceived as unusual to another person’s group of friends. For example, if my group of friends were to walk to Trader Joe’s to get ingredients in

A Social Type is the label that people of the community give to you due to your behavior and the people in your small world might act. For instance, when I hangout with my buddies we do a lot of crazy things like running the mile together with chicken hats on under 7 minutes. To other small worlds at our school we might be perceived as “The Bunch of Crazy Athletic Girls.” Another example could be all the kids in Algebra 2 Trig, they can all be considered “The math wizes.” Almost everyone around school knows them, and how they are all brainiacs. To enumerate, people in different small groups will categorize people into certain categories based on how they act and the people they hang out with. It is natural for humans to judge and stereotype, usually within one’s small world they might act the same because it is part of their underlying status quo. This might also cause another small world to label them a certain

Information behavior is the way information travels in order to reach a certain person's small world. At my middle school, most information about who has a crush on who, or who is dating who is spread through person to person gossip or social media. In this case I found out that my swim team friend was dating some guy in my class through person to person gossip. Someone somehow heard about it or saw it, then told a friend in another small world who then told a distant friend in another small world who then told me (and my small world). Another way of spreading information is through social media. For example, when our 8th grade yosemite trip was cancelled, all the 8th grader’s posted on their social media accounts, “8th grade ditch day monday.” This got the word our fast and people ditched school that following monday. Thanks to my clear conscience, and following the status quo of my small world me, along with all of my friends still attended school. If certain teachers or staff need to spread “official” information to the entire school, that is usually done through the morning announcements. The teachers will record themselves and say what needs to be heard, then later that day all the students will watch the announcements in their homeroom class. If you aren’t looking for “official” information, gossip and social media is the normal way information gets around my school, and it seems to work pretty