William Cody Garren
For this assessment I am choosing Juan from the Martinez family. Juan’s main issues
include gang affiliation, drug dealing, loss of motivation for hobbies, distancing from the family,
and him dropping out of school. The most relevant issues are gang affiliation and drug dealing.
The reason these are the main ones is because these are illegal and can make his future far more
dangerous than the others. Not only can these possibly end in prison time, they could also get
him killed because of gang violence or people wanting to rob him for his drugs and money.
The gang affiliation and dropping out of school as well as the distancing from his family
seem to shed the most light on how Juan is coping with the loss of his father and the changing of
his social systems. These behaviors and actions seem to show that he is seeking belonging in
whatever way he can. The gang affiliation may be his way of feeling a part of something that he
is needed. The family distance also seems to show his discomfort with the new family system
and maybe that is why he spends most of his time away from home. This also brings up the gifts
he brings home when he does visit, this seems like a way of feeling need too by being able to
provide for the family. Dropping out of school to me shows his discomfort with all the changes
and maybe that he feels like he can't go to school because it does give him purpose like the gang
of gifts for his family do.
Using all this information I feel that Juan shows that he is having difficulties with his
Social Construction of Reality. I see this because everything he is doing seems to show that his
reality is not how others believe it is. Since all of Juan’s behaviors are from Elena’s perspective,
she seems to look at his behaviors are rebellious or lack of caring on his part, but his reality may
be very different by how his actions show his possible underlying issues. The other perspective I
thought about what system one thinking. For Juan he seems to be using system 1 thinking about
his life and what he should be doing. When his shrugged off the possibility of trying out for the
William Cody Garren
baseball team at the new school without thinking about the reasons it could be beneficial which
would be system 2 thinking. The use of only system one thinking has caused him to make
decisions that may negatively impact his life in the future because he hasn’t thought about all of
the consequences.