Worried About the Wrong Things

by Jacqueline Ryan Vickery

  Notably, there were missing connections between student expectations, after-school clubs, and career opportunities. Sergio probably could have been a candidate for the college-bound track. As a student with decent grades from a first-generation minority household, there were scholarship opportunities available to him. However, his limited access to social capital, combined with a school that presumed his vocational aspirations, he accepted these expectations of his own future. But unfortunately he chose a vocation that is not largely supported by the precarious and unstable film and creative media industry. We see the reproduction of inequity when low-income students’ ideal future aspirations do not meet reality and when their future expectations are not actively supported by nor valued in society. The connected learning model prescribes connections between students’ existing spheres of influence within their learning ecology, yet remains disconnected from the larger systems that structure future opportunities. To a certain degree, the model privileges academic pathways to success (e.g., higher education), and does not alleviate barriers that preclude students from viable career options outside of pursuing a college degree. What I mean by this is that the connections between personal interests and education (both formal and informal) are crucial (as the model iterates), but there remain systematic inequities that preclude students from pursuing practical career options in the absence of higher education. Social media potentially could provide opportunities for students to expand their social networks and access to social capital—thus alleviating opportunity gaps—yet policies and harm-driven curricula inhibited these connections. As has been noted, unlike more established vocational tracks (e.g., automotive industry, hospitality), there are few career options in the creative media fields outside of attaining a college degree (and even then they remain unstable and limited). As such, the connected model still privileges higher education as the preferred career pathway. A missing node needs to be connections to economic opportunities via vocational pathways.

  Further, the Digital Media Club and Cinematic Arts Project unintentionally—and perhaps problematically—began to attract other students who were on the vocational track. Or, more accurately, students on the college-bound track were less invested in the club and were even dropping out of it. For example, Jack (17 years old, white) was the son of two college-educated parents; his mother worked in the tech industry and his father worked for the state. He and his friends were on the college-bound track and were on the golf team together. Jack was a talented filmmaker whose short film won an award at a local festival. In an at-home interview, his mother expressed support for Jack’s interest in film and said she was glad he had found something about which he was passionate. However, despite his interest in film and media, and despite external and family validation for his talent and creativity, he dropped out of the film club the following semester. He explained that the reason for this seemingly unexpected decision was that he “didn’t feel like part of the team” and didn’t fit in with the other members. He also mentioned feeling alienated when the other students would start speaking Spanish, a language he didn’t understand. From my observations of the Cinematic Arts Project, it was apparent that Jack was on friendly terms with everyone in the club but didn’t socialize with the other members outside of the club. Further, because he was on the college-bound track, he was taking different classes than the majority of the clubs’ members.

  The social aspects of the media and film clubs mediated the students’ experiences, their expectations, and the values they attached to their own practices. Although Jack enjoyed creative media production, he valued it as a hobby and a personally meaningful interest, rather than as a necessary component of his future success. Jack expected to go to college and was actively pursuing many different interests, film merely being one of them.11 Even though the Tech Apps class appealed to students on both tracks, over time the Digital Media Club and the Cinematic Arts Project increasingly attracted marginalized students—misfits who were not involved in a lot of other clubs12—and students who were on the vocational track. Others in the school began to perceive the clubs as vocational. One explanation was that middle-class students, unlike many low-income students, could hang out together at someone’s home and utilize home computers for the same kinds of activities that low-income students utilized in the clubs. For example, Jada (16 years old, black) and her friends would make music videos together on the weekends, using their phones, home computers, and unrestricted access to YouTube (see chapter 5). What was unfortunate was the expectation that the Digital Media Club and Cinematic Arts Project should fit within a college or vocational framework imposed by the school. Arguably, digital media production should also be valued as an outlet for creativity, self-expression, empowerment, social change, and socialization—much in the same way that we view traditional literacy and writing. Students who are good writers do not necessarily join poetry clubs, a school newspaper, or creative writing clubs as a manifestation of vocational or college aspirations; rather, they may do so in order to express ideas, identity, and creativity with peers. In a similar way, the media clubs could have served the needs and met the expectations of both college-bound and vocational-track students, whose desires and goals were diverse and for whom the clubs would be meaningful in different ways.

  Sergio’s and Javier’s stories illustrate the importance for young people to not only find a passion and support for one’s interests, but also to find a way to navigate systems that will support long-term goals and career expectations. Two years after graduation, Sergio was working in a retail job to help financially support his mother. He had taken some film classes at a community college at night, but his education was moving slowly. He maintained an interest in film; however, despite his high school aspirations and expectations, he had faced many difficulties in pursuing film without the institutional support of the school. In the two years since graduation, he had casually collaborated on one film project with his girlfriend and a former mentor from the film club; they had made a short music video based on the popular Harlem Shake meme.13 He had not completely abandoned his film goals, but he was considering earning an Associate’s degree to further his retail career. The vocational-track courses at Freeway High prepared marginalized students with interests in the creative industries neither for higher education nor for jobs. The career expectations and aspirations of marginalized vocational-track students remained disconnected from realistic potential opportunities available in the current labor market.14

  Javier, on the other hand, succeeded not through navigating local opportunities and pathways but by returning to his homeland only four years after leaving it. He went back to Mexico after graduation to live with his sister (two years older than he) and work on films. She was already socially connected and established there as a film student, and Javier was able to collaborate on projects with her and her friends. In contrast with challenges Sergio faced in the United States, Javier was able to capitalize on his sister’s connections, resources, and knowledge of social structures. After taking a year off, he joined his sister in film school in Guadalajara, where he was still perusing a film degree at the time of writing. Sergio had the emotional support of his family, but he did not have the structural and social support that Javier’s family offered. For example, Javier talked about applying to private film schools in the US, but had been advised by his parents to pursue an education in Mexico, which was an economically wise decision to save money. Although the Cinematic Arts Project and Digital Media Club provided Javier and Sergio with skill sets, opportunities, and personally meaningful experiences that were valuable in their own rights, they were unable to help Sergio overcome the barriers and challenges he faced as a low-income high-barrier immigrant in the US. There were too many disconnections between his expectations of the future and the school’s ability to prepare him for the structural barriers he faced after graduation. This serves as an explicit example of how overly focusing on individualized risk often comes at the expense of opportun
ity. How might Sergio’s experiences and expectations been different had federal, state, and local policies been driven by expectations of opportunity rather than harm? What if the school had invested more effort, resources, curriculum, and policies in creating equitable opportunities for marginalized students rather than policing technology in an effort to eradicate risk? As was noted throughout the first part of the book, rules and policies may reduce some risks—exposure to inappropriate content and people—but they also exacerbate other risks—namely social and economic inequities.

  Gabriela: Competing Expectations of the Well-Connected

  When I first met Gabriela (16 years old, Mexican-American), in the fall of her tenth-grade year of high school, she had dreams of traveling the world to take photographs. She was also contemplating getting into wedding photography or portraits, but was mostly interested in nature, architecture, and candid photography. Through her enrollment in the Tech Apps courses and her involvement in the Digital Media Club, she was learning how to use photo-editing software, as well as how to do web design. She enjoyed “playing with photos” and liked to digitally manipulate her images.

  Figure 7.5 Gabriela’s learning ecology.

  The adults in Gabriela’s life valued her interests and talent and were mostly supportive of her aspirations. For example, her uncle—a semi-professional photographer—helped her purchase her first camera. Gabriela had limited mobility options, since her home was located in a disconnected suburb that was not well served by local transportation. However, she and her father shared a close relationship, and he would often drive her downtown to take photographs on the weekends. She enjoyed candidly photographing the busier scenes of the city life—people strolling among the city skyline, bikers crossing the city’s river on one of its many unique bridges, or dogs playing in the parks. Her home life was unusual but loving and stable. Her working-class parents were divorced but were cohabitating after several years of living apart. Gabriela and her 12-year-old sister shared the master bedroom, and each of her parents occupied one of the guest rooms. Gabriela’s side of the room was plastered with photos she had taken, photos taken by her uncle, and images torn from magazines. Practically every inch of the wall was covered in photos, art, and bulletin boards with pictures of her friends. It was obvious that photography was a passion.

  Gabriela was respectful of her parents’ desires for her; she did her best to follow her parents’ rules and meet their expectations. Her parents saw education as important to Gabriela’s future and made it clear that they expected her to earn good grades, and for the most part she did. One afternoon she told me that her latest history grade hadn’t been very good, and I asked her what she was going to do about it. She replied: “When my grades go down, I know I can usually fix them on my own. I get help from the teacher after school and catch up. But if I couldn’t [handle it], well, yeah, I would tell my parents. They have friends who could tutor me; they help me and my sister in school however they can.” Gabriela was a good student who surrounded herself with friends who also cared about earning good grades and doing well in school. She and her friends discussed their grades, expected to go to college, and supported one another academically.

  The different nodes in Gabriela’s life were well supported and connected. For the most part she enjoyed school, or at the very least knew how to do school well. She found outlets and support for her creative interests in after-school activities and involvement in the Digital Media Club. She shared a mutual respect for many of the adults in her life who were able to offer her emotional and material support. Her working-class parents strived to provide the best for their daughters and saw media and technology as an investment in their future; each member of the family had their own mobile phone and personal computer and their home had gaming consoles, two televisions, music, books, and a high-speed Internet connection. Her father explained that he viewed technology as an investment in his daughters’ academic futures and also thought it brought the family together; they enjoyed playing video games together or having family movie nights on the weekends.

  Although her father—who sold and installed window and door screens—was supportive of her interests, he nonetheless worried that Gabriela needed a more “stable career option” than he believed photography would provide. While encouraging her to pursue photography as a hobby, he wanted her to consider nursing. Gabriela was ambivalent about nursing; she told me she was considering it just to please her parents. Her mother did custodial work at a local hospital and occasionally took Gabriela to work with her so she could see what the hospital environment was like. Neither of her parents had more than a high school education; they had emigrated from Mexico in their twenties, and had worked hard to provide a stable life for Gabriela and her sister. Hoping that Gabriela would have more financial stability than they had had growing up, they understandably worried about her pursuing a creative career. Their concerns were valid and their expectations were reasonably influenced by their own class position—that is, pursuing a creative career comes with many risks that privileged families are more equipped to support than working-class families (which often do not have a “safety net” of financial savings or a well-connected social network to fall back on if a creative career fails). However, during my time with Gabriela, she only ever got excited about her post-graduation options when discussing photography and art. Nursing was always discussed in terms of something “she was supposed to do” because it guaranteed more financial stability and upward mobility than photography. She was torn between her own passions, talent, and aspirations and her parents’ expectations, advice, and desires for her life. Gabriela was facing an internal crisis regarding her future decisions and pathways.

  In comparison with many of the other students involved in the Digital Media Club, Gabriela was not as marginalized as many of the other first-generation immigrant young people. Although her parents were divorced, they still lived together, and both played active roles in her life. Though they did not have money for college, they had provided Gabriela with the support she needed to explore her interests, goals, and academics. Her parents were connected to upwardly mobile friends with more social capital that Gabriela could tap into for advice and support. Though she often spoke Spanish in the home, both of her parents spoke English at work. Her peer group consisted of assimilated Mexicans who were college-bound.15 In other words, she and her family were upwardly mobile and connected to middle-class society in ways that many other marginalized immigrant families at Freeway were not. However, despite her positive academic disposition, good grades, academically supportive peer group, and future-oriented aspirations, her parents feared that Gabriela was at risk of facing financial hardships if she pursued a career in the creative arts. They did not want their daughter to struggle with the same financial hardships they had faced; understandably they viewed a career in the medical field as a more secure and less risky career option than photography.

  Through her enrollment in the Tech Apps course and her participation in the Digital Media Club, Gabriela discovered a career pathway that connected her creative interests to her parents’ class expectations: advertising and graphic design. Through his connections in the local community, Mr. Lopez arranged an opportunity for students in the Digital Media Club to tour the local advertising office of a major national tech company. The students learned about the creative and business sides of advertising and had an opportunity to meet with working professionals at the company. During our final meeting, Gabriela told me—with a huge smile on her face—that she had decided to pursue a career in advertising, with a focus on graphic design because it combined her love of photography and images with a more stable career path than photography alone. This was by far the most excited discussion of her future goals I had ever heard from Gabriela. With help from Mr. Lopez and the Digital Media Club, Gabriela put together an online photography portfolio and landed a summer internship with a local advertising agency and gained professional experience working alongside media
professionals.

  In the eight months I spent with Gabriela, I saw her interest in photography evolve from a passion to an identification that allowed her to explore new career paths. It is worth speculating about the extent to which her father’s desires for his daughter were gendered: he wanted her to achieve a stable career (as a nurse, but not a doctor) without disrupting traditional gender norms and expectations (which professional photography would have challenged). Advertising provided a compromise between stability and gendered expectations—and Gabriela assured me that her father was supportive of her new career aspirations. Although her new career path fit with her father’s gendered expectations (almost half of those in the advertising industry are women), it is important to note that the advertising industry is still overwhelming white (80 percent)—Hispanics account for only 10 percent of the industry (Grillo 2015; Labor force statistics 2014), and thus advertising is not a typical career path for a minority student such as Gabriela. However, through the connections and opportunities that the Digital Media Club provided, and with her parents’ support, Gabriela was able to explore options she had not previously identified or cultivated on her own. A year after the study ended, I followed up with Gabriela via Instagram, and later email. She was living with a relative in Florida and enrolled in classes at a community college.

  Connected learning across all nodes of her learning ecology helped Gabriela establish and seek realistic expectations that were structurally supported and valued. Significantly, though, her family was better connected and more upwardly mobile than many of the immigrant families in the study, which undoubtedly played a role in helping her navigate a pathway to success. School played an integral role in helping Gabriela navigate pathways that connected her interests and goals, but her family also took on the responsibility of helping to create these pathways. Understandings of risk and opportunity position these choices as individualized, but class position structures options in inequitable ways. Gabriela’s family was able to shape her options in beneficial ways that are not afforded all students. Mentors such as Mr. Lopez (among other teachers at school) encouraged Gabriela to enroll in AP courses and to consider college as a stepping stone to future success. Additionally, her assimilated parents and extended family helped provide Gabriela with the social and cultural capital she needed to negotiate her expectations with the structural and material reality of achieving her goals. The different nodes of Gabriela’s life—academic, familial, peers, home, extracurricular, and personal interests—were actively connected with one another and intentionally supported her expectations and goals in realistic ways. Similar to Javier’s story, the connections between Gabriela’s home, academic, and personal interests were also privileged within and supported by higher education (as a pathway to a career) more than they would have been within the creative industry without a college degree.