Worried About the Wrong Things

  Broken Connections: Selena’s Disengaged Expectations

  Selena (17 years old, Mexican-American) was a senior who described herself as “goth.”16 With long hair dyed black, baggy jeans, multiple piercings, dark red lipstick, heavy eyeliner, and heavy-metal-band T-shirts, Selena intentionally presented herself as unapproachable. “I like dark things,” she told me. “Like, I was writing vampire fiction way before Twilight, but, like, the evil kind, not this sparkly shit.” She explained that her family was “weird”: “My mom, she’s chola17 and my dad’s a headbanger, I don’t know how they ended up together. My [21-year-old] brother, he’s all tatted up.18 My [older] sister, she’s a real mess, like, maybe bipolar or something. And my little sister, she’s evil [laughs], nah, but she’s always trying to get me in trouble, yo.” She identified herself and her friends as “ghetto” but not in the “fake” way other students at her school did. Unlike many of the students at Freeway who used the term pejoratively, Selena perceived the label “ghetto” as a more accurate description of where she had come from and had lived. Having divorced parents, she had moved back and forth between central and west Texas multiple times, either with her single mother or with her father (who was in west Texas with his other family). She described the west Texas town as particularly “ghetto” because of poverty, drugs, gangs, crime, and fights. She had been sent from Freeway High to an alternative school for fighting. She presented herself as “tough,” but believed that she did so out of necessity rather than an expression of a chosen identity. She explained: “All these people here [at Freeway], they act hard, but then you go to their house and their parents are married and they have their own room and they have this happy little life. No, like, that’s not ghetto. Me? I know ghetto.” In a school with a large immigrant and low-income population of students whose situations were in many ways similar to Selena’s, she still struggled to fit in with her peers, whom she perceived as superficial.

  Figure 7.6 Selena’s learning ecology.

  Selena was struggling with school and home life and had little support from friends or family members. Although she had a few friends at school, she spent most of her social time with older friends who had dropped out of high school. Her mother was currently unemployed, and despite the fact that she had many years of experience and an Associate’s degree she was struggling to find work. Her father was in west Texas and had limited contact with Selena at the time of the study. Neither of Selena’s parents nor any of her older siblings had graduated from high school, although her older sister had earned a GED certificate after dropping out of high school. Her brother made ends meet through unstable jobs that often required him to move. In view of the careers and the financial instability of her family, Selena had low expectations about her own future, and to a certain extent assumed she would follow a path similar to those of her family members and friends—one with bouts of unemployment, low income, unsteady work, and financial stress and struggles.

  Selena’s disposition toward formal education can best be described as disengaged—she frequently cut class, had a history of getting into fights, described school as boring, and often missed assignments and failed to do homework. She described tenuous relationships with many of her teachers and expressed little interest in earning good grades. She enjoyed reading, and thus English was one class she found tolerable; however, she expressed frustration that her English teacher didn’t allow her more freedom to choose her own books for class or to express more stylistic creativity in her writing. She believed that she was intellectually capable of doing well in school but frequently admitted that she lacked the motivation and resiliency to complete school assignments as well as she should.

  Outside of school Selena was curious. She explored personal interests and enjoyed teaching herself new skills. For example, when I visited Selena in the two-bedroom apartment she shared with six other people (her mother, her younger sister, her older brother, his girlfriend, and their two children), she played an Evanescence19 song for me on her keyboard. Impressed, I asked how long she had been playing and who had taught her how to play. She told me that at the age of 13 she had taught herself how to play on her little sister’s Barbie keyboard just by listening to the Evanescence song and watching YouTube videos. Her uncle later gave her his old keyboard for Christmas so she could expand her skills and interest beyond what the limited Barbie keyboard offered. At the time of the study she had taught herself about fifteen songs that way.

  Additionally, although Selena did not tend to enjoy writing for school, she wrote several short stories on her own outside of school. With limited disposable income and limited mobility, she spent a lot of time in her room (which technically she shared with her little sister, but her little sister frequently slept on the couch in the living room with her mother, so Selena had some sense of privacy at night). In her bedroom was an outdated computer that was not connected to the Internet. When I visited the home, Selena explained that the reason she had not been writing much was that the mouse on her computer had broken and she could not figure out how to open and access her files without a mouse. She was hoping to find a new mouse soon and was hoping she would start writing again more when she did.20 In the meantime, she had been writing in a note pad by hand, but she was frustrated that she could not access and edit the stories she had already started. She also kept a sketchbook in which she liked to sketch the covers of her favorite CDs, fairies, and people’s faces. She did not share her writings with me, but she proudly showed me several drawings. She had talent for music, drawing, and sketching. In other words, she was creatively curious and a motivated learner when given the right circumstances.

  When not at school, Selena and her friends often hung out at local parks, where they would smoke, drink, and just “chill.” She used these opportunities—both at home and with friends—to write poetry, short stories, and screenplays. Her mother was aware of her interest in writing and expressed pride when I asked her about her daughter’s writing. However, her friends expressed more ambiguous attitudes that fluctuated between supporting her and distracting her. “My friends, yeah, they tell me ‘You are different, you can actually graduate, ’cause you’re smart.’ But then when we’re hanging out they be like ‘Stop working; let’s go do something.’” Her friends frequently tempted and convinced her to skip school and the after-school Digital Media Club.

  I met Selena through her participation in the Digital Media Club, which differed from the participation of many of her peers and the other students in this book. Although her participation was still in principle voluntary, Selena was earning credit for a course she had previously failed; she needed the credit in order to graduate. Mr. Lopez was required to record her time and her activities in the club and was trying to “stay on top of her” so she could earn credit for the elective course she had previously failed. When I first met her, she was a semi-regular participant in the club. Though by no means the most popular student there, she had found her niche, and she hung out with a few of the other students. She reported that friendship was one of her motivations for coming to the club, along with having access to the computers and software. She spent most of her club time taking and editing photos, but also liked to listen to music or mess around with graphic design software.

  As the semester continued, Selena’s participation in the Digital Media Club waned. By the end of the study she had quit coming altogether. When I asked her why she was not coming to the club as often as she had, she explained that she was disappointed that her script had not been selected for the Cinematic Arts Project. Every student in the club was given an opportunity to submit a script, after which the teachers and the adult mentors selected one script that members of the Cinematic Arts Project would collaboratively produce that academic year. As we continued talking, Selena admitted that her script was only half done, and that its unfinished state was probably the reason it wasn’t selected, although she felt it was good.

  It became evident through the time I spent with
Selena that she was a self-motivated learner, but only so long as she maintained interest in a topic and only if she saw an immediate payoff for her efforts. Often she lacked the resiliency—or time—to follow through on projects. In one interview she briefly explained her growing frustration with participating in the Digital Media Club:

  Selena:

  The fact that I'm doing editing in school is what throws off my motivation.

  Q:

  How come?

  Selena:

  I don’t like school.

  Q:

  You just don’t like school?

  Selena:

  No.

  Q:

  So, would you pick it [video editing] up again maybe when you’re not having to do it for school?

  Selena:

  Actually, yeah. Probably in college I probably will. Or if I ever just decide to go and make my own movie by myself, then, yeah, I'll probably try to do it.

  Q:

  So, you enjoy script writing and editing so long as it’s not for school?

  Selena:

  Yeah. Pretty much. And also all the stuff that Mr. Lopez used to have me working on was stuff that I didn’t like doing. Put it this way: If it’s something that I recorded, that I wrote, that I did, then I will edit it. I can edit it. I can do everything on it. But if it’s somebody else’s stuff that I don’t find interesting, I'm not into it. I can’t do it.

  Q:

  So it needs to be yours?

  Selena:

  Yes. It needs to be mine. I don’t like it whenever he has me doing other people’s stuff.

  Q:

  Does he let you do your own stuff in there?

  Selena:

  Yeah. But right now how they’re having that whole Cinematic Arts Project thing. Everybody’s so preoccupied with that. They’re always using the cameras. And lately right now I'm just focused on graduating. So, that’s one of the other reasons why I'm trying not to get distracted by this. I just want to graduate.

  The club became the only space with the potential to support Selena’s preferred style of learning, creativity, interests, and goals. However, even then she struggled with lack of motivation, resiliency, and competing interests and goals.

  Selena’s comments also revealed her own unrealistic and non-situated expectations about her future. She occasionally mentioned wanting to attend community college, even though she adamantly disliked school. She liked learning and hoped college would be more interesting. However, she did not seek funding, attend any college readiness workshops, or seek help in navigating the college application system. Going to college was something she spoke of but not something she actively tried to do. She also unrealistically mentioned wanting to make a professional movie on her own, something that is not a realistic expectation and reveals her own misunderstandings about the nature of the film industry and the collaborative aspects of filmmaking.

  As Jada noted in a comment quoted earlier in this chapter, filmmaking is an inherently collaborative process, and Selena struggled to work with others. I point this out not to criticize Selena’s aspirations, but rather to highlight the disparity between her expectations and the avenues and hurdles she needed to navigate in order to make her expectations a reality. Mr. Lopez strived to help her, and he deserves much credit for trying to help her graduate, yet there were many other material and structural barriers that prohibited her from identifying and creating a pathway to a stable future.

  In a preliminary study, Nickki Pearce Dawes and Reed Larsen (2011) found that motivation develops when individuals cultivate personal connections to a program’s activities and goals. They situated their research within a broader context of psychological literature that focuses on theories of motivation, including interest theory and self-determination theory (SDT). Interest theory suggests involvement must be personally meaningful for individuals. From a psychological perspective, interest is defined as “focused attention, increased cognitive functioning, persistence and affective involvement” (Hidi 2000, p. 312). Similarly, SDT supposes that sustainable engagement must be integrated into one’s sense of self and identity. Dawes and Larsen (2011, p. 260) claim that the highest level of engagement is achieved when individuals internalize goals “driven by three basic universal psychological needs of the self: competence, autonomy, and relatedness.” Creative projects facilitated by her Tech Apps course and the Digital Media Club provided Selena with extrinsic motivation—graduation—but she was unable to sustain the intrinsic motivation necessary to overcome challenges and setbacks.

  Further, although Selena reported that she usually enjoyed her time in the Digital Media Club, it nonetheless competed for her time and took her away from her out-of-school friends. To compensate, she would often skip school to hang out with those friends, then try to come back to the club later in the day when classes were over. Thus, neither her peers in the club nor her out-of-school friends provided the support and encouragement she needed to meaningfully invest in her pursuit of digital media and writing projects. Despite skipping school and the club, Selena continued to meet with me for a while, sometimes off campus and sometimes after school hours. Selena deliberately presented herself as tough and unapproachable, yet she was a likeable person. She opened up with me about many of her personal struggles and was honest about her own shortcomings. From an outside adult perspective, it appeared to me that Selena’s tough attitude was a way to fit in with her peers and a facade intended to distance herself from peers at school. The more time we spent together, the more apparent it was that Selena was fighting an uphill battle to succeed. Her disinterest appeared to me to be a defense mechanism—if she had low expectations, she would not be disappointed.

  If we examine Selena’s interest in and experience with creativity and digital media, it is easy to identify how missing connections failed to support her goals. She faced severe economic challenges and instability that contributed to her stress. She lacked familial adult role models who could have helped her to build resiliency and to overcome frustrations when she did not accomplish what she was trying to do. There were few academic classes that supported her autonomous learning style and creative interests. Although catering to students’ unique learning styles is a challenge—particularly in low-income schools with larger classrooms and fewer teachers—self-identified didactic learners such as Selena need guidance on developing resiliency and perseverance. Because she had struggled academically and did not exhibit a lot of motivation, her attitude could be misinterpreted as uninterested. However, Selena actually enjoyed learning, but not in the rigid ways the majority of her courses were designed. Her courses left little room for the incorporation of personal interest, self-guided learning, and outlets for creativity. As a result, when she became frustrated she was more likely to quit than to overcome challenges. We can see how the autonomous and creative atmosphere of the Digital Media Club’s informal learning environment motivated Selena more than her formal academic courses did; the space served as a potential intervention in her precarious pathways to future success. But the motivation and opportunities were not enough to help her navigate the systematic, familial, and material barriers in her life.

  Although Selena continued to meet with me for a while after she began skipping school and the club, eventually that too stopped. She would cancel appointments on me, and eventually I decided to stop trying; I didn’t want to be one more source of stress or pressure in her life. If she wanted to reinitiate contact with me, she knew how. I don’t even know if Selena graduated from high school; I suspect she may not have, in view of how frequently she was skipping school and the club (which she needed for credit). However, I am hopeful that someone else in her life or at school provided her with the support she needed to accomplish that major milestone; she would have been the first from her family to graduate, and we can only speculate what opportunities that would have afforded her.

  Conclusion: What Are the Significant (Dis)Connections?

  Javier’s and Gabriela�
�s stories fit within a traditional market-driven narrative of upward mobility and economic opportunities, whereas Sergio’s and Selena’s stories are a lot messier. All four stories can help us identify what connections are necessary for helping young people navigate future pathways of opportunity—or, more precisely, what missed connections emerge as crucial for creating opportunities.