Figure 7.1 A framework for connected learning. Source: Ito et al. 2013 (licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License).
There are so many challenges out there, and I feel that school hasn’t prepared them with everything they need to know to succeed. I want to prepare them for the real world. … I think the after-school club fills in some of those gaps that the school doesn’t prepare them for, because getting out into the real world is tough.
Mr. Lopez (teacher and mentor to after-school media clubs)
Throughout this book, I have primarily focused on how policies and practices at school have exacerbated risks for young people or missed chances to create more equitable opportunities for marginalized and low-income students. In this chapter, I also consider technology classes and after-school clubs as examples of how teachers, schools, and policies can help students manage the costs and benefits of risks associated with digital media. As I will demonstrate, Mr. Lopez, the Tech Apps teacher, intentionally incorporated media technology into his courses, which served as working models of how learning can look when opportunity-driven expectations are at the forefront of students’ and teachers’ approaches to media use at school. However, there remain other systemic barriers—material and cultural—that block connections to more equitable pathways. The move toward opportunity-driven expectations of student media use can be situated within a broader optimistic view that considers the positive relationship between technology and social change. However, I also worry about discourses that celebrate the democratic potential of digital media to create new pathways for future success, yet overlook the very material, cultural, and social constraints that prevent those most in need from actually benefitting from the very interventions designed to close those participation gaps.
One approach that aims to instate a balance between opportunity-driven expectations and an awareness of the risks and barriers that inhibit more equitable outcomes, is the connected learning model that was developed by the collaborative and interdisciplinary Connected Learning Research Network (Ito et al. 2012). On the basis of international research in many different learning environments, Ito et al. explain connected learning as an approach to education that “advocates for broadened access to learning that is socially embedded, interest-driven, and oriented toward educational, economic, or political opportunity.” “Connected learning,” they continue, “is realized when a young person is able to pursue a personal interest or passion with the support of friends and caring adults, and is in turn able to link this learning and interest to academic achievement, career success or civic engagement. This model is based on evidence that the most resilient, adaptive, and effective learning involves individual interests as well as social support to overcome adversity and provide recognition.”
As is illustrated in figure 7.1, connected learning involves three properties of learning experiences: production-centered, shared purpose, and openly networked. Further, four design principles structure the connected learning environments: everyone can participate, learning happens by doing, the challenge is constant, and everything is interconnected. Together these contexts, properties, and design principles make up the connected learning approach that Ito et al. argue supports and sustains learning that engages young people in beneficial and equitable ways.
Figure 7.1 A framework for connected learning. Source: Ito et al. 2013 (licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License).
The connected learning approach is intentionally focused on alleviating economic and educational gaps. However, as I will demonstrate, risk structures choices in seemingly individualized ways that are actually deeply embedded within social contexts that limit the autonomy of choices. Because Freeway High’s student population included many students from low-income backgrounds, first-generation immigrants, and families without college backgrounds or experiences, the school and students faced many challenges to equitable learning opportunities. Many students were academically disengaged and struggled to maintain interest in school for a variety of reasons including language barriers, family obligations such as caring for siblings, financial hardships, and precarious and nomadic home lives. Additionally, many students came from families that did not have experience with college and thus they were often navigating unfamiliar pathways without much home guidance or connections to expanded social capital. For example, Anna (18 years old, Mexican-American) had mentioned wanting to go to college but had not applied yet. When asked if she was planning to apply to college, she responded as follows.
Anna:
I don’t even know. I haven’t even looked really at all. I don’t know what I’m going to do so I don’t know where to look for a school. I don’t know what I’m looking for. I’m totally out of it. It doesn’t help that my parents are totally not on track of anything that we’re doing.
Q:
Do your parents not really talk about it?
Anna:
They always are encouraging me. Like, “Yeah, you keep your grades because you can get scholarships and go to college.” I’m, like, “Do y’all even know how to apply for a scholarship? Because I don’t. And y’all ain’t much help.”
Anna, like many other students at Freeway High, had aspirations of attending university or pursuing a middle-class career, yet her expectations, like those of many other students at Freeway, were often unrealistic. Despite the connected efforts of some of the courses and clubs at Freeway, students still did not have access to the material resources nor the social and cultural capital at home that would allow them to navigate these unfamiliar future pathways. Significantly, I do not want to imply that these shortcomings were the fault of individuals, instead the disconnects highlight systemic inequities and broken connections between education, home, and the labor market. Sonia Livingstone and Julian Sefton-Green poignantly articulate this observation in their book The Class (2016, p. 251): “Connecting learning across school and home might seem beneficial for everyone, but given the different resources that families can call on, in practice it opens the door to socioeconomic inequalities. Further, shifting the burden of responsibility for children’s learning from school to (also) home compounds already-heightened parental anxieties over children’s increasingly uncertain educational and employment prospects.”
Freeway High provided college-readiness workshops that helped students find and apply for scholarships. Yet the workshops often competed with other activities that students were already invested or interested in, such as band or the media clubs. Despite the many challenges, Freeway High was striving to find ways to be more relevant to students’ needs. This was evident from the many after-school clubs, vocational programs, and other resources aimed at supporting marginalized populations. Yet the success of such strategies varied within different student populations and often benefited those who already had advantageous access to networks of social and cultural capital. Students who were already at a disadvantage experienced marginal benefits but still faced systematic barriers that inhibited access to equitable opportunities.
One somewhat successful approach to engaging students, which is the focus of this chapter, was that taken by Mr. Lopez’s technology courses and after-school clubs, which fit with many aspects of the connected learning model. As will be discussed, Mr. Lopez’s pedagogy had proved effective with many students at Freeway High and was credited with helping marginalized students graduate and find their passions. However, despite some success stories (including those of Javier and Gabriela addressed in this chapter), some students still faced structural and discursive barriers that prevented them from overcoming material and environmental challenges. The connected learning model not only provides a useful lens for exploring vital connections within students’ learning ecologies but also allows us to consider the disconnections that inhibit opportunities. At a glance, it stands to reason that schools ought to connect to home life in ways that amplify opportunities. Yet for many working-class families this connection presented an additional burden of responsibility that families were not equipped to provide for a variety of reasons including precarious immigrant status, financial challenges, and unfamiliarity with middle-class habitus1 and norms (Bourdieu 1990). Sergio’s and Selena’s stories will highlight that there was a disparity between some students’ expectations about future opportunities (in the technology and media industries) and their home life and the school’s capacity to prepare students for those positions. As I address through the stories of four teens at Freeway—Sergio, Javier, Gabriela, and Selena—the expectations about digital media literacy, skills, and opportunities tend to be contradictory and unstable: the school as an institution develops and employs particular expectations of technology, education, and goals, but students and their families have diverse expectations and make meaning out of their practices in ways that do not necessarily align with their future-oriented goals or the labor market. Students who did not have the advantages of diverse social networks and cultural capital were the least likely to reap the benefits of connected learning approaches.
If technology and media are to serve as interventions in the lives of marginalized young people or if media are to partially provide pathways to future successes, we must consider the role technology plays within the wider socially connected context of young people’s lives. Further, we must consider how young people’s expectations of their own futures are supported (or not) by the expectations of their peers, schools, adults, and the labor market of the creative media industries. Young people’s expectations of their future—as well as the ways in which they make meaning out of their own practices—often differ from the expectations of the adults in their lives and the ways social institutions map out future opportunities. In order for their expectations to come to fruition, they need adults and institutions to actively support—as well as shape—their opportunity-driven expectations. They also need expanded access to economic and cultural capital that expansive social networks provide more privileged and assimilated students.
What the lives of the four young people addressed in this chapter reveal is the importance of making and supporting significant connections between different influences and spaces of their lives—but also the importance of connecting their expectations to real-world opportunities, which are often missing. There is a disparity between the aspirations of young people, educational expectations, and employment options supported by precarious and uncertain labor markets. Building upon the connected learning model, I analyze the connections or disconnections between six key areas of the students’ lives: academic, peers, home life, adults, interests, and extracurricular activities as related to each students’ self-described short-term or long-term career goals (figure 7.2). Peers refers to the teen’s closest and most influential friends; academic refers to their formal educational environments and curricula at school; home refers to the support for and capacity to learn at home (access to the technology, resources, books, software, etc. necessary to learn at home); adults refers to parents, guardians, and/or other adult role models in their social networks that the teen trusts; interests refers to the teen’s personal passions, hobbies, curiosities, and activities; extracurricular refers to their informal learning spaces and activities (clubs, sports, band, church, etc.). Career goals are representative of a student’s self-identified and articulated short-term and long-term aspirations, expectations, and future career options. Students obviously had important life goals that transcended careers and economic aspirations—such as marriage, children, hobbies, and so forth; however, for the purpose of this analysis, goals are couched within a market-driven understanding of students’ career expectations, desires, and options.
Figure 7.2 A model of an ideal learning ecology.
In figure 7.2, the size of each sphere is representative of its influence on the participant and his or her goals (i.e., a large peer sphere and small adult sphere indicate that the participant’s goals are largely influenced by their peers, and not as influenced by the adults in their life). In an ideal world, all six areas would both connect to and support a student’s career goals and there would be strong connections between each of the six nodes. Likewise, each sphere would be similar in size, as all six areas would influence one another and support the student’s aspirations, expectations, and goals. The length of the arrows indicates the quality or strength of the connections; a short arrow is indicative of a weak connection, a long arrow signifies a strong connection, and a missing arrow denotes a broken or missing connection. The elliptical arrow represents the importance of connecting a teen’s interests and extracurricular activities with their formal learning environment (i.e., academics) and goals, and vice versa. In the ideal model the formal learning spaces are both supported by and supporting the student’s informal learning spaces at school and connecting to the labor market.
Through an analysis of the connections or disconnections between media technology and other aspects of teens’ lives, I am able to avoid a technologically deterministic approach and instead situationally consider the ways in which technology and learning are socially situated and constructed within the broader lives of teens. Only when goals, the labor market, and learning ecologies are connected and supported can digital media literacy truly serve as an effective pathway to economic, civic, and social opportunities for equality. I do not mean to imply that the most important value of digital literacy is economic success or career opportunities. I hope the rest of the book has demonstrated the social, civic, educational, and personal value of practicing and connecting digital media literacies. The Digital Media Club and the Cinematic Arts Project were both designed in part to help marginalized students forge pathways to economic success. The focus of this chapter is on how the students’ learning ecologies in relation to digital media helped connect them with future career opportunities. Through an examination of Mr. Lopez’s classes, the after-school media clubs, and four select students involved in the programs, this chapter explores the complicated and unequal connections between risk, education, expectations, digital media, and future (economic) opportunities.
As has been noted, many teachers’ (and the school’s) policies are ones of unacceptable use that do not provide students opportunities to use technology responsibility. There were exceptions though, particularly (and unsurprisingly) in the technology-focused courses. Through an analysis of Mr. Lopez’s acceptable use of technology approaches, I briefly consider what can be gained when media are incorporated as a connected aspect of the formal learning environment. Mr. Lopez aimed to integrate students’ personal media technologies into the classrooms in innovative ways, yet their efforts were inhibited via fears and policies of panic that tried to minimize risks without a respectful balance of opportunities.
Beyond focusing on media as the driving force, Mr. Lopez’s pedagogical approaches were centered on project-based learning. Rather than merely teaching students how to do something, his courses challenged students to solve problems and to create something together. As has been noted, many students at Freeway High did not have access to high-quality or reliable Internet access outside of school, even those who did were unlikely to have access to expensive proprietary software or expensive camera equipment. So for some students this was the first time they had the freedom and opportunity to mess around with software and equipment. Through their experiences in the technology courses, some students discovered a previously unknown passion for digital media, film, photography, video games, graphic design, and digital music.
Aware of the challenges his students faced at school and home, Mr. Lopez deliberately constructed his classes as a student-focused safe space that could serve as an opportunity for marginalized students to find a niche and support, particularly for those at risk of dropping or failing out of school. He did this by incorporating and validating students’ personal interests into their assignments, but also by helping them make connections between their other courses and their technology course. In other words, by helping them stay motivated in their technology classes, he was actually able to help them engage with their other courses as well, and thus hopefully do better in school all around. As a Mexican-American filmmaker and educator, Mr. Lopez personally identified with and related to many of the students in his classes: “I see myself in them. I know what they are going through. I’m here because I want them to know people like us, we can succeed.” Many of his students viewed him as a mentor and role model, which was iterated in practically every interview with his students. Devan (19 years old, black) was a recent graduate of Freeway High and explained the personal importance of Mr. Lopez’s class:
In my freshman year I was bad. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. The cool thing about this is that I wanted to get to Tech Apps, so I could get it done so I could go to Video Tech next. It made me happier because I was doing the stuff that brought my mood up which made me work harder in the other classes. It’s a weird concept, but since this made me so much happier because I could use my imagination, rather than just have my head in a book all day, I could go to my math class and get it done so I could get to film. My grades drastically improved. Without this I’d have been in a different situation. I don’t think I’d be here [as a high school graduate or mentor] today, if it weren’t for Mr. Lopez and his courses.
Devan’s story resonated with a lot of Mr. Lopez’s students who agreed that incorporating technology and media into the school day provided motivation to do well in other classes. Just as athletes are required to keep minimum grades in order to compete in athletic competitions at school, Mr. Lopez planned field trips and excursions around town for his students, and, just as with athletics, he required passing grades in order for students to participate in the excursions. Sports has been shown to provide intrinsic motivation (fear of failure) and extrinsic motivation (a dedicated commitment to the sport and the team) that can help motivate athletes to do well in school (Simons, Van Rheenen, and Covington 1999). In a similar way, the technology courses provided both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for marginalized students to do well in school, not just in the courses they were interested in, but other classes as well.
As another example, Jasmine (16 years old, multiracial) was highly engaged in her media classes and was an active member of the after-school Cinematic Art Project. However, she was only moderately engaged in her more traditional courses. Her grandparents (with whom she occasionally lived during the study) insisted she keep her grades up, something that was a struggle for her, but they made it a requirement for her continued participation in the Cinematic Arts Project. She explained that project-based learning helped her apply what she was learning across different topics.
Jasmine:
To me, project-based learning is basically giving us a project that gives us the whole core of classes, like math, science, history and English. Because English you have to write the script. Math you have to know the time and break down how much batteries you need and how much time you want the camera and all that stuff. Geography—you have to go out location scouting. People think we don’t learn by that — “Oh, they’re just doing projects. You don’t learn anything.” You do learn a lot.
Q:
You feel like you learn a lot?
Jasmine:
Oh yeah. That’s probably the only reason I’m doing good in my math class—because we do so much in Video Tech. We do so much projects now, I’m, like, “Yeah. I get that.” Also, some people do help me with my math.
Q:
Do you feel like the stuff you learn in video tech or video apps applies to other classes or helps you learn in other classes?
Jasmine:
It kind of comes together. It helps you learn about life too—how to manage your time, how to solve problems, and when you can just say no to some things.
Q:
What do you mean by that?
Jasmine:
Like, you have a whole bunch of projects and somebody comes to you and says, “Can you do this for me?” It’s, like, “I can’t have all this.”
Jasmine pointed out many important aspects of connected learning. First, is that project-based learning helped her to make connections between her other courses. As a low to moderately engaged student, finding ways to apply what she was learning in math to a project she cared about helped her to focus on the courses she did not enjoy much. Also, as her comment highlighted, project-based learning provided opportunities to develop life skills that were applicable beyond formal educational settings. At the end of her film project, I asked Jasmine what was the most important thing she had learned through the experience. I had expected her answer to reflect on the filmmaking process, but instead her answer surprised me: “Communication, learning how to communicate with people. It can be really frustrating, you have to tell people exactly what you want and be specific, people don’t listen or get it always.” Jasmine’s answer was similar to the answers of many other students in the clubs and classes who reflected on the ways the projects helped them learn to work together, manage their time, and follow through on long-term goals. Project-based learning, of course, does not have to be contained to technology-focused courses nor do the projects necessarily have to incorporate technology; yet the use of technology enabled students to seek out information, solve problems, and creatively contribute in ways that were more consistent with their informal and out-of-school modes of learning. There were, of course, risks associated with their practices, as have been discussed throughout the book, but students and teachers such as Mr. Lopez balanced these risks with opportunities in beneficial ways.
As part of a broader trend in the United States, Freeway High has two different tracks for students: college-prep and vocational. The vocational track has the well-intentioned goal of preparing students for non-college pathways after high school graduation, yet it has been heavily scrutinized and criticized because it often “replicate[s] inequality along lines of race and social class and contribute[s] to the intergenerational transmission of social and economic capital” (Oakes 2005, p. xi). Tracking aims to ensure that students who are presumed to be college-bound (as determined by a combination of factors, including test scores, grade-point averages, parents’ educational backgrounds, economics, and student interests) are guided to enroll in more math and science courses, including Advanced Placement (AP) courses and college dual-credit courses.2 Students who are not presumed to be college-bound are advised to take skill-based courses, to take fewer math and science courses, and not to take AP courses. Vocational education focuses on intense specialization, “interpreted by the public schools to mean the provision of an education, that would best meet individuals’ future needs and thus train them to play their specialized roles in industrial America” (ibid., p. 33). My purpose here is not to conduct a larger examination or critique of tracking, although it merits further academic research,3 but rather to contextualize the after-school media clubs within the larger ecology of Freeway High.
After-school activities were a large part of student life at Freeway High.4 The majority of participants in this study were involved in at least one after-school activity, although some students’ participation was more limited (less involved) because of part-time jobs, sibling care, restrictive transportation, or other home obligations. The school’s vocational tracks, such as automotive technology, metal tech (carpentry, plumbing, welding, etc.), fashion merchandising, construction, and culinary arts/hospitality were supported via coursework that aimed to help students develop specialized skill sets. They also were supported via after-school clubs that offered students opportunities to further pursue their interests and develop necessary skills. The college-bound tracks focused on Advanced Placement courses and advanced math and science courses, many of which were pre-requisites for more advanced courses they took in the final years of high school. They also were supported with clubs that focused on leadership opportunities, debate team, business club, service committees, and tutoring, which were aimed at bettering a students’ college resume and preparedness. Activities such as band, orchestra, theater, and athletics tended to attract a diverse population of students from both vocational and college tracks.
The media technology courses and after-school media clubs occupied a more liminal space than the traditionally established college and vocational tracks. Per state regulations, students were required to take a minimum of one computer course in order to graduate. The technology courses tended to either be focused on computer science, which required advanced math pre-requisites that many students on career paths did not have (thus these courses were essentially limited to college-bound students). The other traditional technology option was a more basic audio/visual (A/V) course, which prepared students for entry-level technical (non-creative arts) careers. Yet the design-oriented creative digital media courses and video game courses attracted creative students who were not exclusively interested in technical careers and approached media and technology as an art, rather than a technical skill. These courses were not typically part of the broader college-bound track, but served as an elective for college-bound students who were not interested in computer science.5 In this way, the courses attracted students from both college and career tracks.
For some students, the course merely fulfilled an elective requirement. However, for many of the students in the courses, it became a passion, something they were interested in and wanted to further pursue. This is how the after-school Digital Media Club was developed—students in Mr. Lopez’s courses wanted to continue to pursue creative media design and production projects outside of the formal classroom. Students in the Digital Media Club were interested in the creative aspects of media production, but their interest did not fall along the computer science or A/V technical dichotomy of other courses and clubs. Recognizing an opportunity to fill in a gap in the options of after-school clubs, as well as an opportunity to serve and mentor marginalized young people, Mr. Lopez worked with the students to get the Digital Media Club approved as an officially supported and recognized club at Freeway High. He explained:
I want to give them a place to come and actually apply their skills. Most of them are going to be looking for jobs and they already are looking for jobs or some are looking to go to college. I want to be able to, from a personal standpoint, give them all the skills they need to go and be successful. There are so many challenges out there and I feel that school hasn’t prepared them with everything they need to know to succeed. I want to prepare them for the real world. … I think the after-school club fills in some of those gaps that the school doesn’t prepare them for, because getting out into the real world is tough. … But also the club is fun, I want them to learn in a fun way and projects are a great way to do that.
Although open to any student, the Digital Media Club attracted students caught between the institutional structures of the school: students who were on a vocational track because they did not believe college was an option for them (due to immigration status, economic constraints, or familial obligations), but who were not interested in the other vocational tracks available at Freeway. These students found the club to be a creative outlet that fit their personalities, interests, and goals. There were some college-bound students in the club, however, a large number of the students were classified by the school as “at risk.” Many of the club’s participants were academically disengaged for a variety of reasons (e.g., language barriers, unstable home lives, academically behind due to relocations or family obligations, economic struggles). For some the consequences of behavioral issues had caused them to fall behind in school, which contributed to further disengagement. Thus, as Mr. Lopez’s quotation iterates, the club filled in a gap and served students who did not neatly fit into the college-bound and vocational tracks offered at school. And, as Mr. Lopez noted, he strived to teach students the real life skills necessary for succeeding after high school; skills that middle-class students tend to learn at home and via peer networks (Lareau 2003), but that marginalized students may not have access to in the same ways.
Students joined the club for a variety of reasons, but the overall motivation could be classified as what Ito et al. (2010) refer to as “interest-driven participation.”6 The students had a desire or curiosity to further explore an interest related to digital media and production. Some students joined via the encouragement of peers or teachers, while others joined to gain access to equipment such as cameras, microphones and other recording gear they did not have access to at home. Still, others joined in order to gain access to the computers themselves and the array of software, which was otherwise unavailable to many of the students outside of the school’s computer labs. The students in the Digital Media Club had mixed aspirations: a select few expected to go to a four-year university, others were interested in a two-year degree from a community college, and many expected to enter the work force full-time after graduation. As will be discussed through the four case studies in this chapter, their post-graduation expectations were often unclear, and at times unrealistic.
The Digital Media Club and the Cinematic Arts Project differed from the formal learning environment in several ways that influenced what was learned, how, and by whom. Mr. Lopez strived to incorporate peer learning and personal interests into the formal classroom, but the after-school clubs were better equipped to facilitate this mode of learning to a greater degree. Learning with and via digital media enables a shift from the teacher as primary means of instruction, and allows students to learn in other ways, which was evidenced in the clubs. Mr. Lopez was present, but was not often the primary means of instruction in the classroom; instead students often preferred to rely on computer tutorials, peer-to-peer learning, and autonomous messing around with software and the technologies.7 Through weekly observations and interviews, it became clear that students enjoyed figuring out how to do things on their own.8 With the time and flexibility afforded in the after-school clubs, students could mess around with technology until they figured out how to do what they were attempting to learn.
The Cinematic Arts Project was started by a group of Digital Media Club participants who were primarily interested in working on collaborative film projects; it met at the same time and in the same lab as the Digital Media Club, but functioned as a satellite organization specializing in film production. It was in its second year at the time of this study. In the first year, only Freeway High students and teachers were involved, but in the second year it expanded to include two other high schools from the school district. The students wrote, shot, produced, edited, and directed a short narrative film, which they submitted to an international film festival. In 2010 the film was selected for inclusion in the festival, but in 2011 their film was not accepted. Additionally, members of the Cinematic Arts Project (including Javier, discussed later in this chapter) also submitted personal films they had produced separately from the official club project. These students capitalized upon the expertise of the teachers and mentors in the club, as well as the school’s equipment and other resources to create personal projects; two of the personal film projects that were produced in the clubs were accepted and screened at an international film festival the year of this study.
The Cinematic Arts Project also produced a “behind-the scenes” film, a short documentary, and webisodes for the website, which were produced by members of the club’s publicity team. The teams all worked in collaboration with mentors, teachers, and volunteers from the local film community on collaborative film projects. The club met several times a week for many hours at a time, as well as on weekends, in order to finish the films in time to submit to local and international festivals. The students gained real world experience producing films, working together, fundraising, and publicizing the films; they screened their films at local events as a way to raise funds. The mentors and teachers were well connected within the local film community, which enabled students to gain access to resources and expertise. The students involved with the project were dedicated, ambitious, and creative; many viewed the project as a professional and entrepreneurial opportunity rather than a school project or hobby (see chapter 5).
If all of this is sounding positive, it’s because it is. The well-intentioned clubs and dedicated teachers and mentors undoubtedly had a positive influence in the lives of the students involved with the club; this is evident from countless stories like that of Devan, who attributed academic success and even the ability to graduate to the help of Mr. Lopez and the media clubs. Research demonstrates that after-school programs, such as the Digital Media Club and the Cinematic Arts Project, can have positive developmental outcomes in the lives of young people (Daud and Carruthers 2008; Nicholson, Collins, and Holmer 2004), particularly for economically disadvantaged or marginalized young people (Mahoney, Parente, and Zigler 2009). I do not want to appear dismissive of their efforts and the successes of the clubs; however, in order to experience long term and meaningful benefits it is not enough for young people to merely join a program, but rather they must become psychologically engaged. Research unsurprisingly evidences that individuals who are engaged learn more than disengaged individuals (Gottfried, Fleming, and Gottfried 1998). Engagement is the result of many factors, not least of which intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. I do not think we can overlook the role of motivation in shaping young people’s engagement and participation with media and technology. We must also consider how opportunity and motivation are also mediated and regulated via other aspects of students’ lives.
For the young people mentioned in this book, learning about digital media was constructed as both a means to an end as well as a goal in and of itself. And while the club was accomplishing a lot of good, we need to step back and take a more holistic approach to understanding the role of both digital media and education as risk intervention strategies. Scholars and practitioners are increasingly aware that media and technology in and of themselves are not solutions to any given problem and research demonstrates that not all media practices are equally valued by students or educational institutions (Sims 2014). As was noted earlier, such an assumption is technologically determinist and ignores the cultural, material, and economic context in which individuals access, use, and make meaning through and with technology. Such expectations ignore the extent to which learning happens within social contexts and the ways in which sociality mediates attitudes, meaning, and uses of technology. Alongside the many positive interventions and success stories, we need to evaluate outcomes and experiences critically in order to understand what the clubs accomplished and as a way to identify disconnects between expectations, aspirations, and actual industry opportunities.
The clubs, as well-intentioned as they were, also have the potential to reproduce the very inequalities they strive to alleviate; there were missed opportunities for fostering the deeper, more critical, and democratic digital literacies required for full participation in a digital and participatory culture. Those concerns are where I now turn my attention, as will be analyzed through an examination of four case studies: those of Sergio, Javier, Selena, and Gabriela. All four students had an interest in and expectations of perusing media as a career option, which allows us to analyze how media fit heuristically within the different nodes of their lives.
Sergio (18 years old, Mexican-American) and Javier (18 years old, Mexican immigrant) were both seniors who were heavily invested in the Cinematic Arts Project at Freeway High. They developed a friendship as part of the club and worked together on several film projects both in and out of school. Both Sergio and Javier aspired to work in the film industry after graduating high school and both were moderately academically engaged, but in different ways. However, Sergio and Javier’s expectations for how to pursue a film career differed in significant ways.
Figures 7.3 and 7.4 illustrate Sergio’s and Javier’s learning ecologies. At first glance, it may appear as though the young men had similar goals and opportunities; however, their expectations of how to make connections to pursue and achieve their goals meant they followed two different—and unequal—pathways after high school.
Figure 7.3 Sergio’s learning ecology.
Figure 7.4 Javier’s learning ecology.
Although Sergio earned relatively good grades and strove to do well in school, as a first-generation immigrant student whose parents had a middle school and high school education he did not view college as the most viable option after high school. When asked if his parents had helped prepare him for college of a career after graduation, Sergio responded:
They haven’t really helped me in any other way, just a roof above my head, food, and stuff like that. But, like, I mean, ’cause they’re from Mexico, they don’t really know how everything works here, in America, so they can’t really help me out with that as much as other people can. … ’Cause all my dad ever applies to is construction ’cause that’s all he knows ‘cause he doesn’t have a high school degree or college degree, nor does my mom so all she knows how to do is, like, janitorial stuff, so that’s all she applies to.
As the son of immigrant parents, Sergio was navigating unfamiliar pathways. The opportunities available to him at Freeway were helping him develop valuable skill sets, but Sergio’s family lacked the connections and social capital necessary to develop viable future options. As the model of his learning ecology illustrates, there were disconnections between his academic engagement, resources at home, social network, and opportunities for a career in the film industry. Javier, on the hand, had emigrated from Mexico with his parents and an older sister at the age of 14. His father was the Spanish teacher at Freeway and his mother occasionally worked as a musician. His father had graduated from college in Mexico and his sister was currently pursuing a college degree in film in Mexico. The differences in Sergio’s and Javier’s family situations influenced their own expectations and shaped their perspectives of creative digital media career options.
Like many immigrant families, Sergio lived in a multi-generational home with his extended family. He had emigrated from Mexico with his mother and his older siblings when he was only two years old. His parents were still married; however his father had lived in Mexico separated from the rest of the family for the past 16 years. In fact, Sergio had met his father only a few times, most recently on a trip to Mexico when he was 15 years old. Sergio’s mother was effectively a single mother who had raised her four children in the US. Sergio and his mother shared a converted one room garage bedroom that was attached to his sister and brother-in-law’s home; his two younger nieces and a nephew also shared the home. He had an older brother and sister who also lived nearby.
Sergio’s family had one outdated computer in the home, which was shared by all seven family members. He did not have a mobile phone, but he often borrowed a Wi-Fi-enabled iPod Touch from his friend Antonio (17 years old, Mexican-American). Although the iPod provided a way for Sergio to stay connected to his peers and a way to watch videos and search the Internet, it limited the kinds of media he could create. When it came to producing media he preferred to hang out after school in the media club, which provided him access to his friends, as well as to expensive media editing software and high-quality computers.
Sergio’s mother had a high school education, and was enrolled in English classes at a church during the time of the study; his father had quit pursing formal education after middle school in order to earn money for the family. The only person in Sergio’s family to have gone to college was his older brother, who had attended a local community college for one year before deciding to work full time. However, despite a lack of educational role models at home, Sergio could be described as moderately academically engaged. He cared about his studies and knew how to get work done quickly to pass his classes and have more free time for filmmaking. He enjoyed reading and math, was full of curiosity, enjoyed learning, and shared a mutual respect with most of his teachers.
However, what really excited Sergio was filmmaking. Often sacrificing sleep and other responsibilities to work on film, Sergio spent nearly all of his out-of-school time (and a lot of his in-school time) working on film projects with peers. He considered his interest to be more than a mere hobby, and referred to filmmaking as his “work.” He took a lot of pride in what he created, but he was also quite critical of himself. He compared his work to professional films and was always striving to make his own films better and more professional. Rather than seeing it as merely an outlet for self-expression or a hobby he shared with friends, Sergio deliberately invested time in his film projects, expecting that they would pay off financially in the future. This investment often came at the expense of other academic work and grades. He considered his participation in the Cinematic Arts Project as training for the post-graduation workforce: “Right now I’m doing things like writing scripts and making movie so I can build up a portfolio and then submit it to, like, places. And probably have my potential first part-time job in a film industry company or something like that.” His assumption that he would submit his portfolio to “like, places” is indicative of his own unfamiliarity with navigating a creative career path.
Javier’s interest in film was similar to Sergio’s in that he too aspired to be a professional filmmaker and invoked a discourse of professionalization when discussing his films: “I think projects like [the ones we do in the Cinematic Arts Project] help me to be artistically more mature because you’re working with other people that know about what you’re doing and you have this big responsibility because now it’s not, ‘Ah, I’m just doing my short film, whatever.’ It’s professional, it’s good work.” Javier’s family was more upwardly mobile than Sergio’s. His mother struggled to find consistent work in the United States, so the family lived primarily off his father’s teaching salary. They lived in a two-bedroom apartment just around the corner from the school. Javier had access to the family’s shared Internet-enabled computer. Like Sergio, he did not have a mobile phone. He spent much of his leisure time at home watching foreign and amateur films on YouTube. Javier was a mature teen who was quick to engage in philosophical conversations about politics and the world. Well liked by his teachers and peers, he was looked up to by many of the students in the clubs. He had established himself as a peer expert within the space, and other students often came to him for help with their own projects. He was simultaneously balancing school work, projects for the clubs, his own personal projects, and collaborating on films and scripts with his peers. Javier invested more time in film than in school. He did not consider grades very important, valuing creativity and personal expression above more traditional academic courses and rigor.
Javier admitted to staying up much too late working on film projects. Toward the end of the spring semester, some members of the film club had failed to edit the “behind the scenes” footage for a short film they were working on; Javier took on the extra workload. He recalled this as follows.
Javier:
So, I had to edit it in one night. I really didn’t sleep at all, and I didn’t come to school because I had to do that.
Q:
So you stayed at home?
Javier:
Yeah. Finally, I had to sleep.
Q:
So, did you have software at home to do it then?
Javier:
No. I borrowed a computer. I needed ten minutes of behind the scenes footage. And when I did it, it was, like, really intense. It was so much work. I think it sounds hard, and it is really hard, and it is a lot of work, and it is a lot of time that you have to spend, and you get really tired, but I think you can manage that because of the passion that you have. When you have that dream of film, “I want to do it. I want to do it.” That’s what helps you do it because if you don’t have the backup it’s hard to do it. Sometimes it gets really, really hard.
As this quotation demonstrates, Javier’s passion for film sometimes took a toll on his school work and physical health. He was often tired when I met with him, but he felt his investments were worth the sacrifices. His school work often suffered, but he maintained passing grades so he could continue to fully participate in the after-school activities.
Although Sergio was somewhat more invested in academics and cared more about his grades than Javier, it was Javier who expected to go to college, not Sergio. Javier intended to move back to Mexico, take a year off of school to work on films, and then apply to the university where his sister was currently pursuing a film degree. Sergio, on the other hand, did not consider college to be a viable option, despite the fact that he had decent grades, enjoyed learning, and had friends who were college-bound. He would occasionally talk about trying to go to the University of Southern California (USC), but had not made plans to apply, had not taken the SAT,9 had not filled out FAFSA forms,10 and had not attended any of the college readiness workshops offered by the school. In fact, he missed one of the college-readiness workshops because he was too busy working on a film for the Cinematic Arts Project. Even though he occasionally mentioned college, it was not a realistic expectation (especially an expensive, highly competitive, out-of-state private school such as USC), nor was he actively pursuing steps to achieve this aspiration. In actuality, Sergio was anxious and even felt pressured to get a job and start earning money after graduation. He was connected to peers with larger social networks and access to greater capital; thus his answers reflected middle-class aspirations, but he did not appear to give any real consideration to applying to colleges. Sergio viewed his digital media courses and the after-school club as vocational training, rather than as academic pursuits. In contrast, Javier, who was not particularly academically engaged, considered his digital media courses and the club to be an investment in his academic and career future.
For students who were disengaged with formal learning environments, it seemed creative digital media production and the club provided a potentially alternative pathway to success and career opportunities. Many of these students navigated a daily situation with unstable financial resources and unreliable or nonexistent peer and familial networks (as potential sources of social and cultural capital). Despite these situations, many students still engaged in robust and deeply fulfilling connected learning environments facilitated through their participation with media production and digital media networks. In this way, motivation for future-driven success influenced participants’ engagement in the clubs and learning about digital media. Identification as an artist and producer, combined with a recognition that digital media was more than just a hobby, shaped opportunities for learning and participation, which are key elements for sustained motivation (Dawes, and Larsen 2011). Digital media were constructed not just as tools for media production but also as opportunities for future success.
Although Sergio and Javier constructed similar narratives about the value of media production in their lives, the college-bound versus vocational expectations had different influences on their future-oriented aspirations. They both valued digital media and film, but they imbued their practices with differing meanings. Having watched his older sister successfully graduate from Freeway and be admitted to film school in Mexico, Javier considered digital media and filmmaking to be a means to an end—college and later a career. He presumed that his average grades would not hold him back from pursuing a degree in the creative arts, and thus he invested the majority of his time, intellectual curiosity, and creativity into film.
Sergio on the other hand, strived to earn decent grades to make his mother proud, but did not make the connection that his grades could help him continue a post-high school education. Rather, for Sergio, developing better digital media and film skills was the ultimate goal. He approached his media classes and experiences in the club as a pathway to a future career without the need for additional education. Though he valued the creative process, he also viewed his experiences within a vocational context. This is not surprising when contextualized within the broader culture of Freeway, which encouraged and prepared students for vocational training. Sergio’s career-oriented aspirations were not problematic in and of themselves. However, unlike more traditional and established vocational tracks, the digital media industry offers fewer employment opportunities for high school graduates. At present there aren’t pathways to career opportunities in digital and creative media that are as well established and structurally supported as the pathways in other vocational tracks (automotive, hospitality, HVAC, and so on.). Thus, Sergio’s goals and interest in creative media as part of a vocational track becomes problematic when those pathways to future opportunities are disconnected from and not fully supported by the institutions in which they are embedded.
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 opportunity. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The biggest differences in the stories concern the roles of and the (dis)connections between peers, academic, adults, and home. Javier, Sergio, and Gabriela all had peer networks that supported their goals and/or their interests and academic pursuits. Selena, on the other hand, lacked peer support of her goals, interests, and academic pursuits.
Much has been written about the effect of peer groups on teens’ academic performance, motivation, engagement, and self-efficacy; studies have found that peer networks and a sense of belonging are important for supporting (or detracting from) academic success (Goodenow and Grady 1993; Hymel, Comfort, Schonert-Reichl, and McDougall 1996; Juvonen, Espinoza, and Knifsend 2012; Wentzel 2005).
Additionally, for Sergio and Selena (and to a certain extent for Javier) there was a disparity between their interests and academics and their home life. They did not have access to the resources and the material capital necessary for their home life to play a significant role in supporting their goals. Sergio and Selena did not have access to technology that would have enhanced their personal interests as well as their academic pursuits. Likewise, in comparison with the parents of Javier and Gabriela, their parents were not as well connected or equipped to help with homework or creative media production. Their home lives afforded them less access to social networks that could have provided more diverse and resourceful social capital.
Further, what is abundantly clear in Javier’s and Gabriela’s cases is the extent to which each node actively supported their academic goals and the labor market. While Selena and Sergio found some spaces and influences that supported their goals, there were disconnects between academics and their goals, their home life and their goals, and the adults in their lives and their goals. For Selena, there also were disconnects between her peers and her goals. I do not identify these disconnects as a way to demonstrate deficiencies or failures on the parts of Selena and Sergio, but rather to draw attention to the structural and systematic barriers that shaped their connections, or lack thereof.
The connected learning model helps us to identify essential connections and can illuminate disconnections that detract from academic success and learning. Yet the model does not necessarily connect to alternative pathways of success outside of higher education. The creative media and technology industries in particular still privilege college as the preferred pathway. Sergio’s story in particular highlights how connections between formal education and personal interests do not necessarily lead to a pathway that connects career aspirations to economic opportunities. Arguably Sergio was a candidate for higher education, but despite the connections this was not an expectation he had of himself. In the absence of higher education he was left to navigate precarious opportunities and was unable to work his way into the creative industry. His academic and informal education did not accurately manage his expectations or help him connect long-term goals to his interests and skills.
Notably absent from the ecologies of all four students’ (even Gabriela, who was well connected and supported) was a supported connection between (a) personal interests, extracurricular activities, and goals, and (b) academics (i.e., the elliptical arrow in the ideal model). On the one hand, this further highlights the significance of the informal learning environments in helping students map out pathways that support their goals and expectations. But on the other, it accentuates and emphasizes a missing connection: academics must significantly support the informal learning spaces and personal interests of marginalized young people (and vice versa). As Sergio’s story demonstrates, there do not (yet) exist clear pathways for attaining social capital and economic stability in the creative industries outside of (a) academic pathways and/or (b) well-connected social networks that students’ can tap into for social capital. In the absence of higher education or connections in the industry, it remains difficult for students to connect their interests and informal learning nodes to their aspirations and goals. Hence the importance of helping students make greater connections between the informal and the formal learning environments, so that they are able to tap into other interests, skill sets, networks, knowledges, and capitals that create multiple pathways for attaining their goals.
Schools, as a democratic space to create more equitable opportunities, are in a unique position to help students tap into greater networks of resources and capital. They ought to be expected to help students manage risks and alleviate burdens of responsibility that are otherwise displaced onto families and the home. To a certain degree, Mr. Lopez was helping students make connections within the larger creative industry and community; he introduced them to working professionals, encouraged collaboration within and beyond the school, and aimed to equip students with the efficacy and confidence to participate in public spaces beyond the school. However, there were still barriers that made it challenging for students to cultivate ongoing relationships, networks, and resources. Merely meeting a professional does not provide students with access to resources and capital; rather, those relationships must be cultivated over time through mentorship, trust, and reciprocity.
This is where I see opportunities for digital media to alleviate gaps in inequitable distributions of resources and opportunities. Young people’s participation in networked publics provide opportunities for youth, regardless of social class and home life, to make connections beyond their immediate spheres of influence. Online they can connect and share with peers and adults, amateurs and professionals, in ways that are not easily feasible in offline social networks. But of course teens need incentives, support, and guidance in identifying and maintaining those relationships, which is where education, teachers, and policies can intentionally and deliberately contribute to more equitable opportunities.