“To Make Something of Myself”: Interactional Histories in the Context of Remedial Institutional Practices and Immigration Policies

4 “To Make Something of Myself”: Interactional Histories in the Context of Remedial Institutional Practices and Immigration Policies Jaime was born in a small town in Mexico not far from the Pacific Coast, where he described himself as a “happy kid” who enjoyed school, primarily because of opportunities it provided to connect with friends and play sports. His parents, both of whom had left school in Mexico by third grade, owned a modest two-bedroom home there in which they lived with Jaime and his three siblings. Jaime explained that his father decided to come to the United States because he wanted his family to have better financial and educational possibilities. A few years after leaving—when Jaime was nine—his father earned enough for his wife and children to make the journey to join him in California. Once the family settled into the South Sierra community, Jaime enrolled in third grade at a local school, and while his mother cared for her four young children, his father worked construction jobs. Reunification was difficult, Jaime explained, because of time he had spent away from his father and the strain the separation had put on his parents’ marriage. He described feeling nervous when he first started school in the United States, and because he had no Portions of this chapter draw from data first published in Kibler (2016). © The Author(s) 2019 A. K. Kibler, Longitudinal Interactional Histories, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98815-3_4 75 76 A. K. Kibler exposure to English before that time, initially being lost in class. He attended the same English-medium elementary school as Ana (Chap. 5), but he did not share her experiences with peer conflicts or negative interactions with teachers. Rather, he described making friends with other students, most of whom were Mexican-origin, relatively quickly, and having teachers who “were behind you, telling you what to do, helping you not get behind” (Interview, 10 April 2008). Jaime began high school at South Sierra, where he had a large and strong network of friends and developed positive relationships with many of his teachers despite his tendency to delay or avoid school-based reading and writing tasks. In the middle of his tenth-grade year, he decided to transfer to a nearby comprehensive school (West Hills High School) via an open-enrollment policy, a decision, he explained, made because of a desire to get away from negative peer influences at South Sierra High School as well as an interest in spending time with friends he already had at West Hills. Through this move, Jaime went from an untracked and majority-Latinx charter school environment to a more demographically and socioeconomically diverse but highly tracked setting in which he “rebe[came]” (Marshall, 2010, p. 41) an English learner (EL) and was placed in increasingly more EL-only classroom settings until his graduation. The turning point in Jaime’s story was his decision to attend community college upon graduation, which he eagerly anticipated and through which he hoped to transfer to a four-year university and specialize in computer technology. Although Jaime experienced higher-quality pedagogy and classroom-based successes in the context of literacy events there than he did in high school, he quickly became disillusioned with community college. He completed only three classes over a year and a half due to enrollment difficulties, an increasingly busy work schedule, and challenges imagining a career for himself without legal authorization/documentation. He received temporary legal status through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program,1 but only after he had left community college and was working full-time as a restaurant cashier; he chose not to return to school. Throughout his experiences, both during and after school, however, Jaime remained a highly competent “communicator,” in his words, across both English and Spanish despite what were often restricted opportunities for literacy development and academic success. “To Make Something of Myself”: Interactional Histories… 77 In the following section, I provide an overview of Jaime’s language and literacy experiences during this study. I then use LIHA to analyze literacy events before and after his turning point of attending community college (see Table 4.1) in order to understand the impact of this moment in terms of the interactions influencing his production of texts, how they did so, and patterns of change over time. Overview of Jaime’s Language and Literacy Experiences During High School Jaime completed the first year and a half of high school at South Sierra. There he was placed in bilingual humanities and ELD courses for his ninth-grade year; in keeping with the school’s notracking policy, he took English-medium classes in math and science that were open to students of all academic levels and language proficiencies. In his tenth-grade year, he was not placed in any specialized courses for language development and took untracked classes for all subjects. Upon his move to West Hills High School, however, he was placed in lowertrack classes in English, social studies, math, and science, although counselors and teachers were never able to tell me the rationale for this placement or the criteria used to make this decision. In his last two years at the school, he remained in lower-track math and science and was also placed in SDAIE (specially designed academic instruction in English) track classes, which were designed exclusively for English-learnerclassified students, for both English and social studies.2 According to his school counselor, this was done because he performed poorly on standardized state tests for English language arts at the end of his tenth-grade year, suggesting that such assessments were a key socioinstitutional mechanism (Kibler & Valdés, 2016) in the labeling of Jaime as an English learner. Jaime’s weighted3 grade point average for all four years of high school was a 2.811 out of 4. He typically made Bs and Cs (on an A to F scale), although he failed some of his math, science, and social studies courses on his first attempt at West Hills and had to retake them during the summer. 78 A. K. Kibler Table 4.1 Jaime’s turning point and literacy events presented through LIHA analysis Before the turning point Literacy Event “To get words to do the same thing” “Basic skills” Year Grade 10 Grade 12 Task Pancho Villa research paper (argumentationa) Error correction activity Institutional context (if applicable) Lower-track high school social studies class SDAIE high school English class After the turning point Turning Point: Attending Community College “I put more heart into it” “Actual reading and writing” Grade 13 Grade 14 DREAM Act research paper (argumentation) Voluntary writing (narration/ reflection) Remedial community None college English class Notes: aGenre labels in parentheses are aligned with those originally presented in Kibler (2014), as adapted from Schleppegrell (2004) “To Make Something of Myself”: Interactional Histories… 79 The opportunities for language and literacy development provided in his classes at South Sierra and West Hills High Schools were notably different. In the former school, the curricula often focused on “thick, important books” and academic postsecondary preparation for all students (see Chap. 1), although the extent to which teachers and students were able to achieve such a goal varied considerably. Peer learning and collaborative projects were also a frequent feature of courses I observed. West Hills, in contrast, was both highly tracked and highly teacher- and textbookdriven: Teacher lectures, teacher-led homework review, and individual work on textbook questions were the most common activities in classes. There were a few exceptions, however, in which teachers designed their own curriculum rather than relying on textbooks or created somewhat more open-ended assignments and peer learning activities. In my first observations of Jaime as a tenth grader at West Hills in early 2008, I saw him participate eagerly in his classes, without some of the work avoidance tactics I had seen him practice at South Sierra High School. By the end of the first semester, however, he participated more reluctantly and described school as “boring” (Interview, 13 May 2008), explaining that he would not be able to pass his math or science class that semester. In talking individually with his teachers, each one told me that his grades were low because he did not complete his homework regularly, which Jaime agreed was something he had difficulty motivating himself to do. Multiple times I watched him rush to complete his homework in the few minutes before classes began, and I noted that although he at times struggled with more interpretive or applicationbased questions, he was generally able to complete the homework without assistance. By the time Jaime was in grades 11 and 12, he was placed in SDAIE classes for both English and social studies, the only two subjects for which these types of courses were available. These classes were filled completely with Spanish-speaking, English-learner-classified students, demonstrating at a small scale the hyper-segregation of bilingual Latinx youth documented by Carhill-Poza (2017). As one teacher who had previously taught SDAIE classes explained, most of these students were born in the United States or had lived here most of their lives (Interview, 16 May 2008). The teacher went on to describe this system as “broken” and that 80 A. K. Kibler “the [SDAIE] label has become a death sentence” in terms of academic development and self-image. Youth themselves understood its negative connotations. She recalled, for example, one young man telling her he was upset about his SDAIE course placement because he knew he was “taking the ‘beaner’ class,” using a well-known ethnic/racial slur applied to Mexican-origin people in the United States. While this statement was not made by Jaime himself, it nonetheless suggested the ways in which course placements at West Hills were perceived, at least by some, as reflecting raciolinguistic ideologies (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Rosa & Flores, 2017) and negative social identities related to English-learner and remedial status (Duff, 2002; Ortmeier-Hooper, 2008). In these classes, textbook-driven tasks also dominated the curriculum, and although Jaime’s teachers consistently described him as very capable or “much higher” than other students in those classes in terms of his language development, he continued similar patterns of homework noncompletion and had to retake two semesters of social studies in summer school to earn a passing grade. Ironically, the courses he retook were untracked (neither SDAIE nor remedial), but he described his teacher as excellent, and earned an A‒ and a B for them. These institutional experiences at West Hills tended to highlight academic remediation in English—with the exception of a single Spanishfor-Native-Speakers class, described later—and did not reflect Jaime’s perceptions of himself as an English user or the varied uses of languages and literacies in which I saw him engage. Early in his high school career, for example, Jaime understood himself to be a competent user of spoken English. When asked in tenth grade to describe what he could do in English, he explained, “I think I’m kind of fluent, like I’m better than I thought I could be, so I feel like pretty comfortable speaking it, listening to it, and everything” (Interview, 8 April 2008). As he approached high school graduation, he was even more positive, saying, “Since I talk more in English, it’s like I feel more confident. I’m not afraid to say something wrong, you know?” (Interview, 6 June 2010). Consistent with Jaime’s self-assessment, I observed him using English skillfully with a range of non-Spanish-speaking teachers and fellow students at school, including his English-dominant White (European- “To Make Something of Myself”: Interactional Histories… 81 American) girlfriend. With bilingual friends and his siblings, as well as Spanish-speaking adults at school, I likewise saw him engage in a wide range of conversations across both languages, and in particular using humor with friends that featured extensive bilingual wordplay (e.g., Martínez & Morales, 2014). Although I never observed him with other family members, he reported using Spanish orally with his parents and older relatives. In terms of understanding and producing written texts, Jaime was similarly confident with what he could accomplish in English. In tenth grade, he explained: Like in reading, I’m fine. Some words I don’t know, they’re hard to understand, but I’ll like figure them out later, or I go back and I ask someone, what does that mean? I think writing is like, I think it’s easy, like well I can write everything I say, like really long words, like really weird words, only if I know I have to, but I can write. (Interview, 8 April 2008)4 As mentioned earlier, the time I spent with Jaime convinced me that this self-assessment was largely accurate, and as he alluded to, he typically engaged in school-based practices reluctantly, or “only if I have to.” (This complex situation is further explored later in the chapter.) However, he explained feeling that his literacy expertise in Spanish was becoming less developed over time, saying: My [spoken] Spanish is very good, but my writing, [only] kind of. I don’t have the same skills I had before. I used to be really fast at reading Spanish but now, I’m slower. I get like stuck so I can’t read that well. (Interview, 8 April 2008) I saw this in my school-based observations, particularly in relation to Jaime’s participation in his Spanish-for-Native-speakers class at West Hills High School. There, he was a frequent contributor to class discussions but tended to progress through textbook-based literacy tasks more slowly than his peers. Jaime also skillfully employed English and bilingual literacy expertise in non-academic environments. He was a very frequent communicator 82 A. K. Kibler on MySpace, the social media platform of the day, creating English, and less commonly, bilingual texts via his posts and emails. He also reported occasionally picking up newspapers on the bus and surprising himself by reading and enjoying Twilight (Meyer, 2005), a popular young adult novel. Further, Jaime had significant media savvy: He was always up-todate on current technology and had a prodigious knowledge of American cinema and the latest soccer news, which he accessed online via Englishand Spanish-language sites. As his high school graduation approached, Jaime acknowledged that reaching this milestone was a significant accomplishment, in part because many of his friends from the South Sierra community did not earn enough credits to graduate. He explained that “I think college is probably [going to] be more challenging for me, but I think I’ll handle it if I really put effort into it. I’m not going to let it overcome me” (Interview, 16 June 2010). Jaime hoped to enroll in a community college program to become a computer technician and to also take courses that would eventually allow him to transfer to a four-year university. With the financial help of a family friend (a White community member who had befriended his family years before and who paid Jaime’s tuition),5 he enrolled in a local community college the fall after his high school graduation and explained that, “I look forward for college. I’m like – I don’t know – I’m excited” (Interview, 16 June 2010). During and After Community College At Mountain Ridge Community College, Jaime was placed in remedial (pre-collegiate) English and Math courses in the fall term as the result of his performance on standardized placement tests. Jaime was well aware that his English class did not carry transfer-level university credit, but in contrast to students who may find ESL courses at tertiary levels to be highly stigmatizing (OrtmeierHooper, 2008; Marshall, 2010), Jaime appeared to have a more pragmatic approach to English courses. He said he would have preferred to be in the upper-level ESL class offered by the school because it offered transferable English credits instead of his current class, designed for the general community college population, which did not. He began with just two classes that fall, to “see how it goes” (Interview, 16 June 2016). “To Make Something of Myself”: Interactional Histories… 83 Jaime was initially positive about his experiences at Mountain Ridge. He enjoyed his first remedial English class, which featured an integrated reading/writing curriculum, a range of fiction and non-fiction texts that Jaime said he found interesting, and multiple opportunities to develop his writing through teacher guidance and feedback. Jaime’s math course, a two-term, self-paced, online pre-algebra class, was less engaging because it featured material he had learned in high school. He earned passing credit for these classes in his first term, but by that time he had already become far less enthusiastic about his postsecondary experiences. For example, when I asked in an interview four months into the school year if he liked the work he was doing in community college, he explained: Well, if I understand it, yeah. If I don’t, then I feel, like, frustrated and I don’t know what to do, and I just have to wait until the next day to ask questions of someone. Because I mean, you don’t really get to communicate with the other students there, since it’s just like – as soon as class is over they all leave and stuff. They don’t want to talk much…It’s different from high school, you know? And I just start thinking, like, “Am I going to be able to do all of this, for like, I don’t know how many years?” It’s complicated. I just want to get it over with, community college. (Interview, 20 December 2010) According to Jaime, interactions with classmates were not as common in his community college setting as they were in high school, and he missed those connections not only because of the social environment they created but also for the opportunities they allowed to develop and clarify his learning. Jaime also referenced the long path ahead for completing his studies: The computer science program, for example, required at least ten courses, none of which Jaime was yet taking. Jaime planned to enroll in the next remedial English class in the sequence and a computer software class in the winter quarter. He was unable to do so, however, because all of the sections were full when he went to register. He also considered taking a Spanish-for-HeritageSpeakers class6 as an elective but said that in the end he decided he would rather work to earn extra money. Instead, he took on a part-time job and 84 A. K. Kibler finished the second term of his online math course in the winter, waiting until the spring academic term to take his next English class. Jaime spoke about his second English class in positive terms that were similar to the first one. Although the reading and writing tasks were more demanding, he liked his teacher and enjoyed reading books like The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Haley & Malcolm X, 1964) and completing reflective and argumentative writing assignments. Jaime explained that he had to drop out of the English class that term, however, because of personal issues in his family that kept him from attending the class regularly. He returned to Mountain Ridge in the fall term, just a year after he began community college, and completed his second English class, but he did not enroll in any additional classes that term or after. By the end of his second year after high school graduation, Jaime was working full-time for a local restaurant and was considering returning to school but remained ambivalent about what he wanted to do. When he obtained temporary legal status through the DACA program just a year later, he called it a “life changer,” explaining that it—along with his girlfriend’s encouragement—was motivating him to pursue further schooling or vocational training. He remained unsure, however, about what he wanted to study: First, I wanted to do a doctor assistant for a little bit. That was kind of interesting. Then, I wanted to do like some video production, or maybe get trained for a union job. It all depends, like at what moment I ask myself that question. But I don’t know. I just don’t want to rush into something, you know? Like in a way it’s like, [with DACA] you’re a little free to do more things, but then at the same time you have more pressure on you, because now you know you could do something better. (Interview, 19 May 2013) During the remaining years of the study, Jaime did not return to school, even though he described it as something “I think about every day” (Interview, 24 May 2014). He continued working, however, and in his fourth year after graduation, he left the restaurant where he was employed to take a job at a large technology firm, stocking their breakrooms and dining areas. “To Make Something of Myself”: Interactional Histories… 85 Across his various jobs, Jaime consistently worked with colleagues and customers who were Spanish/English bilinguals. As he explained, “I mean, there’s always people there that always use both languages, you know?” (Interview, 19 May 2013). In many situations, he described also serving as a bridge (or language broker: Orellana, 2009, Valdés, 2003) between Spanish-dominant co-workers and English-dominant supervisors or customers. For example, at the technology company he received written restocking requests in English and then explained to his Spanishdominant colleagues what needed to be done. Most reading and writing he undertook at his jobs was in English, including the restocking requests as well as tasks at his previous restaurant job that included labeling food items, reading orders, and taking online tutorials that informed employees about new policies or food items. The voluntary literacy practices in which Jaime engaged during his community college and working years were quite similar to those during high school. He continued to text and use the latest social media platforms to stay in contact with his bilingual friends and siblings as well as the girlfriend whom he had been dating since high school, peruse Spanish- and English-language websites to keep up with his favorite soccer teams, and read a local English-language newspaper occasionally as well. Jaime described his long-time girlfriend as an avid reader in English who often suggested books to him, although he said, “I only read them once in a while” (Interview, 19 May 2013). As in high school, he reported that his reading in Spanish felt slower than it did in English, and that he did not write in Spanish other than in occasional bilingual social media posts. Jaime’s Longitudinal Interactional Histories As described earlier in this chapter, Jaime’s increasingly tracked high school experiences—and his increasingly limited opportunities to engage in meaningful classroom-based literacy events—built toward the turning point of his enrollment in community college, where he encountered improved literacy instruction and demonstrated development of literacy expertise, but in a context of further academic tracking and a less 86 A. K. Kibler well-defined institutional pathway that contributed to his decision to leave community college. Literacy events demonstrating these trends both before and after this turning point are presented through LIHA analyses; these events as well as their placement in relation to the turning point are presented in Table 4.1. Before the Turning Point: Tracking in High School In this section, I use LIHA analyses of two particular literacy events during high school to explore the opportunities and limitations for language and literacy development that Jaime experienced leading up to his turning point, demonstrating how meaningful opportunities to engage in writing were often foreclosed by both instructional choices and discourses of remediation. First, I examine his interest in the topic of a tenth-grade research paper on Pancho Villa in a social studies class but his problematic experiences writing it; second, I analyze an in-class error-correction activity from his 12th-grade SDAIE English class, which embodied the limited literacy experiences available to Jaime and other students in that academic track. “To Get Words to Do the Same Thing”: The Research Paper Experience In Jaime’s high school experiences, he was required to complete argumentative research papers, particularly in his social studies classes, almost every semester. Topics for these papers ranged from current events to historical topics to exploration of possible careers, all with a focus on learning how to locate sources via library databases and integrate them into students’ own writing via standardized citation practices. Although these events did not feature any formal instruction or teacher feedback on writing, they represented the key extended writing opportunities for Jaime in high school and the ones that most closely mirrored the assignments he would be asked to complete in his community college English classes. This particular literacy event took place in Jaime’s tenth-grade social studies class, which was not a SDAIE class but was the lower of two academic tracks offered by the school, one that was open to all students but precluded later enrollment in advanced social studies courses. It did, however, still provide credit toward high school graduation. This class differed from many at West Hills in that it featured periodic collaborative “To Make Something of Myself”: Interactional Histories… 87 peer learning tasks. In fact, it was the only classroom at the school I saw with desks gathered into tables rather than rows. The teacher, Ms. Evans, often created her own materials, which allowed for a range of tasks like role-plays and other group activities, although she also engaged students in more traditional textbook-driven note-taking, quizzes, and tests. The teacher had a Spanish-speaking assistant, and Jaime described often working with her during class. The literacy event that I analyze here was the writing of a five-page research paper, in which students were expected to draw from multiple sources and include in-source citations for quotations, summaries, and paraphrases, as well as a works cited page. They were offered a range of over 50 topics or historical figures from which they could choose (aligned with the topics they studied that year), and the purpose of the paper was to present an argument for why their topic or person was important in history. The teacher provided pre-writing activities to help students decide on a topic and organize their notes, a timeline and calendar for each step of the process including an opportunity for peer feedback, and library tutorials on finding resources and citing sources. The teacher also outlined in general terms the kinds of information that should be included in the introduction, body, and conclusion of their paper, along with suggested page lengths. Interactions Jaime’s interactions with both the structure of the assignment and the teacher were influential in the creation of his written text. First, the wide range of possible topics allowed Jaime to choose an individual in whom he was genuinely interested: Pancho Villa. He explained, “I pick him because Mexicans talk about him, so I’m like let’s see his history. I didn’t really know much about him, just that he was a revolutionary” (Interview, 10 April 2008). Second, several days of class time spent working with his teacher in the school library were key to locating the required English-language sources for his paper. Jaime described his teacher’s one-on-one help during this time as extremely useful. Third, the structure of the assignment—in which students gathered sources and completed organizational planning for their papers during class but were expected to draft their paper primarily outside of class—also had an impact on his text and the pace at which he wrote it. Fourth, because 88 A. K. Kibler Jaime did not complete a first draft in time to receive peer feedback, a lack of interactions with others during the writing process also played an important role in shaping his text. Impacts Jaime finished the in-class activities on time but did not start writing the paper until two days before it was due. (He acknowledged realizing that he needed to start on the assignment earlier, and being reminded by his teacher to do so, but putting it off because he was busy with other homework and knew he could wait until later to write it.) In the two days during which Jaime drafted his text, he drew upon one of the three sources he had gathered earlier, a 3000-word biography on Pancho Villa from a library database. The assignment guidelines asked students to begin with an introductory paragraph that included a thesis about why their topic or person was important in history before identifying significant events relevant to the topic or person in the body of the paper. Jaime instead followed the organizational pattern in the single biographical source he used: a sequential description of Pancho Villa’s life, from birth to death, without a thesis about his importance. In fact, Jaime’s reliance on this source involved far more than overall organization, in that he took his writing almost word-for-word from portions of that text, with some paraphrasing but without in-text citations. Table 4.2 shows a representative example of this pattern in his paper. Jaime relied heavily on his source text—and, indeed, the teacher’s written feedback on this paper noted that “this does not sound like you summarized your research in your own words in all places”—but there were several ways in which Jaime attempted to engage in paraphrasing. These included changes to selected vocabulary, like using “begging” instead of “pleading with,” “injuring” for “wounding,” and “hoop on his horse back and ran away” for “fled on horseback.” Such changes were in fact accurate synonyms and demonstrated that Jaime understood what the terms in the original text meant. Other rephrasings like “the owner of the hacianda” for “the hacendado” likewise retained the intended meaning. Jaime also deleted the introductory phrase from his source text but included additional information, like clarifying that Pancho Villa had been working in the field and that the hacienda owner was at his house with his sister, as well as creating a new detail about the hacienda owner being “To Make Something of Myself”: Interactional Histories… 89 Table 4.2 Jaime’s paraphrasing from sources, tenth grade Source text Jaime’s text When he was working in the According to his own field and he return on recollection, when he returned September 22, 1894, from the field on September 22, 1894, he saw his mother pleading with He saw her mother begging the owner of the hacienda the owner of the hacienda to leave his sister Martinita alone. to leave her sister martita alone. Sneaking off to the house of his cousin, He when to his cousin’s house he retrieved a pistol, and he retrieves a pistol returned to his home, and he returns to his house where the owner of the hacianda is with his sister martita and shot the hacendado three times, and he shoots the owner of the hacianda three time in the back of him, seriously wounding him; seriously injuring him; he then fled on horseback. then he hoop in his horse back and ran away. shot in the back.7 Another notable change was in clause structure, which can be seen in the second sentence. Rather than embedding clauses in each other as the original text had, he used conjunctions (in this case, “and”) to join clauses, a feature that is characteristic of developing writers (Schleppegrell, 2004). Other changes included shifting some verbs into present tense, mis-transcribing several words from the source text, and using non-standardized orthography to spell new words he introduced, such as “when” for “went” and “hoop” for “hopped,” among others. Jaime followed this pattern through his entire paper, with a single intext citation only in the final sentence. During an interview in which we looked over the teacher’s feedback about his paraphrasing (earlier in the chapter), he reflected on this aspect of his text. I asked Jaime what the teacher’s comment meant to him, and he explained: 90 A. K. Kibler Jaime: Amanda: Jaime: Amanda: Jaime: To not get it from the thing you’re getting it to. Like, try to put it in your own words. Put your ideas. Try to do it the same but not with the same words they’re putting. Not just copy it from another paper. How well do you think you do with that? About a 6 from a 10. What keeps you from getting a 10? Sometimes, it’s too confusing to get words to do the same thing. (Interview, 9 June 2008) His efforts, which resulted in some changes at the sentence level but an unfavorable assessment from the teacher, underscored the challenges of “get[ting] words to do the same thing.” Notably, the instructional focus for this paper was on the mechanics of citations rather than how to actually do the summarizing, paraphrasing, or quoting of sources that would require citing a specific source. In this sense, the complex task of writing from sources was overlooked instructionally as a prerequisite for the formal citation practices required by the assignment. His teacher’s feedback also suggested that he “get some help with proof-reading and fine-tuning of grammar,” a comment that was not surprising given the example in Table 4.2, which was representative of his overall text in this regard. However, it remained unclear what Jaime might have even been able to accomplish if there had been time for him to revise and edit his writing. As he explained, “I was just doing, writing fast. I didn’t have that much time. I could have done better, you know?” Jaime continued, explaining that regardless of the time he had been able to devote to the paper, “They’re going to find mistakes because I’m just, not learning, I’ve already learned it, but just not as well as [the teachers] have” (Interview, 9 June 2008). He did not earn passing credit for the assignment, but his passing grade for the course allowed him to earn credit toward graduation. Change Over Time This literacy event made new demands on Jaime. It was the first time that he had been required to locate, integrate, and cite multiple sources, a format that was unfamiliar to him at this point but “To Make Something of Myself”: Interactional Histories… 91 characterized many of his later writing assignments, particularly in community college. Although he was interested in the topic he chose, found it relevant to his Mexican identity, and spoke with me at length about what he had learned about Pancho Villa’s life, his written text did not demonstrate mastery of the literacy-related expectations for the assignment. Such a situation raises several questions about the role that writing instruction (or its absence) played in Jaime’s creation of his text. While a lack of effort likely masked Jaime’s true ability to engage in this literacy event (echoing a Latinx student profiled in Brooks, 2017), how much might he have been able to accomplish if he had started writing earlier? And might Jaime have begun his drafting sooner if he had more (or different) in-class guidance while writing? If he had completed a first draft on time, would the feedback he received from classmates or his teacher have allowed him to better meet the assignment requirements? Answers to these questions can only be speculative, but the event was significant in highlighting the ways in which Jaime coped with significant literacy demands in the context of limited writing instruction. “Basic Skills”: “Writing” in SDAIE English Class Because of performance on a standardized state assessment in English he took at the end of tenth grade, Jaime was placed in an even lower track designed exclusively for English-learner-classified students—SDAIE—for his last two years of high school English and social studies courses. The English courses featured the same general literary content as those in other tracks but used texts that had been adapted by a publishing company for students at intermediate levels of English proficiency. Ms. Han, Jaime’s 12th-grade English teacher, described students in Jaime’s class as “very low”—pushing her hand toward the ground to emphasize her meaning—and as not having the “basic skills” for writing (Interview, 19 April 2010). Ms. Han thought that Jaime did not put much effort into his work, and she expected more from him. From Jaime’s perspective, however, the class was “for kids who need more help. It’s too easy, but oh well” (Interview, 16 June 2010). In observing this class, I came to see a recurring pattern of literacy events that focused on writing, but not the extended writing tasks I had 92 A. K. Kibler come to expect from his social studies classes. Rather, most texts students wrote in the SDAIE English class were created by copying directly from the teacher via error-correction activities in ways that enacted her notion of basic skills. Such literacy events embody many of the concerns raised by scholars about EL-classified students’ limited access to advanced language and literacy practices or college-preparatory curricula due to placement in remedial or low-track courses (Callahan & Shifrer, 2012; Enright & Gilliland, 2011; Kanno & Kangas, 2014; Umansky, 2016). In the following section I describe one particular lesson, observed in the fall of that year, which was representative of this pattern. Interactions Jaime’s interactions with the curriculum and the teacher’s basic skills discourse were highly influential on the texts he created during this literacy event. At the time this particular lesson occurred, students were studying literature from the late medieval period, including Arthurian legends, and this provided an ostensible focus for the lesson. The teacher’s understanding of these students as needing remediation, however, led to literacy practices that were disconnected from this literature and positioned students as passive recipients rather than active decision-makers and contributors. In this activity, which was a daily feature of the class and typically lasted 20–30 minutes, the teacher projected on the front board a written convention “skill” that they would be practicing along with a sentence that included one or more errors that students needed to correct using this skill. On one of the days I observed, for example, it read: Skill Practiced: Practice Sentence: Elimination of unnecessary comma in compound conjunction “The Marriage of King Arthur” by Sir Thomas Mallory describes chivalric ideals, and life during the middle ages. While this sentence ostensibly related this lesson to the literary works students were studying, multiple disconnects from that literature were “To Make Something of Myself”: Interactional Histories… 93 apparent. For example, in most contexts, “Mallory” is written as Malory, and the work with which he is associated is Le Morte Darthur (2004, Shepherd, Ed.). Students had previously read an adapted version of one section of that work, however, entitled “The Marriage of King Arthur,” and so this was the only title they had been exposed to.8 The practice sentence also set up a situation in which there was a very limited challenge for students in understanding the skill they were to practice. There was only one comma in the sentence, and so there could only be one correct answer as to which comma should be removed. And all of this could be accomplished without any attention to the content of the sentence itself. The teacher led students through this activity in a way that further marginalized the literary context of the sentence and continued to limit their engagement in this literacy event. After asking a student to read aloud the skill they were practicing, as projected on the board, Ms. Han asked students questions about it: 1 Ms. Han: 2 3 4 5 Student: 6 Ms. Han: 7 Student: 8 Ms. Han: 9 10 11 12 13 Jaime: 14 Ms. Han: 15 Jaime: 16 17 Ms. Han: 18 19 ok let’s see. do you know what is compound construction?9 what should you look for here? what are the key words? unnecessary. unnecessary what? comma. comma, so look for the comma that you don’t need. so even if you don’t know what is compound construction, look for the comma. where is it Jaime. what? where is the comma in the sentence that we get rid of. right there. where it says ideals. right. ideals. Joel why are we getting rid of that comma. 94 A. K. Kibler 20 21 Joel: 22 Ms. Han: 23 24 25 26 Student: 27 Ms. Han: why don’t we need it? because you have a list of things. that’s a great idea, thank you. but who thinks you can answer better? OK, what is— you have a compound construction. ah yes. (Observation, 24 October 2009)10 In this interaction, Ms. Han asked students about the key words in the definition of the skill, building on a student’s volunteering of the word “unnecessary” (line 5) to provide a synonym: something you “don’t need” (line 9). Rather than moving on to define “compound construction,” however, she instead explained that all students really need to do is look for the extra comma in the sentence (lines 10–11). Jaime was called on and quickly identified the location of the comma (lines 12–16). When she called on another student, Joel, to explain why they did so, he offered another rule they had learned recently: that items in a list should be separated by commas (line 21). Ms. Han complimented his idea but asked the group for a better answer, to which a different student simply repeated the phrase in the definition of the skill, “a compound construction” (line 26). Ms. Han accepted this as the correct answer and went on to the next skill to be practiced with this sentence, which was “Capitalization of the name of a historical period.” A student immediately supplied that answer (“Middle Ages”), and Ms. Han asked all of the students to copy down the now-corrected sentence. She then turned to a second skill and practice sentence, this time related to correcting a run-on sentence with a semicolon, something students knew how to do immediately. After correcting the sentence, Ms. Han went on to show a 15-minute animated PowerPoint—which she explained she had also shown the previous week—to remind students how to correct run-on sentences. At no time did Ms. Han mention the literary context of the practice sentences or their relevance to the work they were now studying, an adapted version of The Canterbury Tales. “To Make Something of Myself”: Interactional Histories… 95 Impacts Jaime wrote everything required of him in this literacy event: two correctly punctuated sentences. Despite the existence of these texts, it was unclear exactly what he or his classmates learned about punctuation and capitalization, the meaning of a “compound construction,” or the literature they were studying. What was obvious, however, was that youth learned (likely long before this particular lesson) that such literacy events were “games” of finding and articulating a correct answer that had already been presented, rather than opportunities to engage in writing about ideas or thinking critically. And while error-correction lessons did not comprise the entire SDAIE English curriculum, together with the copying of vocabulary words and definitions they made up almost half of each lesson on a daily or weekly basis. During these activities, Jaime did not have opportunities to develop knowledge about literature, or access to authentic literature itself, and writing consisted of copying rather than creating his own texts. In fact, Jaime reported that during the entire year, they were never assigned writing of more than a paragraph at a time. Change Over Time Both the institutional placement and the curriculum of the SDAIE English course reflected discourses that served to marginalize and racialize Mexican-origin and multilingual students and their language and literacy repertoires. The course represented a dramatic reduction in literacy-related expectations even compared to those Jaime faced in other courses at that time, like his SDAIE social studies class, where he continued to complete research papers with little writing support. Jaime’s English class, however, curricularized language (Valdés, 2015) in ways that did not provide him with the literacy expertise to engage in those more demanding tasks. Instead, it relied on teaching isolated features of language (also critiqued in Valdés, 2001), in this case with a focus on written conventions that are in fact commonly misused by all student writers, not just English-learning multilingual students (Lunsford & Lunsford, 2008). These practices were divorced from the literary content and students’ own writing, used a sentence-correction method that has been critiqued by literacy scholars (Godley, Carpenter, & Werner, 2007), and incorporated very limited opportunities for extended writing. Unsurprisingly, although Jaime’s social studies research 96 A. K. Kibler papers demonstrated a small measure of gradual improvement over time in 11th and 12th grades, none featured consistent use of the written conventions on which Ms. Han spent so much of her instructional time. After the Turning Point: Challenges and Successes in and After Community College Despite the limited opportunities Jaime’s SDAIE English class provided for language and literacy development, it did provide credits toward high school graduation, and he completed all requirements—including passing the state’s standardized high school exit exam—in order to graduate on time in the spring of his 12th-grade year. He then decided to attend community college, a choice that served as a turning point in his journey, not because it represented completely new literacy demands—in fact, they were quite familiar (similar to Harklau, 2001)—but because the courses in which he enrolled were no longer placed in a clear trajectory that led to a tangible goal (as his course-taking in high school did). This lack of a pathway became a defining factor in Jaime’s eventual departure from community college despite his growth in writing expertise developed in that context. I use LIHA analyses of two literacy events after Jaime’s turning point to explore this journey (See Table 4.1). Specifically, I first explore an argumentative research paper in which his successful negotiation of literacy expectations had little impact in propelling him forward in his community college journey. I then examine a voluntary literacy event in which Jaime participated after leaving school that highlighted the ways in which Jaime was able to fulfill his own definition of a “real” writer, although he did so outside of academic contexts. “I Put More Heart into It”: Writing in Remedial Community College English Class In the first of two remedial English classes Jaime took at Mountain Ridge Community College, he described a final paper he wrote on the DREAM Act11 as one that he was especially proud of, that he enjoyed writing, and that his teacher rated highly. In this literacy event, Jaime was asked to write about a topic currently being debated in the news, using multiple sources to present arguments in relation to the different sides of the debate and includ- “To Make Something of Myself”: Interactional Histories… 97 ing in-text citations and a works cited page (as he had also been asked to do in his social studies research papers at West Hills High School). Students also wrote a research proposal and annotated bibliographies of their sources, both of which they turned in for teacher feedback. According to Jaime, they spent two or three weeks of class time on this paper, including such activities as analyzing model texts and holding individual teacher-student conferences and peer feedback sessions. This was a high-stakes task, in that it accounted for a large portion of students’ final grades. Interactions Jaime’s interactions with his teacher, his own annotated bibliography, other individuals, and discourses of immigration all had notable influences on the text he wrote. First, his one-on-one conference with his teacher played an important role, in that she gave him advice about organizing his paper into multiple sections: an introduction, arguments for and against the DREAM Act, his own opinion about the issue, and the future of the Act. Second, Jaime explained that the annotated bibliography was an important first step in helping him draw ideas from his sources rather than simply paraphrasing them in their entirety. Third, Jaime described spending significant time developing several aspects of his text with his girlfriend and the family friend who helped pay his tuition. Specifically, his girlfriend helped him summarize the articles for his annotated bibliography, select key ideas from them to include in his paper, use in-text citations, and create a works cited page. His family friend, on the other hand, focused on written expression once he had finished his text: “she would be on the phone with me, correcting my grammar and [telling me] what I should take out of a sentence and put in and stuff like that. That helped a lot” (Interview, 20 December 2010). Fourth, Jaime’s personal involvement with the discourses of immigration policy surrounding the DREAM Act supported his writing of the text. He explained: It influenced me in a lot of ways since I had learned a lot about [the Act]. I know it didn’t pass, but I still feel good that I wrote on it, and I spent some time on something that I really wanted to pass. It wasn’t something I was like, yeah, I have to do this for a class. I mean, it was, but I was putting 98 A. K. Kibler more effort into it, so I could know better about something I was going to get benefit from, so I put more heart into it, like people say. (Interview, 20 December 2010) In this sense, writing about the Act not only helped him understand the arguments being made about immigration policy but gave him significant motivation to complete his assignment. Impacts These interactions were notable in their impact on Jaime’s text. At the discourse level, the text followed his teacher’s advice for overall organization, including each of the sections she suggested. Additionally, his experience creating and using the annotated bibliography—with his girlfriend’s help—allowed Jaime to create arguments that integrated ideas from multiple sources, and his interactions with his family friend supported use of the “[correct] grammar” and sentence constructions that Jaime described. For example, in a paragraph that outlined political and ideological arguments opposing the Act, he included three different sources, all with accurate in-text citations and conventional language usage: There are many people who do not agree that the DREAM Act should pass. Because the DREAM Act was added onto the Defense Spending Bill, many people think that it was Senator Reid’s way to gain many Latin American votes in the state of Nevada. There was also not enough debate on the bill before people could vote on it and many feel that there would be more illegal immigration if the border does not gain more security. Other people think that the DREAM Act would forgive the illegal immigrants for what they did and give them an easy way to gain citizenship (MacPhee). There is an argument stating that giving in-state tuition rates to undocumented individuals amounts to giving them taxpayer-financed education. To some, giving illegal immigrants this “gift” of education will cost taxpayers money, especially when “To Make Something of Myself”: Interactional Histories… 99 the rates are rising throughout the nation (“DREAM Act: Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act”). A woman by the name of Leticia Novoa, who came to the United States from Cuba, states that it would reward criminals for crossing the border. She claims, “there is always a way to do everything legal. To allow these people to have the same rights as I do is rewarding them for their criminal actions, and that’s wrong…if they want legalization, they have to go through the legal process.” (Cano) As seen, Jaime’s use of paraphrasing developed in tandem with the use of multiple sources and conventional usage. For example, Table 4.3 presents the third-to-last sentence of this paragraph alongside the source text from which it was taken. Jaime employed additions (“A woman by the name of ” and “for crossing the border”), deletions (of the year of her immigration), and rephrasings (“it” for “the DREAM Act” and “states that it would reward criminals for crossing the border” for “opposes the DREAM Act because ‘it is rewarding criminals’”). In many ways, these strategies were similar to those he used in tenth grade. What differed more dramatically, however, was his maintenance of complex clausal structures, consistently standardized spelling and language use, and his use of this paraphrased text as part of a multi-source argument that employed appropriate citation conventions. Table 4.3 Jaime’s paraphrasing from sources, first year of community college Source text Jaime’s text Leticia Novoa, A woman by the name of Leticia Novoa, who came to the United States in 1968 from Cuba, who came to the United States from Cuba, opposes the DREAM Act because “it is rewarding criminals.” states that it would reward criminals for crossing the border. 100 A. K. Kibler Such differences appeared to have had a notable impact in terms of teacher assessment. Jaime’s strategies for using source texts were seen as inappropriate by his tenth-grade teacher, but those he employed in this literacy event were met with approval by his community college instructor. Jaime earned an “A” on this paper, although because it was a final assignment he never received additional feedback. With this grade he passed the class and was able to proceed to the next remedial English course at Mountain Ridge. Change Over Time The structure of the assignment described in this literacy event resembled those Jaime completed in his high school social studies courses, although with further writing-focused pedagogical structures in place. However, Jaime’s performance was markedly different on this task than on his tenth-grade research paper, both in terms of the final textual product as well as the process through which he completed it. First, this more sophisticated engagement in writing from sources appeared to be a result of several textual strategies in combination rather than any single element in isolation. Second, the process through which Jaime created his text gave him opportunities to employ and refine those strategies through his own revising and through interactions with others: I actually spent the time on it and reviewed it, trying to make it good. But I mean, that’s what I enjoyed, I learned if I want to do something good, I have to put more effort into it and ask people, because before, I was like nah because people just criticize. So now, I see it in a different way. And now it’s like, yeah, it helps a lot. (Interview, 20 December 2010) Such a pattern suggests that literacy expertise did not simply develop through participation in solitary reading and writing practices: Integral to change over time in Jaime’s case was his engagement with revision and editing with others (consistent with Leki, 2007). In several ways, his participation in this literacy event also helped to answer some of the questions I first posed about Jaime’s tenth-grade writing. For example, he did start drafting earlier after receiving in-class writing instruction, and complet- “To Make Something of Myself”: Interactional Histories… 101 ing his draft on time also allowed him to solicit and receive additional feedback from multiple other people. Given the structure of the assignment and the many layers of interactions Jaime had while writing this text, working with others was fundamental to his ability to meet literacy expectations in this particular context. “Actual Reading and Writing”: Becoming a Writer After Leaving School Jaime passed his first English class—largely because of his success with the DREAM Act assignment—but encountered a range of issues described earlier that slowed and eventually stopped his progress through community college, including a lack of available courses in either the remedial sequence or his area of academic interest (technology), family issues that forced him to drop a course (although he later retook it), and what he described as the attractiveness of work, which provided him a modest income and gave him a sense of independence. Jaime and I continued to meet and talk regularly after he left community college, and in these encounters, I was struck by his repeated insistence that he no longer “wrote,” even though he described engaging in a wide range of literacy practices across languages. As he explained to me, his conceptions of reading and writing were closely tied to formal schooling: When I think of writing, I’m thinking like you know, a paper, more like something important, that has to do for school. When it comes to reading I guess I’m thinking of that too, you know, like a topic for your research paper. That’s what I consider like, actual reading and writing. Texting, I just consider as, anything like that’s just communication, I guess. (Interview, 24 May 2014) In this sense, Jaime saw his own successful literacy practices outside of school—from texting to other daily practices—as “communication,” not “actual” reading and writing. Yet when I asked him how he defined the term “writer,” Jaime described a broader notion, unconstrained by school or other institutional contexts: 102 A. K. Kibler Really, to me, really, it’s like to express something, a point of view that you really have. I mean, it’s something I could go back to later on and reflect on, like it’s a permanent point of view for myself. (Interview, 24 May 2014) In this sense, writing for school was not necessarily what made one a writer. Rather, it was expressing an authentic perspective, one that you “really have” and that can serve as a point of reflection in the future. Further, Jaime included himself as someone who could potentially be a writer, although he presented it as a hypothetical act (“I could go back…”) rather than a regular practice. Such framing was not unexpected: Jaime arguably engaged in this kind of writing in the DREAM Act text, but it was not a frequent school-based practice overall, and he did not report engaging in such literacy practices outside of school. And so I was somewhat surprised when, at the very end of his fourth year after high school, more than two years after he left community college, Jaime texted me to tell me he was sending me some writing. I opened his email, which contained only the document itself, entitled “confused.” Inside was a nearly 1000-word text in which he contrasted what he described as a happy childhood and adolescence with his current frustrations about not “mak[ing] something of myself.” Through this piece of writing and his telling of these experiences, he expressed a point of view that in many ways fulfilled his own definition of a “writer.” Interactions Jaime described creating “confused” on his computer at home and not talking with others about it, but the traces of previous inschool writing tasks and various interactions with policies and discourses related to immigrant students’ academic and vocational success were nonetheless visible. In ninth grade, Jaime wrote a Turning Point essay, as all of the youth in this study did, and he wrote “confused” in a similar narrative style, drawing in particular on similar childhood memories. Also apparent in his text were ways in which he was interacting with larger expectations for doing well at school and having a career that would allow him to have a “comfortable life,” especially in the context of having legal status through the DACA program. “To Make Something of Myself”: Interactional Histories… 103 Impacts In both his ninth-grade Turning Point essay and in “confused,” which he wrote almost eight years later, Jaime described similar childhood memories, including enjoying the company of his family in Mexico at a lake they would visit. In the former text, these moments were explored with great attention to sensory detail, in keeping with the design of that assignment (see also Chap. 8) and teacher feedback. In the later text, however, these scenes were used only as a brief starting point to frame a more somber narrative: What happen to all the joy and happiness that I always carry with me everywhere I went, that’s the question I ask myself. Let’s go back and figure this out, ok when I was living in Mexico I remember those were my favorite years of my life, reason why I say that is because I was so happy with what my family had to offer like going to the lake with the whole family… In this way, the narrative framing was used in “confused” to address what had become a new turning point: his experiences at community college. He went on to explain: Things started to catch up to me after I ated from high school I went to college year didn’t do much there and from then started to pilled up on me making me so and feeling unhappy all of the time. gradufor a things stress Such ideas closely mirror those of other unauthorized/undocumented youth. As Gonzales (2016) found in his work with young adults who shared this status, “a chasm opened up between their stressful, precarious present and a happy, more inclusive past” (p. 215) as they transitioned from adolescence into adulthood. Further, Jaime described his community college experiences in ways that reflected a discourse of academic failure, despite the successes he had there. His framing of these events— “[I] didn’t do much there”—also focused on his own action, or lack 104 A. K. Kibler thereof, rather than the institutional, familial, and economic factors that made his postsecondary academic experiences more challenging. Finally, after further explanation of the stress he was experiencing, Jaime reflected on the new opportunities provided by his new legal status and identified them as a source of both hope and frustration, particularly in relation to discourses of being “successful”: I want to be someone in life I want to have a comfortable life, I know anyone can be successful if they put their mind to it and I want to succeed but there’s something about that won’t let me do anything it frustrates me that I can’t do anything I know am destined to make something of myself because I owe it to my family to make something of myself I don’t want to be the guy working 2 jobs and not having a life. He described these aspirations in fairly general terms, without reference to any particular type of success or career path, but in light of the new work opportunities he had through the DACA program, such possibilities as an immigrant youth seemed to gain immediacy, in that it was at that point more feasible for Jaime to “make something of [him]self ” through schooling and access to employment. His frustration at not doing so dominated both this text and several of our interviews. Change Over Time This literacy event echoed Jaime’s ninth-grade Turning Point essay in its narrative structure and initial framing, but his exploration of entry into adulthood through and beyond his community college experiences took his writing in a far different direction. Although lacking the sensory detail of his ninth-grade narrative essay or the careful assistance with editing he received on school assignments like the DREAM Act essay, Jaime’s text clearly communicated “a point of view that you really have,” which is what he thought was most important to being a writer. This text also represented a new literacy practice related to extended writing that Jaime employed only after his participation in formal schooling had ended. “Confused” did not mark the beginning of “To Make Something of Myself”: Interactional Histories… 105 frequent writing of this type for Jaime, but it nonetheless demonstrated ways in which he was a “writer” as well as a communicator by his own standards, and the potential for his writing to serve as a point of reflection in the future. Contradictions Between Expertise and Remediation in the Context of Immigration Policy Out of all the young people in this study, Jaime perhaps best reflects ongoing scholarly concerns about the impact of academic tracking on minoritized multilingual students (Callahan & Shifrer, 2012; Enright & Gilliland, 2011; Kanno & Kangas, 2014; Umansky, 2016). Although Diego (Chap. 6) encountered extensive remedial coursework at university, Jaime alone had such experiences in both secondary and postsecondary settings. His experiences navigating these contexts make clear that the interactional histories through which literacy events occurred were inextricable from academic tracking but were not shaped only by this issue. Rather, Jaime’s experiences suggest that remediation was part of a larger ecological context impacting his language and literacy journey. Literacy events during Jaime’s experiences at West Hills High School highlight the ways in which differing levels of tracking interacted with variations in the rigor of literacy tasks, instructional expertise, teacher beliefs, and student engagement. In the first LIHA analysis profiled earlier, Jaime chose not to complete a challenging tenth-grade research paper until the last minute and did not meet his teachers’ expectations for the assignment. This event underscores the complexity of understanding relationships between instruction and engagement for a young person who identified himself as a confident English user but received relatively little writing instruction in the context of a genre in which he had not written before. This experience with extensive literacy demands contrasts with the very limited opportunities to engage in challenging school-based literacy practices as he was moved down into an even lower track— SDAIE—in 12th grade, in which multilingual students’ knowledge was 106 A. K. Kibler further marginalized, literacy expertise was conceptualized as a matter of following written conventions, and course placement evoked minoritized and racialized identities for some immigrant-origin students. Such experiences highlight how both socio-institutional mechanisms and instructional quality can manufacture labels such as “English learner,” or as would be applied to Jaime today, “long-term English learner” (Kibler & Valdés, 2016) in ways that reflect institutional arrangements rather than students’ actual language and literacy repertoires. In this sense, Jaime’s experiences support other scholars’ contentions that a seeming lack of “progress” in English language development for minoritized multilingual students like Jaime can be attributed, at least in part, to instructional quality (Brooks, 2015, 2016; Menken, 2013). Community college, the turning point of Jaime’s journey, was an institutional context that afforded new possibilities but also imposed new restrictions. The DREAM Act literacy event provided a venue for Jaime to experience academic success and develop expertise through a task that was similar to those in high school but accompanied by greater instructional guidance and Jaime’s own willingness to seek assistance from others to support multiple stages of his writing. Such a milestone, however, was overshadowed by a combination of institutional structures focused on remediation—and the potentially marginalizing messages such placements can send and reinforce (Harklau, 1999; Ruecker, 2015)—as well as familial and economic pressures and issues of authorization/documentation that made Jaime’s path through community college a lengthy and uncertain one. Despite Jaime’s eventual departure from formal schooling, the final literacy event profiled in this chapter suggests the ways in which Jaime was not only a capable communicator but also a “writer” on his own terms, although outside of institutional structures rather than within them. Significant to Jaime’s journey were the simultaneously facilitative and restricted roles that his Spanish language and literacy expertise played in his academic and vocational success. Jaime had a range of bilingual friends and acquaintances with whom he interacted at South Sierra and West Hills High Schools. Although Jaime and his peers supported each other across both languages during in-class literacy tasks (see Kibler, 2010) and Jaime also benefited from interactions with bilingual teachers “To Make Something of Myself”: Interactional Histories… 107 or assistants in ninth and tenth grades, Jaime’s frequent reluctance to engage in literacy tasks, and his last-minute completion of some of them, somewhat lessened the impact those bilingual resources could have on his eventual written texts. And although many of his interactions with others were bilingual, most of Jaime’s institutionally provided opportunities to develop literacy expertise in academic settings were restricted to reading and writing English-only texts. Even classes Jaime took that were designed to promote biliteracy were limited, in that there was relatively little reading and writing other than textbook-related activities in his Spanish-forNative-Speakers class, and he completed almost all literacy tasks in English for his ninth-grade bilingual humanities class. As a result, even though Jaime explained that he at times read Spanish texts online outside of school and wrote bilingually on social media, it is not surprising that he felt far more confident in his English than his Spanish literacy expertise (which he tended to associated with schooling), a trend that became even more prominent throughout this study. Further, it is notable that the Spanish-for-Heritage-Speakers class in community college that Jaime eventually decided not to take did not fulfill any immediate program requirements for him at a point in time when he had many competing interests, including work. While such a pattern is not surprising, given the limited attention to immigrant-origin students’ multilingualism in US postsecondary schooling contexts (García, Pujol-Ferran, & Reddy, 2013), it is clear that language and literacy expertise in Spanish was seen as peripheral rather than central to his progress in this academic institution, even though his use of both languages played important roles as he interacted with colleagues and clients at work. Another notable trend in Jaime’s interactions during literacy events is a focus on remediation: first into increasingly lower tracks at high school, and then into remedial community college courses. These institutional structures can be understood as part of broader discourses that discourage Mexican-origin and other Latinx students by labeling them as unprepared, lacking capital, and educationally unsuccessful (Ruecker, 2015), and it is relatively easy to understand how Jaime’s SDAIE courses did not support the development of school-based literacy expertise. However, the case of his postsecondary English courses is more complex. The curricula were well-designed, Jaime was positive and at times even enthusiastic 108 A. K. Kibler about his experiences in the classes, and it was in these contexts that Jaime demonstrated the most development in school-based literacy practices. They also represented a far shorter remedial sequence than those in many community colleges. However, these courses—like those in his high school—existed within a compensatory institutional structure and focused on general writing development instead of allowing Jaime to pursue literacy tasks directly supportive of his longer-term goal (transfer to a university) and area of study (technology). The remedial community college English classes served a clear purpose that would have likely facilitated his success in future courses, but the fact that he did not make it to those courses is clearly problematic, and is unfortunately a common issue for community college students (Xu, 2016), including many multilingual Latinx youth (Patthey, Thomas-Spiegel, & Dillon, 2009; Razfar & Simon, 2011). Sternglass (1997) argued that the development of postsecondary literacy expertise requires engagement in discipline-specific courses rather than simply remedial or basic-level English courses, and more innovative community college offerings (such as those profiled in Kibler, Bunch, & Endris, 2011; see also Reyes, 2013) could have perhaps provided Jaime with more immediate access to his goals and area of study and helped him foster a positive identity as a successful postsecondary student. It is also possible that stronger writing instruction in high school might have helped Jaime develop the literacy expertise to test out of postsecondary remedial courses. However, such efforts would likely not have been a panacea for the complex issues influencing his transitions into and through community college. In much the way that both Leki (2007) and Ruecker (2015) found with students they researched, the development of literacy expertise alone was not sufficient to ensure Jaime’s successful transition into and through postsecondary schooling. Rather, what played a defining role was the larger context of reception (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001, 2006), in which a combination of institutional, economic, and familial issues all played a role (Harklau & McClanahan, 2012; Kanno & Harklau, 2012). For example, the institutional challenges Jaime faced were inextricable from economic and familial pressures he experienced, which were themselves closely tied to issues of immigration and authorization/documentation. As Gonzales (2011) has noted, unauthorized/undocumented students “To Make Something of Myself”: Interactional Histories… 109 typically experience increased legal barriers to financial aid and employment as they grow into adulthood (Gonzales, 2011). Jaime’s family had limited financial resources to support his postsecondary studies, and financial aid was difficult to obtain for individuals without legal status (Rodriguez & Cruz, 2009: see also Chap. 5). Although he had tuition support from a family friend, such resources were far more limited than those to which authorized/documented youth like Diego and Fabiola had access (see Chaps. 6 and 7). As a result, Jaime’s choice to increasingly focus on work was not surprising. Further, many of the familial issues with which Jaime coped were, as he described them, related to strains caused by separation and reunification during the family’s immigration to the United States. Finally, Jaime saw no hope of legal employment until proposal of the DREAM Act and passage of DACA, the latter of which took place after he had already left school. Looking back on his experiences, Jaime described the effects of his unauthorized/undocumented status on his ambitions even as a child: I knew that no matter what I did in school, I was going to end up at the same place, because I’m not going to be able to do anything with what I had accomplished. So that, I always had that in the back of my head right when I went to school, so I never really put – I guess I could’ve done better myself, but there was always that, you know, like “Oh I could do this but I won’t be able to work or do anything for it.” So that was there, I guess if I would have known, that there was going to be [DACA], I would have put more effort into my classes, you know try to do better, better grades. I would’ve like tried to go to an actual [university] but I mean, it was too late. (Interview, 24 May 2014) Much like Ana (Chap. 5), Jaime described understanding the limitations of his authorization/documentation status from a relatively early age, and at least in retrospect, considered this as a possible explanation for not performing better in school. Such a pattern resonates with other research suggesting that unauthorized/undocumented youth often experience a lack of motivation to persevere with schooling when confronted with legal barriers to education (Gonzales, 2011, 2016) and have lower educational expectations than similar peers with legal status (Perreira & Spees, 110 A. K. Kibler 2015). Jaime’s case was somewhat unique, in that he maintained support networks that helped him attend community college, but even by his own measure, he felt that he could have accomplished more. Jaime considered himself responsible for his lack of academic success, but it is clear that institutions and policies failed him by not providing adequate conditions for him to “do better.” The access that DACA provided to academic and career possibilities simply came “too late,” in Jaime’s words, to change the institutionally provided options for language and literacy development during his initial postsecondary experiences. Notes 1. The DACA executive order was designed to protect DREAMer youth from deportation and provide them with permission to work. It also facilitated access to financial support of postsecondary schooling in some states and at some educational institutions. 2. Tracking systems in US schools are both complex and diverse. At West Hills High School, the SDAIE track was designed for English-learnerclassified students who were deemed to need instruction that was more specialized and more intense than what was provided in classes open to the general school population. For students at earlier levels of English proficiency, ELD classes were provided in addition to SDAIE courses. 3. High schools typically add one or more additional grade point average (GPA) points to individual classes that are considered “advanced.” In this way, students may earn more than 4 points for advanced courses. Jaime did not have any such courses on his transcript. 4. Please see the Methodological Appendix for an explanation of the transcription conventions used to present data from interviews and informal conversations. 5. At that time in California, unauthorized/undocumented students paid in-state tuition (rather than the more expensive out-of-state tuition they were forced to pay in some other states), but the state laws and federal programs that would later allow greater access to financial aid for this population were not yet in place at the time Jaime began community college. “To Make Something of Myself”: Interactional Histories… 111 6. The Spanish-for-Heritage-Speakers course was generally similar in purpose and focus to the Spanish-for-Native-Speakers course Jaime encountered in high school. In this sense, the classes’ names reflected institutional choices rather than substantive differences in the courses themselves. 7. The source text did not mention where he was shot, and my perusal of other writings on Pancho Villa suggest that this detail might have been created by Jaime rather than retrieved from another document. 8. I do intend to imply that reading the entirety of Le Morte Darthur would have been desirable. More relevant to this argument is that students did not have a larger literary context for the work they were studying. 9. Ms. Han was an English user who spoke Mandarin growing up and began learning English in adolescence. 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