Setting

In October of 2013 I set out to volunteer in a classroom, both in order to see how the education theories I was learning about in graduate school related to current schooling practices and also in order to begin to establish relationships that might lead to an

ethnography like this one. Since my teaching assistantship responsibilities had allowed me to form relationships with volunteer coordinators at a local division of the county’s office of education, I signed up through their website for volunteer opportunities in lower-level elementary classrooms since that age group was of particular interest to me. My contact at the county’s education office placed me with Ms. Mayzie in Room G of Beachside

Elementary School. Since 2013 and continuing through the present moment (May of 2016), I have been volunteering in her classroom for between 1.5 and 10 hours per week, mainly during language arts activities, but also during math and art lessons.

Beachside Elementary School is located in Golden Hills, a central California coastal city with a population of approximately 30,000. Next door to Golden Hills is a larger city of about 90,000 that has historically been a popular destination for tourists due to its coastal location, mild weather, natural and built beauty, and culture of affluence. While the county is home to various celebrities and wealthy families, many residents are poor, with an estimated 16 percent living below the poverty line. Furthermore, housing in the county in which both cities are located is very expensive and difficult to find, resulting in homelessness for many residents of a variety of ages and educational backgrounds.

At Beachside Elementary, these disparities in wealth are certainly present, though they are not as readily apparent as they are at many other schools in the county. For example, in some of the county’s schools, 100 percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, whereas at Beachside, approximately 50 percent qualify. According to official demographic information, 52 percent of students are Hispanic, 30 percent are White, 11 percent are Asian, 4 percent are dual race, and 2 percent are of “other” races4

; approximately 30 percent of students have been classified as English learners (ELs), which again contrasts with other schools in the county, where the percent of ELs is often over twice that at Beachside. Over 80 percent of Beachside parents reported having completed high school or higher levels of education. Overall, the school is ranked by the state as one of the better schools in the district.

Room G reflects many of these characteristics of the school itself. First, it is fairly representative of the racial demographics of the school. For the school year during which I collected data for this study (2014-15), there were 21 students in Ms. Mayzie’s classroom, of

4

These are the labels used in official online documents about the school.

whom 11 were Latina/o, five were white, two were Arab, two were mixed-race students (1 identified as Mexican and Italian, and 1 was Latina and white), and one was black. With regard to language status, from my perspective all students spoke English very well or natively, though two had been classified through state testing as beginning-level ELs, six as intermediate ELs, and one as a reclassified/advanced-level EL. Students’ class status was more implicit, though I did have knowledge that at least three students lived in a nearby low- income neighborhood, and several other students appeared on the basis of their worn clothing and other material possessions to be from working-class families. The educational status of students’ parents was also difficult to determine since parents were not participants in my study.

To better understand the ethnographic context, I endeavored to attend to the ways in which the socioeconomic, linguistic, and racial backgrounds of the students, the teacher, and the school itself shaped student interactions. First, from descriptions of other local classrooms that I read in hundreds of undergraduate student fieldnotes through my role as a teaching assistant during my time in graduate school, and based on local ethnographic work done by colleagues (e.g., Choi, 2014), I believe that relative to many other classrooms, the students and teacher of Room G had access to considerable material, technological, and social resources. For example, the room was colorfully decorated with an almost overwhelming number of commercially produced didactic materials (e.g., posters) covering the walls (see Figure 4.1 below). All students had access to basic school materials collected from parents at the beginning of the year (pencils, pens, and the toolbox described in the introduction) as well as regular access to iPads and computers owned by the school. Furthermore, on most days when I engaged in participant observation, at least one other adult volunteer (often a parent or an undergraduate student from the nearby university) was also present. During my time in

Room G, I also noticed that most friendship circles were racially and linguistically similar; particularly noticeable to me was the fact that the basic-level ELs, who attended pull-out ESL instruction for at least thirty minutes per day, were friends with one another. Students not designated as EL students were also friends with one another. I also observed that more expensive clothing and classroom materials (such as hair accessories and mechanical pencils) become important tools for constructing social identities, with some of the most popular students (e.g., Nicole, who will be described below) often being some of the most well-off. Figure 4.1

Image of the right side of Room G and students during language arts