Learning the Possible: Mexican American Students Moving from the Margins of Life to New Ways of Being

2. Coming from the Margins of School and Life: The Students

24 2 Coming from the Margins of School and Life The Students the camp student experience, like any student experience, begins with a history. Here we begin with a moving snapshot of who the students were, what they experienced, and how they wrestled with present emotions from the weight of their history as they entered their first year of college. They came with identities formed by disappointment, struggle, and questions about where they came from, where they were going, and who they were becoming as they engaged in the movement toward learning to be a successful student. As students in this study begin college through CAMP, they are at an intersection of their present identity and the beginning of their movement from a peripheral existence. It is the beginning of new empowered choices they are making. They have chosen to name their realities.They have chosen to react to and reflect on how those present realities have impacted and will continue to impact their lives. This is immediately apparent because of their mere presence in CAMP, and in college. The students have chosen to enact their agency and desire by choosing to apply to CAMP. They have chosen to be resilient by enrolling in college. They have chosen to endure the complications inherent in juggling their present lives, responsibilities, and identities The Students 25 coming from another community of practice into the CAMP community of practice. There are elements of their lives that complicate their trajectory. But they know this. And they have chosen to use these elements of complexity while they embrace this new opportunity for practice and learning. On the other hand, it is clear that not every marginalized student has choice in their present lived realities. The choice the CAMP students have is one of choosing to go to college or not. But too many marginalized cannot even arrive at a place where they have the ability to choose between a college scholarship or no college scholarship. Often, the choice that many marginalized students make is choosing between the lesser of two evils. And, as such, individuals, ethnicities , races, communities, and cultures are blamed for their present condition, when we know, for example, that no one chooses to be in poverty (Valencia, 1997, 2002). I think of my first-generation Mexican American mother who married very young, at the age of 15. She dropped out of school in the tenth grade. She then had me at the age of 17. What were her choices? She lived in poverty, her mother constantly absent, her undocumented father working or looking for work, and gone for days at a time. Her siblings took care of her, and she took care of them. Meat like bologna was a luxury. The family looked forward to the summer migrant programs, where they got free meals, candy, and arts and crafts. My father, fresh from a tour of duty in Vietnam, dazzled my mother at a dance, and they married soon thereafter. My very young mother arrived at a crossroads, a choice, and it was an easy one for her to make at the time. That was her choice, a different choice from what the CAMP students have. It is a very different choice from what the privileged have. But my mother still would be labeled, stigmatized , and herded into the dropout-teen-mom, apathetic-towardeducation group. What choice did she have? The CAMP students have arrived at this place in their life trajectory of their own volition. Because they have taken the initiative to apply for the CAMP scholarship, seek out postsecondary education, and enter college, their identities seem grounded in some semblance of hope and a need for movement from their peripheral space. They have chosen to act on this hope. Introducing one student at a time— Laura, Cristina, Luz, Maria, and Ruben—this chapter looks at what 26 LEARNING THE POSSIBLE each recalls from past schooling experiences, relationships, and formative interactions with others that shaped their present identities as students; the realities of where they stand academically based on the test scores used in many colleges to determine the level of course work they should take; and understanding the movement and tensions in coming from one or many communities of practice into the new CAMP community of practice. This chapter reveals how each student exhibited a different degree of marginalization, some more than others, coming into their first year...