When I was an undergraduate, I did volunteer work with a remarkable 2nd grade teacher in an elementary school in a working-class neighborhood.
The year before, the children had noticed that traffic on the street outside their school was getting busier, and many of them had to cross an increasingly busy intersection to get to and from home. It was becoming more scary to cross that street. They had a crossing guard but they were afraid for her, too.
They talked together one day in class about how that intersection needed a stop light. And the teacher asked the 7 year olds, "so how do we get a stop light?".
And thus began a months- long project in which students started out by wondering whether to write to the president or to celebrities to ask for help, but as their questions became more focused, they learned about city government and found, with the help of this teacher, the traffic control department. And the nice people in the traffic control department explained to the children that they would need to present data on traffic patterns to the people who had the power over how to spend the city's money.
So the children learned about sampling times for data collection, comparing data, explaining data, and presenting data. They used their growing literacy skills to present their report to city government. Most of these skills were in the 2nd grade curriculum for math, writing, and speaking, but instead of doing shallow decontextualized worksheets to practice these various skills, the teacher incorporated much of the required curriculum into a deeply engaging hands-on project that allowed the class to also learn things that few other 2nd graders learn.
And eventually, after months of work and learning collaborating and getting other adults involved and presenting their data, there was a new traffic light outside their school.
They were 7. And they had learned something about how to leverage power as they learned 2nd grade math and 2nd grade writing.*
Students and Power
Most upper middle class students are taught from childhood that systems exist to serve them and that they're entitled to expect changes in systems that do not serve them well. From watching family members negotiate the details of their children's schooling and then college, to participating in parents' political activities, to witnessing social interactions in which families assert their expectation that they will be heard in businesses, in public institutions, in courts of public opinion, many middle-class students learn self-advocacy and how to work "the system".
Many first-gen students are encouraged by their campuses to instead believe that systems are set up to help them, that they should work hard to learn those systems, and to be grateful when they eventually earn a place within them. We know that many first-generation students struggle and/or eventually just disappear from campus, but there is little in the literature on first-generation students learning to change what's working against their interests.
Learning Institutional Power
What if programming for first-gen students taught the fundamentals of advocating for change when systems on campus don't serve their interests? What if first-gen students were taught even some of the skills that other students learn from parents who hold positions of relative power and use that power to clear pathways for their children?
What might that look like?
Power Mapping
A few months ago, I followed a discussion on Blue Sky about working with students to frame problems and craft solutions by analyzing the power dynamics in an institution. Following that discussion and the links that people shared, I recognized that these strategies are essentially the grown-up version of what that 2nd grade teacher used to teach children about persuading power brokers about their civic concerns.
In that Blue Sky discussion, I came across Jordan Davis's series of essays, Power Mapping as Liberatory Pedagogy on his work with high school students to address the problems with access to educational technology. It's an excellent example of how this process might work with college students looking to solve other problems.
In his first post, Davis outlines the basic processes of defining problems and formulating strategies for change. His goals:
Demonstrate the relationship between stakeholders in a complex system, like a school district or neighborhood, and the power those stakeholders have relative to each other.
This helps students realize that rational decision-making often takes a backseat to power dynamics and competing interests, and that being a skilled practitioner in ed tech requires strong communication, advocacy, and analysis skills to navigate these bureaucracies.
Articulate wicked problems in their schools and school districts.
I encourage students to go, as I often say, three 'whys' deep. Yes, your school doesn’t have enough laptops because the district doesn’t have enough money for them. But why doesn’t the district have enough money for them? And to that answer, why?
Design solutions to the wicked problems they’ve identified by first considering the fears and motivations of all stakeholders involved.
They learn how to investigate unfamiliar stakeholder perspectives—such as superintendents, chief technology officers, parents other than their own.
Execute those solutions through the skills we learn in the class.
In his second post, Davis explores the history of techniques of power mapping, including work organizers of Black and anti-war activism of the 60s. Essentially, power mapping "can reveal stakeholders impacted by an issue that are typically overlooked and excluded, giving rise to innovative and inclusive ways to create change in a system. It can uncover hidden agendas and illuminate key questions related to how, when, why, and for whom decisions are made."
Students learn to search for potential collaborators, uncover institutional motives that run counter to motives of justice and fairness, and develop a deeper sense of belonging as they locate themselves within the many competing interests within any institution. Beyond all of this, students potentially learn a range of valuable soft skills, from leadership to problem solving, to empathisizing with those with whom they disagree.
Those goals seem, to me, essential for students navigating class and educational mobility against the odds, on campuses where the rules of success are often opaque.
In Part 3, Davis outlines the specific steps of his classroom activities with those high school students that enabled them to define problems, to identify stakeholders, and to explore the relationships among stakeholders. He generously includes examples of slides to guide student brain storming, a range of graphics though which students could map power relationships, and even a guide to grading such projects.
Miriam Posner, faculty in Information Sciences at UCLA, joined that conversation with her own set of very helpful slides that can be used guide students through these processes.
What Might This Look Like in First-Gen Programming?
Students are impossibly busy, staff are stretched, and faculty are under too many competing pressures.
And yet, if we imagine ...
Faculty in education or sociology or organizational leadership can craft course assignments that engage students in analysis of obstacles to college access.
"Introduction to College" first-year courses for credit often position first-generation students as different, behind other students, and fragile. Students could also be positioned as capable and knowledgeable about how the campus recruits, admits, advises, offers financial aid, and and organizes campus orientation. "Introduction to College' could involve students in improving any and all of those.
Social activities are important, and at the same time, first-gen students can also come to feel that they "belong" as they work together toward making their campuses better places for students like them.
There are curricular loopholes on many campuses that can be leveraged. When I proposed new courses, I also often proposed additional optional "linked" course numbers for a few credits for students who wanted to explore community-based or experiential applications of course content. First-gen students could be recruited to register for these linked options to work on campus analysis projects in a range of courses so that they're making progress toward degrees while also learning agency.
The point is that there are campus-specific mechanisms for creating spaces for students to learn about and to challenge those in power on their campuses, and students themselves could be part of finding these mechanisms.
If 2nd graders can be mentored by adults to solve complex problems very real to them, there have to be ways in which more first-generation students have opportunities to be mentored in bending systems of power to serve them.
I'd love to hear about any examples that readers know about.
*It's entirely possible that the stop light installation was scheduled and the teacher knew about it. I don't think it matters. The students learned and felt ownership over the actual processes for such petitions, and a lot of adults stepped in to teach them to how advocate for their needs in a democracy.
