Abstract
Youth of color enrolled in urban public high schools, particularly those students who seek to be the first in their families to graduate from college, frequently encounter barriers to their college readiness and access. This study engaged an analytic approach built with culturally relevant and sustaining theories of education to examine how 10 youth of color enrolled in 12th grade at a Title 1 public high school in New York City provided and/or received support from peers as they navigated such barriers. The study utilized a youth co-researcher methodology to amplify student voices about an issue directly connected to their lives. Two findings emerged across data analysis: (1) students asserted collective notions of academic achievement and (2) challenged what they perceived as inequitable access to resources and opportunities as they supported their peers’ college readiness and access. Taken together these findings provide new insights into possibilities for building from students’ interactions with peers across contexts of curriculum, teaching, and research in urban schools.
Highlights
Youth of color enrolled in urban public high schools, those students who seek to be the first in their families to graduate from college, frequently encounter barriers to their college readiness and access
Examining youth’s perspectives of how they support one another’s college readiness and access is urgent considering the limited interactions many youth enrolled in urban public high schools have with school counselors who are typically tasked with sharing information about college with students (Clayton, 2019; Farmer-Hinton & McCullough, 2008; McKillip et al 2012)
This paper examines how youths’ interactions with their peers support students’ college readiness and access, or as Cathy noted in her comment above, youth “are all teachers” as they learn from one another
Summary
Youth of color enrolled in urban public high schools, those students who seek to be the first in their families to graduate from college, frequently encounter barriers to their college readiness and access. This study’s examination of youth’s culturally relevant peer interactions (Marciano, 2017) examines how students of color support one another’s college readiness and access in ways that consider their experiences and perspectives as strengths, acknowledges and extends their dynamic cultural experiences as youth attending the same New York City public high school, and calls attention to youth’s emerging sociopolitical consciousness
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