In this issue Letter From the Division Chair Division Sessions at the Annual Meetings 2022 Business Meeting Agenda Graduate Student Awards Winners Member Publication and Accolades I Webinar Written by Myron T. Strong, Ph.D. As I close another academic year and look forward to the summer, I have been thinking a lot about dreams. In April, I read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and in the book, Santiago searches for his personal legend. Without spoiling anything, I will say the personal legend is your ultimate dream and your heart’s desire. The book made not only caused me really to reflect on my own dreams but also the ways our work encourages others to dream. It’s fitting that this year’s conference is themed the Sociological Reimagination: From Moments to Momentum, because so much of the imagination to understand society comes from engaging in science fiction, horror prose, poetry, etc. Speculative fiction that opens up the endless possibilities. In his essay, Black to the Future, Walter Mosley wrote that science fiction and other speculative fiction is important because the world is so much larger and has more possibilities than science can describe. Through it anything is possible from new life paths to social freedom. Speculative fiction and related genres are the main artery of imagination and many inventions come from the imagination such as space shuttles, submarines, cell phones, even the idea of a Black president long before they are reality. That being said, I want to mention how proud and impressed by all the graduate students that submitted to the student paper competition. Part of the reason because in all of your papers, I saw imagination and creativity and thus endless possibilities Even if you did not win, I want you continue to submit. Just another reminder, the annual meeting is July 7 at 2 pm EST. I chose to have a virtual meeting so I could include as many members as possible in the meeting. I tried to pick a day and time as neutral as possible, but I am aware that for many it is doing a time for family, rest, relaxation, personal development, writing, etc. So I will have the minutes available and if you see anything on the agenda that you want to add or comment on, feel free to reach out. I would like to encourage all of you who are attending the face-to-face conference to attend our sessions. I listed out all of them later in the newsletter. Please follow us on Twitter @EpSssp and SSSP-Educational Problems Division on Facebook. So, as we embark on summer, let’s work on achieving our personal legends as we Imagine a Better Future. Walter Mosley wrote that "science fiction and other speculative fiction is important because the world is so much larger and has more possibilities than science can describe" Educational Problems Division Sessions For 2022 Annual Meeting Annual Business Meeting Agenda The Business Meeting will be held virtually on July 7, 2022 at 2:00 pm EST. Here is the link for the meeting Topics for Discussion CongratulatetheGraduatePaperWinners Suggestsessionsfornextyear’sprogram Discussthecreationoftwonewawardssponsoredby thedivision Discussdivision’sproposedbudget SolicitcandidatenamesfordivisionchairstartingFall 2023 Graduate Student Paper Co-Winners “You selling?”: Snack sales and the construction of deviance in a high school. Karlyn Gorski PhD Candidate, The University of Chicago Youths' affinity for snack foods is well-documented; in various contexts, they sell chips, candy, and other goods. Adults may frame such sales as either entrepreneurial or deviant, which can contribute to positive youth development (on one hand) or cycles of disengagement and criminalization (on the other). Drawing on ethnographic and interview data from Hamilton High School, I show how adults' criminalization of snack sales led the activity to more closely resemble that which they feared: drug sales. Snack sales constitute one way in which youth exercise agency in the face of broad institutional control, leading some to challenge the legitimacy of the school overall. These findings represent a case of how youth experience“ criminalized childhoods” in a school context. De Facto Expulsions: How and Why Students are Forcibly Removed from School Rebecca Diane Gleit PhD candidate, Stanford University American schools have begun embracing restorative justice in attempt to reduce their use of harmful, exclusionary punishments. In most places, however, traditional modes of discipline like expulsions remain. Using three years of ethnographic data collected at a diverse, suburban, well resourced public high school, I explore how and why administrators expel students when they are motivated to take a less punitive approach to discipline. I find that despite their enthusiasm for reducing exclusionary discipline, administrators nonetheless push students out of school. This primarily occurs through de facto expulsions – forced removals that are not logged as expulsions. I document strategies for facilitating de facto expulsions and show how decisions to remove a student often stem not from isolated infractions, but from administrators’ perceived ability to continue serving as a resource broker for that student and family. Since students from less advantaged backgrounds tend to depend more on the school for resources, they are more likely to be perceived as a burden by administrators and pushed out. Thus, I provide one explanation for how school discipline disparities can persist in reform-oriented settings. Moreover, the existence of de facto expulsions reveals that administrative data undercount the number of students forcibly removed from their schools. Graduate Student Paper Honorable Mentions Hospice Education: Palliative Schooling in the Age of Equity JIENIAN ZHANG PhD student, University of Wisconsin-Madison The study of color-blind racism has been central to understanding why racial inequalities persist in schools. I argue that merely increasing racial awareness through both official and unofficial school policies does not alleviate educational racial inequalities. Instead, I call for re-imagining caring in education to promote racial equity. Ethnographic data of a high school from a wealthy, suburban, and progressive school district reveal that some teachers’ response to struggling students of color may be characterized as “palliative schooling.” The schooling is palliative for two reasons: 1) it prioritizes students’ comfort in the immediate moment (a form of caring), and 2) it assumes low academic expectations from students (a form of hopelessness). Caring and hopeless are intertwined with each other as my data show. Moreover, palliative schooling thrives in a school culture that explicitly discusses race and racism. While some white teachers understand racial inequalities, some simply follow directives from school leadership. In a racialized organization, such as the high school in my field work, palliative schooling only reinforces racial inequalities rather than disrupts them. My findings challenge how we think about caring because progressive agendas may sustain racial hierarchies through a counter-intuitive bond between caring and hopelessness.. Immigrant Age-At-Arrival, Social Capital, and College Enrollment Irina Chukhray PhD student, UC Davis Driving the present study is the largely understudied college information search process among immigrant youth, defined as those who are foreign born and who came to the US under the age of 18 (often termed the 1.5 generation). The search process is when students seek out multiple sources for information about college (i.e., social capital resources). Understanding mechanisms that impact immigrant youths’ educational attainment will inform educational policy and practitioners, such as high school counselors, as well as helping to increase immigrant youths’ attainment. Using nationally representative data from the High School Longitudinal Study:2009, this study analyzes immigrant students’ college enrollment outcomes three years after high school completion and contributes to the literature by disaggregating foreign-born students into age-at-arrival groups. Findings indicate that, contrary to theory, age-at-arrival does not predict college-going. Additionally, access to social capital resources does not predict college-going among immigrant youth, where for example, speaking to a high school counselor about college going does not significantly improve later arrivals’ college enrollment. I conclude by discussing the possible role of college-focused conversation content (unobserved here), timing of such conversations, and selectivity influences. Recent Publications and Accolades by Division Members Elaine J. Laberge successfully defended her dissertation from the University of Victoria. Elaine has also been awarded the Canadian Association of Action Research in Education award for outstanding dissertation. This is based upon her research "Pushing Privileged Pillars in Canadian Universities" which was a community-based participatory action research project on poverty discrimination in Canadian universities. The outcome of this research was the creation of a social innovation model to demonstrate to Canadian university communities how to create decolonial and non-deficit-based widening access and participation models for students whose lives are shaped by persistent and systemic (generational) poverty. This research can be found at http://www.echoesofpoverty.com Heather E. Price, was recently promoted to Associate Director of Research at the Institute for Racial Justice at Loyola University Chicago. Heather also published The Fractured College Prep Pipeline THE FRACTURED COLLEGE PREP PIPELINE: Hoarding Opportunities to Learn; This book walks readers through the stages of the high school college prep pipeline that introduce interlocked structural barriers to student achievement. The author shows how these barriers reinforce segregated structures that unfairly distribute the public good of education to some students and not others. Price argues that the college prep pipeline of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate coursework in American high schools constitutes a new form of tracking in the 21st century. Even further, this new tracking introduces a façade of “college readiness” that veils the unequal learning opportunities that send some students out into the college world with pockets full of counterfeit credentials that serve only to reinforce the historically oppressive system. Whether intentional or not, this new form of tracking is embedded in schools across the United States and has lifetime consequences for individual students that reinforce historical racial, ethnic, and spatial inequalities. use "AERA2022 for 15% off and f hi i" Gross, Nora, Charlotte Jacobs, Rekha Marar, and Adam Lewis. 2022.“’This School is Too Diverse ’:Fragile Feelings Among White Boys at Elite Independent Schools.” Whiteness and Education Vasudevan, Veena, Nora Gross, Pavithra Nagarajan, and Katherine Clonan-Roy. 2022. Care-Based Methodologies: Reimagining Qualitative Research with Youth in U.S. Schools. London: Bloomsbury AcademicPress. . Irina Chukhray received a Graduate Research Mentorship Fellowship from University of California, Davis (2022-23). Irina also received the Sociology of Education Association's first Audrey Schwartz Service Award . Click here Click here