The Launch “Family”: Organizational Structures and the Creation of Social and Emotional Capital

• In Event: Structuring for Success in Private Education

Abstract

In this paper I examine how an organization called Launch prepares low- and moderate-income Black and Latino students to enter elite boarding schools. Using data from an ethnographic study of the Launch summer program, I analyze the role that the organizational structures and the program’s “family” framing play in preparing Launch students to enter sociocultural spaces that are very unlike the schools and communities from which the students come. I argue that the program’s organizational structures, overlaid with the relational frame of “family,” create social and emotional resources for students as they progress through the entire 14-month Launch program and into elite boarding schools.

Author

• Amanda Barrett Cox, University of Pennsylvania