Teacher Perceptions: Trailer Park Kids in an Affluent Middle School, Adding Consciousness to the Mix

• In Event: Habitus, Capital, and Power in Educative Spaces

Abstract

Many upscale communities in the metropolitan Detroit area are overflowing with extravagant homes. Less prestigious neighborhoods, like manufactured home communities, are zoned to the outskirts of affluent communities. This paper addresses teacher duo-consciousness that influenced the identity formation of middle school students residing in a manufactured home community. Drawing on Bourdieu’s defining terms of social and cultural capital, the trailer park kids experienced social class orientations and childhoods similar to the social class histories and childhoods of their teachers. Due to being contrasted with their wealthier peers, teachers held sympathy for and were frustrated with the presence of trailer park kids. The trailer park kids experienced emotional weight, by worrying about their teachers, who worried about them.

Author

• Jeanne Marie VanLaan, Rochester Community Schools and Oakland University