Community Cultural Wealth
Aspirational capital
Is the ability to maintain hope and dreams for the future in the face of real and perceived barriers. For FGCS the aspiration of education a space of financial mobility despite barriers of inequality.
Tip: Center yourself, spend sometime exploring what you've always dreamt of becoming, grab some magazines or just a blank sheet of paper to create a vision board or map out your college journey. What experience do you want to have... Will you study abroad? How about a summer internship? Maybe become a member of an organization? How about joining student senate? Maybe write fo rthe school paper? Maybe start your own club? When you need help do you know who to turn to?
Linguistic capital
Is the ability for students to develop communication skills through various experiences. For students who act as an interrupter for members of their family, as well as the cultural being based in storytelling may enhances students ability to "memorization, attention to detail, dramatic pauses, comedic timing, facial affect, vocal tone, volume, rhythm and rhyme.” (p. 79)
Tip: For all the times you've told the same story over again and so has your cousin, aunt, uncle, guardian or friend yet you still want to hear it again and again. See that experience the exchange of oral history, your ability to captivate an audience. That is a skill and don't you forget it! Harness your ability to pay attention to detail, have people hanging on your every word. Remember those skills as you present in class, or engage in extra curricular activities and when you are advocating for your needs. Use your voice!
Familial capital
Recognizing and utilizing extended family and community to enhance social and personal human resources to assist in their navigation to and through college.
Tip: Think about what makes your community yours and recreate it at your institution. Have you joined any student organizations? Connected with you roommate or floor mates? Connected with the Multicultural Center, Pride Center, Women Center? Did you participate in any pre-orientation programs? Have you gone to your professors office hours? How about grabbing a bite to eat with someone in your class to get to know them better. Remember you are not in this alone, there are people throughout your college who will help you in your transition.
social and personal human resources students have in their precollege environment, drawn from their extended familial and community networks. Yosso explains that students’ pre-college experiences within a communal environment come with knowledge that campuses can help students leverage in to positive experiences in college. Consider: · How do we recognize and help students draw on wisdom, values and stories from their home communities? 2 · How do we create environments that honor and invite families to participate?
Social capital is a form of capital that Yosso defines as students’ “peers and other social contacts” and emphasizes how students utilize these contacts to gain access to college and navigate other social institutions. Questions to consider: · How do we help students stay connected to the communities and individuals instrumental in their previous educational success? · How do we engage with likely individuals and community-based organizations about admissions and selection processes and the types of supports successful students need?
Navigational capital
refers to students’ skills and abilities to navigate “social institutions,” including educational spaces. Yosso further explains that students’ navigational capital empowers them to maneuver within unsupportive or hostile environments. Questions to consider are: · How do we help students navigate our institutions? Interactions with teachers/faculty? Interactions with student-support staff? Their peers? · How willing are we to acknowledge that our institutions, both their structures and cultures, have a history of, and may still in many ways be unsupportive and/or hostile to our students and their communities?
Resistance capital
has its foundations in the experiences of communities of color in securing equal rights and collective freedom. According to Yosso, the sources of this form of capital come from parents, community members and an historical legacy of engaging in social justice. This historical legacy of resistance leaves students of color particularly well-positioned to leverage their higher education training to enter society prepared to solve challenging problems regarding equitable health, educational and other social outcomes. Questions to consider are: · How do we support students who are committed to engaging in and serving their home communities (however they define these)? · What opportunities do we provide students in and outside of the classroom to prepare them for participation in a diverse democracy?
References Yosso, T.J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? Race, Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), pp. 69–91
