Teaching across the FGWC Terrain: Reflections of Sociology Educators

Stigma and the General Denial of Class within Academia

Scholars have documented how both WC students and faculty experience their class-identity as stigmatized in academic spaces (Granfield 1991; Lee 2017). Lee (2017) found that faculty reported experiencing stigma in direct and indirect forms. Among the most frequently described indirect forms, Lee’s (2017:203) respondents discussed “instances in which a discourse implies that ‘faculty member’ is synonymous with middle or upper SES [socioeconomic status], excluding first-generation, low-income, or working-class persons.”

While many include conceptual notions of class in their research, the lived experience of class among scholars themselves is rendered invisible within the academic setting (Lee 2017). Lee (2017) found that academics with low-SES backgrounds felt comfortable disclosing and discussing their family of origin’s class status but did not feel comfortable sharing current financial challenges. Furthermore, most of Lee’s (2017) respondents stated they are more comfortable and likely to share their backgrounds with students than colleagues. Erasure of class reinforces the assumption that the academy is free of class inequality, which further complicates attempts to address the challenges faced by WC students and faculty (Haney 2015; Lee 2017; Lee and Maynard 2017). Class distinctions become shrouded through the assumption that academics occupy a shared class background due to either a continuation of their class background or social mobility gained through educational status (Haney 2015; Lee 2017; Lee and Maynard 2017). Literature on faculty experiences has demonstrated that class background can remain salient throughout one’s career, thereby challenging the notion that completing a terminal degree removes any potential class-based barriers and places all academics on equal footing (Haney 2015; Lee 2017; Morgan et al. 2022; Ward 2022).

Impact on FGWC Academics

Numerous studies have noted how FGWC academics may come to feel stuck between two worlds, not fully incorporated into either (Granfield 1991; Haney 2015; Leyva 2011).

Furthermore, many FGWC academics have reported feeling that to integrate into academia, they must distance themselves from their families and WC identities (Granfield 1991; Haney 2015; Hurst 2010; Leyva 2011; Lowery-Hart and Pacheco, 2011). Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of “cleft habitus,” Haney (2015) describes how distancing oneself from family creates a bifurcated consciousness that can lead to feelings of estrangement and isolation. Scholars have also documented how students and faculty with WC backgrounds experience added psychological stress as a result of trying to manage a stigmatized class identity (Granfield 1991; Gutiérrez y Muhs et al. 2012; Lee 2017).

A small but compelling literature examining responses to this stigmatized class identity has found that students and faculty engage in emotion work, boundary making, and impression management to avoid or combat the stigma (Granfield 1991; Lee 2017; Leyva 2011; Smith-Tran 2020). These practices range from attempting to fully conceal one’s background and assimilate into the higher-class culture—with WC students and faculty reporting pressure to adopt this strategy (Granfield 1991; Gutiérrez y Muhs et al. 2012; Lee 2017)—to actively embracing one’s FGWC background and making it an explicit part of their presentation of self (Granfield 1991; Haney 2015; Hurst 2009, 2010; Lee 2017; Lee and Maynard 2017).

Scholarship has also demonstrated the ways intersecting identities can compound the stigma faced by academics with marginalized backgrounds (Gutiérrez y Muhs et al. 2012; Lee and Maynard 2017; Leyva 2011; Pastor 2015; Pittman 2010; Smith-Tran 2020; Ward 2022). Ward (2022) finds that women of color describe engaging in significant extra work to facilitate membership into academia compared to White women. Strategies used by the participants in Ward’s (2022) study included trying to appear less “emotional” and “passionate” about their academic interests and periodically not attending academic gatherings to avoid potential discrimination. In general, much of the extra work done by women of color resulted from an “expressed incongruity between who they were as people as opposed to themselves as professionals” (Ward 2022:502).

First-Generation Self-Definition

In attempting to illuminate the consistencies and divergences among our experiences as sociologists from nonacademic backgrounds, we first faced the daunting task of parsing out contested definitions of both working-class and first-generation. For all authors, each phrase is a metonym insufficient in reflecting the entirety of their social class path. Variations in definitions and self-adoption of the label were illuminated through use of the autoethnographic method.

The label of FG student—commonly defined, as in the ASA Task Report on for FGWC People in Sociology (Roscigno et al. 2022), as a student who does not have a parent or caregiver with a bachelor’s degree—was not immediately adopted at the collegiate level, if at all, by the coauthors. While social class has always shaped our experiences and the material conditions of our lives, FG college student resources had not yet proliferated when three of us entered our first year of college. While it was often a felt dimension of difference, none of us used this terminology to describe ourselves. Jesse writes that he never found FG to be a salient identity because his parents have technical degrees from community colleges and others outside of his immediate family also went to college before him. Nicole similarly questioned her FG college student status because a close primary group relative did obtain a college degree over the course of over 10 years while working full-time by taking free classes provided by her employer. This provided Nicole with an alternative to the traditional model of what it might look like to earn a degree. Nicole notes, too, that despite social class differences between herself and her classmates being readily apparent to her, she eventually realized she was more academically prepared than many peers. However, she reflects that “if others hadn’t literally pointed it out to me (classmates I studied with, teachers asking about honors, etc.), I wouldn’t have known.” This is important when considering FGWC supports because when experiences are conflated, solutions proffered solely for economic or academic resources may fail to attend to differences in cultural capital that differentiate FGWC from continuing-generation students. Factors, potentially including confidence gaps, that affect self-selection of academically high-performing high school students into elite colleges may continue to affect their academic careers. As Ronda (2015) and Pastor (2015) note, social support of students and faculty is needed in addition to structural support.

Additionally, while class was the most salient status characteristic for the two White coauthors, when entering college, racial differences were felt more acutely than were class-based differences by the two coauthors of color. Jenn writes that being an FG college student was salient in her college experience and now as an educator/mentor, but initially she didn’t primarily think in terms of being “first gen.” She describes her experience as follows:

At my undergraduate institution, it wasn’t so much my class that made me feel like I stood out, but more my racial background. At my graduate institution, my class was clearly the part of my identity that made me stand out. It was at graduate school where I first met people who came from families with wealth. These were fellow graduate students and faculty. At that institution I felt like the lives of those around me was opaque in a sense—it was largely a mystery to me and I coped with this uncertainty by separating my personal life from my academic life and trying to keep these two worlds far from one another.

For Leia, “first generation is more like a badge. Similar to girl scouts, my first-gen badge holds weight for those that understand the struggle. Not in a sympathetic way, instead like a ‘I had a similar grind’ type of way.” Leia further explains that the FG label is demeaning in the uneven valuation of college degree attainment compared to nonacademic life experiences and accomplishments. She describes discomfort in adopting the label for these reasons.

Leia’s description was highly resonant with other coauthors and led to additional reflection on institutional usage of FG terminology and programming. The term itself, while sharing the similar qualities of reflecting ascribed status and of traversing cultures, is distinct from the term as derived from first-generation immigrants to the United States, who can simultaneously be the first in their family to attend college. While some coauthors use it to describe ourselves, we all remain critical of the term because it both presumes a permanent change in culture and uncritically places a higher value on both U.S. citizenship and social class culture that includes postsecondary education. It does this in part by setting up a false dichotomy wherein going to college is a marker of success and not doing so indicates a deficiency. For example, Monmouth University in New Jersey has titled its FG program “First to Fly: First Generation at Monmouth,” which implies that if others have not attained a college degree, then they have not “flown.” In this manner, even the label “first-generation” can be read as an insult to our families and therefore a difficult label to adopt.

Colleges and universities, while recognizing the need for and providing more support for undergraduate college students from class-marginalized backgrounds, both flatten and class-sanitize their experiences with FG terminology. Unlike other cultural backgrounds that reflect a shared source of pride for students and families, in FG terminology, the pride is reserved for the college graduate alone. So, too, as Leia writes, is the hurt of the status. Decades later, this experience of cleft habitus is still consistent with Grimes and Morris’s (1997:18) statement,

If there is one finding that consistently emerges from this research, it is that coming from one social world and then attempting to become part of a second, very different social world often leaves the individual caught in the middle of the two and feeling like a part of neither.

Relatedly, Morton (2021) argues that colleges and universities, in their uninterrogated promotion of economic upward mobility, assume that there is no loss derived from changing social class position. This assumption is an obstacle for those seeking a pathway through academia that honors their background while providing the tools necessary to produce knowledge.

As educators of sociology, we can be social class-responsive in our own classrooms by recognizing and providing intervention for FG students while at the same time interrogating and/or asking students to critically interrogate the terminology. A recent Student Voice Survey (Ezarik 2022) revealed the definition of FG college student is unclear to many students. As educators, we can help students recognize their own social positioning and some of the unique challenges and strengths that may come with it.

In so doing and by providing examples of similarly situated students who have attained their educational goals, we may contribute to improving educational outcomes for FGWC students in a manner similar to a difference-education intervention tested by Stephens et al. (2014). Through being cognizant of our language choices and explanations in our classrooms, we can take care not to devalue the lives and experiences of those without degrees and encourage college and university administrations to do the same.

Working-Class Self-Definition

The working-class moniker, while perhaps less palatable for colleges and universities as a special interest population due to wide cultural discomfort among middle-class Americans with explicit discussions of social class and the tacit belief that higher educational attainment and professional jobs erase or neutralize differences in class background (Haney 2015; Lee 2017), was more readily adopted by coauthors, although not in a straightforward manner. Leia, for example, initially described her understanding of social class growing up as consisting of “poor, middle-class, rich, hella rich” and then reflected in our focus group that she identified a separate working-class category as well and recognized the physical, social, and financial domains generally ascribed to each category while simultaneously acknowledging differences within class categories (e.g., King 2019).

Nicole reflected that she drew more heavily on her fathers’ occupation as a union carpenter to “claim” her working-class status rather than her own experiences working extremely low-wage tip-dependent jobs involving physical exertion because she viewed them as temporary. ² She now firmly locates these experiences as working-class even if they are less readily categorized as such because they fall outside popular images of the working class. King (2019:116) notes that U.S. scholars often conflate working-class with “rural white male laborers,” yet using data from the American Community Survey finds that varying definitions of the “working class” include workers who are diverse in terms of race, gender, and geographic location (rural, suburban, urban, etc.). Nicole also notes that the gendering of her class straddling made it difficult to pinpoint when familial disinterest in or misunderstanding of the nature of her academic work obligations were due to social class differences, her work being viewed as less important because of her gender, work that is seen as interesting or jargony itself, or some combination of these and/or other factors. Of the four coauthors, Jesse expressed a claim to working-class identity that was the most definitive and unwavering over time despite not claiming FG status.

Disclosure of FGWC Status to Students—Explicit Disclosures and Presentations of Self

Layers of self-definition among the coauthors shaped their practices of disclosure and physical manifestations of FGWC background. Jenn, Leia, and Nicole indicate that they explicitly share their class background or FG status with students but selectively disclose to colleagues, while Jesse consistently relies on physical and verbal cues to indicate his social class background.

Similarly, Lee and Maynard (2017:39) found that faculty members from lower SES backgrounds would often share their background with students as a form of “symbolic encouragement.” Jenn describes overtly sharing her background and resources with students, writing that:

I make a deliberate effort to tell students on the first day and throughout the semester that I am first gen and had no idea what I was doing when I started college . . . for two reasons—to encourage them to use me as a resource/contact on campus and to show them that if they have a similar background it’s possible for them to successfully navigate higher ed and join an institution of higher ed in the future if they so desire. In other words, I hope that by telling students they see that they belong here.

She notes, though, that her comfort in disclosing her social locations more broadly has increased over time:

I do think it’s important to note that I didn’t feel as comfortable openly foregrounding my various social locations when I was a graduate student. In that setting, I didn’t try to actively hide my first gen/working class background, but I did feel much more so like an outsider and didn’t advertise these statuses as often. I already felt out of place in graduate school and mostly kept quiet and tried to fly under the radar.

Similarly, Leia wrote that she often stays private but began to selectively disclose her class background in classrooms to prevent “certain students from being made to feel as if they need to be the spokesperson to their peers.” Here, she reflects on an instance where she was motivated to share this with her students after a Black student was met with derision from some of her classmates for sharing her experiences living in poverty:

In this moment I shared my experience with the young woman and made a vow to not only defend her in private but also in public. I started incorporating pictures, videos, examples, and language that also SHOWED that I came from a similar background. This young woman taught me authenticity.

SROP (Summer Research Opportunity Program—a summer program designed to provide research experience and mentoring to facilitate doctoral training for exceptionally performing undergraduate students who are underrepresented in their field) was another time I disclosed my class background to students. These students were predominantly Black and Brown, and many of them had immigrant backgrounds. Again, as a point of connection and to show similarity, I disclosed my status. However, different from my interaction in predominantly white spaces, the legitimacy I was seeking when discussing my background shifted from proving respectability politics to sharing a common trait of . . . resilience.

While Leia writes that “people in academic spaces typically assume that I am first gen and so they may find out what they ‘already know’ or can easily ‘see’ how I am a first generation student,” Nicole notes that she sometimes needs to “put in some work” to make her class background apparent to students. She attributes her ability to “pass” as middle-class to her race, her formative experiences growing up in a neighborhood free from the fear of violence and with excellent public schools, being tracked early as “gifted” and therefore grouped with peers who tended to be more affluent than herself and the consequent absorption of cultural capital, and dental work her parents were able to provide for her in high school (Khalid and Quiñonez 2015). In each of the four institutional settings she has taught, she has felt it important to share her FGWC status and relevant resources so that similarly situated students are not isolated because she remembers the sense of relief and belonging she experienced when some of her own faculty mentors disclosed their FGWC background.

Although she notes masculinizing her appearance earlier in her graduate career to avoid rampant androsexism, Nicole’s preferred style of dress is considered feminine but partially consistent with “professional” standards of academic attire. Jenn and Jesse instead described dressing pragmatically and comfortably as an indicator of WC background—and noted specific styles such as wearing a hat and flannel shirts or having visible tattoos. Jesse wrote that he does not explicitly disclose his background but that it comes out instead through his clothing and his speech patterns that include a slight Southern drawl and sometimes casual swearing.

Jesse also writes that while he does not see the utility in wearing clothing that is “too precious to get dirty” or shoes that he is afraid to scuff if he needs to “fix a wobbling desk chair or help change a tire,” he recognizes the instrumental importance of “professional” clothing, such as a suit and tie, as a navigational strategy and would begrudgingly wear them if necessary. Despite different approaches, all coauthors acknowledged that passing as more affluent or as continuing-generation through appearance and mannerisms has practical significance for achieving success. This parallels in some ways the buying of luxury goods to extract social class benefits to survive, where “‘acceptable’ is about gaining access to a limited set of rewards granted upon group membership” (McMillan Cottom 2019:166).

Consistent with earlier findings of variation in navigating stigma (Granfield 1991; Hurst 2010; Lee 2017; Leyva 2011), coauthors ranged in their approaches to disclosure and impression management via dress and speech in the classroom and among colleagues. These strategies impacted sense of belonging variably across coauthors and were infused with layers of meaning according to raced, gendered, and cultural understandings of what it means to present a classed appearance. They were also infused with a different set of risk and reward, with FGWC faculty of color facing more risks when discussing their class backgrounds (Lee and Maynard 2017). As one interviewed faculty member of color recalled, disclosing one’s class status could give people on campus yet another way to see them as “other” and could result in further marginalization ³ (Lee and Maynard 2017). These reflections also illuminate the fluctuating salience of social class at different times in our careers and across different contexts in response to the tension between legitimating belonging and remaining authentic. Further research is needed to parse out whether specific strategies at different times cohere along raced, gendered, or other lines within FGWC experiences.

Race, gender, age/cohort, and other dimensions of identity shape classed experiences of the academy. As graduate instructors and faculty, these differences matter in the classroom for being able to draw out nuanced understandings of social class, build rapport with students across and within similar social class backgrounds, and constrain or enable differing presentations of social class in speech, mannerisms, and appearance. While we all have the same general disciplinary orientation to social class as measured by quantitative and qualitative indicators, different forms of capital, habitus shaped by material conditions, and the labels we claim for ourselves shape where, to what extent, and to whom we disclose our class background.

Whether explicitly or through appearance and mannerisms, disclosure of FGWC status by educators may benefit FGWC students, with two-thirds of surveyed students responding that such disclosure by a professor had a positive impact and that they felt more connected to the professor either immediately or as time went on (Ezarik 2022). Additionally, Ronda (2015) and Pastor (2015) highlight the influence of academic mentors who encouraged them to go to graduate school, making visible a life option that was previously unknown to them. Similarly, Lee and Maynard (2017) found that low-SES faculty frequently mentioned how important mentors were for their academic trajectory and realized the important mentoring role they could now assume. While mentoring relationships have the potential to bolster student success and encourage underrepresented students to attend graduate school, they can also lead to unintended consequences. Some faculty in Lee and Maynard’s (2017) study noted their hesitation in becoming viewed as a “role model” and therefore reproducing problematic narratives about pulling oneself up by their bootstraps. They wanted students to know a life in academia was possible and that they were strong candidates for graduate work, but they also experienced some discomfort encouraging students to enter an institution that remains inequitable on many fronts. Regardless, both honest and open mentorship with first- and continuing-generation faculty and explicit or implicit disclosure of FGWC status to students can illuminate previously unconsidered pathways for FGWC undergraduates.

Perceptions of How Our Backgrounds Shaped Our Teaching of Sociology

As a discipline, sociology is positioned to be better attuned to issues of social class and status than other fields, and as such, each coauthor had high expectations that our class backgrounds would be understood and supported in spaces devoted to academic sociology. Nonetheless, each coauthor was able to describe instances of overt and/or subtle classism (the experience of which, of course, cannot be separated from our other simultaneously held identities) in the academy.

These experiences directly contribute to our course policies, which were strikingly similar. While such similarity may be expected among familiar colleagues, our individual rationales were linked to specific circumstances from much earlier in our educations when none of us knew one another. All coauthors described flexibility/forgiveness with striking similarity. We recognized that external barriers and obligations are unevenly distributed among our student populations and that overly punitive attendance and assignment due date policies unduly penalize students who face greater disadvantages and often reward social privilege.

Each of us in our teaching also emphasizes the production of knowledge and the tension between teaching the value of empirical research while also honoring lived experiences and recognizing institutional biases that shape knowledge production (Zuberi and Bonilla-Silva 2008). We reinforce to students and mentees who are considering or are already in graduate school that an academic career is only one of many fulfilling paths while at the same time strive to create environments that allow FGWC grads and faculty to produce knowledge. In this vein, the impact of our FGWC backgrounds extends beyond the classroom and into our work advising students about their academic goals and potential career pathways. While reflecting on our experiences, several of us noted that we hold ideas about success that are often overlooked or not framed as success in many academic contexts. Leia provided several examples of graduate colleagues whose expectations and educational experiences were shaped by their families’ educational achievements and describes how success is interpreted through the lenses of class and race. She goes on to explain:

My stories, hobbies, travels, and experiences are fundamentally different from the majority of my colleagues, even the G rated version of my life . . . and in some cases, my language experience will not be understood or [will be] rejected.

The process of feeling as though I do not belong was built into the system and tradition of graduate school, independent of individual actors, however the cultural gaps, created by racial and class divides became most apparent amongst my “peers” leading to isolating experiences throughout my graduate study.

I mean, I don’t “belong.” Academia was not built for me to be a part of, let alone succeed. I was not raised reading the right books, attending the right activities, yet I am still here.

Not only does Leia demonstrate the strengths of her distinct standpoint in the prevoius quote, she also demonstrates how her experiences can be drawn on to recognize and support students whose visions of success deviate from mainstream academic norms based predominantly on the experiences of White and economically privileged people. Expanding notions of success and valuing nontraditional pathways can potentially lead to a sense of belonging for more students.

The recent Report of the ASA Task Force on First-Generation and Working-Class People in Sociology (Roscigno et al. 2022) finds pipeline disparities that disproportionately preclude FGWC sociologists from filling positions in top-20 or top-50 sociology programs. Those who came through the top-50 pipeline may respond to a lack of belonging by intentionally opting out of these departments. FGWC sociologists may also rank other considerations above departmental prestige, such as suitability to the demands of family, career, and community-based research, service, and advocacy. Jesse, for example, views accommodation of caregiving and support of family life as a key factor in his career decision-making. As he describes:

I love that I have more time with my family. And that I think makes a big difference in my decisions. . . . And how I do things is—I don’t I don’t treat it like a professional or career that should legitimately take over all of my time. But I think if you—if you’re really going to be successful, you kind of have to let it take up a lot more time than you expected—that you plan for—that you wanted—whatever. It’s not a family friendly thing. And I can’t remember what I was doing recently, as somebody brought up the idea of being an academic and having a family as being incompatible. And I’m not sure that that’s too far from the truth.

But I also know that depending on where you’re at—where you’re teaching, if you’re not in a big research institution, it’s—having a family is, I think, a little more accepted and a little more accommodated.

While R-1 faculty do find ways to make their family lives work (and financial resources are a factor in one’s ability to do so), Jesse points to the considerations that must be taken into account when deciding on different academic paths. FGWC academics, in straddling social class lines and having taken less prescribed paths than their continuing-generation peers, may have more flexibility in defining a successful life and career path, picking and choosing elements from both their early background and their later training to retain or eschew. Additionally, FGWC scholars that remain in the academy may find colleges and universities with larger percentages of FGWC and other underserved student populations more appealing than typically present in top-ranked departments.

FGWC students and faculty may be more inclined toward public scholarship, activism, and community-based-participatory research. Ward (2022) noted that the women of color she interviewed were more likely than their White counterparts from predominantly middle-class backgrounds to share the belief that academic research should attempt to address social problems. However, none of the 12 White women interviewed were FG or poor, as opposed to 11 and 5 of the women of color, respectively, and only 1 White woman was working-class, as opposed to 8 women of color. This unevenness in class background of interviewees may confound the relationship between class, race, and beliefs about research as intended to ameliorate social problems. While there is difficulty in disentangling WC status and race from other dimensions of identity and experience, Stephens et al. (2012) find that FG college students more often have interdependent goals for attending college, which can also contribute to desire to give back to their families and wider communities. The notion that researchers have obligations to the communities they come from echoes Hill Collins’s (2000) work on the strengths of Black feminist scholarship.

In terms of student interest, in their study of student service-learning experiences and how they differed by SES, Clever and Miller (2019) found that low-SES students participated in service-learning experiences at higher rates than their high-SES counterparts and were more likely to explain the struggles of those they served with structural explanations and focus on the impact their service had on the communities they worked alongside, while high-SES students were more likely to employ individual-level explanations (Clever and Miller 2019). This insight into FGWC students can help faculty develop learning outcomes that reward a wider range of experiences and highlight the benefits and strengths a FGWC perspective can bring to projects that aim to reduce social inequalities. Awareness of what students bring to the classroom can shape our pedagogical approaches in addition to our flexible course policies. Sharing our backgrounds with students may facilitate a classroom environment that is conducive to sharing and drawing on one’s experiences to make sense of and build on sociological work, which can also aid students in developing a stronger sociological imagination (Smith-Tran 2020; Sola et al. 2022).