Social Capital for Appalachia’s Youth

Allison L. Ricket, Jacqueline Yahn, and Tasha Werry

Inside Appalachia is a people’s history of social capital. For example, across decades in Kentucky’s Red River Gorge, communities and climbers have progressed toward mutually beneficial relationships.^[1] Another example is multidisciplinary artist Shaun Slifer, whose museum work includes dusty pamphlets he salvaged in his study of the Appalachian Movement Press. For a decade (1969-1979) the press, located in Huntington, West Virginia, and run by a collective of workers, published and distributed literature focused on Appalachian identity and resistance to forms of regional exploitation.^[2] Yet another illustration is Florence Reece’s “Which Side Are You On?” with lyrics that inspired coal mining families in Harlan County, Kentucky, to organize against unfair labor practices and violence in an effort to secure a living wage.^[3] Simplified, social capital is the acumen to access resources and networks that provide individuals and communities of people the ability to foster change or secure opportunity.^[4] Social capital has long existed in Appalachia, beginning with its historical role and moving toward the current ways social capital is being used to strengthen community viability (a community with sustainable economic and social infrastructure that affords a high standard of living for all its citizens) and individual opportunity. Inside Appalachia, how can a community create forms of social capital to work through dilemmas and strengthen quality of life for all its members?

A People’s History of Social Capital in Appalachia

Contemporary Appalachia—the people and the place—has been shaped by the many uses of social capital across the region. At its best, social capital provides benefits that work in tandem to improve individual quality of life while enhancing a community’s viability.^[5] In the past, the mountains themselves dictated the necessity of social capital for community thriving: working the land, planting the land, and living in this mountainous region meant people had to rely on each other as neighbors to live and survive.^[6] Over the decades, Appalachian residents have persisted in generating this type of social capital to both resist economic downturn and build the profile of the region’s people and places.^[7] Appalshop, Appalachia’s flagship media, arts, and education center reflects this effort in its origin story, decades of achievements, and contemporary mission, which includes a focus on community-oriented storytelling.^[8] 

Nevertheless, inside the region social capital has also been contentious, unfolding to yield privilege to local elites. Tensions develop within communities when one group gains power over systems such as county government, public education, and the local job sector in order to monopolize limited resources.^[9] Cynthia Duncan illustrates this phenomenon in her study of persistent poverty in a community situated within the Appalachian coal fields, identifying how familial networks controlled power dynamics within the community, particularly the schools.^[10] 

Finally, leading thinkers on social capital recognize that at its worst, outside entities use their social capital to exploit a community’s resources, particularly their workforce and natural resources.^[11] This misuse of social capital looms like a band of ominous thunderstorms over Appalachian history. In the 1920s, for example, Blair Mountain, West Virginia, was the site of the largest labor uprising in United States history,^[12] but despite community efforts toward labor reform, many miners and local activists died; a hundred years later, Blair Mountain shows the damage wrought by mountaintop removal, a common mining practice in Eastern Kentucky and Southern West Virginia, starting in the late 20th century.^[13] In summation, Appalachia’s history is full of stories of how the region’s people have activated social capital since early settlement times–sometimes in the form of progress, at others as a means of resistance, and sometimes in conflict with their neighbors’ interests.

Disruptions to Social Capital Formation in Appalachia

What so many people “get wrong” about Appalachia is they believe there is a region-wide social capital deficit that is caused by Appalachians’ inability to realize the American dream—or what some call upward mobility.^[14] A case in point is J.D. Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy or Ron Howard’s film adaptation of the book, which feature this worn out idea, and it should be retired. In Appalachia, like elsewhere in America, struggles with social capital arise not from lack of trying, but from unequal distribution of resources and structural inequalities.

A people’s history of the region shows that Appalachians have historically used social capital in an effort to sustain their local communities, while they have also contributed to building the United States into the nation we live in today.^[15] Since the Civil War, many communities in the region have played key roles in establishing and maintaining the nation’s energy, transportation, and corporate infrastructure.^[16] This advancement happened in the form of natural resource extraction (coal, timber, oil and gas), with the help of the region’s labor force (mining, manufacturing, construction, and steelwork), and because of communities’ proximity to throughways, such as the Ohio River.^[17] For this reason major historical disruptions to the nation’s economy are felt acutely within Appalachian communities and come with costs to the inhabitants' social capital.

While an exhaustive timeline of historical disruptions would fill a book, two examples provide keen illustrations. The first is the deindustrialization that unfurled across the United States beginning in the 1980s. Appalachia was home to many of the industries, such as steel and manufacturing, that began to shutter one after another, as companies moved their operations overseas or industries ceased to exist altogether.^[18] The second is the opioid epidemic that got its start when millions of pills were purposefully marketed to Appalachian communities with high rates of chronic disease linked to labor-intensive jobs, environmental degradation, and socioeconomic inequality.^[19] In each case the affected Appalachian communities experienced indefinite stress on social services as local need exceeded the system’s capacity. At the same time the community’s economy declined, threatening residents’ personal wellbeing. Appalachians did not cause deindustrialization nor did they lobby to bring Purdue Pharma to the region. Still, during these times, Appalachian communities have experienced the consequences which have demanded the community’s attention, depleted their resources, and strained networks. These events hamper the formation of social capital at both the individual and community levels, but unique assets within Appalachian communities provide the opportunity to rebuild community viability.  

Appalachian Communities with Multiple Forms of Capital

First, Appalachia’s people have a solid history of using social capital in diverse ways that have led to varied outcomes for their respective communities. Second, Appalachians have frequently experienced disruptions beyond their control that create barriers to accessing social capital. Multiple forms of community capital have occurred within Appalachian communities and have been leveraged to improve individual and collective social capital. Community capital includes natural resources (natural capital), culture and heritage, education and social organizations, community networks working toward a collective good, a democratic local government, strong local infrastructure (e.g., utilities, healthcare, emergency services), and opportunity for income security.^[20] Appalachians’ historical relationship with social capital indicates that Appalachians frequently use their social capital in an effort to secure, protect, and build upon these forms of community wealth.

Inside Appalachia in the 21st century, the most pressing issue across the region is the ability to use social capital to secure community viability. In other words, Appalachians are concerned with the future sustainability of their communities.^[21] More importantly, Appalachians explain they are motivated to work toward securing this future because of the generational ties to family and friends, a deep attachment to Appalachia’s landscape, and a belief that quality of life is based on both financial security and love for the community.^[22] Within contemporary trends in social capital and their contribution to Appalachians (the people) and Appalachia (the communities), this point is clear: social capital is often depicted as a personal asset, like money in a wallet. Therefore, schools and educational stakeholders often make the mistake of narrowly focusing on how individuals build social capital, overlooking the benefits of more widespread social capital in a community. Social capital is most valuable when it builds community viability, therefore improving quality of life for all inhabitants. For example, Building Bridges to Careers is an organization in Appalachian Ohio working to build economic opportunity and quality of life by linking students to community networks that represent betterment of the region’s land and people.

Contemporary Trends in Social Capital

Who an individual knows, their social network, connects them to resources and opportunities. Individuals rely on their social networks for intangible support such as advice, information, and socio-emotional support as well as tangible resources such as employment, housing options, and financial support.^[23] Any town or community contains people to call for advice, a piece of equipment to borrow, a recommendation for a babysitter, the best doctor to treat special needs. Job-seekers in a community may ask someone to “put in a good word” for them to leverage a hiring prospect in their direction. In fact, Julia F. Fisher and Daniel Fisher indicate that half of jobs are obtained through a personal connection.^[24] Opportunities accessed through social networks significantly impact the trajectory of an individual’s life.

Social networks create access to opportunities for individuals. Research shows a more diverse, heterogeneous social network consisting of many weak ties, usually nonfamilial relationships or acquaintances, leads to an increased breadth of access to opportunities.^[25] Access to opportunities is critical for well-being outcomes, social mobility, and self-determination, but access to social capital, and therefore access to opportunities, is not distributed equally.^[26] Both income inequality and race greatly impact access to opportunities, as does level of education and geographic isolation. People from disadvantaged or marginalized backgrounds tend to have smaller, more redundant social networks, meaning their networks are limited to close family and friends who share backgrounds or know all the same people. This sort of closed network can limit access to opportunities outside the family network. In large part, networks are inherited and nurtured or constrained by the socio-cultural context in which a person lives. The difference between the networks, social capital, and therefore opportunities that an affluent child inherits from their family, and the networks, social capital, and subsequent opportunities a poor child inherits from their family and socio-cultural context is called the opportunity gap.^[27] 

People also use social capital in different ways. For some people, social capital is leveraged for social mobility; that is, a person’s personal connections are used to gain admission to a top-tier college, land a competitive internship, find better job opportunities, pull recommendations for the most promising investment, or access the most suitable lawyer to help resolve a legal situation. For others, social capital is used to strengthen family and community ties as well as to create a sense of shared identity, responsibility, and belonging to a place. In this way, social capital sustains important cultural capital and collective community capital.^[28] Examples of social capital functioning in this way range from “Famous Friends” (2021) by contemporary country stars Chris Young and Kane Brown to bell hooks’s Appalachian Elegy (2012). Regardless of the ways in which social capital is mobilized, opportunities created by social capital and the strength and number of social ties are important for quality of life and future building both on an individual and collective level.^[29]

Social capital affects a person’s health, happiness, ability to stay in school and graduate, economic mobility, and overall well-being.^[30] Research in the health sciences shows that lack of social connection is as detrimental to physical health as smoking, and in U.S. counties such as those concentrated in central Appalachia, low social capital is linked both directly and indirectly to high levels of psychological distress.^[31] On the other hand, in places where social capital is high across the community, youth from all backgrounds benefit. Although other aspects of an individual’s life and community context influence youth achievement and development, social capital–that is, social connectedness–seems the most important aspect. For example, in a statistical analysis holding constant factors traditionally associated with school achievement such as race, adult educational attainment, poverty, educational spending, teachers’ salaries and class size, economic inequality, and existence of private schools in the area, social capital was the single most important predictor of state educational success.^[32] Said another way, even with other socio-economic inequities, the study showed a community’s youth were able to overcome those challenges if social capital was high. Both individual and community social connectedness provide an important wrap-around supportive structure, especially for youth.

Christopher Holtkamp and Russell C. Weaver examined the relationship between social capital and economic well-being in Appalachia, finding a strong connection between Appalachian place identity and high social capital.^[33] Place identity is shared by members of a community that is shaped not just by socio-cultural factors but also by the physical landscape, the geography of a place—in this study, the Appalachian Mountains. Where communities demonstrated high levels of “a unique Appalachian identity” informed in part by attachment to place, the researchers found lower levels of economic distress.^[34] Place identity arises out of both “rootedness” to local and family relationships and relationship with nature.^[35] In Appalachia especially, social connections are often woven through and tied together with connections to the land. The geography of place not only shapes social capital but also becomes a form of social capital in and of itself, informing educational aspirations, residential aspirations, and employment choice.^[36] In places where people form bonds not only with fellow community members but also with the environment, a sense of “social insideness” contributes to collective efficacy, the ability of a community to take collective action toward change for the well-being of all.^[37]

Despite the bulk of research illustrating the benefits of connections of social capital on the lives of individuals and the lives of the community, research also points to declining social connectedness in the Appalachian region and beyond.^[38] Contributing to the decline of both formal and informal ties that form these important social networks are factors such as geographic isolation, economic necessity for both parents in a two-parent household to work, and privatization of leisure time. Overall, people are spending more time commuting to work, at work, and in their homes than they did in previous decades.^[39] This generational change equates to less time spent in civic spaces, volunteering, or nurturing social connections across the community.

Camille Busette and their colleagues show that most people form social connections in educational institutions or in the workplace.^[40] Schools, therefore, are consequential sites for building valuable social connections, especially for students with limited family networks or who are geographically isolated.^[41] When schools function as self-contained communities wherein student interactions are restricted to classroom teachers, administrators, and school staff, and the content of school focuses on “objective” academic knowledge divorced from local community and culture, students’ ability to grow a broad, diverse social network is limited.^[42] Because social capital is key for future thriving, opportunities for life choices, and social mobility, schools have an important role to play in providing access to social capital, building opportunities, and forming community connections.

P-12 Education and Social Capital

In the early years of formalized schooling in Appalachia, schools were shaped around community needs and geography. Small one-room schoolhouses operated in tandem with the religious leanings of the local community nestled in the hillsides, serving the immediate, surrounding geographical area.^[43] Lack of flat land and reliable transportation infrastructure made larger schools impossible well into the 20th century, and for many families, the lack of access to school coupled with the need to have children as labor on the homestead meant many children received a grade-school education and no more.^[44] Although education may have relegated to a necessary second priority in Appalachia, schools were tied closely to the community culture and the cycles of the land.^[45] However, as industry grew in the United States at the turn of the century and thinkers like Horace Mann argued for standardized, compulsory, free education for all Americans, the industrial model of public education became popular in urban areas, modeled from Adam Smith’s pin factory. In this model, the primary concern was not education for the imparting of community values and skills but education to prepare workers for the factories: places run by bells, segmented roles, and repetitive work done over and over all day long. Education in the industrial model was meant to feed the industrial machine with standardized, mostly literate products–that is, people–to fill the lines of the factory with competent workers.^[46] Education shifted in focus and purpose away from supporting the intradependence of communal life where people are educated for the common good. With the rise of industry and the industrial model of school, education narrowed to focus on the competitive individual and what they can personally wrest from life and the market, no matter the cost.^[47]

Even until the 1970s, rural places in Appalachia resisted state and federal control of schools. As Constance Elam says in her overview of education in Kentucky, “Settling into wealth, comfort, and the benefits of a regulated society was not the mountaineer dream or preference.”^[48] Education scholars called for reform in Appalachian schools, urging for more technical training, better quality teachers, and increased adult education.^[49] Some schools, like the settlement schools and folk schools, intended to combine outside pedagogy with local culture and community services to create schools tied both to the community and to advancing practices in education. Notably, some of these settlement and folk schools still operate today with progressive models serving the community and the individual needs of students.^[50] Funding mechanisms for public education favored urban and suburban areas, providing more money per pupil to schools in densely populated areas and areas with high property taxes, a disparity that continues in many Appalachian states to this day.

Federal reports in the 1980s such as A Nation At Risk that led to the 2002 policy that followed, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), ushered in an era of centralized curriculum and accountability measures tied to school funding, local districts in Appalachia and beyond have shifted curriculum and coursework to match the content and structure of standardized testing.^[51] Teachers were encouraged to “teach to the test,” and to ensure students would pass the end-of-year tests, districts eliminated un-tested subjects such as shop class and art along with field trips and projects.^[52] The emphasis on accountability and testing was renewed by the Obama-era Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015, a policy meant to improve teacher quality and encourage college readiness for all students. Since A Nation At Risk, districts in Appalachia echoed the “college for all” mantra, which had ripple effects across the region, especially in rural areas and areas without institutions of higher education nearby. The process of centralization and bureaucratizing rural schools that served to make rural schools “outposts of the national culture” shifted the focus away from school as a connecting force in the local community to school as promoter of metropolitan versions of progress.^[53] 

In large part as a result of centralized education standards and curriculum, classrooms became increasingly separated from the local community. This divide encouraged distrust of higher education in rural areas, where parents saw school as encouraging students to leave the area to pursue higher education as the only way to a bright, successful future.^[54] This practice of educating out, where education is constructed and perceived as preparing students to leave, is considered to be a major contributing factor to outmigration of rural youth and rural decline.^[55] Declining social capital both influences outmigration, also referred to as “brain drain,” and compounds the loss of social capital in rural communities. As community networks weaken and the content of schools fails to connect to the local community, students see fewer examples of options for a future in their hometowns.^[56] Additionally, collective social capital is lost as “achievers” leave small towns, taking with them their wider social connections, savvy, and institutional knowledge.^[57] As Elizabeth Catte says in What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia (2018), “You might think our biggest export is coal, but actually it’s people.”^[58]

On the other hand, the social capital created by strong familial, community, and place bonds in some places in Appalachia leads students to find a way to stay, or if they must, to leave for post-secondary education, then return home with new skills and networks to contribute.^[59] For some Appalachian and rural families, place attachment and strong social bonds influence their decisions to turn down job opportunities that would grant them economic mobility, but take them away from their land and families.^[60] Strong bonds with both the community and the physical land alongside students’ perceptions of job opportunities in the area shape students’ decisions to stay or remain in their home communities. In one study of rural Pennsylvania youth, researchers found that teens who value the natural environment and the outdoor recreation possibilities that a clean and protected environment affords were more likely to plan to stay in their rural communities.^[61] For these families and their youth, social capital is not just a means toward increased financial capital, it is a marker of quality of life. For suburban and urban youth, social capital is closely tied with social mobility and financial capital. However, studies indicate that for rural youth, natural capital and social capital are more closely linked, creating a tapestry of identity, purpose, and community satisfaction.^[62] By emphasizing place-based learning and incorporating community relationships in education, schools could further nurture the unique social capital of students in Appalachia.

Whether youth decide to stay or leave, social capital built into schools in large part provides students exposure and access to opportunities to build their futures. Participation in school clubs and activities is another way students build social bonds and leverage those bonds for future opportunities. Participation in extracurricular activities provides students with access to adult mentors acting as coaches, club advisors, and facilitators. While student engagement in these smaller school networks has shown to increase student achievement, adult mentors in extracurricular activities who form positive relationships with students can also serve as bridges to additional connections, opportunities, and support for students in addition to promoting prosocial behaviors.^[63] 

However, extracurricular participation in schools is dwindling, even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Contributing to the decline in extracurricular activities are policies that require students to pay a fee to join a school team or club. In cash-strapped schools, cost for coaches, facility rentals, uniforms, and even transportation are passed on to families in the form of pay-to-play fees, which represent a barrier to access for students, especially disadvantaged students. Another barrier to participation, especially for rural Appalachian schools, is the sheer volume of time it takes to travel to “away” extracurricular competitions. Because of geographic isolation and fraught transportation infrastructure in the hills and hollers, many students who are needed at home for care of younger siblings cannot participate in activities that would give them access to critical network building opportunities.

School Policy Shifts to Building Connections

Schools are important sites for building social capital that construct future life paths and play an important role in bridging the opportunity gap and therefore what is called the achievement gap. The Coleman Report in 1964 introduced the idea of the achievement gap into mainstream discourse. This report, commissioned by Congress as part of the Civil Rights Act, found a gap between White and Black student achievement on math and English test scores and educational attainment. Although much focus was placed on school resources, the report found that school resources were not the main contributing factor to the achievement gap. Family background, community and neighborhood, in addition to peer group influence, what is now understood as social capital, were found to be the main factors shaping the widening and persistent achievement gap in the United States.^[64] Subsequent research confirmed these findings, explaining that affluent parents are able to supply their children with time, resources, and extra programming–i.e., opportunities–for learning earlier and more often than poor parents. Later research illustrated that family income and community affluence, regardless of race, results in student achievement gaps.^[65]

The achievement gap and the opportunity gap are inextricably tied, so much so that organizations such as Teach for America have eschewed the term achievement gap and replaced it with opportunity gap.^[66] The opportunities afforded students to learn and to grow their interests and potential are largely informed by social capital. The social networks of family and community provide the opportunities for students to engage with experts and programs that can develop their talent and interests or help them discover new ones. Furthermore, access to adults with institutional knowledge, or savvy, is another key to academic achievement.^[67] Savvy is the knowledge of how to navigate formal, sometimes large, bureaucratic institutions that are gatekeepers of opportunity such as institutions of higher learning and federal support agencies. When students lack the social capital to build the savvy to navigate these institutions, the opportunities are much more difficult, if not impossible to seize.^[68] 

Because of the increasing attention to social capital and the opportunity gap, public policy has shifted to address ways to increase youth engagement with mentors, experiential learning, and work-based learning.^[69] Learning opportunities that engage community and business partners with students either in the classroom or in the workplace are a way to address the “critical skills shortage.”^[70] While technical skills needed by business and industry evolve quickly with advances in technology, a siloed school system that lacks communication and engagement with business and industry lags behind the world of work, so the skills students develop by graduation and the skills employers need are gravely mismatched, further limiting their opportunities for the future.^[71]

Multiple initiatives at the state, federal, and regional level attempt to address the critical skills shortage, including increasing spending in Career Technical Education (CTE) and targeted philanthropic efforts through organizations such as the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) to address workforce development, economic development, and education through funding targeted toward building social capital in Appalachia.^[72] Because of Appalachia’s unique relationship with natural capital as a creator and foundation for social capital and historic relationship with resistance and collective action, organizations in Appalachia are taking a place-based approach to address the opportunity gap.^[73] Aligning with child development, the community and career connected learning system deeply integrates community members into formal and informal education spaces, allowing students to explore and discover facets of the community not easily accessed via their families.^[74] 

Community and Career Connected Learning

Community and career connected learning is a learning system integrating community partnerships and career awareness into experiential, place-based learning.^[75] This system is an overarching framework drawing together disparate approaches seeking the same goal: to strengthen the social fabric of communities to support both learners and the entire community. As an approach to learning, community and career connected learning emphasizes the importance of intentionally involving local community, business, and industry as active participants in the process of schooling. In this learning system, students learn from community members in both formal and informal spaces, in ways both outside of and connected to school objectives such as grades or graduation. Community and career connected learning refers to the activities and programs that are implemented with the intent to provide opportunities to explore, learn about, and engage with the local community and career fields. Critical facets of community and career connected learning include the following:

• Learning extends to audiences and experiences beyond the classroom and the teacher;^[76] 
• Students participate in an active learning process that involves a community member(s) (e.g., businessperson, staff from community organization, government official) also as an active participant;^[77] 
• Learning incorporates assets from the local community, including its land and culture;^[78]
• Learning, in both formal and informal school spaces, includes a continuum of experiences from exploration to extended immersion, connected to careers and occupations.^[79]

Examples of community and career connected learning at the program level include, but are not limited to, job shadowing, internships, mentoring, tours of local businesses, teacher externships, design challenges, career pathways, career fairs and panels, entrepreneurship clubs, and makerspace opportunities. At the classroom level, community and career connected learning includes inviting community experts to participate in classroom instruction and curriculum design, engaging business and community organizations in problem-based or project-based learning, providing students the opportunity to showcase learning to audiences of community members via presentations or participation at local meetings, outdoor education, and targeted field trips. A key differentiation between community and career connected learning and other instructional practices is the level of authenticity—that is, none of the activities are simulations. They are real, concrete interactions with local community assets that are necessarily scaffolded by the adults for students’ success at any level. Additionally, the emergence of community schools in rural places in Appalachia, schools providing easy access to wrap-around services–e.g., healthcare, dental care, laundry services, food pantry services through inter-agency partnerships on the school campus–dovetails with the spirit of community and career connected learning but is a separate concept. The goal of community and career connected learning is multifaceted: to allow developing students to gain opportunities so that they may explore and build connections with their community and careers within that community.^[80]

Figure 1. Multifaceted aspects of community and career connected learning.

The many terms that aim to capture the experience of students learning about, experimenting with, and deeply engaging with the community and career fields have caused considerable confusion among stakeholders and practitioners alike. Prolonged, in-depth learning experiences in a particular job or field attached to credentialing, graduation, or CTE pathway is referred to as “work-based learning, workplace learning, or work-integrated learning.”^[81] Other terms incorporating some of the explorative and connective process of community and career connected learning include service learning, connected learning, career-connected learning, linked learning, community-engaged teaching, and community connected learning.^[82] The success of education efforts integrating career knowledge and experiential learning into the learning experience relies on the effective communication and partnership of the stakeholders of local business, industry, and community organizations. Therefore, community and career connected learning is used as an umbrella term for the entire continuum of experiences, subsuming the aforementioned specific labels, programs, and activities.

An example of a vanguard organization using the community and career connected learning approach to address the opportunity gap and create critical social infrastructure in communities is the Building Bridges to Careers (BB2C) in Southeastern Ohio.

Case Study #1: BB2C Network, Southeastern Ohio

Building Bridges to Careers (BB2C) is a nonprofit organization in Appalachian Ohio that fosters student, business, and civic relationships to inspire student career choices through experience, entrepreneurship, and education.^[83] Through a comprehensive community engagement approach, BB2C involves local businesses and community members in programming that provides community and career connected learning to students. BB2C is an intermediary organization: an organization operating at the boundaries of other organizations and systems, enabling cross-sector relationships for collaboration and coordinated action.^[84] Acting as the connective tissue between sector leaders, building social capital and collective action, BB2C creates school-community-business partnerships that simultaneously impact and benefit students, schools, families, community organizations, businesses, and the wider socio-political spheres.

 The catalyst for developing BB2C was the realization that one or two chance opportunities in school to learn about economic and occupational pathways was not enough to achieve college and career readiness for students. In response to lack of readiness and to community-wide issues of youth hopelessness and disengagement, lack of a qualified workforce, youth outmigration, and industrial decline, a cross-sector group of educators, businesspeople, government agency leaders, and community members convened to develop a systematic solution to these community-wide problems. The group realized the need for increasing both students’ social capital and strengthening community social capital could be an innovative lever for change.

Through convening groups of people across community sectors, BB2C acts as a connector stewarding the creation of community and career connected learning opportunities for students in Appalachian communities using an asset approach to development. BB2C roots development solutions in education or makes contingent the involvement of students, the next generation of community members, workers, and citizens. BB2C’s organization shows that strengthening collective social capital leads to “successful students, strong businesses” and, ultimately, “prosperous communities.”^[85]

BB2C’s community and career connected programs spanning the Appalachian Ohio region include direct, experiential learning such as job shadowing, high school internships, mentoring, and curriculum that brings local community members into the classroom for problem-based learning.^[86] Additional programs foster students’ entrepreneurial mindset and provide hands-on application of academic learning. BB2C’s programming places the student as the ultimate beneficiary, but one key aspect of BB2C’s approach works to build the individual and collective social capital of adults in the community as well. For example, BB2C facilitates K-12 educators in building knowledge of local career opportunities, the changing nature of skills needed for success in local businesses, and the wide array of assets in the community. By building teachers’ connections to the wider community through professional development and educator-inclusive networking events, teachers begin to have knowledge of and direct contact with opportunities and resources they can then connect to students. Without building the social capital of teachers, an important link is missed in trying to build the social connectedness of students.

Community and career connected learning risks being pigeonholed in the realm of CTE courses or only for students who struggle academically in school.^[87] Limiting community and career connected learning to one population of students or one type of schooling experience will only further exacerbate the opportunity gap and limit community efficacy. However, BB2C works diligently with school districts and organizations to encourage community and career connected learning for all students in all classrooms.

Figure 2 illustrates the work of BB2C and its impact on social capital, and it represents a student’s network. As a student makes decisions about their future, they look to their networks for advice, resources, connections, and possibilities.^[88] Some students, as in this representation, might have a limited family network where all family members work in the same occupation or all know the same people. The student may have access to deep content area knowledge in their school network, but largely see only adults doing the work of school, unconnected to outside influences. Some students may have an additional network via participation in a faith-based organization or outside club, and some students may have even smaller networks than the one pictured here.

Figure 2. A student’s network of school and family connections.

Through community and career connected learning, the student’s network is exponentially expanded. First, the student’s school network is connected with business and adults in the community who come into the classroom as speakers, problem-based learning catalysts, mentors. In other activities, the student is taken out into the community through school-sponsored experiences such as service learning, tours to businesses, job shadowing, and internships for school credit. These efforts afford the student multiple points of access to adults in the local community throughout the school day. Additionally, with an intermediary organization like BB2C, the student can be connected directly to more opportunities to intentionally engage with business and community members, which further increases their social capital.

Figure 3. A student’s network through the influence of community and career connected learning.

Bibliography

“About Linked Learning.” Linked Learning, 2021. 

https://www.linkedlearning.org/about/linked-learning-approach

Allen, Lili. “Involving English Language Learners in Community-Connected Learning.” Perspectives on Policy and Practice. Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Lab. Brown University, 2000. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED445548

Almeida, Cheryl, and Adria Steinberg, eds. Connected Learning Communities: A Toolkit for Reinventing High School. Jobs for the Future, JFF National Faculty, and U.S. Department of Education’s New American High Schools Initiative, 2001. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED457384.pdf

Almeida, Cheryl, and Sue Goldberger. “Keeping Reform on Track: Benchmarking and Action Planning." In Connected Learning Communities: A Toolkit for Reinventing High School, 3-6. Washington, D.C.: ERIC, 2001.

Appalshop. “Our Story,” 2021. https://appalshop.org/story

Anderson, Margaret. “Education in Appalachia: Past Failures and Future Prospects.” Journal of Marriage and Family 6 (1964): 443-46. https://www.jstor.org/stable/349351

Bauch, Patricia A. “School-Community Partnerships in Rural Schools: Leadership, Renewal, and a Sense of Place.” Peabody Journal of Education 76 (2001): 204-21.

Ben-Eliyahu, Adar, Jean E. Rhodes, and Peter Scales, “The Interest-Driven Pursuits of 15 Year Olds: ‘Sparks’ and Their Association with Caring Relationships and Developmental Outcomes.” Applied Developmental Science 18 (2014): 76-89.

Billings, Dwight B. “Once Upon a Time in ‘Trumpalachia’: Hillbilly Elegy, Personal Choice, and the Blame Game.” In Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy. Edited by Anthony Harkens and Meredith McCarroll, 38-59. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2019.

Block, Peter. Community: The Structure of Belonging. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2008.

Building Bridges to Careers. “Community and Career Connected Learning,” 2020. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/7b6222058fdd4c38bb5019652a3fee40

Busette, Camille B., Tonya Farrow-Chestnut, Richard V. Reeves, Kwadwo Frimpong, and Hao Sun. “How We Rise: How Social Networks in Charlotte Impact Economic Mobility.” Brookings Institute, 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/essay/how-we-rise-how-social-networks-in-charlotte-impact-economic-mobility/

“Business-Education Partnerships in the United States: Committed to the Future.” ReadyCT, September 18, 2012. https://readyct.org/2012/09/business-education-partnerships-supporting-a-brighter-future-for-our-students/

Byun, Soo-yong, Judith L. Meece, Matthew J. Irvin, and Bryan C. Hutchins. “The Role of Social Capital in Educational Aspirations of Rural Youth.” Rural Sociology 77 (2012): 355-79.

Cahill, Charlotte, and Sheila Jackson. “Not As Hard As You Think: Engaging High School Students in Work-Based Learning.” Jobs for the Future, May 21, 2018. https://www.jff.org/resources/not-hard-you-think-engaging-high-school-students-work-based-learning/

Carr, Patrick J., and Maria J. Kefalas. Hollowing out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America. Boston: Beacon Press, 2009.

Cartun, Ashley, William R. Penuel, and Stephanie West-Puckett. “Blurring the Boundaries Between School and Community: Implementing Connected Learning Principles in English Classrooms.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 61 (2017): 183-90.

Catte, Elizabeth. What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia. Cleveland: Belt, 2018.

Chambers, Cassie. Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian

Mountains. New York: Ballantine, 2020.

Charania, Mahnaz, and Julia F. Fisher. “The Missing Metrics: Emerging Practices for Measuring Students’ Relationships and Networks.” Christensen Institute, 2020. https://www.christenseninstitute.org/publications/measurement-report/

Chiappe, Andres, Anna Maria Ternet de Samper, Alejandro Emilio Willis, and Ignacio Restrepo. “Rethinking 21st Century Schools: The Quest for Lifelong Learning Ecosystems.” Ensaio: Avaliação e Políticas Públicas em Educação 28 (2018): 521-44.

Christensen, Carrie Ann. “Community-Engaged Teaching: A Project-Based Model.” Teaching Artist Journal 13 (2015): 14-27.

Collins, Charles R., Jennifer W. Neal, and Zachary P. Neal. “Transforming Civic Engagement into Community Collective Efficacy: The Role of Bonding Social Capital.” American Journal of Community Psychology 54 (2014): 328-36. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25224252/

Corbett, Michael. Learning to Leave: The Irony of Schooling in a Coastal Community. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2007.

Dalton, Rick. Rural Pathways to College and Career: Steps for Student Success and School

Improvement. New York: Routledge, 2021.

Dietrich-Ward, Allen. Beyond Rust: Metropolitan Pittsburgh and the Fate of Industrial

America. State College: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.

Drake, Richard B. A History of Appalachia. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2001.

Duncan, Cynthia. Worlds Apart: Why Poverty Persists in Rural America. New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1999.

Elam, Constance. “Culture, Poverty and Education in Appalachian Kentucky.” Education and Culture 18 (2002): 10-12. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1484&context=eandc

Eller, Ron. Uneven Ground: Appalachia Since 1945. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2008.

Fisher, Julia F., and Daniel Fisher. Who You Know: Unlocking Innovations that Expand

Students’ Network. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2018.

Flora, Cornelia B., Jan L. Flora, and Stephen P. Gasteyer. Rural Communities: Legacy +

Change. New York: Routledge, 2016.

Flora, Cornelia Butler, and Jan L. Flora. “Social Capital.” In Challenges for Rural America in the 21st Century. Edited by David L. Brown and Louis E. Swanson, 214-27. State College:  Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 50th Anniversary Edition. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2000. 

Harkens, Anthony, and Meredith McCarroll, eds. Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2019. 

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Life in Rural America.” Public Opinion Poll Series. National Public Radio and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, October 1, 2018. https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2018/10/life-in-rural-america.html

Hecht, Marijke, and Kevin Crowley. “Unpacking the Learning Ecosystems Framework: Lessons from the Adaptive Management of Biological Ecosystems.” Journal of the Learning Sciences 29 (2019): 264-84.

Hill, Heather C. “The Coleman Report, 50 Years On: What Do We Know about the Role of Schools in Academic Inequality?” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 674 (2017): 9-26. https://www-jstor-org.proxy.library.ohio.edu/stable/26582261

Holt-Lunstad, Julianne, Timothy B. Smith, Mark Baker, Tyler Harris, and David Stephenson.

“Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality: A Meta-Analytic

Review.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 10 (2015): 227-37. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1745691614568352

Holtkamp, Christopher, and Russell C. Weaver. “Placing Social Capital: Place Identity and Economic Conditions in Appalachia.” Southeastern Geographer 50 (2018): 58-79. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/689985/pdf

Howley, Caitlin W. “Remote Possibilities: Rural Children’s Educational Aspirations.” Peabody Journal of Education 81 (2006): 62-80. https://search-ebscohost-com.proxy.library.ohio.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.25594711&site=eds-live&scope=site

Imel, Susan. School-to-Work Myths and Realities No. 4. Columbus, OH: ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career and Vocational Education Center on Training or Employment, 1999. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED435835

Institute for a Competitive Workforce, Business Education Network, U.S. Chamber of

Commerce, April 13, 2012. https://www.uschamber.com/chambers-of-commerce/workforce-development-partnership-ideas

Ito, Mizuko, Richard Arum, Dalton Conley, Kris Gutierrez, Ben Krishner, Sonia Livingstone, Vera Michalchik, William Penuel, Kylie Peppler, Nichole Pinkard, Jean Rhodes, Katie S. Tekinbas, Juliet Schor, Julian Sefton-Green, and S. Craig Watkins. The Connected Learning Research Network: Reflections on a Decade of Engaged Scholarship. Irvine, CA: Connected Learning Alliance, 2020. https://clalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/CLRN_Report.pdf

Kretzmann, John P., John L. McKnight, Sarah Dobrowolski, and Deborah Puntenney.

Discovering Community Power: A Guide to Mobilizing Local Assets and Your Organization's Capacity. Evanston, IL: Asset-Based Community Development Institute, School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, 2005. http://www.wlcvs.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ABCD_and_organisations.pdf

Lent, Robert W., Steven D. Brown, and Gail Hackett. “Toward a Unifying Social Cognitive Theory of Career and Academic Interest, Choice, and Performance.” Journal of Vocational Behavior 45 (1994): 79-122. 

Lent, Robert W., and Steven D. Brown. “Social Cognitive Career Theory at 25: Empirical Status of the Interest, Choice, and Performance Models.” Journal of Vocational Behavior 115 (2019): 1-14. 

Markus, Hazel, and Paula Nurius. “Possible Selves.” American Psychologist 41 (1986): 954-69.

Mather, Mary Anne. “Where Community and Curriculum Come Together.” Tech & Learning

20 (2000): 60-66. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ615185

Maxwell, Tom. “A History of American Protest Music: ‘Which Side Are You On?’” Longreads, 2018. https://longreads.com/2018/08/29/history-of-american-protest-music-which-side-are-you-on/

McGreal, Chris. American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts. New York:

PublicAffairs, 2018.

McLaughlin, Diane K., Carla M. Shoff, and Mary Ann Demi. “Influence of Perceptions of Current and Future Community on Residential Aspirations of Rural Youth.” Rural Sociology 79 (2014): 453-77. doi:10.1111/ruso.12044.

McRae, Norah, and Nancy Johnston. “The Development of a Proposed Global Work-

Integrated Learning Framework.” Asia-Pacific Journal of Cooperative Education 17 (2016): 337-48 https://www.ijwil.org/files/APJCE_17_4_337_348.pdf

Meier, Barry. Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origins of America’s Opioid Epidemic. New York: Random House, 2018.

Mooney, Theresa. “Why We Say ‘Opportunity Gap’ Instead of ‘Achievement Gap.’” Teach for America, May 11, 2018. https://www.teachforamerica.org/

Montessori, Maria. From Childhood to Adolescence. Amsterdam: Montessori-Pierson

Publishing Company, 2007. Originally published in Desclee de Brouwer, trans., From Childhood to Adolescence (France, 1948).

Mourshed, Mona, Diana Farrell, and Dominic Barton. “Education to Employment: Designing a System That Works.” McKinsey Center for Government, 2013. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/education-to-employment-designing-a-system-that-works#

Murtazin, Kristina, Oleg Shvets, and Gunnar Piho. “Literature Review on Work-Based Learning.” In 2020 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (2020), Uppsala, Sweden, DOI:10.1109/FIE44824.2020.9274264 

Penuel, William R., Barry J. Fishman, Britte Haugan Cheng, and Nora Sabelli. “Organizing

Research and Development at the Intersection of Learning, Implementation, and Design.” Educational Researcher 40 (2011): 331-37.

Perkins Collaborative Resource Network. “State Allocations.” U.S. Department of Education. https://www.businessroundtable.org/policy-perspectives/building-americas-ever-ready-workforce/pre-k-12-education

Petrin, Robert A., Kai A. Schafft, and Judith L. Meece. “Educational Sorting and Residential Aspirations among Rural High School Students: What Are the Contributions of Schools and Educators to Rural Brain Drain?” American Educational Research Journal 51 (2014): 294-326.  

Philadelphia Youth Network. The Value of Workplace Exposure and Career-Connected  Education for Low-Income Teens, Policy Brief #2. Philadelphia Youth Network, 2008.  https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED539168

Pollard, Kevin, and Linda A. Jacobsen. The Appalachian Region: A Data Overview from the 2015-2019 American Community Survey. Appalachian Regional Commission, June 10, 2021. https://www.arc.gov/report/the-appalachian-region-a-data-overview-from-the-2015-2019-american-community-survey/

“Place-Based Education.” Rural Schools Collaborative, 2021. 

https://ruralschoolscollaborative.org/place-based-education

“Pre-K-12 Education.” Business Roundtable, 2022. https://www.businessroundtable.org/policy-perspectives/building-americas-ever-ready-workforce/pre-k-12-education

Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New

York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Putnam, Robert D. Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015.

Raitz, Karl B., and Richard Ulack. Appalachia: A Regional Geography: Land, People, and

Development. Boulder: Westview Press, 1984.

Ravitch, Diane. Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. New York: Vintage Books, 2013.

“Real World Problem Scenario.” Building Bridges to Careers, 2021. https://www.bb2careers.org/bb2c-blog/real-world-problem-scenarios

Reece, Eric. Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness. New York: Riverhead Books, 2006.

Reeves, Edward B. “The Effects of Opportunity to Learn, Family Socioeconomic Status, and Friends on the Rural Math Achievement Gap in High School.” American Behavioral Scientist 56 (2012): 887-907.

Rhodes, Jean E., and David L. DuBois. “Mentoring Relationships and Programs for Youth.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 17 (2008): 254-58. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228488351_Mentoring_Relationships_and_Programs_for_Youth

Ricket, Allison, and Tasha Werry. “Community and Career Connected Learning.” Building Bridges to Careers, 2020. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/7b6222058fdd4c38bb5019652a3fee40

Savage, Lon. Thunder on the Mountain: The West Virginia Mine War, 1920-21. Pittsburgh:

University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990.

Scott, Rebecca. Removing Mountains: Extracting Nature and Identity in the Appalachian

Coalfields. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Silva, Jennifer M., Kaisa Snellman, and Carl B. Frederick. “The Privatization of ‘Savvy’: Class Reproduction in the Era of College for All.” INSEAD Working Papers Collection 47 (2014): 1-55. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2473462

Slifer, Shaun. So Much to Be Angry About: Appalachian Movement Press and Radical DIY

Publishing, 1969-1979. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2021.

Theobald, Paul. Teaching the Commons: Place, Pride, and the Renewal of Community. Boulder: Westview Press, 1997.

Vaclavik, Danielle, Bernadette Sanchez, Kathleen Buehler, and Tene Gray. “How to Support Me in Connected Learning: Youth Perspectives on Adult Supportive Behavior and its Benefits.” Journal of Community Psychology 45 (2017): 906-21. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318515300_How_to_support_me_in_connected_learning_Youth_perspectives_on_adult_supportive_behavior_and_its_benefits

“What Is Place-Based Education and Why Does It Matter?” Getting Smart, EduInnovation, and Teton Science Schools, February 2017. https://www.gettingsmart.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/What-is-Place-Based-Education-and-Why-Does-it-Matter-3.pdf

Whitaker, J., dir. Settlement Schools of Appalachia. Appalachian Kentucky Video Archives 66. Morehead State University, Morehead, KY, 1995. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/appalachian_kentucky_video_archives/66/

Wilkinson, M. “‘We’ve Got All the Exciting Elements of a Compelling Documentary’: An Interview with James Maples, Author of Climbing in Kentucky’s Red River Gorge.” Booktimist, July 29, 2021. https://booktimist.com/2021/07/29/weve-got-all-the-exciting-elements-of-a-compelling-documentary-an-interview-with-james-maples-author-of-rock-climbing-in-the-red-river-gorge/

Williams, Doris Terry. The Rural Solution: How Community Schools Can Reinvigorate Rural Education. Center for American Progress, 2010. https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2010/09/pdf/ruralschools.pdf

Yang, Tse-Chuan, Stephen A. Matthews, Feinuo Sun, and Marina Armendariz. “Modeling the Importance of Within- and Between-County Effects in an Ecological Study of the Association Between Social Capital and Mental Distress.” Preventing Chronic Disease 16 (2019). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ​​https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2019/18_0491.htm