English Learners Outside the Classroom: The Effects of Participating in Extracurricular Activities

Participants

This study involved the participation of 3 High School students. These students ranged in age from 15-18 years old. All students attended the same Central California High School and were previously students of the same Spanish teacher. All participants are native Spanish speakers and completed assignments about their hobbies and interests during class with the researcher. The researcher took ideas from previous assignments and decided to utilize participants who meet different levels of English proficiency to ensure all participants could provide several points of view about the effects of extracurricular activities and English language development.

The students included in the survey were between the ages of 14 and 18 years old. Two of the students were female and one male. All three students were socioeconomically disadvantaged, two were classified as English Learners, and one was reclassified during 7th grade. All participants are Latinx, the male is from Salvadorian background, and the two females were born in Mexico and emigrated to the United States less than three years ago.
Students were selected from the current researcher's Spanish classes. There is a caring, respectful, and valued voice relationship between the researcher and the students (Gay et al., 2009), which made these students the ideal candidates to engage in this narrative research.
Students were contacted by their current Spanish teacher, who also served as the project's researcher. Prior to conducting the interview, students were given an information sheet in which the procedure was detailed, and it was made clear that they were not required to finish the questionnaire and that they could stop it at any point or skip any questions they did not feel comfortable discussing.

Setting

This study was conducted at a comprehensive high school in Central California which will be referred to from now on by the pseudonym Central California High School (CCHS), while the city where this High School is located will be referred to as Central Valley City (CVC). In the rural commuter town of California, CCHS opened its doors on August 16, 2010.

Agriculture is the primary industry of CVC, and many residents commute to the Bay Area regularly. CCHS was built to be the first comprehensive high school in the city's history. CVC is a diversified community with 23.3 percent White, 2.0 percent Black, 3.1 percent Asians, less than 1% Native Hawaiians, and 4.7 percent of individuals of two or more ethnicities. Hispanic or Latino people account for 70% of the population. 67.5 % of residents in the CVC community have completed high school. A Bachelor's Degree or above is held by 10% of the population.
With a median family income of $62,874, the 2019 per capita income was $22,880. At present,

18.0 % of CVC residents are living in poverty. CCHS is one of the most recent schools to open in the CVC School District. CCHS Academic's student population continues to increase by around 5% each school year. CCHS's major demographic group is Hispanic, accounting for approximately 86% of the student body. The only substantial subgroup of students enrolled at

CCHS is white, non-Hispanic students. For the past three years, English Learner enrolment at CCHS has been consistent at around 17.5 % of the total student body. While the entire student population has increased by roughly 5% per year, the percentage of Fluent English Proficient (FEP) has remained stable.