Laboring in the Shadows

Before Associate Professor Bianca Baldridge was a sociologist of education researching youth work, she began as a youth worker. Her participation in community-based nonprofits as a student motivated her to follow this path. She remembers how she felt seen by youth workers in ways she didn’t at school and how they created spaces for her to connect with other passionate young people. These community-based educators made her feel capable of creating meaningful change in her community and the world.

Baldridge’s new book Laboring in the Shadows: Precarity and Promise in Black Youth Work shows how essential yet overlooked and underpaid Black youth workers are in out-of-school contexts. Praising this work as a “calling” is not enough she says; a labor of love is still labor, and youth workers need living wages, benefits, and opportunities for growth.

Intertwining Black educational history, interviews with youth workers, and thoughtful analysis, Baldridge demonstrates in Laboring in the Shadows the need for structural change to adequately recognize, compensate, and support youth workers.

Here, Baldridge discusses the precariousness and promise youth workers experience in the profession as well as how community-based organizations and schools can align to better serve students academically, socially, and emotionally.

How would you define the term youth worker?
A youth worker is someone who works with young people who cares about their educational, social, and personal development. There are times when I struggle with the term because people think I'm talking about kids who work. I like the term “youth worker” because it is used in the United States and the United Kingdom to describe practitioners who engage with young people. I’ve always considered mentors, coaches, and counselors as part of the landscape. Terms like “youth work professional” and “community-based educator” are interchangeable with youth worker.

Within educational research, I'm part of a lineage of scholars who have talked about “informal learning,” or the family as educator, the community as educator. The sharing of knowledge is education. Schools have never been the only sites of learning. What we think about as school has looked different throughout history.

Youth work occurs in many out-of-school contexts. Can you share more about the importance of understanding the full landscape of youth work?
It’s important to identify where youth work happens because these organizations are often hidden in plain sight and so are the workers. Everybody knows somebody who works with young people, but you may not know the intricacies of their jobs. We all understand that classroom teachers go to school, get a teaching credential, and then go work. We have all experienced schools, but we don’t necessarily have the same understanding of what youth development spaces look like, whether they be in school or outside of school. Visibility can lead more people to understand the kinds of structural support that youth workers need, like living wages, benefits, healthcare, and professional learning opportunities.

How might we broaden the understanding of what it means to educate — and who should do the educating?
Schools have a lot to deal with. We put so much on teachers and schools, but there have always been other organizations and people who care for young people, too. They need our appreciation because society would collapse if parents didn't have a place to send their children after school.

Youth workers and community organizations can form beautiful relationships with teachers and schools. I've known youth workers who call teachers to talk about how they can make sure a kid is OK.

I encourage all schools to think about where our kids are going after school. What can be leveraged to make sure that those programs are supported, and how can we work together? When values are aligned, what better opportunity than to have every part of a kid's learning ecosystem come together to support all of who they are in their educational lives and their social-emotional lives? I always recall a youth worker from my first book telling me she wished that teachers knew that they weren't in competition. They're all our kids.

Your research examines three paradoxes within youth work. One paradox is that youth workers are treated as “noble” and doing a labor of love, but they are not fairly compensated for this labor. What would you like readers to understand about this paradox?
I focus this book on Black youth workers, but I see that precariousness as a part of a larger group of workers. We rely on their essential labor as a society, yet we don't pay or treat them well. There are other nonprofit workers, gig workers, and medical assistants in this context. We're quick to say, “you're so great,” “how noble of you,” “that's such a wonderful profession,” but why don’t we pay them well or make sure they have benefits?

Your book examines both the precarity and promise of Black youth workers. How did you decide to focus on both, and can you share more about why it is essential to look at the two together?
I think that inherent in education is hope. For me, the action of engaging with young people and educators is an act of hope. This particular book focuses on Black youth workers because I connect contemporary Black youth workers to a long history of Black educators, Black activists, and Black families who have always created and carved out spaces for learning, affirmation, nurturing, and protection to make sure that young people were equipped to handle the world that they were going to enter; that was always a part of Black education freedom for Black communities. Inherent in that work is a hope and promise for a better future. Youth workers get up every day, take phone calls from young people, and show up for little pay because they believe in the futures of Black children, of all children. They believe in the promise of education and the promise of growth and development among young people.

That precarity and promise piece is really important to me. I am the kind of person who celebrates the both-and. I don't like the either-or. I am a serious scholar of education, and at the same time, I watch a whole lot of bad reality TV. Sometimes people think those things don't go together, and I'm here to say that they do. We are not just one thing, and it really is a both-and thing.

Within Black education there’s a fight, and a perpetual push for the right to learn and dignity. It’s resistance, and that resistance is also through joy, laughter, and hope.

What sticks with you from your conversations with youth workers about fostering joyful spaces for learning for themselves and for students?
Whether it's with food and fellowship or music, youth workers seeing young people as they are and accepting them without conditions is an act of joy. The creation of joy through struggle has always been a part of Black community-based spaces and education spaces. The joy and the pain are often tethered.

What can we learn from their insights about self-care and community care?
People who are doing this work deserve reprieve and rest. Sometimes people think about self- care as self-centered or going to expensive spas. But it can be reclaiming and recognizing that people's minds, spirits, and bodies are tired.

With self-care and community care, it is important for youth workers to decide the kind of care that they need. Organizations have different means, but wellness should be a priority, whether it’s a staff appreciation day, a day off, or making sure that folks are paid when they take time off.

As part of any movement, there has to be care. There have to be opportunities for rest and rejuvenation as well as rest and planning. Rest is not just rejuvenation for the mind, body, and spirit; it’s also to regroup. Youth workers grow and evolve and form better connections with young people by listening to them and then regrouping to figure out how we can do our work better.