CHANNELS WITHIN SETTINGS  (making the map, again) 


Considering the channels where identity engagement takes place.  First and foremost, Aurelio had to navigate a number of systems operating within one another, like Uri Bronfenbrenner’s nested Russian dolls, as well as the various kinds of channels operating within them.  


Environmental/situational channels.  Now that he’s away from the extended family that supported him so fully, these channels are no longer as powerful.  Then there are those channels that form his daily and weekly routines—his classes, his soccer team practices and games, the weekly meetings of the Cesar Chavez Society, not to mention his informal group of friends from his dorm.  These channels are the stuff of what Tom Gilovich and Lee Ross call “the subtle sway of situations.”  


Groups as channels. Then there are the groups within which Aurelio participates—the classes, the soccer team and the Cesar Chavez Society—that serve as channels where identity engagement takes place.  These groups serve “double duty.” They influence him from within, as he navigates these groups’ internal dynamics.  They also influence him by looking outward, especially his soccer team and the social justice work in the community through the Cesar Chavez Society, influence him through the pursuit of common goals and commonly held values.   These are powerful channels that have replaced for the most part his prior dependency on his family.  


Honor committee/restorative justice committee


Social and emotional channels.  And then there is another set of channels altogether, chief among them his values, his mindsets, his character, which is best defined as the habits he develops out of his struggles he overcomes across a range of diverse situations.   


Each of the channels has its own “factors — on-ramps, gates, gatekeepers and off-ramps, where driving forces and restraining forces compete—some of which create “pockets” of trapped energy.  Each of the channels has an on-ramp, barriers and facilitators and an off-ramp—that can either trap or release potential.  It is the barriers and facilitators within these channels that can either prevent his intensions from being realized or grease the skids, whether it is at the vigilance or threat appraisal stages.  (put into the channels section the value of “interrupting” a downward spiral of poor performance.


For Aurelio, some of the channels are stronger than others, more relevant than others and more visible than others.  Moreover, some of the channels merge and overlap and reinforce each other, forming a set of overlapping feedback loops with recursive properties.  


Channels and Traffic.  Just as the weather improved over the course of Aurelio’s life journey, so, too, did the channels, or roadways, that served to connect his dreams with actual accomplishments.  In middle school he found himself mainly on surface streets encountering such physical barriers as gang territories, such emotional barriers as his father’s abuse and such racial barriers as his racist teacher.  By high school he found himself encountering fewer barriers on both freeways (his daily bus ride) and those interpersonal surface streets paved with a growing number of adults in whom he could trust.  As he matured grew more skillful in judging the potential of new and unexpected routes—whether academic, social or emotional—through, for example, the Los Angeles Community Scholars Program and those intergenerational relationships he developed with his college professors.  


Playing Meteorologist and the Travel Agent


There are combined channels, reinforcing feedback loops and cortisol channels 


Vicious and virtuous cycles