Compounding this was her own experience as a mother of six, and the idea that she had to be shown how to do fundamental work, such as changing a diaper that she had done countless times in the past.

It sounds weird but you have to do it…this I know and the person is telling me how to do it. So if they want to have me watch that, I'm a student, I'm learning so I have to act like I'm learning.

Rouda began to feel diminished by these events and others like them. She said that she sometimes felt she was getting "smaller and smaller", but she felt pressured to continue the placement so she would be hired.

Sometimes I say, 'Oh my god, what am I doing here? I have to give up everything.' I did that sometime. I think about it and I say what am I doing here? Somebody telling me to do something and I know already. So another person comes and different way. She telling me not this way, and do it that way. Even some people they tell me to stop, 'No listen to supervisor. Listen to us. She don't know nothing. We are the old staff, three years working here. She don't know something. Listen to us.' Who you listen? As a student, it's tricky.

The students experienced different levels of participation within their placements. Most often this was directly related to the extent to which they were accepted, the opportunity to perform integral jobs, and the kinds of support and feedback they received from other staff or supervisors. In addition, as in Maritza's situation, the students themselves affected the extent to which they participated.

Summary and Interpretation of the Job Placement Settings

A job placement experience, unlike the classroom, had a structure that could be fully described as a community of practice, but whether or not it became one depended mostly on the host and employees. The placements were like an informal apprenticeship opportunity, the learning dynamic that is central to the theoretical ideas behind a situated learning and a community of practice. They were opportunities for a student to learn a job that he or she could and would actually do with the skill base they currently had. The job placement sites were chosen to allow students to gain knowledge about work practices and market experience: two opportunities they may not have been able to obtain without the transition offered by the employment preparation program. For example, Nadine, who had worked as an office cleaner and had no other means of gaining other kinds of experience or even thinking she could perform other kinds of jobs, was able to consider other kinds of employment after her experience in the coffee shop and her job placement. Students in the employment preparation program, who may have never received a second look based on their application and resume before attending the program, were offered employment because a supervisor got to know them and their work practices while they were at their placements.