English learners have long been defined as faulty linguistic beings, liabilities in a school system that values immediate academic readiness to perform like those in the mainstream. With a need to look at the many other facets that constitute who English learners are and what they are capable of in their academic pursuits, this case study looked at how academically marginal middle school English learners used the imagining of college to anchor, cue, and redefine their practices, identities, and perspectives as students in the pursuit of post-secondary possibilities. The paper explores tensions and contrasts in learning identity and practices based on movement from being academically peripheral to participating in a new learning community with high expectations for academic performance. Findings reveal how English learners negotiated new expectations of academic performance that forced a realignment of practices and trajectory; and how their experiences surfaced new understandings of their identities as students.