Latina/o Immigrant Parents as Prophetic Mentors: Beyond School Engagement—“Denouncing How We Are Living, Announcing How We Could Live”

• In Event: The Critical Pedagogy in Mentoring: Planting the Seeds for Critical Consciousness and Transformation

Abstract

Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking.
-Antonio Machado

The epigraph above by the late Spanish poet Antonio Machado highlights the important journey undertaken by present day wanderers, our low income immigrant parents navigating through untraveled pathways of a new society. One of the most critical pathways that low-income Latino immigrant parents are expected to traverse along with their children is that of school. No longer relegated primarily to the southwest, in the last decade Latinos have seen significant population increases all across the nation accounting for almost 1 out of every 4 kids of school age (Passel, Cohn, and Lopez, 2011) . The prolonged economic turmoil has led to an anti-immigrant scapegoating and a resurgence of racist laws and propositions in states like Arizona, Georgia, and South Carolina that specifically target immigrant families and their visible participation in civic society. Furthermore, conservatives have used the economic crisis to declare war on government and governmental programs, many specifically designed to provide assistance to the most vulnerable in society. This has resulted in parents having to be more self-reliant, all while battling increasingly hostile societal and schooling structures, and developing strategies (mentoring) to cope with increased pressures.

This paper explores:

1. What pedagogical tools do Latina/o immigrant parents utilize to help their children navigate through the U.S. educational system, especially when many have limited educational experience themselves?

2. How does prophetic thought inform the actions that Latina/o immigrant parents take to provide opportunities they never had for their own families?

3. What can school communities learn from the struggles of Latino immigrant families and how can that be incorporated into the larger school culture?

This paper presentation draws from life history and in depth interviews with 10 (N=20) working class immigrant families from a community case study in California. I draw from these sources of data to construct critical race counter-narratives of mentoring that presents parents as active agents striving to position their children as subjects in their own education. Interviews revealed that Latina/o immigrant parents utilize a “pedagogy of the fields” to teach their children non-market values like reciprocity, social justice, civil disobedience and modeling for them academic excellence by returning to school to further educate themselves all with the end goal of not only improving themselves but their communities. Parents were also critical of existing contradicting laws and policies that on the one hand draw heavily from their labor contributions, yet disadvantage immigrant families and deny them (and at times their children) opportunities for upward advancement given to others. These experiences shaped in profound ways the mentoring advice and career aspirations that they held for their children. Finally, parents indicated that school communities could benefit from truly learning and embracing their own cultural traditions, beliefs, and strengths that they bring to the community.

Author

• Pedro E. Nava, University of California - Los Angeles