¡Sí Aportamos! Latino Parents Reflect on Their Inclusion in a Southern School

• In Event: Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: Family Roles in Supporting Achievement: Asset-Based Perspectives

Abstract

How have Mexican-origin parents in one southern community used their existing values and recent experiences with migration and settlement to devise a bona fide role in their children’s public schools? Using an integrative sociopolitical theoretical framework and sociolinguistic methods, this study examines interviews with seven Mexican-origin parents about schooling experiences of Latino families in the southern town where they had lived for over ten years. It foregrounds the ways participants used their interactions to anchor evaluations of sociopolitical contexts for their children’s, their own, and their Latino peers’ integration into the town’s schools. The parents detailed institutional structures and interactive practices necessary for their full membership as constituents in the schools. In so doing, they elaborated this study’s practice implications.

Author

• Myriam Casimir, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona