Searching for Dignity Through Antropoesía: Centering the Voices of Latina Immigrant Mothers' in Dual-Language Education

• In Event: Humanizing Subaltern Voices, Knowledges, and Language Practices in Dual-Language Bilingual Education

Abstract

Purpose
Latinx immigrant parents and families face significant structural inequalities in the US. In particular, Olivos and Mendoza (2009) call attention to ethnoracial positioning, socioeconomic status, level of English proficiency, and immigration status as four dimensions of inequality impacting Latinos/as. Understanding the experiences of Latinx parents in schools is critical for both research and practice, particularly within bilingual programs, which are meant to serve English Learners (ELs). In this paper, I examine the experiences of Latina immigrant mothers in one emerging DLBE program in the US. The following research questions guided my inquiry: what is the experience, day-to-day, of families, parents and guardians of school-aged children, who are Latinx immigrants? How do these experiences bear upon the education of students developing their bilingualism within a TWI program? What implications do they hold for educators and educational systems? And as researchers, how best do we represent these experiences and advocate for change?

Theoretical Framework, Data Sources, Methods
Understanding structural inequality is critical in working with Latinx immigrant parents in schools; and yet research has documented the deficit perspectives that are common among educators, administrators, and other parents, with lack of visible participation from Latinx parents often misinterpreted or misrepresented as a lack of care or concern for education (Valencia, 2012; Valdés, 1997).

The main source of data for this analysis were 12 interviews with Latina mothers who had kindergarten children enrolled in the program, in addition to field notes collected during 18 months of participant-observation in the kindergarten and 1st grade classrooms of the TWI program.

In order to better represent the mothers’ experiences and advocate for change, I used antropoesía - or ethnographic poetry (Rosaldo, 2014) to analyze my data. Poetry as method of inquiry has been used in both educational and anthropological research (Cahnmann, 2003; Maynard & Cahnmann-Taylor, 2010). As a tool for analysis and representation it allows us to foreground the voices of our participants, which is critical when doing research on, for, and with marginalized populations. I use antropoesía as a humanizing representation of Latina mothers’ experiences: to do justice to their words, their experiences, and their lived realities in ways that do not just code, classify, and selectively quote to illustrate my own theoretical interpretations.

Results
I present five transcripts-as-verse that illuminate the impact and ramifications of the experience of migration. Specifically, the words of Latina mothers evoked the struggle of not understanding the language or the institutions one is expected to navigate; the discriminatory experiences and encounters in attempting to do so; the English-only discourses that scared and pressured parents; the sadness of language loss; the hope-filled power of bilingualism and aspirations it brings; and the power and potential of a culturally sustaining bilingual education.

Significance
Given the important role that families play in the education of children, understanding the experiences of Latinx immigrant parents in schools is critical. In order to do justice to such experiences I argue that we must learn to listen, and to represent our participants’ experiences differently in our work.

Author

• Sofia Chaparro, University of Colorado - Denver