Abuelitas Speak: Cafecitos as a Conduit for Latinx Family Engagement Through Community Cultural Wealth

• In Event: Bilingual Education as Home-Land: Healing Roots, Reclaiming Community Power

Abstract

This study presents findings from a two-year-long study of Latinx family engagement through the use of cafecitos in a dual-language elementary school. Using ethnographic approaches to data collection and analysis, I analyzed how to implement cafecito monthly meetings with parents that focused on engagement approaches and arts integration surrounding a community cultural wealth model.

My Welita lives with us at home. She likes to come to the cafecitos because we do fun art activities together. Today we made papel picado, I already know she (welita) is going to hang ours on the refrigerator. These days are always fun for us.

Layla (all names used are pseudonyms), a first grader, shared the words written above at a cafecito at Ball Elementary in October of 2023. The cafecitos at her elementary school were supported by a partnership with a local university grant-funded arts education initiative. Clarke et al. (2016) describe how university-school partnerships should examine their intentions and positionality before engaging in school and university partnerships. Coady (2019) reminds us that educators should “evolve from learning about families to learning with families and learning from families” (p.6).

Theoretical Framework
These cafecitos were grounded in the Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) scholarship inspired by Yosso (2005), which identifies six forms of cultural capital each community possesses (aspirational, linguistic, familial, social, navigational, and resistant). These unique forms of capital all serve as a means for communities of color to legitimize, reclaim, and heal individuals, families, and their communities.

Methods
This paper explores how cafecitos can be used to honor and acknowledge the familial and cultural capital Latinx students and their families hold and can share with educational stakeholders.
How can schools utilize monthly cafecitos as a culturally responsive approach to family engagement?
How did students and families respond to the arts-integrated activities presented during the cafecitos?

Data Sources
This study shares the experiences of students and family members who attended monthly cafecitos at their local elementary school during the fall of 2023. Similar to previous ethnographic work, I present a move toward action for creating family engagement opportunities that are reflective of cultural sustaining practices and sensitivity.

Results
The first finding highlights the ancestral knowledge that family members shared. The second finding depicts how a community member is centered as a producer of knowledge, specifically drawing on abuelita epistemologies. The finding reveals how students, their families, and community members came together to share in the production of knowledge through learning dances to honor their loved ones.

Scholarly Significance
This study revealed how bringing together schools and community members provides a positive space for the creation of knowledge that reflects the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of Latinx students. Importantly, this study notes the commitment needed to cultivate these authentic opportunities. Echoing Gonzalez’s (2015), this study reminds us that “abuelita epistemologies cannot be confined to a school building or defined by a cookie-cutter curriculum or taught in a 1-hr lesson plan” (p.80).

Author

• Katherine Espinoza-Talati, Trinity University