Our Padres Sacrifice, We Rise: Mexican American Doctoras in the Making

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 41
  In Roundtable Session: Latin@ Forms of Social and Cultural Capital Toward Higher Educational Attainment

Abstract

This study challenges the deficit stereotype that Mexican American parents don’t value education (Valencia, 2002). Through the creation of a co-constructed auto-ethnography, we explore our parents’ role in our PreK-PhD educational trajectories. We apply Critical Race Theory to celebrate our parents’ contributions and develop a theoretical model of Mexican American Parental Chispas [Sparks], inspired by Yosso’s (2005) Community Cultural Wealth model and Delgado-Bernal’s (2001) pedagogies of the home theory. Chispas identify the assets of Mexican American parents that positively influence their students’ educational trajectories, allowing them to succeed and persist along the PreK-PhD pipeline. The five Chispas that we derived from our analysis of our platicas consisted of the following: aprendizaje, orgullo, transformación, y apoyo [learning, pride, transformation, and support].

Authors

• Marlen Quintero Pérez, University of California - Los Angeles

• Ana Karen Gomez, University of California - Los Angeles