My experience as a parent activist in
urban school reform, where I witnessed
a troubling divide between parents and
educators, propelled me into graduate
school and a dozen years of qualitative
research on family engagement in education. I’ve led parent programs and
studied how parents see their role in
their child’s education and how administrators see their role in promoting parent
involvement. I’d like to share three
lessons I’ve learned, in hopes of sparking
more authentic school and family
partnerships.
Lesson 1:
Validate Families’ Cultures
Although deficit thinking about poor
and minority families is less blatant than
in the past, some educators still assume
that immigrant parents don’t care about
education. “I get angry when I hear
administrators say that in Latino house-
holds, education is not that important,
[because the] parents don’t come to
school,” said a former local district
superintendent in Los Angeles. “You
couldn’t be any more wrong. Parents do
care; they just need an invitation. They
need an environment that is conducive
to their engagement” (Auerbach, 2007).
An assistant principal agreed, describing
the low-income immigrant parents at
her school as “devoted parents, hard-
working, trusting, compassionate, and
open to change.”
Latino immigrant parents have high
aspirations for their children that they
express at home according to their own
cultural scripts. These are not always
the same as educators’ scripts, which
often equate parent involvement with
attendance at school events and respon-
siveness to school requests.
Apoyo
When I first began interviewing immigrant parents, I noticed that they didn’t
refer to “involvement”; they spoke
instead of apoyo (support) and the many
ways they supported their children’s
education with verbal messages and
consejos (narrative advice). “The parent
is the one who plants the seed,” said
the father of a high-achieving student.
“I tell my son, ‘If you study, you are
going to accomplish what you want.’
the basis for academic learning and
for the buen camino (right path) in life
(Delgado-Gaitan, 2004; Valdés, 1996).
Many immigrant parents’ view of
education itself is bound up with this
concept and with collectivistic values of
cooperation and interdependence rather
than individualistic values of compe-
Too often, educators are unaware of the
moral and emotional support for learning
that Latino parents offer behind the scenes.
The parent’s job is to motivate him so
he continues his education and becomes
something” (Auerbach, 2006).
Too often, educators are unaware of
the moral and emotional support for
learning that Latino parents offer behind
the scenes; such support might include
choosing better schools, reducing
chores so students can study, and modeling the value of hard work (Auerbach,
2006; López, 2001). The first step in
culturally relevant parent engagement is
to recognize these “invisible strategies”
and related parent beliefs. Leaders
might take a cue from a gifted Latina
parent liaison who begins every meeting
by first acknowledging the support for
education that parents already provide
at home.
Educación
In my experience, preservice educators
find it eye-opening to learn about the
traditional concept of educación among
Latino immigrants, especially low-
income immigrants from small towns
and villages in Mexico and Central
America. Educación is distinct from
formal academic education, which is
seen as the job of educators; instead,
it refers to respectful behavior, good
manners, and moral training, which
parents inculcate in their children as
tition and independence (Rothstein-
Fisch, Greenfield, & Trumbull, 1999).
Bridging the Gap
As the Latino population continues to
grow, more schools are taking steps
to better understand Latino families
as assets. Educators are meeting to
examine their own assumptions and
biases so they can counter deficit
thinking. They’re opening up dialogue with immigrant parents about
shared hopes and dreams for their
children. They’re sponsoring home
visits and parent-led community walks
to learn more about students’ lives and
neighborhood resources, as well as
families’ funds of knowledge and home-based literacy that teachers can integrate with classroom learning. They’re
investing in bilingual parent liaisons or
parent center directors who can act not
only as translators but also as cultural
bridges between immigrant families and
