enrique g. murillo, jr. california state university, san bernardino

Enrique G. Murillo, Jr. California State University,

San Bernardino

* Who am I?Immigrant experience

Former Student

Former Teacher

Teacher Educator

Researcher

Parent of Bilingual / Bicultural Children

CON CON CONFIANZA:CONFIANZA:

CON CON CONFIANZA:CONFIANZA:

Building Trusting Relationships

with Latino Parents

OUR PRIMARY OUR PRIMARY CONCERN IS THE CONCERN IS THE DISPARITIES IN DISPARITIES IN ACADEMIC ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AMONG ACHIEVEMENT AMONG LATINO CHILDREN AND LATINO CHILDREN AND YOUTH!!!YOUTH!!!

SOME KEY STARTING POINTS OF GENERAL AWARENESS: 1. In January 2003, Latinos were

recognized, numerically, as the largest minority group in the U.S.

2. As of 1998, Latino children, numerically, have already become the largest minority student demographic in U.S. public schools

SOME KEY STARTING POINTS OF GENERAL AWARENESS:

3. Latino students, in general are the most under-educated major segment of the U.S. population, and are more than twice as likely to be undereducated than all groups combined


4. Latino students in particular, have the highest dropout (“pushout”) rate, score among the lowest on achievement tests, and have low college enrollment rates


5. NC. has the fastest growing Mexican population in the nation, and is the third-fastest growing state in terms of its Latino population

(a 394 percent increase

during the past ten years)


6. N.C. has the highest percentage of teen Latinos who have quit school or bypassed it altogether – more than any other state in the nation


7. Nearly 47 percent of N.C. Latinos between ages 16 and 19 are not enrolled in school and lack a high school diploma

We can’t say with absolute certainty what are the causes of the Latino Achievement Gap!

But we know some likely contributors, from the research literature

LATINO STUDENTS ATTEND SCHOOLS:

with fewer resources, staffing and programs with a high mobility rate of both students and

teachers that are located in communities with high poverty

rates that are racially segregated (with academically

segregated tracks) with less-qualified teachers with more and harsher discipline with lowered expectations for student

achievement, and with mismatches between school and home culture

AMONG THE TASKS TO HELP US TACKLE THE MISMATCHES BETWEEN SCHOOL AND HOME IN THE NC CONTEXT, WE NEED TO:

Learn about the cultural histories, traits, backgrounds and diversity of and among Latinos


Interrogate racism, class and marginalization, and their effects on schooling


Build teacher training programs that include a strong student-home culture component so teachers are not only sympathetic and sensitive to a different culture but also appreciative of students' backgrounds and willing to structure the school experience to be compatible with students


Develop qualified teachers that have specialized knowledge and skills in language acquisition, biliteracy, and cross-cultural learning


Research the local community and its “social reception,” and the impact of this on the effectiveness of schools and the learning of children in classrooms


Combat the deficit views of Latino students and parents; and understand that the incorporation of students' language, culture, and experiential knowledge should not conflict with teachers' responsibility for providing students with particular academic content knowledge and learning skills; and


Create meaningful and trusting relationships with Latino parents and extended family

WHY DO WE NEED PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT? Brainstorm togetherl.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.10.

WHAT DOES THE RESEARCH SUGGEST ABOUT PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT?

The family makes critical contributions to student achievement from preschool through high school


Student achievement improves in a home environment which encourages learning


Student achievement improves when parents express high expectations for their children's achievement and future careers


Student achievement improves when parents become involved in their children's education at school and in the community


Parent achievement improves when parents are enabled to play four key roles in their children's learning:

1. As teachers; parents create a home environment that promotes learning, reinforces what is being taught at school, and develops the life skills children need to become responsible adults



2. As supporters; parents contribute their knowledge and skills to the school, enriching the curriculum, and providing extra services and support to students



3. As advocates; parents help children negotiate the system and receive fair treatment, and work to make the system more responsive to all families



4. As decision-makers, parents serve on advisory councils, curriculum committees, and management teams, participating in joint problem-solving at every level

WHAT COUNTS AND DOES NOT COUNT AS PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT?

1) Expanding the definition of parental involvement

WHAT COUNTS AND DOES NOT COUNT AS PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT?

2) A shift from a deficit view of parents to viewing and valuing parents for the resources that they do bringa. Supporting use of the Heritage/Native Language

at homeb. Maintenance of social networksc. Funds of knowledged. A desire to have their children achieve more than

they did – or “becoming somebody”e. A desire for their children to go to collegef. A cultural-historical trust in schoolsg. A respect for teachers

WHAT ISSUES DO LATINO IMMIGRANT STUDENTS FACE?

Amapola’s narrative best elucidates the pain she felt in not speaking English and the pain of being rendered invisible and unworthy:

“It must have been so traumatic to me. I can remember hiding. I remember very little instruction or no instruction. I can picture myself in a classroom but no instruction. I can picture myself on the playground playing with children, not talking to them but playing with them. I mostly remember hiding. Hiding, hiding so I would not have to interact with anyone. Hiding in closets or staying in the room at recess time and the teacher would leave. I didn't know anybody. It was awful. I cannot put it in words and I can't even remember. On top of being traumatic, I didn't have the language. And that required English. I was invisible. They ignored me.”

Linguistic Isolation

WHAT ISSUES DO LATINO IMMIGRANT STUDENTS FACE?

*Coming to U.S. schools as adolescents meant that they had to learn a new set of rules of how to be and how to serve.

*They also need to learn the rules of the street and the coded

language of gangs. *These stories point to the obvious need that schools need to do more

than teach the standard curriculum. *Teachers need to provide recently arrived immigrant students with

the concrete knowledge of the school and the community and the differences between their own familiar culture and the new cultural mores of the host community.

*Without a translation of these codes, students are left to fend for

themselves.

Social and Cultural Alienation

WHAT ROLES CAN TEACHERS PLAY?

*The power to nurture learning, to inspire, and motivate immigrant and working class youth that one teacher or counselor can effect cannot be overstated. Immigrant students have few recourses and access in their community to the information necessary to prepare and attain a higher education.

*Teachers and counselors possess the knowledge immigrant and working class Latino youth need to experience the academic success needed to reach the university level. The knowledge is there but as the data here suggests, what is lacking is many times the willingness to provide the mentorship and guidance that would improve educational outcomes.

Teachers’ Roles

WHAT ROLES CAN TEACHERS PLAY?

*An important mantra worth repeating “hard, but not impossible.” For Latino students, and immigrant students in particular, gaining access to the resources necessary for admission to a four year university and once there to graduate is hard, but not impossible as the five teachers here so aptly illustrate.

*The college admissions and retention process might have been easier if the students had been afforded more opportunities, knowledge, mentorship, respect, care, encouragement, and if their linguistic, cultural and social contributions had been valued in the classroom. Teachers’ Roles

Forging Connections With Parents

*Key to building confianza with students and their parents is a profound respect for their culture, linguistic codes, customs, values, beliefs, emotional feelings, and just as importantly, their dreams, hopes and fears.

*To become a person who can inspire confianza is an ideal in

the Latino community and is a broad concept that permeates much of human interaction.

*Respect, responsibility, and reciprocity are all concepts that

are linked to confianza. *Most people aim to inspire confianza in others; to inspire

respect, responsibility, and reciprocity.

Confianza

Forging Connections With Parents

*To have confianza in your teachers is to trust that you will do well by them. It means that your best interest as students are protected by them. To have this confianza implies that there is a sharing of experiences and worldview between teacher and student, or teacher and parent. To have confianza in your teachers means that you can count on their loyalty and trust when you are doing well in school as well as when you are struggling to get by. To have confianza in your teacher means that you can confide in them that you might not confide in others, like family problems, economic problems, migratory status, and others.

Confianza

CAPITALIZING ON SOME KEY IDEAS:

*Latino parents articulate a vision of upward mobility that is available through the attainment of higher education. That hope is couched within the parents' formal education limitations.

*Do not interpret lack of parental involvement in the traditional sense as a lack of caring. Rather, understand the limitations of working one, maybe two or three, jobs, living on the fringes of society, and trying to make sense of this new society and new culture.

Sus Esperanzas Para Nosotros /

Their Hopes For Us


*Value the incredible job that parents do with their children in terms of providing for them with una buena educacion (literally a good education). To be bien educado means that your parents have taught you manners, how to behave, to be respectful of elders, to share no matter how little you have, to work hard, to be honest, to work for your group, to have strong family relationships, and to not boast or show off. *

*Parents hope that their children will grow up and that they

will demonstrate that they are bien educados. Educación has nothing to do with reading, writing, or arithmetic, and while the parents desire their children to pick up on the academic skills that will improve their future they also expect that the children will maintain their traditional values.


Their Hopes For Us


*Hold up these values as something desirable in the classroom.

*Understand that part of educating the students is educating the parents about the way schools work in the U.S.


Their Hopes For Us


Maestro Blanco describes how he feels about the parents:

They are people who for whatever reason had to abandon their

schooling because they had to work to help their family. Because they had to work. Many did not finish elementary school, others did not finish junior high or high school. But they are people that with the experiences in life that have had to overcome, and they have suffered much ...That is to say that they have a good education. They have good manners, a good attitude towards life, they have ethics, a work ethic, an ethic of respect, an ethic of community. And they are people who are trying to survive with all of the economic limitations and with the limitations of not understanding 100% of what it is to live in the U.S., of how everything works within the system.


Their Hopes For Us


*Educators have to make every effort to connect to parents and to socialize and familiarize them with a new educational system that places a high value on parental participation.

*Jeanette Hernandez best illustrates this:

We have to connect with the parents. We have to understand that historically parents have been excluded from the process of schooling. They have not been socialized that way. We need to assimilate them, socialize them then to how schools work. Now when we want to bring parents in with their strollers and their issues you know, Que tiene (so what), you want them here. Let us accept them for who they are. It is a contradiction on the school’s part. We need to get them educated to the school culture, rituals, and traditions. A lot of parents don’t know what that is about.

A New EducationalSystem


*But, perhaps, your most important contribution lies in making the invisible expectations of the schools visible, explicit, comprehensible, and tangible.

*These suggestions, together with dismantling deficit views of the culturally different, may help teachers recognize the incredible asset and source of strength that Latino families bring to the table. An appreciation of the families cultural values, beliefs, hopes and expectations as well as the family’s immigrant status, economic constraints, and linguistic diversity can promote reciprocal relationships between mainstream teachers and Latino families. Every one benefits from increased collaboration between teachers, schools, students and their families.

Making the Invisible . . .

Visible


*We need to examine and reflect how we as educators feel about our students and their needs. Educators need to make this leap in order to act. In other words, it is not enough to simply care and passively understand. Rather, teachers need to make the jump and become advocates for the students they teach.

*One way to accomplish is to understand the historical, political, and cultural context in which Latino students are schooled. Teachers need to be critical of the social injustice that is part of the curriculum and the overall process of schooling. In California schools, this means that teachers need to have knowledge of the history of school segregation of Mexican students, of the onslaught of anti-immigrant legislation, of xenophobic attitudes, of the difficulty in learning a second language, of being uprooted and subjected to a whole unknown world, and the myriad structural factors embedded in their schooling experiences.

Makethe Jump!


*In North Carolina, the issues surrounding the education of Latino students are entirely different. North Carolina has no previous history of Latino immigration and many conflicts including perceived competition for scarce resources between long standing African Americans and the recently arrived, and cultural misunderstandings with the host community’s banks, schools, and other social service providers.

*In other words, each state, each community has their own unique culture challenges, which must be explored, analyzed, critiqued and understood by the educational community. New learning communities can be created by understanding past, present, and future conditions that will lead Latinos towards increased academic achievement.

Unique Cultural Challenges


*Armed with this knowledge about most Latino immigrants, teachers can then take the necessary actions to ensure that parents not only are given the information about how the educational system in the U.S. works but that the parents receive it in recognizable ways. By capitalizing on the high hopes that Latino families have about the benefits of a formal education, teachers can create respectful collaborative relationships with parents. Unique

Cultural Challenges

AN EXAMPLE

Café de la Amistad and its use of the community's funds of knowledge

Lessons for Teachers in the Mainstream: Building Respectful, Horizontal Partnerships with Latino Parents

1. Teachers need an understanding of who their students’ parents are and where they come from.

2. Teachers need to understand that parents are the child’s first teachers

3. Teachers need to appreciate that parents are continued sources of knowledge

4. Teachers need to expand the definition of parental involvement

5. Teachers need to explore the ways that Latino parents are involved

6. Teachers need to explore and find ways to connect with the parents

Summary


7. Teachers need to socialize parents to how U.S. schools work 8. Teachers need to accept Latino parents for who they are 9. Teachers need to listen to parents10. Teachers need to make parents feel safe and develop trust. 11. Teachers should learn to communicate with the Latino parents12. Teachers should effectively communicate high expectations

for their students 13. Teachers should consider holding meetings in alternative

community facilities

Summary


*These suggestions, together with dismantling deficit views of the culturally different, may help teachers recognize the incredible asset and source of strength that Latino families bring to the table. An appreciation of the families cultural values, beliefs, hopes and expectations as well as the family’s immigrant status, economic constraints, and linguistic diversity can promote reciprocal relationships between mainstream teachers and Latino families. Every one benefits from increased collaboration between teachers, schools, students and their families. community facilities

Summary

SOME THINGS TO DO

l. Write a Welcome Letter (pick your favorite bright color and use it consistently)

Introduce yourself Include contact information Provide them with your class rules Include a daily schedule Homework policy Important Dates TRANSLATE!!!

SOME THINGS TO DO

2. Publish a 1-2 page newsletter of topics covered, accomplishments, and a preview of what is to come

3. Become the bearer of good news!

Our general rule 2:1

Telephone calls

Good News Envelopes

SOME THINGS TO DO

4. Document all incidents from the start

5. Ask for suggestions. Remember every parent has something to offer. We are all resources.

6. Students write invitations letters on construction paper or on the computer

SOME THINGS TO DO

7. Bribes work!

Homework Passes

Free "A's" on a test

Estimation candy jar - parents win it for their children

SOME SPANISH PHRASES TO HELP YOU

COMMUNICATE

I recognize that parents are a child’s first teachers.

Reconozco que los padres son los primeros maestros de lo hijos.

Thank you for your help and support in ______'s education.

Les agradezco su ayuda y apoyo en la educación de ____.

Strives to do his or her best Trata de hacer su mejor trabajo.

Reading books in any language is an important part of the reading program in our school.

La lectura de libros en cualquier idioma es una parte muy importante del programa de lectura de nuestra escuela.

What advice would you give to teachers in regards to English Language

Learners, and fostering a meaningful relationship

with their parents? “Never make your students and parents feel

unimportant or inferior to you. Treat them, as you would like to be treated . To foster a meaningful relationship teachers must make parents feel welcome and comfortable, especially for parents who do not speak English fluently. Teachers main goals should be to offer students a meaningful learning environment.”

What advice would you give to teachers in regards to English Language

Learners, and fostering a meaningful relationship

with their parents? “Teachers need to learn about the children's background

and culture and accept them as they are. Also teachers need to be open to many languages, beliefs and ideas. Moreover, teachers need to accept that is in our hands the education of all the children in the world. Being a teacher means to teach, to know others and to share knowledge with others. Being a teacher in America means to be able to teach any kind of child in any situation. Teachers can not be selective of what kind of students we want to teach.”

PARA LOS NIOS

GRACIAS

enrique g. murillo, jr. california state university, san bernardino

Documents

nation slide

schooling slide

home culture slide

high school diploma

latino students

research literature

san bernardino slide

latino children