Mexican-American Parents do Value Education
Every teacher’s goal is to have students do well in school and pursue a higher education. It is important for the teacher to have a teacher-parent connection in order for the student to be successful. Teachers hold conferences and open house to meet and greet parents. There is more information below on parent-teacher involvement.
The parents external (within the school) involvement shows that parents are interested in their children’s education. According to Richard Valencia, Mexican-American parents lack of external involvement but they do practice internal (within the home) which is way of showing that parents do value their children’s education.
Teachers only see that Mexican-American parents are not externally involved and it can lead them to assume that those parents do not value their children's education. Mexican-American parents do value education and they provide their children with other resources that will help them graduate high school and pursue a higher education.
Internally Mexican-American parents make sure that there child does their homework, and that they make it to school on time ready to learn. For example, my parents always made sure I had a good breakfast and always told me to push myself to do better. Of course there are other ways of internal involvement like teaching there kids other resources.
A resource that Mexican-American parents teach their kids is politics. According to Richard Valencia, Mexican-American parents get their children engaged in politics at a young age. Parents and their children follow immigration updates because they might be affected by any changes. Children also translate from English to Spanish leading them to get indirectly involved. This leads students to protest, and vote.
According to Tara Yosso, A resource parents provided is community cultural wealth. Within community cultural wealth children get aspirational capital and social capital. These are good resources for students to have in order to pursue higher education despite the obstacles they might face and will be able to reach out to others when they need help. There are other capitals shown below.
According to Mayberry Marlee, Mexican-American parents are not involved externally because there is a language barrier, have unsteady jobs, or lack of transportation. Therefore, if meetings are not mandatory parents do not attend. Some solutions might be for teachers to make conferences, and open house mandatory. Another solution might be to have a translator. What other solutions might solve this problem?
Mexican-American parents do care for their child’s education but teachers do not see it becasue parents are internally involved and not externally. Having parents externally involved could lead toward higher success rates within the Mexican-American community.
