Abstract
Pedagogies employing critical traditions have increasingly been used to ameliorate achievement disparities and centralize issues of power in the education of Students of Color. In this study, I trace a teacher’s journey—new to critical pedagogies—as she learned about community cultural wealth and incorporated family histories as counterstorytelling curricula with her sixth-grade class of immigrant students in California’s Central Valley. I examine the pedagogical implementation with examples of students’ meaning making. The teacher and students demonstrated what I am advancing as migration capital—or knowledges, sensibilities, and skills cultivated through the array of migration/immigration experiences to the United States or its borderlands. This study highlights the potential of community cultural wealth pedagogies and as pedagogical tools to counter deficit narratives with Latina/o immigrant youth.
Stories matter . . . many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.
Immigration, globalization, and increasing ethnic diversity have altered the educational landscape in many Western countries across the globe (Banks, 2017; Suárez-Orozco, 2018). In the United States, the 2016 presidential election reignited the struggle for economic and political power, racial violence, social divisions, and fervent questions about national identity. A new era of xenophobia, anti-immigration, and neoliberal education ensued (Menjivar & Kanstroom, 2013). The very presence and humanity of Mexicans, and Latinas/os at large, have been systematically attacked. Horrific images spread across the nation of children in cages crying for their mothers and separated from their families under harsher immigration policies in what has become the latest humanitarian crisis in America. Within this context, how can we envisage anew the education of Latina/o immigrant youth in U.S. schools?
Latina/o K–12 youth demonstrate disparate educational achievement and experience cultural alienation (Gándara, Rumberger, Maxwell-Jolly, & Callahan, 2003; Orfield & Lee, 2006; Valencia, 2010). Dominant pedagogical approaches with “English learners (ELs) 1 ” and immigrant students are overly reliant on technocratic second language acquisition models, revitalized assimilationist projects, and segregated instructional models (Arias & Faltis, 2012; Crawford, 2008; Gándara & Hopkins, 2010; Ghaffar-Kucher, 2006; Gomolla, 2006). Education is often presented in ways that normalize Eurocentric grand narratives, rationalize exploitation, reject or ignore race and racism, and minimize the experiences of People of Color (Bell, 2004; Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Gillborn, 2006).
Critical scholars reframe the problem not as one that lies with Latina/o immigration or with the migrants themselves. Rather, they lay it with the exploitative relationship to, inadequate understandings of, deficit perspectives and racism against Latina/o immigrants (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Jimenez, 2012; Solorzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001; Valencia, 2010). In response to oppressive conditions, critical education scholars argue for a curriculum that embraces conflict, centralizes the histories/herstories of marginalized communities, provides multiple viewpoints, and contests dominant narratives (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008; Freire, 1970; Paris & Alim, 2017; Sleeter, 2016; Taylor, Gillborn, & Ladson-Billings, 2009). Critical researchers are advancing the field with empirical projects in varied real-world contexts (Ayers, Quinn, & Stovall, 2009; Ginwright, Cammarota, & Noguera, 2006; Morrell, 2008). Scholars have also documented powerful ethnic studies curricular projects, social action, consciousness raising, and academic achievement with K–12 Latina/o students (Allender & Berta-Avila, 2016; Cabrera, Milem, Jaquette, & Marx, 2016; Cammarota, 2016; Irizarry, 2011; Zavala, 2018).
However, more empirical studies are needed to illuminate the contours and tenets of critical and culturally relevant pedagogies as situated practices across culturally and linguistically diverse K–12 classrooms. Toward this aim, this study focuses on critical and culturally relevant pedagogies in California’s Central Valley with a Latina teacher and her sixth-grade students, a majority of whom are Latina/o immigrants, emergent bilinguals, and classified as “English Learners” (García, Kleifgen, & Falchi, 2008). As writer and novelist Chimamanda Adichie (2009) reminds us in the epigraph, stories have the power to “malign or humanize.” I argue that community cultural wealth (CCW) counterstories can nurture educational engagement and support Latina/o students in more empowered understandings of their immigration identities.
This is a participatory critical ethnography in which the researcher (author) collaborated with the teacher to discuss and learn about curricula centered on immigration experiences and the practical applications of CCW in an elementary classroom setting—from conceptualization to implementation and reflection. Here, I focus on the teacher’s pedagogical applications of CCW and her students’ participation. Specifically, I examine the following research questions:
In what ways does a teacher—new to critical and culturally relevant pedagogies—understand, articulate, and implement CCW pedagogies with her sixth-grade class?
How do Latina/o immigrant students talk about, write, and understand their family migration/immigration stories using CCW?
I structure this article beginning with an overview of my theoretical framework, which draws from both critical and culturally relevant pedagogies and CCW. Next, I provide a social and geographic context for this study in California’s Central Valley. I follow with three areas of literature: (1) Latina/o schooling and political alienation, (2) English learners and emergent bilinguals, and (3) family histories, storytelling, and counterstories. Next, I detail the participatory ethnographic methods I employed. I organize my findings into three themes: (1) The CCW unit helped the teacher and her students foster a language of cultural dignity, (2) the teacher’s autoethnographic family stories normalized migration and served as counternarratives, and (3) CCW and counterstories positioned students as co-constructors of knowledge and socialized them to create counternarratives of their own migration experiences.
This study has significance for examining the education of Latina/o immigrant youth. It illuminates nuanced understandings of critical and culturally relevant pedagogies in situated settings with immigrant emergent bilingual youth in California’s Central Valley, makes theory pedagogically tangible within a K–12 classroom setting, and advances the construct of migration capital to build on the CCW framework. In addition, the majority of studies have been conducted with teachers experienced in critical pedagogy and in urban contexts, such as California’s Bay Area, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008; Ginwright, Noguera & Cammarota, 2006; Yang & Tuck, 2013). This is an important component of this study, since very little is known about how to apprentice teachers new to critical pedagogies and in less urban, politically conservative contexts. Given the increasingly social context of anti-immigration and greater diversity of destinations of Latina/o migrations, understanding how to address these educational issues in semirural/semi-urban areas is timely. Central Valley California is one of the fastest growing regions in the nation, and one that mirrors many of the social realities of migrants who live in towns and cities across the nation. This study contributes to our understandings of the similarities and differences between implementing critical pedagogies in rural towns and urban centers and in drawing parallels with rural communities across the nation.
Theoretical Framework: Critical Pedagogies and Community Cultural Wealth
I draw on critical and culturally relevant pedagogies and CCW as my theoretical frameworks. The key tenets of critical and culturally relevant pedagogies undergirded my collaboration with the teacher. These include centering issues of race, xenophobia, power, and inequality in immigrant contexts; redefining the teacher-student relationship to one of reciprocity; and leveraging experiential knowledge as cultural capital through counterstorytelling. CCW informed both my theoretical design for the study and informed the curricular design.
Critical and culturally relevant pedagogies flip the lens on the school system itself and examines the relationship between oppressive structures in schools with the larger political economy. It aims to empower the powerless; strives toward larger social transformation; deconstructs and redefines the traditional student-teacher relationship to affirm their humanity and cultural and linguistic heritages (Freire, 1970; Grande, 2004); and seeks to develop academic skills while raising critical consciousness with students (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008). At the heart of it, the aim is to unmask the miseducation dealt to historically oppressed Communities of Color and to rebuild with a liberatory education (Freire, 1970; Woodson, 2000). Critical and culturally relevant pedagogies reflect a significant shift from cursory understandings of culture to more rigorous and relevant curricula, which draw from the intellectual and cultural heritages of students (Gay & Howard, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 2014; Rodriguez, 2013), their funds of knowledge (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005), and asset-based pedagogies (Lopez, 2018), and which examine intersectionality across equity, disability, race, and other identity markers (Artiles, Dorn, & Bal, 2016). Most recently, scholars have advanced culturally sustaining pedagogies (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2017), which challenge the construct of “leveraging, accessing, building upon” cultural practices, even dynamic cultural constructions, that do not honor students’ histories and cultural practices in their own right. This approach seeks to support youth in maintaining or sustaining their cultural and linguistic heritages and provide access to academic competencies, while explicitly engaging in questions of equity and justice (Ladson-Billings, 2014; Paris & Alim, 2017).
Yosso (2005, 2006) developed CCW building from critical race theory (CRT) in education to counter cultural deprivation models as well as to illuminate the knowledge, strengths, and cultural resources within Latina/o communities. Her work counters the misappropriation of cultural capital, which situate middle-class White communities as culturally wealthy, and Communities of Color as culturally poor. CCW is “an array of knowledge, skills, and abilities possessed and utilized by Communities of Color to survive and resist macro and micro-forms of oppression” (Yosso, 2006, p. 75). Yosso extended the work of Solorzano and Villalpando (1998) who theorized the range of resistant cultural capital of undergraduate Students of Color. Yosso’s (2006) CCW is a CRT theory of empowerment, which acknowledges and names the bodies of knowledge, abilities, and resources Communities of Color possess and use in their everyday lives, and which are organized into six categories:
Aspirational capital:“The ability to maintain hopes and dreams for the future even in the face of barriers” (p. 41).
Linguistic capital:“The intellectual and social skills learned through communication experiences in more than one language and/or style” (p. 43).
Navigational capital:“The skills of maneuvering through social institutions such as schools, the job market, healthcare and judicial systems” (p. 44).
Social capital:“The networks of people and community resources” (p. 45).
Familial capital:“The cultural knowledges nurtured among familia (family/kin) that carry a sense of community, history, memory, and cultural intuition” (p. 48).
Resistant capital:“The knowledges and skills cultivated through behavior that challenges inequality” (p. 49).
I seek to add a seventh category of migration capital, defining it as the knowledges, sensibilities, and skills cultivated through the array of migration/immigration experiences to the United States or its borderlands. I situate it within the specific experiences of Latina/o communities who traverse Latin American countries toward, within, and across the United States/Mexico border. CRT scholars have theorized and advanced experiential knowledge and cultural intuition (Delgado Bernal, 2002; Solorzano & Yosso, 2002). I expand on this significant scholarship, aiming to connect these skills, experiences, and knowledges specifically to immigration/migration experiences and extend the CCW framework. Topics about immigration are often taboo, hidden, or cause shame or fear, particularly around issues of ethnicity/race, poverty, legality/illegality, documentation, and everyday life as migrants. Yet when teachers are equipped to see, connect with, sustain, and expand on students’ lived experiences as immigrant youth, it generates pedagogical spaces of possibility.
Social and Geographic Context
This study is set in California’s Central Valley, a region of vast contradictions and social inequality. Some have called it “the other” California (Haslam, 1994). Indeed, it is another California—while only 90 miles from its Bay Area neighbor, it is another world from San Francisco’s financial district, the Golden Gate’s picturesque landscapes, and Silicon Valley wealth. It is also, quite distinct from its Southern California sisters—Los Angeles and San Diego, where Hollywood, Disneyland, and sunny beaches permeate the nation’s social imaginary of the state. It is insulated geographically as a large flat valley surrounded by hills and mountain ranges. The physical separation is symbolic of social, educational, economic, and political alienation, particularly for the poorest, working-class Communities of Color. Its social inequalities have been historically and systematically manufactured by political policies, systemic disparity, and institutional factors. The Central Valley’s agribusiness is a multi-billion-dollar industry, yet the region is one of the poorest in the nation, with several of its cities often making it to the “top ten poorest, most uneducated cities, and violent cities” in the nation (Forbes, 2019). For these reasons, I call it the othered California.
It is one of the fastest growing areas of California, with a population equal to that of 38 states. The California Department of Finance (2019) projects that by 2040, the valley will be home to almost 12 million people. California’s Central Valley is 40 to 60 miles wide and stretches 450 miles from north to south. Spanning across 18 counties, it is the agricultural heartland of California. Providing more than half of the produce—fruits, vegetables, and nuts—grown in America, it is the most productive agricultural region in the nation and in the world. As such, water is a major currency. Sophisticated irrigation systems service hundreds of farms throughout the region. While low-income farmworkers toil in the fields to supply the region’s labor demands, “at home (and in many schools) their faucets spew toxic water tainted by arsenic and fertilizer chemicals” (Del Real, 2019). Many Latina/o immigrant families work in the fields harvesting fruit, vegetables, and nuts and in the fruit canning industries. Many children of immigrants in local schools have family members working as field laborers or in the agricultural industry. Access to clean water is one of many of the social indicators signaling inequality and vast disparity.
The youth in this study live in a Mexican immigrant community on the south side of the city of El Valle. Pseudonyms are used for all proper names of people, businesses, and schools in this study. Like many cities across the nation, El Valle is racially segregated with many Latina/o immigrants living in the south side’s unincorporated areas, which are not governed by local municipal corporations but by county services. As such, there are very real consequences for residents and their children. South El Valle has no access to city resources like a running sewage system, public parks and recreation, libraries, city police, or city health clinics. They must make do with more limited resources by the county. Residents of South El Valle pay for septic tanks that need to be drained monthly. Like many low-income, marginalized cities across the nation, South El Valle faces the highest crime and gang violence in the city. While many areas in North El Valle are quickly integrated into the city limits, South El Valle has been left out of city services for decades. Like gerrymandering maps that resemble jigsaw puzzles, El Valle Elementary School sits in an island integrated into the city’s unified school district, while surrounded by unincorporated areas.
The racial makeup of the city of El Valle was approximately 64% White, 35% Latina/o, 4% African American, and 5% Asian. In South El Valle, multiple family dwellings are the norm. Field and factory work, or other labor in the bustling informal economy, are common especially among recent immigrants. Spanish is the preferred language in public businesses such as Doña Marina’s Panadería, Cárdenas Pharmacy, El Valle Taco Trucks, and Los Hermanos Automotive—much of the street signs and advertising are in Spanish or bilingual. Spanish-speaking businesses, grocery stores with products from Mexico, social networks and neighbors who share their language and culture make South El Valle a hub for immigrants, the vast majority of whom are originating from Mexico.
The social and structural conditions are reminiscent of another era in American history. There are no parks in South El Valle, no little leagues, and no public libraries. A religious community center, along with the school, become the key agencies for the community to seek youth activities and inquire about social services in the city of El Valle. Another consequence of not being incorporated into the city is the unpaved dirt sidewalks in the school’s surrounding neighborhoods. In winter, heavy rains flood the dirty, muddy pathways where concrete sidewalks should be. Families walking their children to school are forced to share the road with cars—in winter, rain and heavy fog affecting visibility are common in the valley. Besides being incredibly uncomfortable and communicating a lack of respect for the residents, these conditions pose a public danger. There have been numerous traffic accidents, and “near accidents” occur often. These conditions create a culture of official neglect. These are the conditions the children in this study live in and through.
Literature Review
I examine three areas of literature: (1) I begin with an examination of Latina/o youth’s schooling and political alienation as a way to contextualize immigration narratives within societal systems that marginalize Latina/o communities, (2) I review the literature on emergent bilinguals and “English Learners” because many immigrant youth are classified as such and/or traverse these categories, and (3) the literature on counterstorytelling situates oral histories, family histories, and storytelling as cultural practices of resistance within Communities of Color.
Latina/o Schooling and Political Alienation
Historically, schools have served to perpetuate dominant society’s ideologies and values (Apple, 1990; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990; Grande, 2004). Students are taught Eurocentric curriculum that legitimizes grand narratives, such as individualism and the importance of manifest destiny. The exploitation and violence against People of Color and the poor are ignored, omitted, or sanitized. Children normalize values and philosophies about whose knowledge counts, where each person’s place is in the world, and whose histories matter (Apple, 1990; Freire, 1970).
Latina/o youth, like Students of Color at large, have been mis-educated—internalizing dominant values and learning through both veiled and explicit ways that their culture, language, and histories have no value (Delgado Bernal, 2002; Tejeda, Martinez, & Leonardo, 2000; Valenzuela, 1999; Villenas & Deyhle, 1999). Dominant research explains the disproportionate achievement of Latina/o immigrant youth as problems with the students themselves, their families, and/or their culture (Murillo et al., 2010; Ogbu, 1988; Valencia, 2010; Solorzano & Yosso, 2002). Historically, Latina/o students have been viewed as problems to remedy or, at best, challenges to overcome. Cloaked as solutions, both approaches conceal a greater menace—deficit thinking (Valencia, 1997, 2010).
Pedagogies from critical traditions have increasingly been used to alleviate achievement disparities by centralizing issues of culture and power in the education of Latina/o students (Darder, Noguera, Fuentes, & Sanchez, 2012; Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008; Paris & Alim, 2017). Critical pedagogies counter deficit frameworks and aim to teach both academic and critical literacies. They center students’ everyday lives, while positioning youth as knowledge holders and knowledge producers (Delgado Bernal, 2002; Freire, 1970; Ginwright, Cammarota, & Noguera, 2006; Grande, 2004).
Critical pedagogies, or humanizing pedagogies, carry a more explicit analysis of oppression and resistance. At the heart of this approach lies the teacher-student relationship honoring students’ experiences, histories, and everyday lives and fostering critical consciousness, cultural identity, and academic achievement (Bartolome, 1994; Fránquiz & Salinas, 2013; Freire, 1970; Huerta, 2011; Irizarry, 2011; Salazar, 2013; Valenzuela, 2016). Bajaj, Argenal, and Canlas (2017) found that sociopolitically relevant pedagogy that centered on immigrant/refugee policies and practices were conducive for critical learning. Gutierrez and Jurow (2016) found that Latina/o migrant youth drew strength from seeing themselves as historical actors—to contextualize historically marginalized communities in more empowering ways. There have been burgeoning studies about the potential and power of ethnic studies as curricula and as political action movements to engage Latina/o K–12 youth (Allender & Berta-Avila, 2016; Cabrera et al., 2016; Cammarota, 2016; Morrell, Dueñas, Garcia, & López, 2013; Zavala, 2018). Ethnic studies teachers and curricula have supported student identity development through healing racial and cultural identities; developing historical knowledge of Latina/o, Chicana/o, and Mexican peoples across transnational contexts; raising critical consciousness; linking social action with participatory action research curricula; fostering a “critically compassionate intellectualism”; and increasing academic achievement (Allender & Berta-Avila, 2016; Cabrera et al., 2016; Cammarota & Fine, 2010; Cammarota & Romero, 2006; Huerta 2011; Salazar, 2013).
There is demonstrated power in critical and culturally relevant pedagogies with Latina/o youth. Yet more research is needed to interrogate the overlaps, affordances, tensions, and possibilities of these pedagogical approaches with Latina/o communities, particularly across urban/rural settings, varying sociocultural contexts, and geopolitical spaces. This study aims to contribute to the field with an examination of CCW and family histories as pedagogical tools with migrant elementary students in California’s Central Valley.
“English Learners” and Emergent Bilinguals
One in five children in the United States are children of immigrants, and most of these are U.S.-born citizens (Suárez-Orozco, 2018; Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco, & Todorova, 2010). In K–12 schools, those who are learning English according to state classification requirements are categorized as “English Learners.” Approximately 80% of the 5 million “English learners” in U.S. K–12 schools speak Spanish as their home language (82% of 1.2 million in California; California Department of Education, 2018). While there are troubling inconsistencies with EL classification and reclassification (Estrada & Wang, 2017; Okhremtchouk, 2014), the demographic realities highlight the imperative of effectively educating Latina/o “English learners.” Unfortunately, students classified as “English learners” are often viewed in deficit ways and as homogeneous because they share a common attribute—a lack of English proficiency. Yet there is great variance regarding immigration status and patterns, ethnic/racial/linguistic backgrounds, religion, academic preparation, interrupted schooling, age, and entry into U.S. schools, socioeconomic status, parents’ education level and literacy skills, and family history (Garcia & Frede, 2015; Potochnick, 2018). In addition, factors such as perception of scholastic competence, educational opportunities, motivation, and acculturative stress were found to have differing degrees of predictive achievement ability with “ELs” across disparate language acquisition methods programs (Lopez, 2016). Sociocultural and critical scholars challenge the “EL” term (previously ELL) as deficit and narrow. Instead, they proffer alternative terms like emergent bilinguals and hybrid language speakers to help us expand our understandings of immigrant youth as dynamic language learners with a vast set of skills, experiences, and abilities (Garcia, Johnson, & Seltzer, 2017; Gutierrez, Baquedano-Lopez, & Alvarez, 2001). What possibilities might open up for emergent bilingual learners when their instruction isn’t dominated by prescriptive curricula and technical aspects of learning English?
Family Histories, Storytelling, and Counterstories
Oral histories, family histories, and storytelling are cultural practices of resistance within Communities of Color, and which have been a form of knowledge production and dissemination for centuries. Oral stories, storytelling, and family histories are not simply interesting stories but “transmissions of culture upon which our survival as a people depends” (Wilson, 1996, p. 13). Stories are a way of passing down knowledge, of passing down beliefs and cultural values (Rintoul, 1993; Tuhiwai Smith, 1999; Yosso, 2006). This is particularly important for youth who may not know the kinds of sacrifices previous generations made on their behalf. There is a need for telling stories from the past, to reclaim the past, to give testimony to the injustices of the past, and to reinscribe local knowledge (Delgado Bernal, 2002; Olmedo, 1997; Tuhiwai Smith, 1999). Through stories, elders can share culturally specific knowledge of conquest, segregation, assimilation, immigration, deportation, and resistance (Delgado Bernal, 2002; Jimenez, 2016; Valencia, 2010). Oppressed people have used stories as a powerful form of resistance, as strategies in the struggle for justice, and as tools for survival and liberation (Castillo, 1995; Delgado Bernal, 2002).
Counterstorytelling is an important technique within CRT to tell the stories of the marginalized and to challenge the majoritarian stories of the powerful (Delgado, 1989; Solorzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001; Tate, 1994). In this study, I document the use of counterstorytelling as a pedagogical tool to share, learn from, and write immigrant histories. Oral stories and family histories are not tales born out of thin air; they are life stories—birthed from personal and family experiences, and those that come from generations past. A cultural practice and tradition, counterstorytelling is also knowledge production and dissemination, and it is also history. Autobiographical counterstories are those that counter majoritarian narratives through personal, or autobiographical, experiences (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Montoya, 1994; Solorzano & Yosso, 2002).
Method
I conducted a participant ethnography over the course of one academic school year and two summers (one prior and one after the school year). I collaborated with a sixth-grade teacher to interrogate, design, and implement critical and culturally relevant pedagogy with her predominantly immigrant Latina/o “ELL” students in California’s Central Valley. The larger study was carried out over 1.5 years using critical pedagogies and CCW as lens and curricula throughout the year. Topics included gang/neighborhood violence, current events, neighborhood redistricting and local/state/national elections, Latina/o poetry and literature, and so on. However, here I focus two units implemented—the CCW unit and the family history unit, which were merged into the CCW Family History Project. It was aligned to state academic standards for English language development and social studies. In the English curriculum, we made connections by having students learn expository and narrative writing; developing their thinking, reading, comprehension, and analytic skills; and developing their vocabulary skills. In social studies, students learned about timelines, conducting interviews, documenting family stories, writing an oral history report, and presenting a family history project. Table 1 is a portion of activities in the curricular unit.
Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) and Family History Units
Culminating activity/assessment.
Over the summer, Ms. Vasquez and I agreed to meet to engage in praxis pláticas (talks), or curriculum planning meetings. We met approximately eight times to discuss books about critical and culturally relevant approaches, including Freire (1970) and Yosso (2006). We discussed having students document stories they hear in the home about immigration and their lived experiences, family histories to develop academic and critical literacies. The school used a 2-hour block model of English language development. Ms. Vasquez’s years of teaching experience was a valuable asset in designing lessons, and my (author’s) previous K–12 teaching experience was also helpful for curricular design and pedagogical implementation. My role during the CCW Family History was as a co-developer of the curriculum, as a participant-observer, and at times as a cofacilitator during the curricular units. We co-taught our design lessons, which built on students’ lived experiences and family histories. Sometimes the teacher took the lead, at other times I led, and at others we collaboratively taught building on what we each were doing. The particular activity or goal of the lesson and our own expertise in that area determined the teaching format. We implemented these lessons one to three times a week for 1 to 2 hours a day across the academic school year. During the remainder of the school day, when we were not implementing design lessons, I assisted the teacher as a volunteer and made fieldnote observations throughout the day, as time and class structure permitted.
The Context of the Study
I gathered data in a sixth-grade elementary classroom in El Valle Elementary School (pseudonym), a Title I school with 95% of students receiving free and reduced lunch. The majority of the students were designated “English Learners” (78%), and most were children of Mexican immigrants. The school is located in a Mexican immigrant community within the city of El Valle. The classroom teacher in this study, Ms. Vasquez, was born and raised in El Valle. She is a child of Mexican immigrants and grew up with similar challenges that her students face—attended Title I schools, child of immigrant working-class parents, and lived in the school’s surrounding neighborhoods. In addition to the context of struggle, Ms. Vasquez also learned resilience, strength, knowledge, and array of strength, or CCW, from her upbringing. Ms. Vasquez had 8 years of teaching experience at the time of the study. A key factor to note about Ms. Vasquez is that she was seen as a leader in her school, had the principal’s support in exploring critical and culturally relevant pedagogies, and was a well-respected teacher at her school. However, she was not a veteran of employing critical pedagogies in her practice. Rather, she self-identified as an emerging critical pedagogue, who recently begun to take steps toward the practice of critical pedagogy in the classroom. This is an important component of the study since many of the studies employing critical pedagogies have been documented with veteran teachers of the practice and in urban settings rather than rural, more conservative contexts.
Data Collection and Analysis
I employed participatory research and critical ethnographic methods, with data collection of teacher interviews, curriculum planning meetings, student work, and participant observations of classroom pedagogies and of the curricular planning meetings (praxis pláticas/talks). I followed a hermeneutic cycle whereby what is learned through observation is informed by—what is already known, a reading of the literature, field experience, and continuing data framing, analysis, and interpretations (Erickson & Gutierrez, 2002). Key strategies in data analysis included transcription, developing activity logs, making analytic comments, and building preliminary connections between activities from multiple data sources. I used analytic memos to promote researcher reflection and test initial assertions (Maxwell, 1996). In addition, I kept a weekly reflective journal to monitor my own positions, emerging arguments, biases on data collection, and in-process memos on the research I conducted for this study (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995).
I employed a three-step coding process, whereby I created, recalibrated, and refined codes (Erickson, 1986; Saldaña, 2016). First, I conducted an open coding to look for preliminary patterns. General analytic categories were developed around teacher thinking, teacher narratives of self, deficit immigrant frames, student understandings of migration, and immigration narratives. Second, I reviewed the transcripts more explicitly for how teacher and students described their everyday cultural practices and family migration stories (i.e., shame, pride, shifts), their participation in the curricular unit, family interviews, and reflections on the overall project. Third, I developed an analysis with more specificity to my research questions and developed categories, including the following:
Conscientization : factors shaping the teacher and student conscientization journey, upbringing, racism, and racialized experiences; attention to issues of power
Collaboration : participation, apprenticeship, dialogue, knowledge production
Student engagement : how students participated in class learning activities
Counterstories of deficit immigrant frames: examples by the teacher or students where they began to speak back to (or countered) deficit perspectives of immigrants, immigration, and Mexicans/Latina/o communities
Personal counterstories : examples by the teacher or students where they demonstrated a shift from speaking back to deficit frames generally to counternarratives of their own lives, identities, selves, or families
Community cultural wealth : Teacher and student understandings, uptake, and extension of the theory as a whole and of specific capitals (i.e., aspirational capital)
Teacher reinterpretation of theory as narrative pedagogy
The coding and categorizing process led me to several patterns and themes related to the teacher’s conscientization journey, interpreting the teacher’s pedagogical narratives, the ways in which she was understanding CCW. Another strand was related to how her students were also making sense of CCW, their teacher’s narratives, and their engagement with family migration histories. I developed analytic memos and examined the relationship between and across categories to develop findings. Here, I focus on the aspects related to my research questions and the ways the teacher-student narratives demonstrated what I am advancing as migration capital.
Findings
The findings demonstrate the varied ways in which the teacher and her elementary students engaged with CCW—a higher education theory countering deficit perspectives of the Latina/o community—as pedagogy in an elementary classroom. I begin with a short excerpt of the teacher’s introduction to Yosso’s (2006) text on CCW to provide background into the road toward classroom implementation. I found that the teacher’s use of autoethnographic counterstories helped normalize Latina/o cultural practices and migration experiences with her students, countering the lies of deficit perspectives and uncovering the latent truth of CCW. Her example invited students to reflect on their lives and create counternarratives of their own migration experiences.
Developing CCW Pedagogies Through Counterstories
During one of our initial summer planning meetings (or praxis pláticas/talks), Ms. Vasquez described her impressions of CCW and Yosso’s (2006) text we had read together: Critical Race Counterstories Along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline.
As I was reading Yosso’s book . . . it made sense to me. I followed along with the conversations, problem-posing approaches in the parent meetings, the student-teacher dynamic, and all the capitals of family, language, and navigation. As I read, I thought, “Wow, that’s powerful!” That’s when community cultural wealth first clicked. I had the “aha” moment A-H-A! I always knew we had value, but she named it and it made sense to me as a teacher. And she wrote in a teacher-friendly way, like she was telling me cuentos (stories). So, then I thought, how can I apply this with my students? When we talk about our community, students say “nobody cares about us cuz we live in the ghetto.” I see them embarrassed of their families and of speaking Spanish. When we read the local newspaper for current events everything from South El Valle is about crime, gangs, shootings, poverty, and immigrants as illegal and unwanted. We need to address these larger social issues, but I also want my students to see they have value and knowledge!
Yosso’s book spoke directly to teacher’s interests and personal experiences. The ideas in Yosso’s book resonated with Ms. Vasquez’s quest to more meaningfully incorporate her students’ lives. She was particularly captivated by the counterstories of parents who discuss Freire’s ideas of education as political, problem-posing methodology, the student-teacher relationship, and banking education. She was captivated by the content through Yosso’s counterstory methodology. Yosso (2006) discusses CRT theories and CCW in a conversational manner through composite counterstories, which “make sense” to Ms. Vasquez because they are written in a “teacher-friendly way,” like reading “cuentos” (stories). In doing so, Yosso follows hooks’s (1989) vision as a feminist theorist, “to articulate it [theory] in a language that renders it accessible—not less complex or rigorous—but simply more accessible” (p. 39).
Ms. Vasquez believes in her students and holds an ethic of care for the Latino community. However, she finds new strength and power in a clearly articulated theory of cultural empowerment in the concept of CCW. There is power in naming. Ms. Vasquez was moved to profess, “Wow, that’s powerful!” She had a sudden revelation or her “aha moment” and highlighted its effect by spelling out each letter. With renewed passion, she turns the focus back to her work as a teacher by asking how she can apply this in her classroom with her students. She relays a common theme from conversations with her students who internalize pejorative narratives about their community— about being immigrants and all that it entails. This is where we took our next steps to design curricular lessons for her sixth-grade class drawing from CCW and integrating it into the family history unit.
We developed introductory activities and lessons to discuss the neighborhood, community, culture, and immigration. We included whole class discussions of current events and challenges they see in the neighborhood and helped them also see strengths within their community. We had the class work in collaborative groups to list examples for each of the capitals in CCW (e.g., aspirational, familial, linguistic). As a class, they discussed different things they learn from their families. Some students initially felt embarrassed. Jaime said, “But my dad didn’t go to school.” Lilian followed, “My mom only speaks Spanish.” Ms. Vasquez intervenes with, Learning also means all the ways we learn from our parents and families in our daily life? What do they teach us? What lessons and consejos (advice) do they teach you? You might learn to be responsible, to keep trying, do well in school . . . they can teach things to you with their words, with their actions, or by their example. Think about all the things you learn from them?
Students from different groups exclaim, “oh, ah . . . pues, everything” (well everything). There is a collective move that redefines learning from in-school subjects to more expansive understandings of learning and family knowledge (Gonzalez et al., 2005; Yosso, 2006). A selected list of student examples for family strength—originally (familial capital) is detailed in Table 2.
Community Cultural Wealth Selected Student Examples of Familial Capitals
Students generated examples related to character and cultural values such as “respect for my family” and “seguir adelante (keep going)” or not giving up in the face of challenges. They also created lists related to specific literacy tasks like speaking Spanish, learning English, writing letters, translating, and being bilingual—some of which included examples learned from their siblings. Other students talked about learning from their grandparents in Mexico—how to use remedios (home remedies), taking care of plants, and riding horses. Each group developed long lists, which they grouped together into index cards—these are used to create a “CCW Rainbow Wall” as a visual aid that promotes deeper thinking and learning. Each color represented one of the CCW capitals, and group examples were placed along the arch for that color. We developed the acronym “R-FLANS” as a cultural play on words, where each letter represented the beginning of the CCW term. We expressed it as R (our) FLANS, like having our Mexican custard dessert, but also as an acronym to remember the CCW capitals. Red was resistant strength, orange was familial strength, yellow was linguistic strength, green was aspirational strength, blue was navigational strength, and indigo was social strength. Together, they represented the hope and beauty of a rainbow after the rain, symbolizing hope as a theory of cultural empowerment. In this way, students were able to understand the role of each capital (strength) and their collective force.
We also used CLOZE activities like the one below to scaffold learning, where words are omitted from a passage for students to use context clues to fill in the blanks. The teacher shared the paragraph below on a projector with the underlined sections left blank. Students used the examples they had listed and elaborated on them to write paragraphs. Here is an example of one student’s interpretation of CCW and family strength: Community and Cultural Wealth is about the knowledge, experiences, skills, and abilities that we have. One example is
Augustin is a U.S.-born child of migrant farmworkers. In the summers, he helps his family by working in the fields picking cherries, strawberries, and other fruits in the region. His example highlights the socioeconomic reality of many students who live in poverty in South El Valle and contribute to their family’s survival. His father encourages Agustin to pursue a good education through college, while also helping him honor what they’ve endured and the value of hard work.
A Teacher’s Autoethnographic Counterstories
Ms. Vasquez’s narration of her personal and family experiences comes after we collaborated on designing the CCW curricular units and after introductory lessons. The teacher shared her story to serve as a culturally relevant mentor text (Lopez, Ynostroza, Franquiz, & Cardenas, 2015) about CCW. Ms. Vasquez’s life stories allowed students to hear how their teacher’s cultural practices were shared naturally, with joy. She framed the particulars of her experiences in ways that nurtured trust, reciprocity, openness, and care/cariño (Valenzuela, 1999).
In this excerpt, Ms. Vasquez reviews what students have learned the previous week and uses student-friendly language to reinforce key concepts from the CCW lessons with her students. Through her unfolding narrative and exchanges with her students, she demonstrates her understanding of the CCW framework and provides students practical examples that resonate with their own lived experiences.
Our families might not all have been able to go to school like my parents who only finished 2nd and 3rd grade, but they have big dreams for us—aspiration, aspiración. Our families and communities are smart, have knowledge, and so many things to teach us. (She points to the community cultural wealth paragraph on her classroom wall.) Like the ideas we learned from the Rainbow Wall showed us that our families and communities have knowledge. We learn from them. Many of us speak more than one language—we have linguistic strengths because we are bilingual and bicultural. We have social strength like helping out our family and friends and they also help us. We have resistant strength because we stand up for ourselves and fight back when things are unfair. We have navigational strength because we can go through things like crossing the border, con ganas y fuerza (with will and strength) and we have navigational strength learning to live in another country, find work, and go to school. Our families and communities have so many experiences to share with us and teach us about so many things in life.
Ms. Vasquez does not create a fictitious example or from an unknown person. Instead, she uses this opportunity to engage more deeply and to demonstrate care with her students through sharing her own autoethnographic counterstory of immigration. She reiterates the connection for students between the family history project as a way to “honor” the strengths “we” have. In this way, Ms. Vasquez is making explicit connections with the theory and as a powerful age-appropriate framework for the CCW Family History Project. She is also leveraging individual story to their collective experience with pronouns such as “we” and “our.” Ms. Vasquez addresses various deficit perspectives of Latina/o immigrants—that of Latinos as uneducated, not caring about school or education, not having goals or dreams, of shame in speaking Spanish, and of immigration. She engages CCW to counter these ideas with her narrative. She uses affirming terminology of strengths rather than capitals to help her emerging bilingual students better grasp the concepts. She previously presented a vocabulary overview of “capital” both as a capital city or town that is the official seat of government, and as a term signifying wealth. While they did this activity, in their classroom talk, students preferred changing the terms to “linguistic strength, social strength, navigational strength, and so on.” Ms. Vasquez links navigational capital with “ganas y fuerza” (desire/will and strength) to frame her examples of immigration and learning to live in another country. In her own way, she is gently but deliberately tackling the miseducation and internalization of deficit perspectives of Latina/os and immigrants (Delgado Bernal, 2002; Tejeda et al., 2000; Valenzuela, 1999; Villenas & Deyhle, 1999).
In the following excerpt, Ms. Vasquez continues to explain what aspirational capital entails using the student-generated term aspirational strength. She provides contextual examples and asks students to think about their own families/parents:
We learned about aspirational strength in our community and cultural wealth project—when our families might not have a lot of money or maybe they couldn’t get an education, but they have big dreams for us. My parents, like many of our families couldn’t get a good education because they were very poor. Even though they only went to school for a few years, they taught me so much. They taught me how important school was, to work hard, and stand for what I believe in. How many of your parents teach you that your education is important? (Almost all students raised their hands, several nod and agree with her. Many raise their hands and respond, “Me”“my mom”“my parents”.)
Ms. Vasquez acknowledges that her own parents were not able to pursue their education beyond elementary school because of extreme poverty and uses the collective “our families” to describe this process. In doing so, she simultaneously acknowledges the socioeconomic conditions that preclude large sectors of Mexican people from obtaining an education and alleviates students’ fears about their parents’ lack of formal schooling by proudly sharing her own story.
Now, think of ways your parents demonstrate aspirational strength and share ideas with your group. (Ms. Vasquez walks around the class listening and asking guiding questions to help some students think of familial examples. After 5 minutes, she calls on groups to share some of the ideas they’ve come up with.)
Like when your family has big dreams for your life, even though right now we don’t have a lot of money.
My mom wants me to study hard and go to college—be a lawyer or doctor, but no one in our family has ever done it.
My mom works in the cannery and says that my work is to go to school.
My dad helps me with my math homework. He tells me to study hard so I don’t have to work picking tomatoes in the fields like him and my mom.
My mom always asks me what I learned in school. She likes when I share what we learn. She always says, “es un privilegio estudiar” (it’s a privilege to study). How you say privilegio?
Privilege
Yeah, a privilege.
Students dialogue with each other about the aspirational strengths their families have and practice. They share examples of dreams of a better future, going to college, obtaining professional careers, and valuing education in the midst of their parents’ low-level, backbreaking work. Jaime’s mom is also reinforcing the value of education by helping him see it as a privilege.
In another lesson, Ms. Vasquez points to her family tree and personal immigration timeline as she shared stories that were passed down to her. She had created samples using her own experience to give students a model sample of the work they would embark on:
My family is from Mexico (she points to the map of Mexico placed on the left corner of the poster.) They were very poor and decided to move to America. My dad started working in a fruit factory, la canería (cannery), and my mom would clean other people’s houses to make extra money. It was hard for them because they didn’t speak English and life was different and very hard for them when they came to America. Growing up, we would always go back and visit our family in Mexico. ((She points to a picture of a plaza (town square) in Mexico and talked about the fun she had with her family when they visited.)) On Sundays we’d go to the plaza (town square) after church to listen to the banda (musical band) in the kiosko (kiosk) and eat helados de limón (lemon ice). My family was very close and we took care of each other.
Ms. Vasquez provides a description of her parents’ struggles as newlyweds and as new immigrants in America. With her words, she paints a picture of the cultural practices in the Mexican plaza as a social meeting place on weekends. Most students share some of these experiences and add details of their own memories to their neighbors or respond to their teachers’ examples like mimicking Mexican trumpet music and saying how fun Mexico is or how they enjoyed “walking in the plaza with their cousins.” Another student, Eva, comments that they don’t like going to Mexico because it’s hard crossing the border back to the United States. Some students supported her, adding comments that the “migra” was mean, there were long lines, and described invasive inspection processes. Eva meant many things with her word “hard”—she describes the stress many children shared when crossing the border. Ms. Vasquez acknowledges the varying degrees of difficulties about their experiences at the border and continued sharing her family history with her students: Mis papas no tenían papeles (My parents were undocumented). They tried to cross the border through the desert and in the trunk of a car but couldn’t. Finally, they were able to cross. My dad also was really poor so they wanted to give our family a better life by coming to America. They wanted us to have enough to eat, a chance to go to school, and a chance at life. That doesn’t make them criminals, it makes them good parents. They came to work, a chance at an education, and to give us a better life.
By divulging her parents’ deportation and stories about crossing the border, Ms. Vasquez shares an aspect of immigrant life that is hidden from public life and often causes shame (Menjivar & Kanstroom, 2013). Particularly, given the anti-immigrant xenophobia pervading our nation, the teacher demonstrates migration capital through her autobiographical counterstory. In doing so, she normalizes immigrant experiences, removing criminality, deficit, and inferior perspectives (Delgado, 1989; Montoya, 1994). She shares this information in normal conversation, without judgment, as a simple reality of the decisions her family and millions of Latina/o families have made to survive. She links her parents’ immigration decisions to social and economic causes. She counters the notion of migration as criminality of migrants to that of being good parents seeking better life opportunities for their families. She is normalizing and destigmatizing migrant life.
“La Maestra También Es del Campo” (The Teacher Is Also From the Fields): Migration Capital as a Pedagogical Tool
Ms. Vasquez recounts her parents’ work picking fruit and vegetables in the fields, thereby connecting to many of her students’ family occupations.
Ms. Vasquez continued, My parents had to cover their arms and faces when working in the peach trees because the fuzz irritated their skin. Their backs hurt all the time because they had to bend down low to pick the fruit. Many of our families work in very hard jobs in the fields, factories, fixing cars, in stores, restaurants, and cleaning offices.
One student exclaimed, “My dad picks cherries then goes to work at the cannery.” Several students whispered to their neighbors in agreement. I heard students sharing, “Mine too” and “My mom works two jobs.”
She knew many of them had parents who worked in the fields, but she also knew some might be embarrassed so she asked them a general question of whether they “knew someone” who worked in the fields. In doing so, she allows them to share what they feel comfortable divulging. She provides a few examples of the harsh working conditions and long workdays. Ms. Vasquez employs the collective “our” pronoun to connect her own story to her students’ lives. In learning about their teacher’s experiences as a child of Mexican farmworking immigrants, one student leans in to share with his neighbor, “La maestra también es del campo” (The teacher is from the fields too). The student whispers it with a mix of surprise and pride that his teacher shares life experiences similar to his own. Ms. Vasquez overhears and responds, “Claro! I grew up in the fields” (Of course!), thereby affirming her pride and collective histories with her students. Students are listening intently as they relate to their teacher’s life. This is an example of the teacher drawing on migration capital as a pedagogical tool.
Ms. Vasquez closed her presentation by sharing that Growing up, some people in my neighborhood would say, “Sal si puedes” (Get out if you can), but my parents taught me never to forget where I came from. My dream was always to make a difference in my community with my education.
Ms. Vasquez’s family history also reflects several capitals of CCW (Yosso, 2006). She reinforces that her parents valued education or held aspirational strength although they did not achieve a high level of schooling. She counteracts the assimilationist model of success summarized with the colloquial saying, “Get out if you can,” which motivates Youth of Color to achieve success in order to leave their neighborhoods. Instead, she learned from her parents to value her upbringing, go to college, and give back (familial and navigational capital). Her decision to become a teacher, return to her hometown, and “make a difference” with her education demonstrates deep care and commitment. Ms. Vasquez doesn’t want her students “just to go to college so they can get out of the neighborhood.” Instead, she wants them to love learning, understand social injustices, and empower themselves with an education to be transformative agents within their communities (resistant capital).
During our lunch break, we sit in the classroom and debrief the lesson. I asked Ms. Vasquez what she hoped students gained from her presentation.
I want them to know that I didn’t just snap my fingers and arrive here. It’s because of my familia, their esfuerzo (family, their struggle). There was a journey and they need to see that to know the kinds of sacrifices our families have made for us. I want them to see our struggles, but not be paralyzed by them. I hope they can use them as an inspiration and believe they can get an education and make positive changes in our neighborhoods.
Ms. Vasquez wants her students to know that her journey did not happen by accident, but that there was a longer struggle by our families and with our families. She references a collective family struggle for a better life with her use of “esfuerzo” (effort). Ms. Vasquez also wants her students to see themselves in her journey to instill a faith and perseverance in them that “they can get an education,” meaning that they can overcome the obstacles and succeed in empowering and transformative ways. Here we see Ms. Vasquez developing understandings of how to shift her pedagogy toward more critical and culturally relevant curricula. Some veteran critical pedagogy teachers might employ participatory action projects to more directly address community violence or empowerment. Yet we need to examine Ms. Vasquez’s journey along a spectrum of growth and promise. She is for the first time sharing her life story with her students, integrating CCW into her curriculum within a politically conservative geographic region and school district, and using pedagogical language and strategies appropriate with “English learners.”
Aspirational Capital in Student Counterstories of Immigration
A key part of the CCW Family History Project was having students conduct oral histories, tracing the history of a family member, making connections to their own lives, and making connections to the theory/capitals learned. Many students’ family history essays revealed the experiences their families faced as Mexican immigrants, and the lessons learned from these. Through the CCW Family History Project, students gravitated strongly to aspirational capital for understanding their migration experiences.
Students demonstrated their families’ aspirational capital, or the ability to maintain hopes and dreams in the midst of challenges, obstacles, and barriers. In her oral history essay, Marcela, an outgoing student with long brown hair and a boisterous laugh, wrote, My dad gives me consejos (advice) like estudiar es bonito, toma aventaja de eso (studying or going to school is beautiful, take advantage of that). He teaches me that school is important even though he only did 4th grade. In Mexico, my dad had to work with his dad in the cornfields and taking care of animals. He didn’t get to have an education, but he wants me to do my best all the way to college. (Marcela, Student work–Family history essay)
Marcela highlights that despite her father’s low educational achievement, he teaches her that school is important. While he may not be able to teach her the academic skills and content in English, Marcela’s father teaches his daughter through his life experiences and consejos (advice) to prioritize homework and school activities in order to promote the value of education (Delgado Bernal, 2002; Delgado-Gaitan, 1994; Villenas & Moreno, 2001). While Marcela is still in elementary school, her family is instilling in her a vision beyond their current conditions—one of the beauty of learning and the dream of going to college. The fact that she raised this example in her family history essay suggests that Marcela is internalizing her father’s lessons about the importance of education. Marcela’s example also reflects Yosso’s (2006) aspirational capital, which refers to the ability to maintain hopes and dreams despite current economic, material, and other obstacles.
Another student, Mariana—known to the class as a kind, warm-hearted, empathetic friend with a talent for math, wrote about her mother in Mexico who had to leave school at an early age. In her family history essay, she wrote, My mother finished school at fifth grade. She had to stop going to school to help my grandma sew clothes for money. That’s why she wants me to keep going and do good in school because she never had the chance. She says her hands hurt a lot. She says, “no te dejes mija, esta vida es dura y quiero que tu sigas adelante.” (She says, “Don’t quit, this life is hard and I want you to keep going further.”)
Although Maria’s mother had to leave school in elementary school, she dreams and hopes for her daughter to stay in school so that she might have an opportunity to obtain an education. This chance signifies more than a greater number of years in school, it signals the pursuit of a more fulfilled life—one not marred by the pain and degradation of extreme poverty. Maria’s mother also gives her consejos (advice), which she includes in her oral history essay.
Initially, many students thought they were not going to learn much or that it would be easy because “they already know their parents.” However, as students engaged in the project and in varied learning structures, they gained a deeper appreciation for their family knowledge, practices, and histories. During one day of participant observations and after students had conducted their oral history essays, I ask Jose what he liked best about the project.
I thought the interview was really cool because even though my mom and dad tell me a lot of stories about their life, I really never paid so much attention and I really didn’t know what it all meant. Like I didn’t know that she washed clothes in the river or that she started working as a sirvienta (maid) when she was ten . . . crazy! I’m eleven now and I can’t imagine it. It makes me appreciate her more and want to do my best in school.
Jose admits he did not always “pay attention” or understand the implications of his parents’ stories. He points out that the interview helped him learn about his parents’ lives and that it was “really cool.” For Jose, this project served as an opportunity to learn about his mother’s difficult house chores, employment at a very young age, and diminished opportunities in their homeland of Mexico. Jose’s response, “Crazy! I’m eleven now and I can’t imagine it?” reveals his difficulty reconciling the juxtaposition of his own life—as a student in America going to school and playing with friends—with that of his mother’s childhood—a 10-year-old maid who washed clothes in a nearby river. He may not yet fully know how to process this difference, yet he translates the knowledge of his mother’s work as a child to a greater appreciation of her, and perhaps of the sacrifices she endured. Jose begins to expand his understanding of his mother’s limited socioeconomic conditions with his present life opportunities as a student in school.
Another student, Lisa, in her final paragraph of her oral history essay about her mother discussed the challenges of being an immigrant and connected her mother’s dreams for her to the CCW framework we had learned throughout the project.
I learned my mom had a hard time immigrating from Mexico. She didn’t have food and water for five days. When she got here, she didn’t have a lot of money, she didn’t speak English and people were mean to her. She said she came here (the U.S.) so we could go to school and to give us a better life. She had aspirational strength for us.
Lisa heard stories her mother shared with her about her journey from Mexico and highlighted that her mother faced dire conditions crossing the border followed by the difficulties of poverty, not speaking English, and discrimination as an immigrant in the United States. Lisa’s mother describes these harsh experiences in ways she deems appropriate for her 12-year-old daughter in elementary school. She may want her daughter to understand the general harshness of her life and circumstances while being conscientious not to divulge too much pain at her young developmental stage. (We introduced the CCW Family History Project and had conversations with parents during back to school night events. We discussed with parents that they would be doing a family interview project, talking about migration, and that they could share experiences they felt comfortable with and would want their children to know.) Like many Mexican immigrants, Lisa’s mom “didn’t have much money and didn’t speak English” but came to the United States with the hopes of giving her daughter a better chance at a future. In her native Mexico, Lisa’s educational and life opportunities would be extremely limited. Because of poverty, Lisa may have had to follow in her mother’s footsteps and leave school to help her mother full time with household chores or doing some kind of child labor for added income. In countries like Mexico, many families cannot afford to pay for school supplies, school clothing, nor can they afford deferring the assistance or income their children could make.
When I followed up with Lisa about her CCW Family History Project, I asked her to talk about what she learned. Lisa responded, “It was the first time I had an assignment that my parents were actually a part of. I just got a chance to see my mom’s life in another way and know more about her dreams for me.” Through the interview of her mother, Lisa gained a greater understanding about her mother’s circumstances and journey to the United States. Lisa’s mother demonstrates courage and in the midst of extreme hardships continues to hold dreams for her daughter’s future. In this way, Lisa’s mom reflects and disseminates aspirational capital with her daughter (Yosso, 2006). While there are many aspects of immigration that are, or can be, traumatic, such as family separation, racism, and immigration raids, schools and educators need to be equipped to engage youth about their lived realities. Here, Lisa’s mother shares aspects of her immigration to teach her daughter life lessons from her experiences (migration capital). Lisa draws on her understandings of the CCW to accurately name what her mother did as aspirational strength, the student-friendly term we created for our curricular unit.
Prior to our work, Ms. Vasquez had volunteered to collaborate with a social services program linking a licensed therapist with a classroom teacher. As the therapist modeled socioemotional strategies, Ms. Vasquez learned classroom activities to better support her students. One example was a “Community Circle” every Friday, or as needed, for the class to discuss topics that affected their lives, learn about mental/emotional health, and practice community caring strategies. Just as other student experiences emerge in the classroom, if counseling, referrals, or further support was needed, they were provided.
Students demonstrated migration capital as they shared immigration narratives. Ms. Vasquez modeled her own examples and created a classroom climate of trust, reciprocity, and cariño (care) in which the students felt comfortable enough to share and learn from their migration/immigrant experiences. In doing so, they connected with each other and developed an array of counternarratives of immigrant life while learning English, social studies skills, and academic literacies.
Conclusion
Through CCW pedagogies and migration capital, Ms. Vasquez narrated her familial skills, knowledge, and experiences in concrete ways, emphasizing for her students the CCW they too utilize. Students learned about family histories and immigration experiences as a centerpoint for learning. They learned to contextualize and uncover their family stories and immigration histories as assets, strengths, and knowledge. Both the teacher and students demonstrate (to varying degrees) an internalization of their individual and collective realities as CCW.
The teacher adopted a strategy of sharing her personal life experiences as a child of Mexican immigrants to teach students to facilitate deeper engagement in their family history. In this way, she drew on migration capital to help students make sense of their own lives. She talked of her family stories—of border crossing, fieldwork, and working-class life—and of her own life experiences without judgment, as a simple reality of the decisions her family and millions of Latina/o families have made to survive. Ms. Vasquez shared details of her culture in ways that countered deficit perspectives of Mexican immigrant lives. And that Mexican families, in turn, had valuable knowledge, skills, and experiences, or CCW.
I analyzed the teacher’s talks as autoethnographic counterstories, whereby the teacher normalized immigrant experiences, countering inferiority narratives and deficit perspectives (Delgado, 1989; Montoya, 1994). I argue that by normalizing their collective experiences as Mexican immigrants, she simultaneously countered the lies of deficit perspectives and uncovered the hidden truth of CCW. Her use of migration capital and autoethnographic counterstories positioned students as co-constructors of knowledge, socialized them into norms for academic language, and created counternarratives of their migration experiences. Students followed their teacher’s life story from Mexico to the United States and from a child of farmworking parents to college and finally to becoming a teacher.
Through our study, Ms. Vasquez translated an academic theory of CCW into student-friendly terms using her autoethnographic family counterstories as pedagogy. In doing so, she taught and demonstrated CCW—a theory of empowerment—in ways that her students could make sense of and find meaning in. With scaffolded learning activities, student examples, the CCW Rainbow Wall, family interviews, and oral history reports, students were apprenticed into a language of validity, legitimacy, dignity, and value. Collectively, they carved out counterstories to the abhorrent tropes of immigration perpetuated in the media, public opinion, and national policies. And with that, students were provided a springboard to read, write, speak, learn, and heal through counterstories of their own experiences as children of Mexican immigrants growing up in the Central Valley.
Ms. Vasquez displayed vulnerability in sharing her family history with her students because she knew there was strength and power in her story. Indeed, her experiences as a child of Mexican immigrant farmworkers turned teacher provided students with a powerful counterstory and the opportunity for her students to make experiential connections—as illuminated with their comment “la maestra también es del campo” (the teacher is also from the farmworker fields). Through her presentation of her family history, Ms. Vasquez illuminates the relationship between the oral family history assignment and the ideas students have been learning through CCW.
Current events signal new more egregious levels of state sanctioned immigration trauma, the effects of which are only beginning to emerge. These youth, too, have migration capital, but they will require medical attention, counseling, social services, and holistic educational supports to heal. What that will look like is beyond the scope of this study, but we as a nation will be charged with carrying and resolving these consequences in and beyond school settings.
This study highlights the strengths, cultural competency, and experiential knowledge of migration/immigration that the teacher brought to the classroom as someone who shared a similar background with her students. The power of Teachers of Color who share immigrant students’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds is well documented (Bajaj et al., 2017; Fránquiz & Salinas, 2013; Gonzalez et al., 2005; Okhremtchouk & Jimenez, 2013, Chapter 2; Picower & Kohli, 2017). However, it is also important to acknowledge that not all teachers share their students’ cultural heritages nor bring a critical consciousness. What I argue is that educators need to shift their paradigms of immigrant youth and view their lived experiences with dignity. Teachers with similar cultural backgrounds, political clarity, and shared sensibilities bring skill sets that help immigrant students flourish. We need to develop policies and incentives to attract, train, and retain Teachers of Color, particularly those with the expertise to engage immigrant youth and Youth of Color (Jackson & Kohli, 2016). Additionally, White teachers and educators outside the identities and experiences of the students they serve can learn to be strong teachers of Students of Color when race, class, privilege, and inequality are confronted, and critical and culturally relevant teaching is central (Sleeter, 2017).
Ms. Vasquez’ autobiographical counterstories taught her students that her story as a child of immigrant Mexican parents matters and, consequently, that their stories also matter (Adichie, 2009). This pedagogical approach helps support immigrant Latina/o students’ educational experiences by providing them the language to counter deficit perspectives, affirm their everyday lives, and bring to fruition their cultural practices and everyday ways of knowing. In our current political climate, it is more important than ever for educators to cultivate and sustain empowering pedagogies with immigrant youth. CCW pedagogies contribute to these efforts by generating pedagogical possibilities in the lives and education of Latina/o immigrant youth.
Footnotes
Notes
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