Our legends and journey stories: Exploring culturally sustaining family engagement in classrooms

ABSTRACT

Humanizing family engagement practices seek to foster the community cultural wealth and funds of knowledge to working with and for immigrant families and communities. In this manuscript we explore asset-based theories for working alongside families and communities in our schools, with a focus on classroom examples for involving parents and families in school learning. We share the ways that teachers and schools can build curriculum and engagement opportunities that are welcoming and expansive.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional Resources

1. Delgado-Gaitan, C. (2001). The power of community: Mobilizing for family and schooling. Rowman & Littlefield.

In this important book, Concha Delgado Gaitan recounts 10 years of ethnographic research with and for families that she conducted in the Carpinteria community in California. She tells the story of students and families living and attending school in a changing community while illuminating how parents worked within these changes through the creation of the Comité de Padres Latinos/Committee of Latin Parents (COPLA) parent group. Delgado Gaitan’s ethnographic research illuminates the transformative power and sustaining change that is possible in families, schools, and communities when parents are empowered to lead and realize their potential as advocates for success of their children.

2. Flores, T. T. (2019). The family writing workshop: Latinx families cultivando comunidad through stories. Language Arts, 97, 59–71.

This article highlights a family writing workshop that was facilitated in a 3^rd and 4^th grade English Language Development Classroom (ELD) in Arizona. The workshop was designed to engage parents and students, majority Latinx, in the writing and sharing of personal stories and histories. This workshop provides a model for inviting parents and families into the classroom in which the space is co-constructed and built upon their strengths and resources.

3. Valdés, G. (1996). Con Respeto: Bridging the Distances Between Culturally Diverse Families and Schools—An Ethnographic Portrait. Teachers College Press.

This book highlights the challenges, successes, values, and beliefs of 10 Mexican-origin families living along la frontera, the border between Texas and México. Valdés’s ethnographic study, conducted between 1983 and 1986 in a small town located along la frontera, shares the ways that families navigate their daily lives at the intersections of language and immigration status. In addition, she illuminates the strong familial bonds and social networks of families that are a source of strength and a necessary part of their survival and well-being.