Achieving Latina students: Aspirational counterstories and critical reflections on parental community cultural wealth

ABSTRACT

In this study, six Latina students shared perceptions of their parental influence on their educational aspirations. CRT, LatCrit, and community cultural wealth provide the tripartite framework for analyzing issues of race, class, gender, language, culture, and immigration by examining their roles in society through counterstories. Learning in an after-school program about educational advancement, these participants navigated against deficit ideology. Messages of aspirational hope, navigational inspiration, Spanish language guidance, familial kinship, social networking, and resistant intelligence enabled these students to build a foundation of personal emancipation to disrupt the systemic sociopolitical and sociocultural nature of oppression.

KEYWORDS:

• Community cultural wealth
• parental encouragement
• aspirational counterstories
• LatCrit
• Latinas

Notes

¹ All names (the educational after-school outreach program, names of people in the study, and names of schools and school district) have been changed to protect the identity and to follow IRB anonymity regulations.

² Promover la Educación (PIE) operated under a nonprofit organization but, in 2008, the program was cut due to loss of funding under the Bush administration. Some educational outreach is still offered to Latinas through the nonprofit organization. However, educational outreach is limited and does not offer the same educational programing as the PlE program.