Practicing citizenship: Latino parents broadening notions of citizenship through participatory research
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P ra c t i c i n g c i t i z e n s h i p : L a t i n o p a r e n t s br o a d e n i n g n o t i o n s o f citizenship through participatory r e s e a rc h
Emma H. Fuentes University of San Francisco, San Francisco, California.
Abstract Using a combined methodology of Participatory Research and Critical Ethnography, this article documents the politics and practice of a committed group of Latino parents who, through community-based research and organizing efforts, sought to address the disproportionate underachievement of Latino students within their city’s public school system. In doing so, they in effect broadened the core concepts of political participation and citizenship. Their story calls attention to the way that people engage in community activism and link with academic research in order to challenge and transform both their immediate worlds and the larger sociopolitical structures that shape them. Latino Studies (2011) 9, 396–415. doi:10.1057/lst.2011.48 Keywords: participatory research; community organizing; cultural citizenship; urban education; parent involvement
VOCES Latinas After a long day’s work the families gathered in the auditorium of their local church. The seating was arranged, questions prepared and the smell of coffee and pan dulce filled the room. Fifteen members of VOCES took turns asking r 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 9, 4, 396–415 www.palgrave-journals.com/lst/
Practicing citizenship
questions to their invited guest, the director of the English Language Learner (ELL) program. Many of the questions were aimed at understanding the process and possibility that the majority-Latino students in her program could attend a 4-year university upon graduation. After several vague responses, the director spoke directly to the parents, and said, “Most of the students cannot afford to go on to a 4-year university and most of their parents would not let them go anyway, they have different hopes for their kids.” At this point, many of the parents walked away from the group in frustration while others continued pressing her with more questions. At the end of the meeting one mother expressed her concern and frustration: Ensen˜amos a nuestros hijos a tratar el mundo con respeto. ¿Y luego en las escuelas, llenas de gente educada nos tratan ası´? “We teach our children to treat the world with respect and then in their school filled with ‘educated’ people they treat us like this?” 1 In the spring of 2001, a group of parents and community members who called themselves VOCES Latinas (Latino/a Voices) led a research and organizing effort in a Northern California city, focusing on the inequities found specifically within the ELL department at the local high school, Benton High.2 I begin with an excerpt from my field notes to highlight the mixture of determination, dedication and frustration on the part of Latino parents and community members during their interactions with local school officials. VOCES members recounted numerous interactions with teachers, school board members,
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