Convivencia to Empowerment: Latino Parent Organizing at La Familia

Abstract

This article explores the emergence of La Familia Initiative, a Latino parent-organizing project at a public middle school. Motivated by their urgency to improve their children's schooling and enhance their opportunities for a better high school experience in the future, the participants organize to establish a more inclusive partnership with the school. The paper examines the foundation of the project's success, as well as the dynamics of participation taking place as these parents begin to organize independently of the school, with the goal of achieving a more active voice in the education of their children, and thus in the school community. The paper also investigates how families and communities, who have been traditionally under-served by the educational system, can participate effectively in the education of their children when the conditions for their involvement are facilitated, and their culture and particular ways of participating are validated and developed. Parent empowerment projects open symbolic spaces of leadership and participation in school and in society and have the potential to become valuable exercises in grassroots democracy and community self-determination.

A First Step to a Conceptual Framework of Parent Empowerment: Exploring Relationships Between Parent Empowerment and Academic Performance in a National Sample

“…In line with research indicating that parent empowerment improves children's mental health outcomes (Resendez, Quist, & Matshazi, ), the findings suggest that parent empowerment may potentially improve academic outcomes for children who are typically disadvantaged in the schooling process, that is, children of parents who are not college educated, have lower income levels, and who speak only Spanish at home. Jasis and Ordoñez‐Jasis's (, ) work supports our findings that parent empowerment may potentially reduce disparities in academic achievement due to socioeconomic status (i.e., parent educational level, household income). However, the academic performance of children of college‐educated parents did not change after parent empowerment was accounted for.…”

“…Jasis and Ordoñez‐Jasis () indicated that Spanish‐speaking parents benefit from parent empowerment programs by developing individual or collective power to advocate for their children. This finding may explain why a number of researchers have focused on parent empowerment for Latino immigrant parents as a means of improving their children's academic success (e.g., Auerbach, ; Delgado‐Gaitan, ; Jasis & Ordoñez‐Jasis, , ).…”

“…As a result, little research (e.g., Griffith, ) exists on the relationship of parent empowerment to indicators of children's academic success. Parent empowerment is examined mainly through qualitative lens using interviews and observations of empowerment‐based programs (Jasis & Ordoñez‐Jasis, , ). When quantitative methods are used, parent empowerment is often conceptualized as one‐dimensional rather than multifaceted (e.g., Griffith, ).…”

“…The focus in school counseling has been on empowering students to self‐advocate, to understand oppression, and to succeed academically. However, parent empowerment is integral to student empowerment; when parents have a sense of empowerment, they influence schools to provide a better education for their children and, thus, students are more likely to succeed academically (Holcomb‐McCoy & Bryan, ; Jasis & Ordoñez‐Jasis, , ).…”

Supporting Southeast Asian American Family and Community Engagement for Educational Success

“…With the common goal of helping their children, these organizations have built families' capacity to work with individual schools through parent organizing, leadership development, and providing direct support and information to the families (Jasis & Ordonez-Jasis, 2004;Hong, 2011;Shirley, 1997;Warren, 2005). The key to the success of such partnerships is the willingness of schools to collaborate with families and community groups to achieve common goals.…”