Education of Latino Children

The Latino population in the United States is on the rise, but historically, Latino graduation rates have been low. Many educators lack sufficient intercultural preparation, and therefore, teachers may tend to blame student failure on cultural and familial deficiencies. In this study, we elicited educators’ perceptions of Latino students and the students’ families through 10 focus group interviews at 6 target schools (4 elementary schools, 1 middle school, and 1 high school). Findings include contradictory views of students’ and families’ attitudes towards education, and consistently negative views of students’ and families’ educational backgrounds. Latino families were seen as close, caring, and hard working, but with the wrong priorities and in a state of crisis. Given these findings, we believe that there is a need for educators to question their assumptions through self-reflection, in order to overcome stereotyped images of Latino students. To that end, we recommend 3 overlapping tiers of professional learning with increasing depth of challenging experiences: (1) intercultural information, (2) intercultural inquiry, and (3) intercultural immersion.

The application of technology in the classroom has become increasingly important as researchers and educators seek innovative ways to teach and engage learners that meet the new social realities. The use of technology in out-of-school programs has raised great interest in recent educational research (Masters and Nykvist, 2006). Of particular concern is the digital divide where Latino/a working-class students have limited access to technology (Ek, Machado-Casas, Sánchez, and Alanís, 2010). This chapter highlights La Clase Mágica at the University of Texas at San Antonio (LCM@UTSA) as an after-school program that provides children (protégés), teacher candidates (aspirantes), and researchers with opportunities to tap into technology's potential to create innovative learning environments that focus on language, literacy, and cultural development. Miller (2003) asserts that afterschool enrichment activities have been shown to have long-term social and academic benefits for participants. After-school programs have the advantage of providing children an informal learning setting. In contrast to school, where teachers design activities to engage children in learning goals, after-school settings afford children opportunities for learning that addresses their unique, desired goals (Masters and Nykvist, 2006). Afterschool programs have been shown to 129

I think our state as a whole, our country as a whole-somebody is going to have to wake up and say, "These people are here, they need things just as our children need things".. . And you know, if we don't help them, then we are running the risk of having new crime in the streets.. . And back there, the boys and girls who are 15 can get out of school and find whatever work there is. What kind of possibilities do we have for children who are 15 and uneducated? This comment by a U.S. elementary school teacher presents a complex view of Latino students and parents who come from another culture and speak a different language. In the study we report, we found that such images of Latinos' schooling, the effects of immigration, and the way our educational system responds to immigrants were common among the educators who participated. Through focus group interviews, we elicited educators' perceptions of language minority students in a school district in the Southeastern U.S. that has been strongly affected by recent immigration. With the latest waves of immigration over the last 4 decades, demographic patterns in many public schools across the U.S. have changed markedly. Between 1980 and 2010, the U.S. "Hispanic" [1] population more than tripled, increasing from 14.6 million to 50.5 million. In 2010, Hispanic individuals made up 16.3% of the total U.S. population, and the latest Pew Research projections are that Hispanic individuals will comprise 29% of the population in 2050 (Passel & Cohn, 2008). Pine County, the site of our study, is a striking example of this sea change. In 1990, fewer than 1,500 Hispanic individuals lived in Pine County, or about 2% of the population. This figure officially increased to more than 12,000 in 2012, which constituted 10.7% of the population. The Hispanic population in Pine County rose 89.52% from 2000 to 2010.

Abstract Debates continue about how to teach young Latinos and other minoritized children in the US. Latinos are a compelling case because of (1) their size and (2) their paradoxical development: strong social competencies yet relatively weak academic development. A suggestion is to provide young Latinos with classroom experiences that resonate with the ways they are socialized at home, yet cultural dimensions of teaching in early education are underspecified and reliable and valid measures do not exist. We frame equitable teacher–child interactions as the combination of generic and cultural aspects, and as a way to utilize the social assets of Latinos in classrooms to enhance their academic development. We refine an observation protocol—the Classroom Assessment of Sociocultural Interactions (CASI)—by integrating cultural concepts from the Learning by Observing and Pitching In (LOPI) paradigm with videos of K-1 classrooms in Central Mexico, and conduct a series of psychometric analyses. We find good model fit and moderate reliability for the CASI and discuss research and practice implications to foster equitable developmental opportunities for Latino children across early education settings.