“Language Socialization Practices and Cultural Identity: Case Studies of Mexican-Descendent Families in California and Texas”, by Sandra Schecter and Robert Bayley, highlights the strong link between identity and language use. With the overlapping concern with language use and education, we should seriously consider our students’ identities within our own interests and awareness as part of the schooling institution. It seems that there are a multitude of experiences within this category of individuals, so we need to be able to discern the individual needs of our students to help them maintain their identities without a sense of “clashing” with this idea of the American culture and value system.
“’Starting at the Top’: Identifying and Understanding Later Generation Chicano Students in Schools”, by Christina Chavez-Reyes, is an article that looks at the possible reasons why later-generation Chicano or Mexican American students might not fare as well as expected academically. While I can get some of the assumption breakdowns (the differences between culture do not create a great enough difference between students from a Mexican heritage versus American heritage), I am struggling with the official decree from the article.
Chavez-Reyes, with a very small homogeneous sample, found that college counselors were not providing the needed guidance to these mostly general track students. The truth from my own experience is that I had very little interaction with my own guidance counselor. When I was a first semester senior I was called into his office for the first time. He inquired what my plan was going to be after high school and I told him. That was the extent of my counseling relationship.
The problem I have with the article is the ease by which it places blame on counselors without a large enough sample. Also, it seems to completely disregard the budget constraints schools face. With a close friend going to school to be a counselor, I am curious what the student load happens to be for every counselor, who they spend their time with, and what other student experiences happen to be. I am living proof that a student can go through school with limited guidance and still push themselves for an education. That is not to say that there is not an issue going on to create obstacles for these later-generation students, or even that one of the obstacles is not the lack of guidance. I just require more evidence to begin condemning individuals I know, personally, that have a soft spot for student success.
However, there are some interesting similarities between the issues with AAVE and multi-generational Chicano or Mexican American Descendants. The need to negatively characterize school personnel seems reminiscent of some of the feelings in the African American community. Refraining from my own desire to argue against these criticisms, I understand that there is some racial tension within the school institution that we need to be wary about, that needs to drive me (a white woman) into building trust and allowing students to maintain their identities.
This conflict of interests, wanting a quality education while having trust issues with school personnel, gets more complicated when the identities of students are meshed within their cultural backgrounds and the histories that co-exist within them.
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