Journal of Latinos and Education, 11: 124–138, 2012Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1534-8431 print / 1532-771X onlineDOI: 10.1080/15348431.2012.659566

Stories of Success: Latinas Redefining Cultural Capital

Leslie D. GonzalesE.T. Moore School of Education

Clemson University

In this essay, the stories of successful Latina scholars are captured and shared through a series ofinterviews. Inquiring about the k-20 experience of the Latinas, the study provides timely insights thatcounter mainstream deficit perspectives on the Latino population. Specifically, these Latinas’ storiesshow how they have been inspired by cultural values, such as community, faith and compassion. Giventhe Latina population’s rapid growth in the U.S., this work is timely as it aides in the broadening andredefining of cultural capital.

Key words: Latina scholars, Critical Race Theory, cultural capital, educational experiences

My mother could do anything, and I think she gave us the impression that we could doanything.—Dr. Garcia

The growth of the Latino population in the United States has raised critical public policy ques-tions. These questions are often related to how the Latino population intersects and integrateswith important social institutions, such as the public education system. Such questions circulatearound linguistic barriers, parent–school relationships, and notions of cultural clash—all ques-tions that signal how in general education policy in the United States is governed by a laggingcultural competency (Valdés, 1996; Valencia, 2002; Yosso, 2005, 2006).

A look into history shows that similar questions emerged with regard to other minority popula-tions as well and that policymakers, researchers, and education officials quickly responded withinitiatives geared toward Americanization, assimilation, and a schooling process that demandsintegration (Tyack & Cuban, 1995; Valencia, 2002, 2000; Valenzuela, 2005). Policy responses tothe current Latino education situation contain these very same elements. Thus, critical scholarsargue that today’s education policies and practices are crafted in ways that make the schoolingexperience uncomfortable, unfamiliar, and in some regards hostile to non-majority, non-middle-class students (Dixson & Rousseau, 2005; Lareau, 2003; Valencia, 2000; Valenzuela, 2005).Consider, for example, the recent elimination of funding for ethnic and gender studies in Arizona,the exclusion of immigrant students from higher education institutions across multiple states,the politicized nature of bilingual education, and the erosion of affirmative action policies andprotections.

Correspondence should be addressed to Leslie D. Gonzales, University of Texas at El Paso, 5000 West University,Education Building Room 906, El Paso, TX 79968. E-mail: ldgonzales@miners.utep.edu

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To make matters worse, sociopolitical perspectives are punctuated by an overarching neolib-eral logic (Harvey, 2005) that asserts that institutional racism, sexism, and classism have beendissolved by an equal opportunity system that facilitates a most authentic kind of meritocracy.1

Of course, a critical eye finds that equal opportunity and equality continue to be evasive. Minoritystudents, especially Latinas, continue to lag behind in terms of educational achievement. In fact,although Latinas are the largest minority subgroup in the United States, they are also amongthe least educated populations. Although it is critical to investigate and continue to expose thestructural barriers that marginalize this important and growing population, researchers must alsocelebrate the success that Latinas have captured, tell their stories, and thereby challenge the deficitperspectives that too often frame education policy, programming, and administration.

To this end, in this paper I share the story of three Latina2 women who have achieved profes-sional and academic success despite what most would consider odds. Their stories demonstratethat it is time to discard the deficit theories that have long guided education policy, educationprogramming, and teaching and administration. Specifically, their testimonies provide a clearmessage that Latino families, especially parents, offer rich, valuable, and transferable forms ofcultural capital that can be mobilized in one’s academic and professional careers. These Latinasrecall how family ties, community, and faith strengthened them and helped them persist through-out the K–20 schooling experience. Sharing their stories is very much an act of resistance forthese Latinas; at the same time, for those who listen there exists deep transformative opportunity.

This paper is laid out in the following way. First I discuss the concepts and ideas that are centralto this discussion: (a) Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital; (b) how deficit theorists coopted—and manipulated—cultural capital to serve the status quo, especially in terms of public educationpolicy and practices; and finally (c) how critical race scholars are finding ways to challengemarginalizing and prevailing perceptions about Latina/o families and students. Following theliterature review I describe my research methods and then move into the discussion. I concludewith suggestions as to how we as education leaders can purposefully challenge traditional—and oppressive—notions of cultural capital that stunt our ability to recognize the rich assets thatLatina/o children and their families bring to the institutional table.

UNDERSTANDING CULTURAL CAPITAL

The late French theorist Pierre Bourdieu (1977) developed the concept of cultural capital as hestudied education institutions. Through this work, Bourdieu put forward a theory that analyzedhow skills, tastes, networks, and habits work as capital for society’s elite. The theory suggeststhat the elite use particular forms of knowledge, skills, and language to navigate through society’smajor institutions. These institutions, and education institutions especially, tend to look for these

1For a discussion of how deeply Americans cling to notions of meritocracy, equal opportunity, and the AmericanDream, see Johnson (2006).

2The Latina/o population is a diverse population, with people coming from several different Spanish-speaking back-grounds. In this study Latina includes those who identify as such, coming from a Spanish-speaking background. In noway do I intend to present an essentialist view of Latinas/os. Women in this study referred to themselves in a variety ofways, including Chicana, Cubana, Latina, Mexican American, Mexican, and Peruvian.

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habits, thereby validating narrowly defined and narrowly shared forms of knowledge and thuscontributing to their reproduction as the ruling ideas and habits of society.

Neo-Marxist in its essence, Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital was intended as a critique ofschooling. Bourdieu aimed to show how schooling is drenched in institutional biases that servethe economic, political, and cultural elite in a society. Unfortunately, Bourdieu’s concept hasbeen coopted by deficit theorists to explain why some groups in society are more equipped withcultural capital to succeed academically and why other groups should attempt to mimic, adopt, orgain such capital. From this school of thought has come the crafting and adoption of deficit-basedpolicies that silence those who do not speak English; that seek to repair the families of childrenwho come from economically poor, minority backgrounds; and that aim to change parentingpractices in order to shape better parents.

Ultimately, cultural capital has been manipulated by deficit theorists as a concept that allowsone to ignore the deep structural problems associated with public education finance acrossa fragmented federalist system that allows states, counties, and cities to race to the bottomthrough regressive taxation policies (Anyon, 1997). Deficit theorists place the blame for lowperformance on children and families while ignoring the problematic, ethnocentric, and oftenprofit-driven approach to school programming, curriculum negotiation, and textbook adoptionpractices. To this end, Massey, Charles, Lundy, and Fischer (2003) described the cultural deficitparadigm as “the simplest and most widely recognized explanation for poor academic perfor-mance” (p. 5). The theory is underpinned by a blame-the-victim rhetoric, in which the academicfailure of children is attributed to family and/or child deficits rather than understood as an out-growth of deep structural issues related to school funding mechanisms, regressive taxation policy,and/or a lack of opportunity.

Two examples of how deficit thinking undergirds the development of school policy from thekindergarten through Grade 12 arena well into higher education are Ruby Payne’s A Frameworkfor Understanding Poverty and Vincent Tinto’s first—and still very popular—attempt at anexplanation for student departure in higher education.

In the case of Ruby Payne’s work, which is more thoroughly treated and critiqued in Bomer,Dworin, May, and Semingson (2008) and Gorski (2006), one has a prime example of how per-sistent deficit thinking is in school practices. Through her aha! Process Payne claims to teach“in-service teachers how to understand and work with students who come from poverty” (Payne,2009, p. 1) Payne’s suggestions are filled with gross assumptions about poor, working-class fam-ilies. For example, one of the central pieces of Payne’s framework is a series of quizzes thatteachers and/or administrators are supposed to take in order to assess their readiness for workingwith poor students. The quizzes are grounded in what Payne refers to as the “hidden rules ofclass” (Payne, 2009, p. 4). Thus, the quizzes suggest that if one grows up in poverty, then he orshe will know how to “find the best rummage sales, locate grocery stores’ garbage bins that havethrown-away food, bail someone out of jail, get a gun, even if [one] has a record, and move in halfa day,” and so on (Payne, 2009) Poverty, from Payne’s perspective, is understood and analyzedas individual behaviors linked to “hidden rules” that one learns rather than an economic realitycaused by structural economic and political systems. Ignoring the responsibility and the ability ofeducators to engage in critical and transformative work, Payne isolates the condition of povertyas a result of dysfunctional family structure, violence, a lack of morals, criminality, and hiddenrules (Bomer et al., 2008).

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As if the uncritical and classist assumptions built into Payne’s work were not enough, Payne’swork has also been described as racist (Bomer et al., 2008; Gorski, 2006). In almost each sce-nario presented in Payne’s workbook troubled/in-crisis students are portrayed as people of color,as either African American or Latina/o, and often from female-headed households (Bomer et al.,2008; Gorski, 2006). Unfortunately, Bomer et al. (2008) found that a large number of publicschools have utilized Payne’s services and that this workshop is “central to district professionaldevelopment offerings in at least 38 states” (p. 2499). Teachers and staff who attend Payne’s pro-fessional development workshop receive an uncritical, conservative perspective of what is wrongwith children, not what is wrong with the system and how it might be transformed. In addition,Payne’s professional development workshop perpetuates the myth that minority parents do notcare and are not interested in their children’s education.

Deficit-based perspectives are also eminent in the U.S. approach to higher education. Take, forinstance, Tinto’s (1987) work on student success in higher education. One of the major studentsuccess theories deployed by higher education and student affairs professionals, Tinto’s studentdeparture theory is grounded in several deficit-based assumptions. Tinto’s general postulation isthat minority students must disconnect from their past in order to succeed academically. Tinto(1993) suggested, “In order to become fully incorporated in the life of the college, [students]have to physically as well as socially dissociate themselves from the communities of the past”(p. 96). To this end, the model consists of three phases of student integration: separation or dis-association from “(one’s) pre-college community”; “transition where students let go of their oldnorms and behavior and acquire new college norms and behaviors”; and finally “incorporation,”which “refers to the process of integrating yourself into various college communities” (Yosso,2005, p. 105).

Grounded in an assimilation/acculturation framework, Tinto’s model has been heavily crit-icized for its overt emphasis on integration; in fact, Tierney described it as “cultural suicide”(Chatman, 2002; Rendón, Jalomo, & Nora, 2004; Tierney, 1992; 1997; Yosso, 2005). Tierneystated that Tinto’s model demands that minority students adopt the culture, values, and ideasof mainstream university life, which, Tierney argued, are largely based on hegemonic idealsthat circulate around White male privilege in capitalist society. To exemplify how Tinto’s modeltranslates into practice, Tierney documented the following conversation between two White maleadministrators regarding the Native American student population at the institution where theywork:

They [Native American students] have a terrible problem with acculturation. They grow up withoutcompetition, and when they come here to a university whose ethic is achievement and competition,it’s tough. The other male answered: The major problem is that they have a foot in each culture thatdraws them back to their roots (Tierney, 1992, p. 613).

Challenging such deficit-based attitudes, Tierney argued that it is the job of the universityto find ways to capitalize on the cultural values that minority students may have to offer andto infuse campus life with them. Gloria, Castellanos, and Orozco (2005) also suggested thatuniversity officials, particularly in the area of student affairs, must implement programming thatis culturally competent, which means that programs should contain values and ideals that arefamiliar, relevant, and valuable to Latina/o students. It is important to note that Tinto’s modelmotivated several scholars to look into the experiences of minority students in higher educationand ultimately challenge Tinto’s work. Since then, Tinto has revised his work to consider how a

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more diverse higher education student population might navigate higher education, yet his initialmodel remains popular.

To summarize, cultural deficit thinking revolves around the idea that some students lackthe right kind of capital and that parents are often to blame for this gap. When institutionsadopt deficit-based thinking, teaching, and practices, they validate a narrow habit of life whilemarginalizing those who see, work, and live differently. Cultural deficit thinking allows edu-cation practitioners to focus on individual student and family situations while ignoring majorstructural inequities that contribute to situations. This results in institutional practices and poli-cies that demand change from individuals rather than from a system that is unfair and unjust.However, there is a growing body of research and work aimed at redefining cultural capital anddevoted to a larger mission of social justice for all.

COUNTERING THE DEFICIT PARADIGM

The literature that counters deficit thinking extends from thinkers like Friere (2004) in Pedagogyof the Oppressed to the more contemporary work of Yosso (2005, 2006), with her model of com-munity wealth. In general these works might be categorized as critical race theory. These are notculturally driven explanations that seek to establish one culture as better or more valuable thananother, nor are they intended to convey essentialist views about people of color. Instead, crit-ical race theorists focus on how race, class, property rights, and discourse converge to produceunequal, unjust, and marginalizing conditions for people of color. Drawing on a legal foundation,critical race theorists aim to challenge these conditions through various tenets. Solorzano (1998)categorized them as follows: (a) the intercentricity of race and racism with other forms of subor-dination; (b) challenge to dominant ideology; (c) commitment to social justice; (d) centrality ofexperiential knowledge; and (e) interdisciplinary approaches. As a whole, this framework aims toreveal the powerful disadvantages that people of color face in institutional settings held over bydominant and narrow ideologies. At the same time, this theoretical frame attempts to demonstratethe positive values and assets that people of color bring to the institutional table (Lareau, 2003;Romero, 2004; Valdés, 1996; Yosso, 2005, 2006). In other words, critical race theory providesthe framework to redefine cultural capital and aims to reshape policy, programming, and practicein education institutions.

For example, in Yosso’s (2005) book of counterstories, Las Madres, a community-basedorganization of parents and local citizens, discuss how they are often dismissed or assumedto be uninterested in their children’s education—a central tenet of deficit thinking concerningLatinas/os. However, these parents, a group composed mostly of mothers, come together to definethe ways in which they do support their children’s education. One mother mentions that when herdaughter returns home from college, she saves enough money to buy her laundry soap and gro-ceries to take back to college. Another mother expresses the value of learning consejos. To thisend, Delgado-Gaítan (1994) emphasized how consejos offer valuable learning opportunities forLatina/o children, explaining that consejos “are more than storytelling, it is problem solving” (p.59). Other supportive actions that emerged from Las Madres’ discussion include a father whobuilt a desk for his son and a mother who says that she enforces “quiet time” in the house whenher son begins his homework.

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Although many of the parents may not have understood the homework assignments becauseof their limited formal education, they expressed to their children, in intangible, idiosyncratic,but powerful and meaningful ways, that education is a priority. Yosso (2005) called these variousforms of support “community cultural wealth.” The model contains six forms of capital: aspi-rational, familial, social, navigational, resistant, and linguistic. The six forms are not “exclusiveor static, but rather are dynamic processes that build on one another as part of community cul-tural wealth” (Yosso, 2005, p. 77). Yosso’s work extends the funds of knowledge work by Mollsand colleagues (1992) by systematically naming and defining the cultural assets that Latina/ofamilies transfer to their children. However, as powerful and meaningful as community culturalwealth may be to Latina/o families and students, such resources have largely been missed ordismissed by school administrators and teachers who operate in institutions that are riddled withbiased conceptions of cultural capital.

Challenging deficit perspectives in higher education students, Yosso (2005) documented aconversation that occurred in a postsecondary classroom in which Chicano students themselvesrefuted the applicability of Tinto’s model to their own experience. Although the students agreedthat the college experience had influenced their views, they largely agreed that disassociationhad not been necessary for their successful transition. In fact, students discussed the importanceof their families and the communities from which they came in terms of their college-goingexperience. Students differentiated between acculturation and assimilation. They argued that“acculturation” or “adding what you have to the new situation” (p. 108) was a better descriptorfor their experience than assimilation and/or disassociation.

Building from Yosso’s (2005) work, I believe that counterstories must be shared to reshape thevision that many education leaders have about Latina/o families and students, especially whenit comes to the kind of programming that aims to build school–family relationships. Moreover,I believe that counterstories hold scores of power that can contribute to a deeper, more criticalanalysis of the ways in which Latinas and people of color still confront institutional racism andclassism that is manifested in education policy, programming, and practices. This study showsthat the assets that Latina/o students bring to the table must be recognized, understood, andvalidated. Moreover, the value that Latina/o families add to the lives of their children must beacknowledged and affirmed by education institutions.

METHODS

This work began in early 2006 when I interviewed 13 Latina faculty members at one public uni-versity. As a first-generation, first-year Latina doctoral student, I wanted to learn more about thehigher education experiences of other Latinas. Over the course of those interviews, it became evi-dent that the Latinas I spoke with drew support from places and people that are rarely cited in themainstream literature regarding student success. For example, the Latina women discussed formsof support, like faith-based routines, music, and especially close familial relationships, as tacit butformidable and irreplaceable forms of support. Despite the deficit rhetoric that Latino childrenand families are often consigned, family, especially parents, were reported as an important andconsistent source of support by the Latinas whom I interviewed.

This intrigued but did not shock me; I myself believe that my parents have been and continue tobe implicit to my own success. At the same time, I recall how uncomfortable it was for my mother

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to challenge or simply engage school officials if a situation arose at school. I also remember thatshe never involved herself in the parent–teacher association or at the school in general. I clearlyremember being one of few Latino children in a predominantly White school wondering why somany mothers often volunteered as classroom mothers, knowing my mom would never do sucha thing.

We struggled, as a family unit, in that predominantly White school through many difficultsituations—through blatant and covert acts of racism. When my kindergarten teachers thoughtthat I should be placed in special education because my last name was Gonzales, my parentsand I showed her that I could already read and write. Sadly, to this day I believe that one ofthe reasons that I was not placed in special education was because I knew no Spanish. In fact,my parents made sure to point out to my teachers that English was my first and only language.In other words, my parents saved me from being tracked into special education by pointing outhow Mexican I was not. I do not blame my parents for their decision; it was the only way theyknew how to shield me from an education system that was hostile to children like me. And yet Ihave always known how important my education was to my parents. I remember practicing myABCs with my mom when I was a small child, and I recall how my dad would tell me, “Hita,3

you can be anything you want. Just do good in school and you can do anything you want.” Mystory and the story of the 13 Latinas I interviewed contained what seem to be glimpses of differentkinds of cultural capital.

To learn more about these different kinds of cultural capital, I returned to three of the originalinterviewees to ask them to share a longer and broader view of their educational experience. Theinterviews were open ended and ethnographic in nature. The three interviewees were selectedbased on three criteria. First, each had received the vast majority of her education in U.S. insti-tutions. Second, each interviewee came from a family with a working-class background. Third,each of the three interviewees was a first-generation college student and graduate.4 This last fac-tor was important to consider given the fact that I was trying to better understand how Latinasmaneuver through schools when they do not have access to conventional forms of cultural capital,like parents who have experienced college.

The first interviewee, Dr. Garcia,5 came from a large family with 10 brothers and sisters.Her father completed 3 years of college and then went overseas with the military. Her mothergraduated as salutatorian from her high school. This interviewee said that there were years whenher parents did “really well [financially] and others not so well.”

The second interviewee, Professor Ruiz, was a senior lecturer and the daughter of immigrants.Professor Ruiz’s father obtained a fourth-grade education and worked as a roofer, whereas hermother, who completed high school, worked as a seamstress in factories once the family arrivedin the United States from Cuba.

The third interviewee, Dr. Muniz, lived in Juarez, Mexico, throughout her childhood and dur-ing her undergraduate years as well. Her parents ran a small business in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico,and she described her family’s economic position as “okay.” Dr. Muniz said that her father

3“Daughter.”4Two of the women mentioned that their fathers had some college, but no one’s parents had completed a college

degree.5All names are pseudonyms.

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completed some college, but when her parents married he left school in order to support thefamily.

In the following section I present a discussion of the data. It is organized around themesthat appeared frequently throughout the data. These themes were identified through a continualanalytical process such as that advanced by Charmaz (2006). Reviewing the transcripts, I iden-tified common practices or ideas and then organized those into larger themes. All of the themespointed to important forms of support that Latino families offered to these women in terms oftheir educational success. Each has implications for school policy, programming, and practices.

DISCUSSION

Evidence garnered through my research illustrates that the parents of the Latinas in this studycared deeply about education, to the point that education was conceptualized as a family, notjust an individual, goal or expectation. In other words, it took the work and sacrifice of entirefamilies to ensure that the children would attend school and college. With that being said, theLatinas themselves considered their own educational advancements as advancements for thewhole family. I showcase instances in which parents and families chipped in in small but mean-ingful ways to the success of their children; in which parents made whatever sacrifices necessaryto pay tuition for their daughters; and in which parents provided study spaces and study time fortheir children despite having younger children who would otherwise have preferred noisy, playfulatmospheres.

In general, the discussion of cultural values and lessons confronts major assumptions that arebuilt into many of the deficit-based policies, practices, and methods that are in place today. TheLatinas I spoke with took cultural values and practices like compassion, community, selflessness,and a strong work ethic, all of which were nurtured by their parents, and used them as guidingpoints throughout their educational and professional endeavors. Mobilizing their unique “cul-tural wealth” (Yosso, 2005), these Latinas speak to the power and the solid foundation that theirfamilies, especially their parents, provided for them.

Education: An Expectation, a Family Goal

From the beginning of this study, the Latina women I interviewed described education as aparental expectation. Dr. Muniz said that she recognized education as a priority because her par-ents “strategized” to ensure that she and her younger brother received the best education possible.She explained that her parents organized their entire lives around their children’s education. Forinstance, Dr. Muniz’s family lived in Juarez, Mexico; this is where their home was, their jobswere, and most of their family resided. However, on a daily basis Dr. Muniz’s mother woulddrive her and a younger brother over to a city in Texas so that they could attend American schools,where Dr. Muniz’s parents believed their children would receive a better education. “The hour-long drive every morning and evening was well worth it in [my] parents’ eyes.” Dr. Muniz said,“Some families value hard work. Some value economic achievement—my family valued educa-tion.” She went on to say that “they would say you are not expected to do anything in the house,

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you’re not expected to do work, you are not expected to clean the house . . . because we knowthat you have to study.”

Dr. Muniz’s parents turned several deficit-based stereotypes on their heads. For one, Latina/oparents are often depicted as uninterested in education, especially when it comes to young Latinadaughters. Moreover, Dr. Muniz’s story resembled the sort of “concerted cultivation” that Lareau(2003) described in Unequal Childhoods. Drawing largely from Bourdieu’s theory of culturalcapital, Lareau (2003) explained that middle- and upper-middle-class parents tended to “orga-nize” their lives around their children’s academic careers. Although Dr. Muniz’s parents were notwealthy and neither had completed a college education, they strived to give her every opportunitythrough strategic planning and sacrifice.

Education as a family expectation was also central to Dr. Garcia’s experience. Dr. Garciasaid that continuing education after high school was “just expected.” Her parents would say,“We are counting on you.” In the first interview Dr. Garcia explained how she and each of hersiblings attended a local private school, for which her parents paid. She was not sure how theyhad managed because some years “they did really well [financially] and others not so well.”Realizing that paying private tuition was a major sacrifice for her parents, Dr. Garcia knew thather educational success would be a success for the entire family. Dr. Garcia also described howher parents supported her throughout her higher education experience. With a twinkle in her eyeand a softening voice, she told me, “My mother used to type my papers for me” because “[she]knew I was running myself ragged between work and my studies.” Dr. Garcia went on to explainthat she had done the same for her own daughter when she had entered college.

Professor Ruiz knew that education was important to her parents because they alwaysreminded her and her siblings that education was “key” to a better, more secure life. ProfessorRuiz said, “We [she and her siblings] knew that we were being held to a very high standard andbecause they [her parents] were role models for us in terms of how hard they worked, we knewthat’s what they expected of us [in terms of education].” She stated that as Cuban immigrants,her parents were very unfamiliar with the U.S. school system, yet there was always a familialcommitment “to [making] sure that there was enough food on the table, that there was enoughto pay the rent, that there was enough to make sure the children could go to school to get aneducation.”

When Professor Ruiz did decide to pursue a college education, her father said, “I’m really gladyou want to go to college, but I can’t help you financially.” However, Professor Ruiz recognized,and recognizes still today, the enormous monetary contribution that her parents did make to hercollege education. She commented, “If I had had to live on campus for four years . . . It was anincredible contribution and it was a sacrifice at the same time! They had two other kids at homeat the time!” Professor Ruiz discussed how once she was accepted to the state college, about40 miles away, her mother bought a desk for her and placed it in the family room. She recalledhow her mother would ask her younger sisters to be quiet so that she could study.

Understanding education as a family goal or perhaps even more as a family sacrifice signalsthe fact that these parents were deeply invested in and committed to their children’s educationalfutures. Despite the lack of familiarity of some parents with the school system, education wasdefinitely an expectation. How these parents expressed this expectation differed, but for the mostpart the expression could be detected in the ways in which the parents organized their lives, suchas in the case of Dr. Muniz’s mother driving Dr. Muniz back and forth each day so that shecould attend an American school. Also, the case of Professor Ruiz’s parents is a good example of

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familial support and sacrifice: They sheltered, clothed, and fed her for an additional 4 years whileshe attended college.

Beyond the very practical forms of support that these Latina/o parents offered their daughters,I wanted to know whether and how culturally grounded values or lessons aided these Latinasthroughout their school experiences. Therefore, I asked the interviewees to describe or definesome of the most important values that their families instilled in them and to consider whetherand how these values shaped their educational experiences and/or served as positive influencesin their lives.

The Place of Culture

A major part of this project was to think about culture and cultural capital in new and extendedways. Thus, in asking these Latina women to describe their culture, I hoped to understand whattheir culture meant to them, what role it had played in their lives, and whether it had been apositive influence in terms of their educational experience. Dr. Garcia explained the values of herculture beautifully. Much of what she said mimicked what Dr. Muniz and Professor Ruiz offeredas well. Of cultural values and lessons Dr. Garcia said the following:

Faith and family . . . this life of faith, not only a faith-filled life, but what does that really imply? Partof what that means is that it is not about you. You know, it’s about doing for others, really focusingon trying to be there for others and really this is very much, what my parents, particularly my mother[taught us], you know the most valuable work you can do is work helping others. So, this notion ofpersonal enrichment was never . . . it was about doing for others.

Thus, a few of the most important lessons and values that Dr. Garcia extracted from her cul-tural upbringing included a strong sense of community and selflessness. This sense of communitywas an important value to all three interviewees. These three women took devotion to their fami-lies and to their Latina/o communities and shaped successful academic and professional careers.The more mainstream notions of individualism and competition did not serve as the spring-board to success for these women; in fact, their school and work lives were deeply groundedin cooperation, interdependence, and selflessness.

Dr. Garcia elaborated about the ways in which her sense of community had influenced herschool and life experiences in positive ways. She said, “I remember telling my [PhD] advisor,look this is not about me becoming a full faculty member . . . my work is about getting moreChicano kids in school . . . my work has always been clearly defined . . . ” Still today, Dr. Garciais deeply involved in improving access to education and the quality of education within Latina/ocommunities.

Similarly, Professor Ruiz’s work is oriented toward serving a community, a student popula-tion that she “identifies” and “empathizes” with. In our first interview Professor Ruiz describedher students as “her heroes” because she understood the struggles that Latina/o students faceas they traverse higher education.6 Connecting this sense of community to her cultural upbring-ing, Professor Ruiz said, “When I think about my culture . . . I think of this sense of mutual

6The university at which the interviewees worked is a majority Hispanic institution. More than 80% of the studentsare from a Spanish-speaking ethnic background.

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responsibility that [Latina/o] families have, I think culturally to take care of each other.” Lateron Professor Ruiz said the following:

I think that when within the family there is such a focus on taking care of each other, that once youare an adult and you move out to the greater world, the greater community, this extends to the peopleyou come into contact with, the same sense of responsibility.

Dr. Muniz also talked about her work as being driven by a sense of community. What isinteresting is that Dr. Muniz distinguished between education and schooling to explain howher cultural upbringing fostered an educative process that she believes has been implicit to hersuccess. She said the following:

Schooling and education is not the same thing—it is not. I mean schooling was not the best qualityin my experience, I was not getting the best schooling possible, the kind that would have taken meto Stanford. But I was provided an education with my parents nurturing the value of learning . . .

I had an education and that education helped me to succeed in college . . . Education not only inan academic sense, in a more holistic sense, in being a good human being, in being a good citizen,someone who sympathizes, someone who is committed to community, who cares for our community.

This education that Dr. Muniz spoke about is often referred to as educación in the literature(Valdés, 1996; Yosso, 2005, 2006). Educación is a form of education that denotes one’s respectfor family, for tradition, for pride in one’s community. It is a way of life that many Latina/ofamilies strive to instill in their children.

By holding tightly to the value of community and conceptualizing their own educationalachievement as one of greater social good, these women shaped successful academic careers,both as students and as members of the academy. Despite theories like Tinto’s, which recom-mend that students cut ties with their communities of origin, and despite academics like RichardRodriguez or even commentators like Linda Chavez (1991), who suggest that minorities haveno choice but to assimilate if they intend to be successful, these women managed to use severalcomponents of their community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2006) in shaping their story of success.To this end, Margolis and Romero (1998) found that women of color “struggled to maintain tiesto their communities of origin and to keep a focus on social action” (p. 10). Resistance requiresworking hard, and one of the cultural lessons that these Latinas discussed extensively was theability and willingness to do just that.

Work Ethic

Community was definitely an important value to the three Latina interviewees, but how one worksto ensure the security and mobility of one’s family and community requires a strong work ethic.When asked to describe the most important lessons that her parents taught her, Professor Ruizsaid, “I would say the value of hard work, the value of meeting your commitments . . .” Sheelaborated as follows:

You know you see your mother, for example getting up at dawn, making breakfast for three girls, youknow, getting to the factor by eight, and then getting home at five to make dinner, and then sewingclothes for the kids . . . looking after the spiritual and physical support of the children . . . I thinkthese values, you just learn them and carry them with you.

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Dr. Garcia also spoke extensively about the strong work ethic that her parents instilled in her.She, like Professor Ruiz, made special reference to her mother, saying, “My mother could doanything, and I think she gave us the impression that we could do anything . . . She was a strongbeliever in very hard work, and I think that that was very important to us.” After the interview Dr.Garcia continued to talk about the influence her mother had on her life, saying, “She was harddriven; sweet, but hard driven.” She described her mother as a driving inspiration behind her ownsuccess.

To see and hear that these values are part of the Latina/o cultural fabric reaffirms the idea thatthese Latina/o families, parents in particular, can positively inspire and motivate their children tosucceed. Moreover, a strong work ethic is beneficial to those in academia. Sotello Viernes Turner,Myers, and Creswell (1999) found that faculty of color find themselves working exceptionallyhard for two reasons. First of all, as minorities in academia, they feel that they must prove them-selves and demonstrate that they have been hired based on their qualifications rather than thecolor of their skin, last name, or so on. Second, faculty of color must work exceptionally hardbecause they often have additional expectations placed on them because of their minority status.For example, one Latina faculty member in Turner’s study said, “[I am] expected to represent thewhole ethnic group—a burden that white faculty members are free from” (Sotello Viernes Turner,2002, p. 42). Such additional expectations piled onto teaching and research commitments resultin overextended and overworked minority faculty members. Nonetheless, given the commitmentthat many faculty of color, including the interviewees in this project, feel for their community, astrong work ethic is necessary for the workload that they are likely to face as minorities in theprofessions.

Disfrutando—Enjoying Life, Family, and Friends

One of the most important values that surfaced through the interviews was the importance ofbeing a hard worker, but working hard was to be balanced by maintaining close ties with fam-ily and friends and enjoying life. This “orientation,” as Dr. Garcia called it, diverges somewhatfrom the contemporary helter-skelter work pace that most Americans bear out. Each of the inter-viewees, but especially Dr. Garcia and Dr. Muniz, strove to strike a balance between their workand their personal life by maintaining close connections with family and friends. This nurturingof relationships is often referred to as familismo and/or personalismo (Gloria, Castellanos andOrozco, 2005).

Dr. Garcia was clearest on the issue. She said, “Los Americanos viven para trabajar—Nostrostrabajamos para vivir.”7 Dr. Garcia spoke about the importance of spending time with family andtruly enjoying one another’s company. Dr. Garcia said that she refused to talk about the detailsof work at home. This was a lesson that she attributed to her parents, who worked very hard butmade time to enjoy themselves as well as the fruits of their labor.

In the first interview Dr. Muniz also mentioned how her relationships with family and friendskept her balanced. She said, “Academia is important, but I don’t want to marry the university.” Inthe later interview Dr. Muniz described how she had looked forward to Christmas break during

7“Americans live to work, and we work to live.”

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graduate school as an opportunity to recharge and spend time with family. Describing gradu-ate school as somewhat alienating, Dr. Muniz appreciated the opportunity to reconnect with herfamily during this break. Spending time with family and friends provided a sort of groundingmechanism for these women.

WORKING FROM A NEW PERSPECTIVE

The women interviewed for this project site discussed many ways in which their parents encour-aged and supported their educational advancement from kindergarten through age 20. Forexample, the tight-knit families, which acted as one unit so that each child could attend school,signaled to these women that education was an important priority and one that their family sac-rificed for. These were parents who organized their entire lives so that they could offer theirchildren opportunities to earn the best education possible, such as Dr. Muniz’s mother, whodrove Dr. Muniz into the United States on a daily basis for seven straight years, or ProfessorRuiz’s parents, who allowed Professor Ruiz to live at home throughout college while they strug-gled to provide for their two additional school-age daughters. Not once did these women frametheir culture or their cultural upbringing as a deficit but instead as a defining characteristic thatallowed them to be successful, compassionate individuals and professionals.

Dr. Garcia, describing her culture as faith and family, said that these two components shapedher life. Living a life of faith meant that “the most important work [she] can do is work for others,”and she molded an extremely successful career of doing just that. To balance her life Dr. Garciamade sure to take time to enjoy family “en disfrutando!”

Professor Ruiz said that her work has largely been defined by a sense of mutual responsibility,which her family nurtured. Ruiz said that when there is such a focus within the family “to takecare of one another,” then that focus tends to seep into the way an individual lives out his or herlife overall. This is another example of how being selfless can also lead one to be successful.

When I asked Dr. Muniz to talk to me about her cultural upbringing, she simply said,“Education.” She went on to explain, though, that education was more holistic than the school-ing process alone. Dr. Muniz believed that had she relied on the schooling process alone, shewould not be the PhD-holding Latina that she is today. Education, for Dr. Muniz, was more thanacademics; it was intimately tied to the cultural values that her parents nurtured. It was respect,compassion, and being a good citizen.

The Latina women I interviewed took cultural values and lessons and used them throughouttheir educational experience. All three women believed that one’s work should extend beyondpersonal enrichment, and at the same time one’s commitment to his or her work should be strong.Working hard must be balanced, and these women relied on the comfort of their families to assistthem in this balancing act.

Theories of cultural deprivation and deficit thinking fail to take into account the rich insightsthat Latina/o children can exhume from their home lives. As scholars, we must seek out anduncover the tacit but powerful forms of support that can be drawn from the cultural wealth thatLatina/o students and their families possess. How can we do this, though? At a moment in timewhen we are driven by a measurement mentality, how can education leaders work with such tacitforms of cultural capital? Next I share how I have worked with others to apply insights like theones gained from this project in a school setting.

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Application

In my current work at a local school I have had the privilege of developing—in conjunction withparents, teachers, and administrators—a unique parent partnership program grounded in research.Located in one of the poorest zip codes in the United States, with a population that is almost100% Mexican or Mexican American, our school is committed to resisting the traditional statusquo approach to parent–school relationships. As a school we have committed to the notion that allparents care about their children’s education, even if we cannot see it in ways that we expect to.

To this end, administrators, teachers, and staff are engaged in what we call “self-work.” Self-work demands that we recall our own stories and that we confront our own positions of power byasking ourselves the following: How did we get to where we are today? We must humbly considerthe various ways that we have been helped. This means talking about the advantages (even micro-advantages) that we were afforded and that others were not. Self-work helps us move beyond thesituational and look at the structural.

We are doing this in many ways: Teachers participate in reading groups in which selectedbooks and readings expose institutional racism, sexism, and classism. We have transformed thehome visit to scheduled social calls in which teachers take snacks to share; are expected tocommunicate—as best they can—in the parents’ native language; and share about their own fam-ilies, children, and lives. Gone are the days of the punitive home visit with its needs assessmentsand checklists.

It is only when we open the doors to our schools and classrooms in real, meaningful, andauthentic ways that we can transform relationships with parents. This means asking parents toengage in a reciprocal partnership of learning and support. For instance, not only does the schooloffer educational and leadership development opportunities to parents, but we ask parents to teachus. Resources and time are made available to parents who are ready and willing to share theirtalents, skills, and experience with the school. We have parents who teach knitting and paintingto one another. Parents have demonstrated to children how to make paletas and pastelitas whileteachers reinforce the math and science that is involved in such activities.

How one becomes educated, in the sense that Dr. Muniz discussed, is through the nurtur-ing support of parents who care, parents who remind their children of the importance of familyand hard work, and parents who are invested in the life success of their children. Teachers andadministrators must find ways to validate such support—as tacit as it may be. The education ofthe Latina women I interviewed is an accomplishment for their parents, one that they should becredited for. The only way this can be done is if we acknowledge and take the power that ourcredentials afford us and use it as transformative, reflective practitioners.

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