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e i g h t CHICANA / O STUDENT EDUCATIONAL EMPOWERMENT The students themselves spent a great deal of time making suggestions about how to address the needs they laid out in our discussions. Mari’s suggestions in the following interview excerpt unpacked much of what has been covered in the first two sections of this book: I’d reinvent the whole school system. Make sure there’s mentors there and have people that care. And I don’t want any teachers that are too tired to teach kids. If they don’t wanna teach, just quit the job, find something else, weed ’em out. Have people that care and make sure even to reach out to the cholitos. They’re good people too. . . . They have respect and it’s in there, and a lot of people don’t see that. And it pisses me off when some of the teachers are gonna right away judge them. These are good kids. But if you’re gonna judge ’em wrong, of course they’re gonna retaliate against you. So para mí [for me] that’s a big thing, ’cause I guess that’s why I wanna go to high school, [to] grab some of those kids, sit their butts down, and tell ’em. As mentioned in Chapter 4, Mari wanted to see schools that care for and nurture Chicana/o students. As her first sentence above suggests, attaining this goal is a difficult task that requires, in her eyes, a reinvention of the entire school system. In the introduction this was a pivotal issue, because much of the past research on Chicana/o schooling relies heavily on proposals for dramatic, systemic change to address Chicana/o students ’ educational needs. Schools are not the only site from which Chicana/o empowerment might emerge, however. This chapter focuses on the multiple strategies for addressing the needs of Chicana/o students that have been uncovered 251 08-T3261 3/22/05 1:22 PM Page 251 t r a n s f o r m i n g s c h o o l l i v e s throughout this book. The students described realistic ways of addressing Chicana/o students’ needs that individuals, communities, and even schools can initiate immediately. This chapter presents issues relevant to parents, teachers, and peers who want to help Chicana/o students, and then it emphasizes an intervention program that can more comprehensively assist Chicana/o youth in empowering themselves. These ideas are presented in such a way that they can be adopted immediately by Chicana/o youth and their communities in any context. The process described is powerful because it not only allows students to address the issues covered in this book but also helps them develop strategies for meeting the many needs they might have in schools. P A R E N T S A N D F A M I LY Despite the traditional portrayal of Mexican parents as unconcerned about education, this was rarely the case among the families of students who participated in these two projects. In fact, parents were often Chicana/o students’ strongest supporters or motivators for school success . The students discussed two kinds of familial support. The first, and the most common, is observational influences. Many students find motivation and strength from seeing the struggles and commitment of their families to provide their children with opportunities to achieve success. Parents who strive to motivate their children should know that just by setting an example of hard work and commitment to helping the family, they are having an important effect on their children. Even more helpful to students is direct influence; when parents reinforce these messages by explaining their own struggles and the need for their children to take advantage of all the educational opportunities they might have. This direct influence does not require that parents have succeeded in or completed school themselves, but simply that they make it a conscious part of their parenting to reinforce the importance of school with their children. This type of support is extremely helpful to Chicana/o youth. Parents of Chicana/o youth are often burdened with multiple jobs and a great deal of stress in their efforts to support their families. For many of them, providing an observational influence and an occasional direct reinforcement are all that they can do. Parents should know, however, that their children often need other kinds of help too. In particular, Chicana/o...

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