Quinn Kendall
June 4, 2024
Las Vegas Valley Family Portrait: A Field-Based Activity Reflection
I attempted to choose two very different families to interview for this assignment. The first family I found thanks to my friend and fellow teacher who previously took your class and is currently fairly affluent. The second family that I interviewed was a family I had frequent contact with throughout the past school year, their daughter belonging to the neighborhood assigned to Jim Bridger Middle School. I asked both families questions from the suggested list and focused on individual experiences with education, family values, cultural background, professions of the adults, and current quality of life. I tried to keep my language inclusive in case either family fell into nontraditional categories and was careful not to make assumptions about the caregivers’ identities, based on the information in chapter nine of our textbook which expands the definitions of family.
The first family interviewed currently resides in Henderson, Nevada, and has lived there for six years, emphasizing education and social activities for their children. Despite mixed ethnic backgrounds, they primarily identify as White, with the children being ¼ Mexican, ¼ Japanese, and ½ White. The eldest daughter feels more comfortable identifying as White than her Mexican heritage, possibly influenced by societal stereotypes. The father, raised bilingual, no longer speaks Spanish, and the mother, though of Japanese descent, never felt connected to her heritage. The family doesn’t celebrate ethnic holidays except for the mother’s Japanese New Year’s gathering. Despite living in a neighborhood dubbed “Hender-tucky,” they enjoy their newly built home and are affluent, with the father working as a physician assistant and the mother as a stay-at-home mom. The interview revealed that belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was a large part of the family’s identity.
Our conversation led me to believe that their racial identity choice is influenced by race, social class, and upbringing. If the family identifies and presents as white, then they likely will experience fewer effects of the white supremacy embedded in the school system. These conclusions are influenced by the hurdles described in the assigned article, as a family being white-passing might easily take advantage of the privilege that comes with being perceived as white due to the societal benefits of identifying as such. This key point also influenced my decision to interview families from such different backgrounds.
The second family that I interviewed consisted of a mother and daughter, both Black. The mother teared up when I asked her to describe her family and eventually I told her we didn’t have to directly answer that question. While the mother of the first family had ample time to be involved in the children’s education because she was a stay at home mother, the mother of the second family has not been as lucky. Her work schedule can be unpredictable, even resulting in our interview being rescheduled a few times. She also mentioned that when she was in school, most of her teachers were white, and most of her daughter’s teachers are white as well. This reflects the findings of the high school critical race article where they say that Families of Color typically view teaching as a “White Profession.” The mother actually completed most of her education in California. She moved to Las Vegas at 16 and when she entered her first high school, quickly realized that Nevada had lower standards for education and chose to complete her GED rather than stay in school for her junior and senior years. She currently works at a bakery and had never considered the field of education for her or her daughter.
I wanted to hear more of this family’s story because they came to mind when I remembered a second key point, that “one of the most prevalent, thus familiar, master narrative about Families of Color is that they do not care about their children’s education simply because they are not physically present in schools.” This statement could not be further from the truth with the second family. Even the mother’s diligence in attending an interview with me showed how much she cares about her daughter, despite the fact that next year I will not be her math teacher anymore. I assured her that my door would always be open to assist her daughter in any of her subjects in the following year and that I hoped her daughter would come and continue to tell me about her weekends and educational progress.
My third key point related to where children head after PK-12 education. The article’s data showed that, “Families of Color positively influence the college and career decisions of Youth of Color despite their marginalization.” I found that both families had aspirations for their children to attend some form of education after high school. The privilege of the first family and the ability to give so much time to their children’s education places college as an expectation rather than a hope in their family. The situation of the second family, however, suggested that even though college is the goal for her daughter, her daughter’s poor performance in school and the family’s financial situation act as barriers for the goal to come to fruition. Indeed, later the article agreed that amongst the families that they studied, many participants “described relentlessly encouraging their children to pursue their aspirations, no matter what.” I feel that in the second family, it is clear that the mother facilitates an environment of encouragement for her daughter, refusing to give up despite the current difficulties of her daughter’s attendance record and grade reports.
I learned that the two families had very different school journeys. The first family had easy access to teachers. They also have the time and finances required to make sure that their children have stability at home so that education can be a priority. The first family has two college-educated parents, while the second family has none. The second family has struggled with an unsupportive school system, where teachers who are willing to take the time to educate their daughter, who has a tendency to misbehave or disengage, are hard to find. Most of her behavior issues occur from a desire to fit in, which our textbook says is common. It is possible that the historical implications of racism on the current structure of society influence the second family’s experience of education, as suggested in the Yasso article.
The first family described a well-educated child as one that makes good grades, maintains hobbies and skills, takes time to study, and attends and completes at least a college degree. The second family said that a well-educated child would be one who could go to college if they chose who did well in their classes. Both families had similar descriptions of a well-educated child and both mentioned grades as being an indicator of success, supporting chapter eight of our textbook.
The first family expects each child to attend college, while the second family has more short-term aspirations, which is for their daughter to finish high school with all of the credits needed–as such, for her to also finish middle school and make up for her failed courses. The second family expressed their highest hopes being college eventually for their daughter. This comparison reminded me of one of the articles which mentions that, “although on the surface public schools claim to inspire ‘college-for-all’ messages, by the time Students of Colour enter high school, most have received subtle and overt discouraging messages about pursuing college from their peers, teachers, and counselors.”
The first family identified more with religion for their home culture than either of their ethnic backgrounds. They described a culture of helping each other, and of doing good things to try to be good people. They said that attending church was a large part of their culture, along with healthy lifestyle choices. The second family exclusively mentioned religion when I asked about their culture, although currently they are not practicing.
The first family did not struggle in navigating the educational system in Southern Nevada. They bought a house near a high-rated public school system in Henderson and their children have been doing well in the system and seem to have thoughtful and caring teachers. The second family had no trouble with the daughter in elementary school, but something shifted when she entered middle school. Behavior problems began being a regular problem, and she previously did very well in school but her grades began to decline. She failed all of her seventh grade classes and will be repeating seventh grade this year, because she hasn’t been going to summer school. The mother thinks that the neighborhood kids have been influencing her daughter, and she is eager to move closer to Summerlin and Centennial when her lease is up in September. She hopes that leaving the North Las Vegas schools will help her daughter return to what she used to be regarding education and behavior.
The families had a similar idea on what parental involvement and family engagement with education looked like. Both families said that it was a family that valued education and took the time to make sure that their children were on track to do well in their classes and who took the time to contact the schools. However, the level that each family could engage differed. The first family’s mother, as a stay-at-home parent, plays a key role in monitoring her children’s education, attending parent-teacher conferences, and ensuring they meet academic expectations. Involvement for them means assisting with homework, ensuring progress, and communicating regularly with teachers, with consequences at home for not meeting rigorous standards. Conversely, the second family faces barriers to involvement. The mother’s work schedule conflicts with school meeting times, and she struggles to contact her daughter’s teachers. While she wishes she could be more present to support her daughter academically, her job demands make it unrealistic. She believes teachers’ engagement is crucial for her daughter’s success, as she feels unable to provide adequate support on her own.
The families had the least to say about multicultural education. The first family vaguely thought that it was important to make sure that students learn about other cultures, but seemed to believe that it was the job of history classes to educate students about other cultures. The second family was unsure what I meant. When I described my perspective on what multicultural education was–general knowledge passed on to individuals to make sure that they understand historical inequity based on race and individual culture, in education with the goal of creating spaces where every child can learn–the mother was in support of the idea, but unsure how the information could be widely spread. I described the example lessons from the textbook about incorporating Cambodia into all classes as a way to vary cultural exposure, which she found very interesting and appealing as a form of education. She personally had not experienced a classroom that prioritized education of other cultures, but felt she might have had more success in school in a classroom that valued cultural diversity.
Overall, both families clearly value education. However, one family has the privilege of being white-passing, has financial resources to spare, and has assimilated into the traditional, suburban lifestyle, has an address with a good district-assigned school, and has the time to be heavily involved in their children’s education, while the other has to balance her job and being a full-time parent to a child with behavior issues and problems skipping class, somewhat influenced by an unstable home environment at least partially caused by perpetual poverty. The families both have high hopes for their children to succeed, but the juxtaposition between the two demonstrates all of the trends we have been studying in this course and discussed in the assigned article as issues leading back to a family’s identified race, which as demonstrated in the second family, heavily influence the amount of barriers to success in a country with chronic societal racism. It reminds me of the Yasso article, where it debates the merits of a community of financial wealth having access to better education, and discusses the impact of this while acknowledging the unique benefits other cultures bring to their children’s education, too.
The biggest thing that I learned from this activity is that the issue of racial inequity is still very prevalent in education, especially in the community that I teach. I plan to take on more of the burden of contacting families, to try to have as many as possible communicate with me about their children as possible, and also be flexible about the times to communicate with them even when the school is not, so that work schedules do not have to stand in the way of parents knowing about where their children stand with their performance in my class. I already use the app Talking Points to contact families in bulk via text, but I can utilize this resource more often for weekly check-ins with the families who are able without it costing much extra time after contract hours. I think the biggest way to bridge the educational gap is by communicating more with families and learning about where they come from culturally just as we had to do for this activity.
References
Marrun, Norma A., Plachowski, Tara J., Mauldin, De’Ana R., & Clark, Christine. “‘Teachers Don’t Really Encourage it’: A Critical Race Theory Analysis of High School Students’ of Color Perceptions of the Teaching Profession.” Multicultural Education Review (2021).
Marrun, Norma A., Rodriguez-Campo, Marcela, Plachowski, Tara J., & Clark, Christine. “Divergent Values: A Family Critical Race Theory Analysis of Families of Color and Their Perceptions of Teachers and Teaching as a Profession.” Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education 20, no. 3 (2021): 11-36.
Nieto, Sonia, and Patty Bode. Affirming diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education . 7th ed. Hoboken, New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2012.
Yosso, Tara J.. “Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth.” Race Ethnicity and Education 8, no. 1 (March 2005): 69-91.
Quinn Kendall, Educator 