Gerardo R. López, Ph.D. Vanessa A. Vazquez, M.A. Indiana University

1. “They Don’t Speak English” Interrogating racist ideologies and perceptions of school personnel in a Midwestern state Gerardo R. López, Ph.D. Vanessa A. Vazquez, M.A. Indiana University

2. Demographic Overview • Indiana has witnessed a healthy growth in the number of Latina/o workers– particularly in the last 20 years. • According to the US Census, the Hispanic population in Indiana grew from 87,047 in 1980 to 214,536 in 2000 (estimated 242,518 people in 2004) • The majority of these individuals (71%) are of Mexican decent.

3. What are the challenges for schools? • Home factors • Language • Tenuous immigration status • Low levels of prior schooling • Health/immunization issues • Identity issues • School factors • Inadequate knowledge of Latina/o culture • Inadequate knowledge of ESL/Bilingual Education approaches • Insufficient resources to address needs • Student placement issues

4. Background of Study • Emerged from a larger study of Latina/o parents and how they understood and interpreted “involvement.” • Interviewed teachers, administrators, and other school personnel about the challenges they face when working with the Latina/o community • Quickly realized that school personnel held particular beliefs about Latina/o families; beliefs that were “noble” and/or “righteous” on the surface, but emerged from a deeper racialized logic about language and culture

5. Speaking in Code • “Things are different now…” • References to a mythologized past • “Proxies” for the Latina/o community • Mobility • Low SES • Single Parents • Larger Class Sizes • Researchers needed to decipher the codes that school personnel were speaking

6. Method • Qualitative Research • Three Latina/o-impacted districts: • Small Midwestern school district (student population= 10,665) • Rural school district (Student population= 6, 571) • Large Urban District (Student population=38,931) • Schools • High Schools: N=4 • Middle Schools: N=2 • Elementary Schools: N= 3 • Semi-structured interviews • Teachers: N=14 • Administrators: N=8 • School Personnel: N=6 • Observations, interviews, group interviews, on-the-spot interviews, fieldnotes

7. Initial Findings • Language as barrier • Needs specialists become “experts” • Construction of parents, especially Latina/o parents as “good” and “bad”

8. Language as barrier • I: [With] regards to your Latino students…do you see parents being involved? • T: [W]e are working on getting the parents to help more at home because to this child we’re saying “you need to practice this or you need to practice that” or we’ll send things home, and [get no response]. I did have a conference with a Latino dad. Dad came to conference, mom didn’t come. I think because of work. But, the student [would] say: “My mom don’t know English, my mom don’t know English. My mom can’t help me, my mom don’t know English.” • I: Is all the work in English? • T: Well…yeah, the things she needs to learn are. I mean she needs to learn her shapes in English and her letters in English, and those things. But she has an older brother and dad who speaks in English. So there’s probably some way to work it out, you know. But we are probably going to have to meet with them or handle it differently, or you know, something like that. But it’s been really interesting to watch the families. You know, each work it out the best they can. And, and they do show interest, they do care, But they are things that slip through the crack because I don’t speak Spanish. I cannot begin to write my newsletter in Spanish. And I wish I could. I wish I spoke Spanish. I wish I could translate everything because it would simplify things a lot. But, that’s just not realistic.

9. Needs specialist become experts • I: Tell me about those recess problems. • T: fights, lots of fights. And kicking and just, I mean, you know, blows. And we had just never allowed fighting in our playground or anything like that. And they [Latinas/os] really felt like if somebody just barely brushed up against them or something like that, you got in their space and they felt like they wanted to solve it right there. We had a lot of fights. • I: Was there kind of a trend? • T: It wasn’t. It was, in a sense. It was not racial. It was more of just, I just think that Hispanic children have always been taught to stand up for yourself and if somebody doesn’t fight fair or whether it be soccer or whether it be coming down the slide and they bump into you, then it’s not necessarily, you know, you got in their space…But I just think, we did have a lot of fighting and that was really mostly because the Hispanic children tended to stay together was really among each other and not so much, you know, with white [children], you know Hispanic children fighting back and forth. • I: And what did you do as a school do to begin to address that? • T: We brought well, again, language was a barrier, so we did bring, the ESL teacher. She came out to recess duty for a while. And she work with them to kind of establish, procedure again. Like if somebody does take something, or bump into you, or you don’t think is playing fair, that you come and get the teacher and let them help solve the problem. So she came out to recess and that greatly helped. It also helped that she covered some of those things within her class. Then I think to just how, it’s just how, that we have [dealt with it]...

10. Construction of “good” & “bad” parents • I: How does [your school], build opportunities for parent involvement? • T: …I’m not sure if we have like a lot of parents, or you know where parents can come. I know a lot of schools will do like reading nights or math nights or anything like that, but we’ve not really done anything like that. And I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that we’re thinking “are we wasting our time? Are parents going to come?” Because in the past they haven’t. • I: What leads you to believe that the turn out won’t be good? • T: …Well we sent home slips of papers saying “this is the time that we would like to schedule you, can you make it?” and a lot of time I won’t get those back! And you can try calling parents, [but] there’s never a good time for them. So it’s, trying to work with two different schedules you know. I think from teacher to teacher, you know [we communicate], “these people, you know this family they usually don’t show.” And sometimes you know the parents will show, but usually you kind of have an idea of who’s not going to come and, and be a part of the conferences. • I: How do you think the school sees the role of the parent? • T: We hope that they’re making sure the homework is being done, that they’re eating right, that they’re going to bed at a decent time , you know? I think that the mental image of what a parent should be. And I think , that [with] the demographics we have here, a lot of times we can’t see that. We know that’s not happening in everyone’s house…I think knowing, just knowing, the parents are going to be supportive--that if there is a problem, are the parents are going to be there to back their children to make sure they have loving and nurturing environment to go home to? I think parents are, you know the most important thing in the child’s life. And, you know, I think a lot of students here don’t go home feeling that way.

11. Analysis & Discussion • Diffusion of responsibility • Language as “problem” or “barrier” • Kids have barrier not schools • Its not “their” problem • Pass buck to specialized school personnel • Certain things that are beyond a school’s control (e.g., economic factors, cultural factors, etc.) • When all else fails, blame parents • They can understand parents, but still blame them for not getting involved (involvement=caring) • Parents need to do their “share”

12. Analysis & Discussion Perception of neutrality • Educators & schools see themselves as neutral • “We value their language & culture” (but won’t do anything to accommodate them) • “We’re doing what’s best for the child” (so we refer them to the experts) • Teachers/Administrators fail to recognize their own social conditioning • “Good old days” logic is still informing how they view the present situation • Don’t recognize their own role as socializing agents • Don’t see themselves as reifying normative values/beliefs • Rather, they see it as their duty to educate kids and parents into “proper” ways of being and acting in a school setting • Reified missionary logic that they are imposing on Latina/o parents and kids…

13. Conclusion • Problem is symptomatic of a much bigger illness • Paternalism over language is informed by those very same language rights laws that inform the way we treat ELL’s kids: • Lau v. Nichols • Castaneda v. Pickard • Title VI of CRA • Language of deficiency is embedded into “language rights” discourse • Breeds a false sense of neutrality • Judgments can never be neutral because the space in which they are created/interpreted/applied is always already racialized. • That’s why need to focus on the politics of the everyday • The same ways in which laws are racialized, so too are schools and their agents actively constructing racialized images of Latina/o students and parents though their actions and positionality