By Glenda M. Flores, Guest DIVERSITY in Ed Contributor
Latinas are the fastest-growing nonwhite group entering the teaching occupation in the United States, far outnumbering African American and Asian American women. Today, women of Latino origin comprise nearly 18% of the teachers in California compared to approximately only 8% in 1997. Moreover, Latino children comprise one out of every five public school students in K-12 schools nationwide and over 50% of California’s student population, signaling a “Latinization” of schools and the teaching profession.
In my new book, Latina Teachers: Creating Careers and Guarding Culture, I show the impact of the growing numbers of Latinas who are becoming teachers in two Southern California multiracial schools in Los Angeles. I show how they are reshaping the ways our schools are run and our children are taught. Latina teachers often work in schools embedded in neighborhoods with large immigrant populations and racial/ethnic minority families. My research investigates how and why Latinas — many of whom hail from immigrant families and are the first in their families to attain a college degree — are entering the teaching profession and how they help students navigate educational institutions in two majority-minority elementary schools. Latinos’ dominance in education is especially pronounced in Los Angeles, where Latinas/os constitute almost 30% of teachers and Latino students now make up nearly two-thirds of the K-12 population. Many of these students are disadvantaged, and 58% of Latino youth in Los Angeles have at least one undocumented parent.
How can we explain the startling discovery that teaching has now emerged as the top occupation drawing Latina college graduates? As I discovered when I began interviewing these women, the majority said they had not specifically planned on a career in teaching. Rather, a series of social factors constrained and enabled Latinas into the teaching occupation. Family financial constraints, as well as the burgeoning demand for bilingual, bicultural teachers, especially in the 1990s, combined with the financial feasibility of the shorter educational preparation for the teaching career, and recruiting efforts served as magnets drawing Latinas of diverse backgrounds into the job. In many cases, Latinas indicated they were the preferred labor pool in immigrant and racial/ethnic minority communities because employers deemed Spanish bilingualism and bicultural abilities an asset.
Fitting this narrative is Mrs. Bianca Franco, a 30-year-old Mexican-American woman who has been working as a fourth-grade teacher in California for nine years. Her mother was an undocumented immigrant from Guadalajara but was eventually able to secure a job as a teacher’s aid in an elementary school. Her father, on the other hand, was born to Mexican immigrants in California and worked as a plumber. While her parents placed great value on education — as many Latino families do — neither had navigated the rigors of college life or knew how to guide their daughter through college and into a white-collar job. When she was about to embark on her collegiate studies, her parents were unable to fund any part of her schooling. Although Mrs. Franco “fell into” teaching, she developed a passion for the job once she saw what a valuable resource she was for Latino families (both undocumented and U.S. born) who were having trouble navigating institutional bureaucracies and finding support for their children, whom they wanted to succeed in America. With Mrs. Franco’s narrative, we begin to see how other occupational aspirations held by Latina college graduates were thwarted by family financial constraints and their lack of understanding of the higher educational system. We also begin to see the seeds of what I call “cultural guardians” being planted once in the profession because Latina teachers often overextend themselves, providing services that go beyond what is required of them by schools and their jobs because they themselves experienced social exclusion and want to shield Latino students from similar experiences. The situation is especially racialized for Latina educators because they or their extended families are of the same or similar communities, and they have lived, shared and witnessed the issues firsthand.
Like Mrs. Franco, in many cases Latina teachers are first-generation college students who “made it.” They are the success stories in their communities and are highly aware of institutionalized roadblocks in schools because they lived them themselves. In their students, they see mirror images of their younger selves. I find that they creatively use Latina/o cultural elements in their jobs as a means to guard and protect Latino students from a system that is built up to divest them of their cultural resources. One example is by incorporating important communication codes in the Spanish language such as using usted instead of tu (both are forms of the English you) to demonstrate respect and bridge the social distance with Spanish-speaking immigrant parents from rural areas during parent-teacher conferences. Another example is allowing alternative forms of mathematical problem solving in long division and multiplication, as math problems are solved differently in Mexico. Many Latina teachers have the background knowledge that allows them to discern and modify their interactions with distinct Latino families.
Educational policymakers argue that the way to change the educational attainment of racial/ethnic minority students is by hiring more teachers of color. It is important for school districts that want to recruit more Latina teachers to be aware that there is internal diversity within the Latina/o population. This means that not only do they hail from different Latin American countries, but they are also internally divided by socioeconomic status, generation level in the United States, Spanish-speaking abilities and immigration status. While the Spanish language binds this group together, Latino culture is not experienced as a monolith because it varies by region. These issues will become more pronounced as Latino families enroll their children in American schools in new immigrant gateways.
