Literacy Journal of Early Childhood

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Reaching for success: A close-up of Mexican immigrant parents in the USA who foster literacy success for their kindergarten children Cristina Gillanders and Robert T. Jiménez Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 2004; 4; 243 DOI: 10.1177/1468798404044513 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ecl.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/4/3/243

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01ECL4-2 Gillanders (JB/D) 19/10/04 11:39 am Page 243

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Reaching for success: A close-up of Mexican immigrant parents in the USA who foster literacy success for their kindergarten children C R I S T I NA G I L L A N D E R S USA RO B E RT T. J I M É N E Z USA

Journal of Early Childhood Literacy Copyright © 2004   London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi  4(3) 243–269 DOI: 10.1177/1468798404044513

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,

Abstract The purpose of this study was to examine the home

environment of immigrant Mexican kindergarteners of low socio-economic status in the USA who display high levels of emergent literacy when compared to their peers. To examine the home environments, the study focused on the literacy beliefs and practices of four families. Findings highlight the role of parental active support and corresponding literacy practices at home, as promoters of positive effects of bilingualism and consequently literacy learning. In addition, the school’s use of Spanish facilitated the dynamic of the families’ belief in active support of their children’s literacy learning and subsequent literacy practices. Keywords bilingual children; emergent literacy; family influence; kindergarten

children; parent role; Spanish

Introduction The importance of educational achievement of minority children increases every year as the population of the USA becomes more linguistically and culturally diverse. According to the 2000 Census, 17.9% of the population in the USA speak a language other than English at home. In 1999, 25% of Latino students in grades K–12 spoke mostly Spanish at home and 17% 243



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spoke English and Spanish equally (US Department of Education, 2000). These demographic characteristics point to the vital need to understand how English language learners can achieve educational competence. Since the home environment plays such an important role in school achievement, the aim of this study is to describe the ways in which Spanish-speaking families assist children in their process of literacy learning. The high percentages of high school drop out and low academic achievement in this particular population is a major concern. In 1999 the drop out rate for Latinos born outside the USA was 44% (National Center for Education Statistics, 1999). Thirty-eight percent of Latino students are held back at least one grade (García, 1997). Moreover, Latino children fall behind English-speaking children in reading achievement (NAEP, 1999). Various researchers have attempted to explain why Latino students show such high percentages of failure in reading achievement. These explanations attribute failure to lack of intellectual and linguistic abilities due to poverty, as well as differences or discontinuities between the school and the home environment (see for reviews of these theories Delgado-Gaitan, 1994; Ortiz, 1986; Vasquez et al., 1994). Discontinuity theories explain academic underachievement as a result of a cultural mismatch between the goals and expectations of the school and those of the students’ home environment. However, some students are able to overcome these limitations and are able to succeed in school. Few studies have addressed this question of why some Latino students are capable of succeeding despite what many mainstream, middle class, European-Americans consider to be limitations in socio-economic status, as well as cultural and linguistic differences (see for example Jiménez et al., 1996; Matute-Bianchi, 1991; Suarez-Orozco, 1987; Volk, 1997). This study focuses on the literacy of young Mexican immigrant children that show higher levels of development when compared to their peers in school. Previous literature in emergent literacy has emphasized the role of specific beliefs and practices in families that promote the learning of literacy (Dickinson and Tabors, 2001; Evans et al., 2000; Frijters et al., 2000; Gregory, 2001; Purcell-Gates, 1996; Robertson, 2002; Sènèchal and LeFevre, 2001). In this study we will describe the family environments of these children to pinpoint specific beliefs and practices that seem to support successful attainment of forms of literacy valued by schools in the USA. We hope such description may generate alternative explanations or extensions of previous theories of academic success or failure in Mexican immigrant children. To understand the origin of the beliefs held by the family members, it is necessary to consider the sociocultural context in which the family’s 244



                 :                      practices take place. The sociocultural context defines the goals of development and the circumstances in which the children’s development manifests (Rogoff, 1990). Based on this framework, first, we analyzed the ongoing events of literacy that occur in children’s lives while they are interacting with adults or other children. Second, we analyzed the goals of literacy in the child’s social context in his/her process of appropriation of this cultural tool. Literacy goals can vary according to the community, as has been shown by studies of cultural uses of literacy (Anderson and Stokes, 1984; Anderson et al., 1997; Gregory, 1996; Parke et al., 2002; Schieffelin and CochranSmith, 1984; Volk and De Acosta, 2001). Finally, ideas about literacy cannot be separated meaningfully from the circumstances in which the literacy event occurs. Children learn about literacy through their interactions with adults and peers in a process of guided participation (Rogoff, 1990). This concept means that children’s learning of a cultural tool, such as literacy, occurs through both guidance and participation in culturally valued activities. These activities are not only conducted by family members for instructional purposes, but also are routine arrangements (e.g. going to the grocery store, picking up the mail or reading a recipe) that are part of the family life. This perspective extends cognitively based views of literacy to more culturally and societally grounded notions. Literacy is not simply a personal possession but it also belongs to specific communities and larger societies. As such, those elements that play a role in societal inequities are also reflected in and constitutive of all the behaviors, ways of thinking, and linguistic interactions involving literacy (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999). Applying the concept of guided participation as a mechanism for learning in the particular domain of literacy, we follow Barton and Hamilton’s (2000: 9) proposition that ‘literacy is best understood as a set of social practices; these are observable in events which are mediated by written texts’. As a set of social practices literacy is patterned ‘by social institutions and power relationships, and some literacies are more dominant, visible and influential than others’ (Barton and Hamilton, 2000: 12). As a result we assume parents will value certain literacies more than others and will expect their children to learn the kind of literacy they perceive to be more prestigious, particularly when they employ overt instruction. Finally, ‘literacy is historically situated’ (Barton and Hamilton, 2000: 13) and therefore we need to consider the history of the parents’ learning of literacy and the changes that occur in their conceptions of literacy learning as they interact with a foreign culture. Consequently parents’ beliefs about literacy learning will be shaped by their views of which dominant literacies are 245



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worth transmitting to their children and the history of their own learning of literacy. In addition, these parents’ beliefs will transform by their changing conceptions of literacy learning as they come in contact with new cultural practices and reflect on the differences between these and their own experiences gained in other places, with distinct histories, and embedded within identifiable economic and linguistic systems.

Parental beliefs in literacy learning Understanding what parents believe about how children learn to read and write might clarify what they do at home to nurture their children’s literacy learning. Several researchers have examined how parents differ in their views of home practices conducive to literacy learning in young children, depending on what forms of literacy they have been exposed to and the opportunities for formal education afforded by their socio-economic status (Fitzgerald et al., 1991; Sonnenschein et al., 1997). Parents from more privileged backgrounds have been found to value artifacts and events that are considered natural (e.g. paper, pencils, and reading to the child) and tend to emphasize an entertainment approach when teaching their children about literacy, whereas low literacy parents value natural and skill-oriented artifacts and events (e.g. flashcards, playing school, alphabet blocks, etc.) and direct instruction (see also Gregory and Williams, 2000). Goldenberg, Reese and Gallimore (1992) describe how the low-income Latino parents of kindergarteners in their study tended to focus on repetition of symbol–sound relationships when teaching their children to read. In a later article Reese and Gallimore (2000) explain this perspective within a cultural model of literacy development. Parents in these families tend to disregard their children’s early experiments with text as not ‘real reading’. They also believe that reading is learned through formal instruction. Reading aloud is not a common practice, and in those families where this practice does occur before the children begin school, it is considered a means for imparting a moral message, not for learning to read. This cultural model arises from the parents’ experiences with learning to read in their home countries, and although it is ubiquitous, it is not unchangeable. In effect, although reading aloud to their children was not part of the parents’ cultural model, once teachers assigned it in an ongoing homework program, parents integrated it within their overall set of literacy beliefs and practices. In addition to parents’ beliefs about literacy learning, parents’ ideas about the importance of bilingualism can also have implications for children’s literacy learning, especially among immigrants who speak a language other 246



                 :                      than English. Knowing two languages has been found to have a positive influence on metalinguistic awareness (that is, the ability to reflect on and manipulate parts of language independent of meaning), a prerequisite for learning to read (Bialystok, 1997; Bruck and Genesee, 1995; Durgunoglu and Öney, 2000; Göncz and Kodzopeljic, 1991; Yelland et al., 1993). Furthermore, parents’ desire to raise their children as bilinguals might motivate them to practice the native language in a variety of ways that in turn are precursors of literacy. For example, these parents might engage in practices such as demanding that their children speak the native language, reading, singing, and teaching rhymes with the intention of developing cultural identity in their children, and with the result of promoting literacy development (Gillanders, 1996).

Family practices for literacy learning According to their beliefs, parents conduct activities in the home that have consequences for the development of children’s literacy. Some family literacy practices have been underscored as precursors for young children’s literacy and school achievement skills. Shared book reading is a practice that has been frequently linked with children’s literacy development (for a review see Bus et al., 1995; Scarborough and Dobrich, 1994). In lowincome Latino families, shared book reading is not a common practice (Goldenberg et al., 1992), but the amount of storybook reading in these families increases substantially once the children begin school (Reese and Gallimore, 2000). In addition to shared book reading, parents engage in other practices that have been linked to early school literacy learning. Some of these practices are the use of extended discourse (such as explanations, narratives or pretend talk) (Dickinson and Tabors, 2001); the level of vocabulary that mothers use with their children (Dickinson and Tabors, 2001); activities involving letters and words (Sènèchal and LeFevre, 2001; Evans et al., 2000); and teaching of rhymes and nursery rhymes (Maclean et al., 1987). None of these studies involved bilingual families, therefore it is less known what kinds of literacy events occur in these families and how these events might affect later literacy development. The purpose of this study was to examine the home environments of those children that display high levels of emergent literacy in school despite coming from culturally different backgrounds. Traditionally, researchers have emphasized the reasons for failure of Latino students. In this study we attempt to understand the reasons for their success. In brief, our research questions in this article are: 247



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1. What are the family beliefs about literacy development and instruction? 2. What are their attitudes toward bilingualism? 3. What kinds of practices does the family engage in that could be conducive to literacy learning in a bilingual context? Since the focus of this study was on the beliefs that underlie these families’ literacy practices, ethnographic techniques were used. Ethnographic strategies allow the researcher to observe instructional events in the homes as a socioculturally relevant environment.

Method Setting Forest View (a fictitious name) is a mid-western city of about 123,000 inhabitants and a suburb of Chicago. The Latino population has become the largest minority in the city (at the time of the study 22.6%). Most of them are of Mexican origin, although some are from Puerto Rico, Cuba, and other Spanish speaking countries. The Forest View School District serves almost 10,000 students of which approximately 3000 receive bilingual education. The bilingual program is transitional, that is, the children receive instruction in their native language from kindergarten up to third grade and then they are transitioned to English-only classrooms. Most of the students are Spanish speaking, although there are some who speak other languages such as Lao, Chinese, and Polish. To be placed in bilingual education, children entering the school system are tested using LAS (Language Assessment Scales) (Duncan and De Avila, 1998). In this test children are asked to follow directions, repeat sentences and retell stories in English. If they score less than four on the English proficiency test, they receive bilingual education; otherwise they attend an English-only classroom. The school attended by the target children served 725 children. Of those, 380 qualify for the free-lunch federal program. Eighty-five percent of the children in the school were of Latino origin and there were 16 bilingual classrooms including six of the kindergarten classrooms. Selection of the participants The target children were kindergarteners from low-income Mexican immigrant families and with no formal pre-school experience. This last criterion was selected in order to minimize the influence of schooling before entrance to kindergarten and maximize the role of parents in preparing the children for school. The teachers from two bilingual kindergarten classes in the same 248



                 :                      school were asked to identify Latino children of low socio-economic background that were considered above their peers in levels of emergent literacy. All the children selected were eligible for the free-lunch program. Because the school district had a popular pre-school program the pool of students that had not previously attended formal pre-school was rather small. From this group the kindergarten teachers chose those children that in their view were the best of the group that had not attended pre-school. The selected children were assessed at the beginning and end of the school year, using several literacy measures as follows:1 Conceptos del texto impreso (Clay et al., 1996); samples of writing examined using Ferreiro and Teberosky’s (1979) developmental framework; comprehension of a story read aloud; identification of rhymes, and matching of sounds of first syllables which were created for this study. Six children were recommended by the kindergarten teachers and were assessed. Four children met the criteria that included: • • •

A kindergartener with high levels of literacy development within his/her classroom. Immigrant parents from a Latin American country. All parents of the selected children were born in Mexico. Parents with low levels of education, that is, a maximum of a high school education equivalent.

For reasons of space limitations in the present article we refer to two of the families selected in the study.

Data collection Interviews To obtain an inside perspective of the participants’ beliefs and values a general interview guide approach (Patton, 1991) as well as informal interviews were conducted. During the months of June 1999 to June 2000 the first author conducted from six to seven interviews per family. Each interview lasted from 60 to 90 minutes. In total the first author made 27 visits amounting to 30 hours of interviews and observations. All interviews were conducted in Spanish. The areas especially considered in the interviews were parents’ beliefs in literacy learning and instruction, attitudes toward bilingualism, and literacy practices. As a resource to help the parents and children to talk aloud about their practices and beliefs, the families were asked to audiotape events in which parents or siblings and the child participated, that were viewed by them as leading to literacy learning. These tapes were later listened to by the parents and the researcher. The researcher asked the parent to explain the activity taken place in the tape. This explanation was transcribed and later analyzed. 249



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In addition, the target children’s teachers were interviewed at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the school year to determine the children’s literacy development in school and the overall view of the classroom literacy activities. During the visits information was also obtained from the participants ‘in situ’ (Patton, 1991), through informal interviews or conversations, often in the presence of the target child. Participant observations On each of the visits the first author was able to observe the physical setting and the informal interaction between parents and children, since usually the target children sat with the adults during the interview. On a few occasions the parents were asked to perform everyday activities they had described in the interviews. These activities included doing homework with the children, going to the grocery store, or reading a book aloud with a sibling. Documents Parents were also asked to accumulate samples of the work done by the children (e.g. writing in notebooks and pieces of paper) during a three-week period. On a subsequent visit they explained what might have been the purpose or motivation behind each particular item.

Analysis The analysis of the data began after the first interview in the field. The depth of the analysis ranged from reading over the previous interview and formulating new questions to developing a focused coding. In focused coding the researcher creates categories rather than label topics. These categories are used in large amounts of data to help define and explicate each category (Charmaz, 1983). In the initial analysis the first author organized the interview transcripts in accordance with the initial questions of the study. The analysis was based on a data record rather than on the original raw data (Graue and Walsh, 1998). Subsequently, a set of codes was developed with the major themes of parents’ beliefs about literacy learning and bilingualism, and literacy practices (e.g. kindergarten readiness, ideas about literacy learning, and daily routine). A limited set of codes were chosen, and a summary of each was written that clarified and classified the data that it covered, a process that has been called focused coding (Charmaz, 1983). Examples of coding categories are: responsibility for literacy learning, support in literacy learning, and attitudes toward bilingualism. During this process Tables 5 and 6 were developed in which we categorized the different activities the parents engaged in when supporting literacy development. To illustrate specific teaching events that commonly occurred within the families, 250



                 :                      vignettes were written using data from the interviews, participant observations and documents. The vignettes are not directly taken from field notes but rather are elaborations in which the researcher tries to convey to the reader his/her interpretive stance (Graue and Walsh, 1998). Parts of the analysis were translated into Spanish and presented to the parents as a way of verifying beliefs and practices. A few corrections were made with regard to aspects of their family history.

The children María Isabel Ramírez María Isabel was assessed at the end of her kindergarten year in June of 1999 (see Tables 1 and 2 for the initial and final assessment scores of the two children). In her initial assessment her score in the test of ‘Conceptos del texto impreso’ (Clay et al., 1996) lay on the fifth stanine. Since normalized scores for kindergarteners were not available, her score was compared to those from a group of first graders from Arizona, Texas, and Illinois tested in the fall (see Clay et al., 1996). She was capable of writing words including letters that represented phonemes as well as syllables, which is an advanced level in the progression towards alphabetic writing (Ferreiro and Teberosky, 1979). She was also able to match the sound of the first syllable of a word when shown a picture of another word with the same sound, and retell a story recalling the main events in sequence. According to her classroom teacher María Isabel began her first grade showing an advanced level of decoding skills compared to her classmates. As a result she was placed in the advanced reading group. However, during the winter months she had shown little progress in her reading fluency. At the end of the year she was described as an above average student. The reading teacher indicated that she had improved greatly in her reading aloud and fluency. In her final assessment she obtained a score of 23 in the test of ‘Conceptos del texto impreso’, which lies on the 9th stanine. She was able to identify three out of four words that did not rhyme and was able to write words in the conventional form. She could retell a story’s main events in sequence and identify the sounds of first syllables. Eutimio Luzardo Eutimio obtained the lowest score of the four children included in the study in the test ‘Conceptos del texto impreso’. His score of nine places him in the fourth stanine in the normalized scores mentioned above (Clay et al., 1996). He was able to identify one word that rhymed but was incapable of matching the first syllable of a word to a picture. In writing, he used the syllabic hypothesis, that is, each letter represented a 251



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syllable, although the letters he used did not have the conventional sound. After reading aloud a story to him, he recalled only details but no main events. Although his performance in these tests was not very high, he was included in the study because of his awareness that each letter represented a syllable. Children who achieve this stage are advanced in their literacy knowledge (see Ferreiro and Teberosky, 1979). Once he began school and gained confidence in his abilities, Eutimio rapidly became an above average student according to his teacher. At that point he was able to read simple sentences in predictable books. In writing he was using letters conventionally representing phonemes as well as syllables. He seemed to be very interested in learning to read and he was able to understand stories that were read aloud. At the end of the school year he was reading simple texts and was able to understand their meaning. In his writing he included vowels and consonants and wrote some words with conventional spelling. The teacher continued to consider Eutimio an above average student at the culmination of his kindergarten year. In the final assessment he obtained a score of 16 in the test ‘Conceptos Table 1 Initial assessment Name

Date of Concepts Identification Writing Matching Comprehension LAS Assessment about of Rhymes Samples First (Max: 3) Print (Max: 4) (Max: 5) Syllable (Max: 25) (max: 2)

María Isabel

6/1999

11

0

4

2

3

English: 0/1 Spanish: 63/3

Eutimio

9/1999

9

1

3

0

2

English: 49/1 Spanish: 77.5/3

Table 2 Final assessment Name

Date of Concepts Identification Writing Matching Comprehension LAS Assessment about of Rhymes Samples First (Max: 3) Print (Max: 4) (Max: 5) Syllable (Max: 25) (Max: 2)

María Isabel

6/2000

23

3

5

2

3

English: 10/1

Eutimio

9/2000

16

4

5

2

3

English: 75.5/3

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                 :                      del texto impreso’ which placed him in the eighth stanine in comparison with first graders tested in the fall (Clay et al., 1996). He was able to identify all the words that did not rhyme. He could write words conventionally and recall main events and details from a story. Finally, he easily identified the sounds of the first syllables.

Family portraits All the parents were born in Mexico. In Tables 3 and 4 the children’s ages and the years of residence in the USA shown are at the beginning of the study.

The Ramírez family First author met the Ramírez family in May 1999 when María Isabel was finishing her kindergarten year. The first interview was held in June. Mrs Amelia Ramírez was pregnant with her third child. Mr and Mrs Ramírez are from Uriangato in the state of Guanajuato, a city of about 59,000 inhabitants. In Mexico Mr Ramírez worked as a salesman and installer of construction materials. Mrs Ramírez stayed at Table 3 Family portraits Family

Place of Birth

Children

Focal Child

Ramírez, Amelia & Mario

Uriangato, Guanajuato (Urban)

María Isabel (6y) José (5y) Alma (born during the study)

María Isabel (6y)

Luzardo, Rosario & Juan

Tepehuanes, Durango (Rural)

Eutimio (5y)

Eutimio (5y)

Table 4 Parents educational background, years of residence in USA, and language used at home Family

Educational Level

Years of Residence in USA

Language used at Home

Ramírez, Amelia

Middle School and ‘Comercial’*

2

Spanish

Ramírez, Mario

Completed elementary

3

Spanish

Luzardo, Rosario

Completed elementary

7

Spanish

Luzardo, Juan

4 years elementary

7

Spanish

Note: *High school equivalent.

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home with the children. Two years before the study began they moved to Forest View where they had some relatives and where they believed he could find a job in a factory. At the time of the study, Mr Ramírez was working in a factory that made batteries. The Ramírezes were considering returning to Mexico some day. Mrs Ramírez stayed at home taking care of the household. She did most of the school-related activities with the children because Mr Ramírez ‘no tiene paciencia’ (lacks patience). Most of the time the children were present during the interviews and participated in the conversation. María Isabel had not attended pre-school because when she was four years old they were living in a school district that did not offer this kind of program. At the time of the study Amelia’s efforts to learn English had been limited to listening some tapes of the program ‘Inglés sin barreras’ (English without barriers). Mario considered himself more competent in English than Amelia since he had to use some English in his work.

The Luzardo family The first author began her interviews with the Luzardos in October. The Luzardos came to this country as newlyweds seven years ago. Mr and Mrs Luzardo came from a small town that they called a ‘rancherío’ two and a half hours from Tepehuanes. In Mexico Mr Luzardo worked in agriculture, while Mrs Luzardo took care of the household. Some of Mr Luzardo’s relatives were already living in Forest View, so they decided to try their luck in the USA. At the time of the study, Mr Luzardo worked in a factory that made cardboard. Mrs Luzardo stayed at home with Eutimio. Mrs Luzardo did not drive so she spent most of her time at home with Eutimio. In the interviews she said that she wanted to take classes to improve her English, but had been unable to because of lack of transportation and because Eutimio, until recently, was not ready to stay with an adult who was not one of his parents. According to his mother, Eutimio did not attend pre-school for the same reason. Like the Ramírez family, the Luzardos have considered the possibility of returning to Mexico some day.

Learning about literacy at home In this section we will describe the families’ attitudes toward bilingualism as well as their general beliefs about how children learn literacy. These beliefs are embedded in the following description of each family’s literacy events. Tables 5 and 6 summarize the different events in which the children learnt about literacy at home. According to Rogoff (1990) the process of guided participation occurs not only in formal didactic activities in which 254



                 :                      parents explicitly have an educational goal in mind, but also in activities that are not intended to teach but rather are everyday routines in which every family engages. In Table 5 we have included the formal activities carried out explicitly and intentionally by the parents with the purpose of teaching their children to read and write. The parents were eager to share these activities so the researcher was readily able to obtain information about them. In Table 6 we described the informal activities. In these events, usually child-initiated, there is no explicit purpose for teaching children about literacy; rather they are the result of the children’s active participation in their own learning. The parents’ role in these activities is to provide the materials and occasions so that these events can occur. For example, when Rosario asked Eutimio to pick up the mail, he liked to read the advertisements for toys. Obtaining data about these events was more difficult for the researchers than the formal activities. As formal activities have a specific purpose in mind, parents made a special effort to perform them so they were quite conscious about them. On the other hand, informal activities Table 5 Family support in learning literacy: formal teaching activities Focus

Ramírez

Luzardo

Letters

Teaches letters of child’s name

Points to letters of the alphabet in Spanish Encourages solving letter soups in English

Reading

Encourages reading instructions in homework

Reads instructions and words in English workbooks

Reads aloud books in Spanish brought from school

Seldom reads aloud books in Spanish

Encourages putting syllables together Writing

Asks child to make ‘planas’ of name

Asks child to write names of family members

Dictates words and phrases

Asks child to write words in English workbooks

Instructs child not to join words together

Asks child to write numbers

Reads words slowly so child can write words Asks child to write numbers from 1 to 200

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Table 6 Family support in learning literacy: informal teaching activities Focus

Ramírez

Luzardo

Letters

Chants the alphabet while jumping rope in Spanish

Plays school, writing letters and coloring

Reading

Invents stories orally in Spanish before going to bed

Picks up mail and reads ads in English Reads sales ads in stores in Spanish and English Reads prices in stores in Spanish and English

Writing

Makes list of ingredients for cake in Spanish

Writes letters in Spanish to family members

Copies words from ads in English Plays school and writes instructions to friends in Spanish

are part of the daily family routine in which the goal is to take care of the household needs. The fact that formal activities are more readily reported than informal activities reflects a particular way of viewing learning. In lieu of taking for granted that less informal activities did occur, we assume that these activities were less accessible to us as researchers because they were considered by the parents not worthwhile reporting as literacy learning practices.

The Ramírez family Amelia believed that it was important for her children to become bilingual. She considered that knowing English and Spanish provided better job opportunities. To achieve her goal Amelia and her husband spoke to the children in Spanish at home. She disagreed with other Mexican families, who stop speaking Spanish so that their children learn English. Vignette 1: doing homework It is Friday afternoon and Amelia calls María Isabel (6) and José (5) to do their homework. In the living room María Isabel sits around the coffee table on the floor. Amelia sits with her baby on the table, where she can easily see José’s and María Isabel’s homework. She begins helping José, while María Isabel reads the instructions for her homework. José sets his homework sheet on the table and opens a notebook in which he has written beforehand several syllables in the order of the vowels, that is, ‘ma-me-mi-mo-mu; sa-se-si-so-su’, and 256



                 :                      others. These syllables have been dictated to him by Amelia previously. Amelia explains that she dictates syllables and words to her children in order to help them learn to read and write. She also says that this was the same way she taught María Isabel when she was José’s age. José’s homework is shown in Figure 1. Homework was an important part of the formal activities that the Ramírez family performed. Amelia used the homework as an indication of what was necessary for the children to learn. This was not only in terms of the content of the curriculum but also in terms of the children’s performance. For example, Amelia recalls how María Isabel had to write the numbers from 1 to 100 in her homework. She noticed that María Isabel could do this task easily, so she decided to teach her how to write the ta te to tapa toma tusa sopa paleta piloto pesa mata suma Tito toma el pastel.

tu tio elote usas

ti tapete pastel solo

Original dialogue in Spanish

Translation in English

Amelia: A ver José. (She points to the syllables on the sheet of paper. The task of the homework is to read words that have the syllables ta-te-ti-to-tu and some other words that they have studied previously. The text that Amelia is pointing to says tate-to-tu-ti.) José: Ta-te-ti-to-tu. (Amelia points to text again) Ta-te-to-tu-ti. (Amelia points to first word in the page: Tapa) José: Taba. Amelia: ¿Esta sílaba cuál es? José: Ta. Amelia: ¿Cómo dice aquí? José: Ta Amelia: ¿Cuál es esta sílaba? (Points to the syllable pa in José’s notebook) José: Ta . . . pa. Amelia: Júntala. José: Tapa.

Amelia: Let’s see, José. (She points to the syllables on the sheet of paper. The task of the homework is to read words that have the syllables ta-te-ti-to-tu and some other words that they have studied previously. The text that Amelia is pointing to says tate-to-tu-ti.) José: Ta-te-ti-to-tu. (Amelia points to text again) Ta-te-to-tu-ti. (Amelia points to first word in the page: Tapa) José: Taba. Amelia: What syllable is this? José: Ta. Amelia: What does it say here? José: Ta Amelia: What syllable is this? (Points to the syllable pa in José’s notebook) José: Ta . . . pa. Amelia: Put it together. José: Tapa.

Figure 1 Sample of José’s homework

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numbers from 100 to 200. Although this was not required by the school, she took the initiative to teach her more than what was required. Amelia believed that her children, although they had different styles of learning, learned better when they received direct instruction. As she described it, ‘cuando me siento con ella aprende mejor’ (when I sit with her she learns better). She also had the idea that children learn more if they have many opportunities to practice. Most of the activities Amelia set for her children in the initial phases of reading emphasized decoding syllables. She taught initially the names of the letters in María Isabel’s name. Because the teacher used a syllabic approach, Amelia’s instruction was congruent with her schooling and with what was being done in the children’s school. As seen in the previous vignette, she asked José to write in a notebook the syllables they had been learning in school and then she used the notebook as a reference for overseeing his homework. What was José learning from this exercise? As pointed out by Clay (1979) beginning readers must monitor simultaneously many cues such as meaning, sentence structure, order of letter and words, size, visual cues, and first and last letters cues in order to learn to read effectively. In reading the syllables in the homework, José was learning to use first letter and visual cues. He also had to pay attention to order cues so he could read the letters in the left to right direction. In addition, in the vignette Amelia was helping José to learn how to blend syllables. This process probably would have been easier for José if Amelia had pointed out that he also needed to attend to the meaning of the word. In an exchange later on this particular interaction (not included in the previous transcript), José tried to read the word ‘elote’ (corn). Once he recognized the familiar word he was able to blend the syllables without any effort. Although Amelia seemed to place great emphasis on grapho-phonic clues, that is, clues from letters and sounds, especially in the initial phases of reading, she also considered it important for her children to understand what they were reading once they were able to decode. En la lectura es lo que le digo, le estoy enseñando a que ella vaya captando lo que va leyendo y no nada más lea lo que está leyendo en las sílabas, sino que vaya captando lo que ella está leyendo, porque de eso se trata. In reading it’s what I am telling her, I am teaching her to grasp what she is reading and not only reading the syllables, but rather grasp the meaning of what she is reading, because that is what it is all about.

In writing, she began teaching María Isabel to write her name using planas. Planas is a common practice for teaching literacy in Latin American 258



                 :                      countries. A letter, word or phrase is written on a page and the child has to copy the letter, word or phrase numerous times until the end of the page. She also frequently asked María Isabel to write words or phrases she dictated. Amelia dictated different kinds of texts. She once asked María Isabel to write the ingredients they needed to bake a cake. Other times she would ask her to write sentences with words that were familiar to María Isabel because they had been reading them in school. In terms of informal activities, María Isabel and José frequently engaged in language games that were good exercises for phonological awareness (Lundberg et al., 1988; Torgesen et al., 1992), that is, the explicit knowledge of the phonological structure of the language. For example, they often skipped with a rope, chanting words beginning with the letters of the alphabet. Their father Mario would sometimes ask them to invent stories orally before going to bed. Amelia recalls how, initially, the stories were told mostly by Mario, but soon after the children began to create their own. By the end of the school year, Amelia began babysitting some neighborhood children who would come to her house some afternoons during the week. During these visits the children played school, and since María Isabel was the eldest, she was the teacher. Amelia amusedly reported how María Isabel repeated the words of the teacher and copied some of the exercises she had done in school that day. As for reading aloud, Amelia explained that initially they did not often read storybooks aloud because they did not have many books in Spanish or English. However, in the middle of María Isabel’s first grade year, the teacher informed Amelia that she did not seem to be making much progress in reading. Amelia responded that she thought that María Isabel did not practice reading frequently enough and asked the teacher to send books home in Spanish so they could read more often. Since then they read aloud more frequently.

The Luzardo family Like Amelia, Rosario believed in raising her son Eutimio as a bilingual. Being bilingual allowed Eutimio ‘más oportunidades de empleo, de estudio, de superarse’ (more job and study opportunities, to get ahead). She was certain she wanted Eutimio to learn English but she also wanted to make sure he learned Spanish ‘correcto’ (correctly). Vignette 2: workbooks Rosario and Eutimio sit in the living room. Eutimio is bored and Rosario, looking for some thing to amuse him, brings a workbook. They both look at the book and choose a page. The task is a 259



                            P A P E R PAPER PAN READ CELL CUP

E R A S E

N D N G A

C E L L D

I S P U C

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L K N E S

GLUE PEN PENCIL DESK ERASE

Spanish Original Version

English Translation

Rosario: Empieza a buscar ésta. (Referring to word in letter soup) Eutimio: Pero ésta no está, no está. Rosario: Busca la ese. Eutimio: Aquí. Rosario: Pero que estén todos en línea. Eutimio: ¿Tu la ves? Yo no la veo. Rosario: A ver busca una ese. Mira. (Points to letter). Ahora busca ésta (pointing to another word). Eutimio: Esta es la pi, la pi, pi, pi. Rosario: ¿Pero cual empieza por la pi? Tu la buscas. ¿Ya la encontraste? ¿Conoces las letras? Eutimio: Jota, u, eme, pe. Rosario: Jump. OK, busca otra. Rosario: A ver dime las letras. Eutimio: Ese,u, ene, wow, ¡esta le gané! Rosario: Sunny. Eutimio: ¡Sunny Delight! ¡Sunny Delight! (Laughs. Looks for another word).

Rosario: Begin looking for this one. (Referring to word in letter soup) Eutimio: But this one isn’t here, isn’t here. Rosario: Look for the s. Eutimio: Here. Rosario: But they all have to be in a line. Eutimio: Do you see it? I don’t see it. Rosario: Let’s see, look for an s. Look. (Points to letter). Now look for this one (pointing to another word). Eutimio: This is the p, p, p (names the letters in English). Rosario: But which one begins with the p (name of letter in English)? You look for it. Did you find it? Do you know the letters? Eutimio: J, u, m, p. (In Spanish) Rosario: Jump. OK look for another one. Rosario: Let’s see, tell me the letters. Eutimio: S, u, n (in Spanish) wow, I won this one!! Rosario: Sunny. Eutimio: Sunny Delight! Sunny Delight! (Laughs. Looks for another word)

Figure 2 Example of letter soup

letter ‘soup’. Figure 2 is an example of a letter soup. The task is to find the words. Eutimio with pencil in hand looks for the words and circles them. Rosario used workbooks as a way of ensuring that Eutimio liked books and also as a means of entertaining him. Initially she did most of the coloring and finding answers to the puzzles, but eventually Eutimio began 260



                 :                      doing it without her help. At the time of the interviews, Eutimio and Rosario had already completed around 10 workbooks. In the vignette Rosario and Eutimio are solving a letter soup game, which was a frequent activity. This game requires that the child find words embedded within a block of seemingly random rows and columns of continuous letters. What was Eutimio learning from this activity? First, in order to find the word, Eutimio had to assume that the word was written in a specific order. In fact, Rosario reminds him that the words are ‘en línea’ (in a line). Second, he was learning that words are meaningful and that words like ‘sunny’ are found both in books and on the bottles of his favorite juice ‘Sunny Delight’. Third, when Rosario asked him to name the letters he found, he was learning that letters have specific names. It is interesting that in these examples, both Eutimio and Rosario chose to name the letters in English and Spanish. This is common in the circumstances of living in a bilingual context. Rosario and Eutimio go back and forth between English and Spanish. The lesson for Eutimio is that both languages share a similar alphabetic system. Although there was not much discussion about the meaning of the words in the exercise, Rosario tried to read the words in English once Eutimio had found them in the puzzle. By the end of the study, Rosario was encouraging Eutimio to read the workbook instructions in English by himself. It could be considered contradictory that given Rosario’s belief in teaching a correct Spanish, she would use both languages at the same time. This activity was congruent with her belief, though, of giving Eutimio activities that were entertaining and educational. In addition, she did not have a choice because English workbooks were the only resources available. This example also shows that the process of bilingual literacy acquisition in family settings does not always occur in a sequential fashion such as schools often try to implement in a graded curriculum. One language does not always precede the other; rather in many circumstances both languages are used at the same time. On some occasions Eutimio liked to write the names of the family members. Rosario dictated the name of the letters and he wrote them. When Eutimio did not remember how to write a letter, Rosario provided a piece of paper on which she had written the alphabet. This was used as a reference when Eutimio was engaged in writing. Most of the activities in which Rosario and Eutimio engaged were more relaxed than those in other families. Rosario was able to describe more informal activities as compared to the rest of the families. Although it seems as though more informal activities took place in her household, it may have been the case that she simply included more activities in which she was 261



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not explicitly teaching reading and writing. Eutimio frequently asked his mother to read signs in stores that announced sales. Rosario often asked him the prices of the products he wanted to buy. All the signs in the store were in English. In addition, Rosario indicated that Eutimio often ‘se pone a estudiar’ (begins to study) as a form of entertainment. He also enjoyed writing letters to family members in Mexico. As in the other families, reading aloud was infrequent. Rosario reported that they had few picture books in Spanish and she read materials in English only with a lot of effort. Not until the kindergarten teacher began sending books in Spanish in the middle of the school year did reading aloud become more frequent.

Discussion Despite being poor, speaking a minority language, and belonging to a foreign culture, the children in this study were able to perform well in school and develop their literacy skills at levels comparable to or better than those of their classmates. Challenging the deficit theory, which would have predicted that these children were doomed to failure because of poverty and therefore lacking the experience necessary for school, these families provided some of the forms of support valued by the school. Our findings also suggest a more complex picture than the one proposed by the discontinuity theory. Although there were some continuities between the school and home (that is, the teacher spoke Spanish and used the syllabic method for teaching reading) there were also discontinuities. An example of a discontinuity is that teachers used reading aloud as an instructional strategy while the families rarely did so, at least until the teachers encouraged them to do it. This means that some families do not react passively to the differences between home and school but rather are willing to adapt to the new circumstances of their children’s schooling and add new practices to their repertoire if this means helping their children succeed in school (Reese and Gallimore, 2000). However, these new adaptations occur within the parents’ original cultural model. Janes and Kermani (2001) reported considerable resistance by a group of Latino parents in a family literacy program when they were asked to elicit specific kinds of interactions with their children while reading aloud. In the present study the teachers provided the books to the parents but did not specify how the reading should be conducted. Therefore, the parents integrated the reading aloud as part of the homework routine. In other words, hints and vestiges of the parents’ prior experiences with literacy continue to appear in their ongoing practices. 262



                 :                      This study provides a more inclusive and deeper understanding of the factors determining the success in school literacy of some low-income Latino children. Looking at the beliefs and practices of the families under the lens of a sociocultural perspective, one can observe the goals and circumstances of the literacy events taking place in these families and find a more specific explanation beyond the deficit or discontinuity viewpoints. In addition, observing the literacy events in the home of these families we can come to understand their views of which literacy they consider worth transmitting to their children, the influence of their own history in the learning of literacy, and their changing conceptions of literacy learning as they come in contact with a new culture (Barton and Hamilton, 2000). An ubiquitous belief of the parents of these families was the importance of actively supporting their children’s school literacy, which they demonstrated by engaging them in numerous literacy-related activities. Unlike Mexican parents reported in other studies (e.g. Valdés, 1996), who value education but view their roles as limited to sending their children to school and raising them to be polite and well educated, the parents of this study believed they had an active role in supporting the academic learning of their children. Their actions contradict the common belief among educators that Latino parents are too busy surviving in this culture to care about their children’s education or do not have the tools to help their children in school. The learning activities were both formal and informal. Formal activities included writing planas, completing workbooks, taking dictation, writing numbers, and writing the names of family members. Informal activities included playing with words while skipping rope, finding the first letter of a word, inventing stories before going to bed, reading advertisements, playing school, and writing letters to family members in Mexico. The focus of most of the formal activities was on helping the children use graphophonic clues in the text. They believed that learning to read started with being able to decode and this required direct instruction. Other types of clues such as pictures or meaning were granted less attention. All these literacy events reflect on the parents’ ideas of what constitutes the type of literacy their children should learn to succeed in their educational careers. These ideas have been shaped by the parents’ own history of literacy learning. Amelia remembers how her parents taught her before school her name and address in case she got lost. Rosario enjoyed school so much that she wanted her child to be interested in school related activities early. In addition, all parents in this study described learning to read and write copying ‘planas’ and reading ‘ma-me-mi-mo-mu’ which 263



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depicts a syllabic method for teaching reading. What they described as their past learning experiences in Mexico, it seems, has not changed substantially in the last few years. Jiménez et al. (2003) described in their study of two elementary Mexican schools the great attention teachers gave to promoting flawless production of oral reading and of written work with the inherent belief that ‘practice makes perfect’. They did not observe classroom discussions about text meaning or students’ interpretation of texts, and in general reading occurred infrequently. Because of their strong desire to help their children succeed, these parents searched for ways of supporting their children’s learning with the resources and knowledge they had available in a foreign culture. This was an opportunity for bilingual events to occur while teaching literacy. Rosario and Eutimio used English and Spanish back and forth while talking about letters and words in the workbooks. What kind of consequences do these kinds of events have in children’s literacy learning? We can assume from the children’s performance that a bilingual environment did not cause detrimental effects in the children’s literacy learning. Quite the contrary, as others have suggested (Bialystok, 1997; Bruck amd Genesee, 1995; Durgunoglu and Öney, 2000; Göncz and Kodzopeljic, 1991; Yelland et al., 1993) knowledge of two languages can facilitate metalinguistic insights that are favorable for literacy development. Bilingualism has been associated with the ability to replace one word with another (word awareness), and with phonological awareness in middle class populations (Bruck and Genesee, 1995; Göncz and Kodzopeljic, 1991). Gregory (1996) has argued that emergent bilinguals’ interest in learning words in the second language encourages them to pay attention to the boundaries of words, which appears to facilitate understanding of how words map onto their associated graphic representations. If this is the case, why do so many low-income bilinguals have difficulty learning to read? Among the families in this study, bilingualism, with its metalinguistic benefits, developed in a context of active parental support and literacy practices at home. Literacy activities provide an ideal context for the display of metalinguistic awareness. For example, as described, bilingual children tend to easily acquire the concept of one-to-one correspondence between spoken words and their written equivalents. When these children are exposed to activities in which they need to read words, they are able to apply this knowledge. If frequent literacy activities are unavailable for the bilingual child, the heightened awareness she has developed owing to her bilingualism could be used for learning the second language orally but not necessarily for reading. Therefore, literacy activities provide a necessary link for the metalinguistic benefits to have an effect. 264



                 :                      Further research needs to be conducted in order to establish the relationship between bilingualism and specific literacy practices among immigrant families, and between bilingual events and specific emergent literacy skills. What is not yet known is whether overt instruction that links metalinguistic awareness of the sort learned by bilingual children to literacy learning would support or accelerate students’ understanding of reading and writing. We suspect it would, given the data on bilingual literacy activities presented in this study. Finally, we cannot disregard the contribution of the school to the success of these children. The school’s use of Spanish facilitated the families’ support for and active participation in their children’s literacy learning. Using a language that was understood by the families, the school provided information about its expectations (by means of homework, instructions to parents, etc.). In this way the families could not only understand the school’s goals but also gauge their children’s progress. This is a strong argument against those who have attacked bilingual education in the USA in the last years. We cannot predict in what ways these children’s literacy will develop as they traverse the school system. In a longitudinal study Sènèchal and LeFevre (2001) found that children from homes in which the parents reported teaching literacy skills often but did not read storybooks frequently were more likely to have advantages over their peers in spelling, decoding, and alphabet knowledge until the end of first grade. However, by third grade this group of children experienced a dramatic decline in their reading performance compared to their peers. We could expect from these findings then that the children of the present study might experience a decline in their reading achievement by third grade since reading aloud was not a frequent practice among these families. However, we should also underscore the ability of these families to adapt and change according to the demands of the school. On an optimistic note, if the school were to continue communicating effectively with these families, it is possible that such a joint effort would synergistically strengthen the possibilities for their children’s learning. As shown in this study, schools play an important role facilitating parents to achieve their goals. Rather than ignoring or belittling the beliefs and values of immigrant families, schools can design strategies that complement the parents’ efforts (Nutbrown and Hannon, 2003). Teachers should explicitly identify the differences between school experiences in the home countries of students and those in the USA. The parents of this study were actively seeking to understand these differences and to find ways to accommodate to best help their children. 265



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Note

1. María Isabel Ramírez was assessed at the end of her kindergarten year. References

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 , Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, CB#8040, UNC-CH, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-8040, USA. [email: [email protected]]  . , 303 Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1320 S. Sixth Street, Champaign, IL 61820, USA. [email: [email protected]]

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