By Dr. Wendy Y. Perez
From a young age, I loved school and books. This type of intellectualism is a love I shared with my father.
Image of a monument to José Eloy Alfaro Delgado, former President of Ecuador at a city plaza.
In Ecuador, he read voraciously as a child and academically excelled until he left his legal studies at the Universidad de Guayaquil after he married my mother. At home, it was completely normal that I was academically inclined. Reading books, discussing ideas, and engaging in debates were encouraged. My love for learning and academics was deeply rooted in my identity as an Ecuadorian-American.
My father told me about Simón Bolívar and Eloy Alfaro and their visions for Latin America. He also recited poetry by poets like Manuel Acuña. He told me that El Hombre Mediocre by José Ingenieros was a seminal book from his youth. We listened to Ecuadorian music by Julio Jaramillo.
A portrait of Simón Bolívar, statesman and revolutionary leader.
While these were all Latino men, I held onto the knowledge that my Ecuadorian and Latine roots had a rich history of producing art, music, and knowledge, so I could too. Why not me? This "educación" was given freely by my father and an example of how parents of color pass on “funds of knowledge,” the ways that families generate, obtain, and distribute knowledge to their children.
While my father saw me as an academic and intellectual, I realized others at my predominantly white high school did not, creating a disconnect for me. While I received encouragement for using advanced vocabulary in Spanish and discussing ideas at home, I felt "othered" in honors and Advancement Placement classes that had disproportionately few Latine students. At home, I pictured shaping the world like the Ecuadorian and Latine protagonists I learned about, but at school, I was only exposed to a few of these leaders. I wanted to see Latine visionaries and history makers as main characters deserving of meaningful attention in my high school curriculum, rather than side characters worthy only of cursory discussions. While my father told me that I could do anything I set my mind to and that nobody could ever take away my knowledge, I faced lower expectations at school. One honors teacher even felt the need to remind me soon after I started her class that it was challenging, which wasn't a warning I saw her give to non-Latine students.
This disconnect between school and home meant a challenge to my core identity. I accepted this as the model of school: you have one world at home and another at school, utterly separate.
Later, when I attended a predominantly white college, higher education too became separate from my home life and the knowledge from my father. Unfortunately, like the honors and AP classes at my high school, my college also had few students, faculty, or administrators who looked like me. There were limited classes focused on Latine culture and ways of knowing. I found my intellectual freedom nonetheless, but it felt like I had to leave my culture and family behind, aside from the few classes I took on Latine history, psychology, politics, and culture, or the one Chicano/Latino center on campus. While I enjoyed connecting with diverse people on campus, I also looked to those who cared for our lawns, served us our meals, and a few faculty of color or students of color, to find someone who looked like me, to remind me of family and culture, to help me feel like that part of me belonged on campus. When I struggled academically during my sophomore year, I questioned, "Do I belong here? Do I even belong in college?" If my most vital connection to college was through my academic self, devoid of my Latine identity and knowledge, then maybe my struggles meant I wasn't college material. If only my college had honored my Latine identity by providing more opportunities to learn about Latine culture, for my family to connect with campus beyond orientation, to find more ways to celebrate events and traditions important to Latine culture, and had more faculty and students that shared some of my lived experiences, it would have meant embracing more of my whole self.
Well, many years and a Master's and Ph.D. later, I realized that I did belong in college. I've committed my professional life to academics, but I've stopped dividing myself and focused my research on finding ways to center families of color in education. I’ve embraced how being an Ecuadorian-American deeply committed to her family and culture has strengthened me as a scholar and academic, even when this wasn’t part of the intellectual communities that I belonged to. And I ask, why can't home culture be a part of academic life? Why can't families of color and their knowledge and culture be integrated into academic spaces such as colleges and universities?
People of color continue to divide themselves because their culture and families do not appear in educational institutions at the highest levels. I acknowledge that college is often a time when young people gain independence, form their identities, and understand new ideas away from their families. And not all college students want their families to be a part of their college experience. Yet, students of color have cited their families as critical supporters on their higher education journey. Many students of color's academic journeys are about collective betterment rather than solely individual advancement. For many students of color, welcoming their families and culture could bridge two worlds that don't have to be so separate.
- While scholars invite higher education membership to include families, demonstrate how families support first-generation college students of color, and create more inclusive models of family engagement in higher education, more research is needed. Higher education institutions, faculty, and researchers can further explore the connections between families of color and higher education. Important questions to consider include:
- What can we learn from existing models that invite families of color to be part of their children's college experience? How do students of color envision their families' involvement in their college experiences? How do their families themselves wish to be engaged?
- How can higher education institutions learn from effective family engagement practices in K-12 education, where families of color are leaders and decision-makers on issues of substance, such as curriculum, enrichment activities, hiring, and budgets?
Photo of Dr. Wendy Perez graduating from college with her late father in attendance.
I have been fortunate to have a first teacher like my father and to work with parent leaders of color who care deeply about their children's education. As a mother and scholar, I also dream of my Latine son attending a higher education institution that honors who he is, including his Latine culture.
My dreams for higher education institutions are similar to those for K-12. I dream that they can become spaces that include families of color in decisions that affect their children, that families' lived experiences, knowledge, and traditions are valued rather than dismissed or minimized, and that they offer opportunities for students of color to see themselves and their families. Higher education institutions have the opportunity and responsibility to fully embrace students of color and their multiple identities by engaging their families.
I urge them to consider this call to action now. Engaging families of color in education is especially critical during this current time, where public narratives can paint them as problematic rather than who they truly are: partners who care deeply about education for their children and young people in their communities who are willing to resist and speak out against educational policies that are unjust and do not respond to their lived experiences.
