Parents who are immigrants understand the importance of education, but are often labeled as parents who don’t hold their children to high standards, according to Emily Francis, a high school ESL teacher in North Carolina who works with newcomer students.
“My mother was labeled as someone who didn’t care about my education” because she wasn’t able to participate in school events and conferences, said Francis.
Francis knows that parents, like her own mother, may not be able to attend scheduled school events and activities because they are “working countless hours for [their children] to have survival essentials.” Today, she operates in her classroom with the understanding that different families from different cultural backgrounds have different learning patterns at home. “Bringing families into school gives us the opportunity to open the floor,” said Francis. And that helps students learn.
Being welcomed in a new school environment and feeling a sense of belonging is important for all students and parents to experience. It’s particularly important for schools to engage with families that might feel disoriented by their setting or that their cultural practices are unwelcome, according to Carola Suárez-Orozco, a clinical psychologist and professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on the role that schools play in the development of immigrant children.
How can educators create a welcoming environment for parents so that they can enable student success? Here are some strategies tested by educators.
A Wish List for the Child’s Education
For the 2024-25 school year, Francis asked a group of parents to write down their visions for their children on a sticky note.
She’s done a slightly different version of this activity with elementary students’ parents, in which the parents each wrote a wish for their child on a strip of paper, then all the papers were linked together to make a chain of wishes. This activity provides parents with an opportunity to reflect on their own child’s success.
As with any group, there can sometimes be a lack of communication between immigrant parents and their children. According to Francis, the most feedback that she received was from students, who may not have heard these explicit messages of future success from their parents before.
“Parents don’t get asked enough what their opinion is when it comes to their kid’s education,” said Francis.
Name Cultural Norms in Order to Identify and Overcome Misperceptions
Engaging with the parents and families of immigrant students and English language learners can be hard to do without proper understanding of other cultural family practices, said Francis.
Some newcomer parents and students might come from a culture where it is expected that parents don’t involve themselves in or interfere with school practices, said Suárez-Orozco. That’s a stark contrast from the U.S. education culture, which expects parents to be heavily involved in school activities.
For parent María, the transition to navigating a school in the U.S. was very difficult. At first, María and her children had a hard time locating classrooms, but they have worked very hard to adjust to their new setting.
In Mexico, María was able to help her children with their homework, but couldn’t shortly after arriving because she doesn’t understand the language. She still makes sure that her children feel supported in their new environment, and she helps where she can with their assignments, despite the language barrier.
Now, a year later, she has been able to connect with Francis and other teachers who have welcomed her and her family with open arms.
“Things aren’t impossible,” said María.
María is pleased with the amount of support that her family has received from the school, and she has participated in Francis’s family engagement nights.
María has also seen the positive impact of a welcoming and communicative community has had on her children. They continue to deepen their understanding and engagement in school, their confidence levels have increased and they come home happier, she said.
Meet Parents Regularly, Outside of BTSN
Family engagement nights for newcomer students and their parents happen once every quarter at Francis’ school. She and the other organizers break parents into small groups so they can have deeper conversations with one another and the parents who missed previous engagement nights receive personalized information to catch them up to speed. These events are meant to provide parents and students with guidance about the expectations of students in the U.S. school system like attendance, behavior and grades.
However, parent engagement across the age groups vary. When Francis worked at the elementary school level she would regularly have 70 to 80 parents show up to each engagement night; at the high school level, that engagement is much lower, she said.
Fighting Low Expectations
In her 35 years of experience in this field, the biggest challenge that she has seen is that teachers have low expectations of students because they believe that parents have low expectations for their children.
“To see in black and white that many of these parents actually have high aspirations for their children would probably be quite refreshing,” said Suárez-Orozco. One of the common motivations for parents to immigrate to the U.S. is to provide a better life and education for their children, and it’s important that teachers hear that, she continued.
While some parents might regularly share their wishes and vision for their children, Suárez-Orozco said that other parents have limited time because they are “dealing with the practical realities of surviving.”
Break Bread with Relevant Food
In order to engage with parents on a cultural level, Francis sets up a potluck event during the holidays. Parents are invited to bring in a homemade dish for other parents and teachers to enjoy. Not only is this a way for parents to share their own cultural traditions and cuisines, but it also shows the teachers how much they are appreciated for their work, said Francis.
Low lift games like Lotería, are a fun way to engage parents during engagement nights, said Francis. Games like these offer an opportunity for teachers to interact with parents without having to discuss school topics.
Meeting Parents Where They Are
Francis has worked with school counselors to find more flexible engagement event strategies, including going to a community, holding an event at the library, or even on the weekends. It’s important to “[find] ways for parents to know that we want to team up,” said Francis.
Schools have to be willing to meet parents half way if they want to build meaningful connections. Suárez-Orozco suggested offering Zoom options for meetings and events, and said that it is important to share positive information about a parent’s student.
Communicating and Communication Tools
Parent engagement is important for all populations, but for parents who might come from different cultural backgrounds, engagement might look different. Francis and her colleagues use ParentSquare —a communication platform that translates messages from over 100 languages— to communicate with families that speak primary languages other than English at home. She also calls parents personally before an engagement event to encourage them to participate.
“When I became a teacher, my goal was to make sure that we break those assumptions that [immigrant] parents are, if not more, interested in making sure that their kids become successful,” said Francis.
Overall, providing a welcoming environment and guidance on U.S. school systems and standards for families from different cultures without judgment helps to bridge the cultural gap that might exist between parents and school.
Some strategies like wish lists for their children, naming cultural norms and communicating outside of annual Back To School Nights can go a long way in engaging newcomer families with English language learners. MindShift
