(Re)Constructing Home and School: Immigrant Parents, Agency, and the (Un)Desirability of Bridging Multiple Worlds
By: Fabinne Doucet
Reply by: Shu Shi

Some immigrant parents’ undesirability to build a bridge with the school and teachers reveals the dilemma of mismatched culture between immigrant families and school, as well as the dilemma of inconsistent expectations held by teachers and immigrant parents.

I myself didn’t receive education in America until last September. I wasn’t familiar with American elementary education. Luckily, I learned a lot from observing a typical American elementary classroom in Brooklyn last semester. Students in my class can speak English fluently, and so can their parents, even though most parents’ first language is Spanish. When teachers asked for parents to take turns to lead the weekly Family Fridays or to be chaperons for field trips, parents were very familiar with roles assigned by the teacher. Honestly, I was a little surprised that parents need to actively participate in kids’ school activities and that they have frequent communication with the teacher. I even learned a lot of unfamiliar rules and terminologies in the class, which makes me feel diffident to claim that “I’m majoring in education in America”.

Based on my experience in Brooklyn, I feel more comfortable in student teaching in a Chinatown elementary school this semester. When seeing that many new immigrant parents who may feel diffident in English resist communication with my cooperating teacher (CT), I understand them. I occasionally help my CT translate and call some parents to briefly update students’ performance in school. Parents show a sense of nervousness when answering the phone. Chinese immigrant parents are unaccustomed to having a “casual chat” with the teacher, and they usually consider teachers’ calls as negative signals. When asked to contribute more time to their kids’ school activities, most parents deny and say that they don’t know how to do and that they cannot speak English with the teacher; also, they are surprised that they are asked for giving feedback on kids’ performance. I feel sad when thinking of these issues. Just because they are not proficient in speaking English and in understanding explicit or implicit expectations embedded in American culture, these immigrant parents cannot really enjoy the interactions with teachers, and even with the whole mainstream society. The saddest thing to me is seeing these parents have been excluded from their children’s education.