Case Study: Chican @/Mexican-Americans

After gaining a better knowledge of Chican@/Mexican-American individuals, it is clear there is a lack of understanding towards these unique cultures and narratives in exchange for assimilating students into a larger American culture. While some students, like Mora, are able to balance both their heritage and finding success in their education endeavors, many students either fail to achieve high success or drop their culture in exchange for not only the more dominant culture, but also higher levels of success and understanding of course material. Mora admits he is a unique outlier if one was to look at Chican@/Mexican-Americans as a whole. Not only did Mora have the opportunity to attend a successful high school, but he grew up in a middle-class household with parents who found moderate success in the business world. Mora says he has Mexican-American friend whose families have gone through extensive struggles just to live in America, with one friend having crossed the Rio Grande at the age of six years old. This friend, Mora said, saw her grandmother drown in the river as her family was crossing it, and the ordeal still is a painful memory to her.

Much of Mora’s success is tied to the fact he was from a family with a moderate amount of monetary capital, and Mora said his experiences would have been much different if his family belonged to a lower socio-economic class (2015). This does not mean we excuse race, as it does play a significant role in how teachers perceive students; rather, we analyze both race and class simultaneously, and find ways to increase the amount of Chican@/Mexican-American students into middle and upper-socioeconomic classes while also reworking standards to work within students’ needs while still challenging them on course