Chapter 10: Bridging Cultures Parent Workshops: Developing Cross-Cultural Harmony in Schools Serving Latino Immigrant Families

A hotbed for observing cross-cultural interaction is the school classroom. Recent waves of immigrants have diversified many school populations in the United States, especially in major urban centers. Presently, elementary schools in minority communities are a locus for cultural socialization because young immigrant children are being exposed to mainstream cultural values for the first time. Since schools usually reflect the culture of mainstream society, children from immigrant families unknowingly will struggle to integrate their home and school cultures because they were previously embedded in what was the “mainstream culture” in their own society (Trumbull, Rothstein-Fisch, & Greenfield, 2000).

Cross-cultural communication with Latinos is a particularly salient topic because they are currently the largest minority in the United States. Latinos, counted at 35.3 million in 2000, were 12.5% of the U.S. population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2006). In 2000, the state of California had almost eleven million Latinos, 32.4% of the population (Guzmán, 2001). Moreover, 62% of Latino children in California had at least one immigrant parent (“Ethnicity race and culture—Latino growth,” 2010). Since the majority of Latinos in California, the location of our research, are first- or second-generation Americans, cross-cultural conflict is especially relevant, as newly arrived immigrant families face the challenges of integrating into mainstream society and schools.