Latinos In Action was founded by Jose Enriquez. LIA is a class/program set up for junior high and high schools to support Bilingual Latino students in utilizing their language skills to support their schools, districts and communities. The class provides work experience for Bilingual Hispanic high school students to serve as role models for younger Hispanic students by tutoring at local elementary schools. LIA students learn to have the self-efficacy to persist through their educational goals and become contributing members of their communities. The mission of Latinos in Action is to help students graduate from high school and to empower Latino youth to be college and career ready through culture, service, leadership, and excellence.…
Compton, prior to WWII, slowly began transforming from an all white community to a multiracial community, due to the migration of African Americans. After the war had ended, the black population increased significantly to approximately 100 percent, in Compton. Many of the African Americans who migrated to Compton endured many hardships until the mid-1960s, where things began to slowly change. After the 19960s, the African Americans were governing the city of Compton, along with its school district. As the time passed, the city of Compton began to take on yet another transformation, due to the migration of Latinos.…
The Latino Retreat is an annual festivity which takes place at the Mendocino College. The Latino Retreat allows for Latinos across Mendocino County to learn more about their educational opportunities, different ways they can thrive, as well as learn more about their culture. This year, the Latino Club at WHS had the opportunity to attend the 30th annual Latino Retreat. Every year, a motivational guest speaker attends the college and the students have an opportunity to speak to him or her afterward. This year, the speaker was Samuel Blanco III, director of the Upward Bound Program at UC Davis.…
In Academic Profiling: Latinos, Asian American, and the Achievement Gap, by Gilda Ochoa, it describes how a focus on the achievement gap, can cause harm to both Latina/Latino and Asian American students by ignoring systematic and structural injustices that maintain “binary” and “hierarchical” thinking. One of her arguments is that the achievement gap gives off a mirage that inequality is being managed by moving the focus to “high-stakes testing”. According to her bibliography Gilda L. Ochoa lives in Southern California. She enjoys reading, writing, and running. She is also a professor of sociology and Chicana/Chicano and Latina/Latino studies at Pomona College.…
Although people assume otherwise, I am Latina, and I'm proud to be a part of that community. I obtain my Latin blood from my father, who moved to the United States from Uruguay as a child. My parents divorced each other when I was young; however, when I was with him for either the weekend or the month of July, I embraced all the wonders of my Latin family. Latino culture entails prodigious amounts of cooking, and we always cooked Uruguayan food; it was almost taboo to eat out. From flan to the glorious empanadas, my family always ate homemade meals.…
Being a student at one of the most prestigious schools in the United States, you are given amazing classes which teach us various topics which eventually bring us back to our major or main topic of our undergraduate. Being a Mexican student, my knowledge is primarily about the struggles and stories from my own country. Coming to this school and meeting other minorities from other countries and taking classes that teach us about those countries as well, my knowledge about other problems and stories that happen to other students, families, and youth throughout the countries makes us realize that we are all the same and not alone when it comes to tragedies and inequalities like the ones many of us encounter in the US already. Attending "El Pais Que Viene” a Non-Profit Event & Book Launch, allowed me to connect the various topic and stories I learned in my Chicano studies class called “Central Americans” where we discussed the important events and inequalities that are happening throughout these central American countries and looking at stories through literature and media. Living in the Untied States as a minority, we tend to not tell our stories from our countries or even identify ourselves from those countries due to the negative image that the US has towards the people who come from these different countries.…
With over 170,000 Hispanic people living in the Oklahoma City metro area, The University of Oklahoma’s Hispanic American Student Association (HASA) strives to welcome members of the community and spread their culture in the meantime (Living in Oklahoma City). The University of Oklahoma’s Hispanic American Student Association focuses on providing an environment in which students from an underrepresented group on campus can come together and share experiences. It also has formed a community in which students can ask for advice and guidance from other students, forming bonds through shared experiences. The organization hopes to expand Hispanic and Latino customs and traditions throughout the University of Oklahoma. (Hispanic American Student Association).…
The recent changes made by the 2020 Census, which would move Latinos into the race category, brings forward the discussion whether Latinos should be considered a race or an ethnicity. Even though society projects a single stereotype of what it means to be a Latinos, the Latino community is actually extremely diverse with no physical characteristics bounding them together instead the shared experience of being a Latino is the United States ties this heterogeneous group together. This understanding of each other on a cultural level and not on a physical appearance level is what makes Latinos an ethnicity and not a race. While the Latino community contains a variety of people with different cultures, customs, races, and nationalities, they are…
In the article, “Mexican Immigrant Families Crossing the Education Border: A Phenomenological Study” by Sandra Ixa Plata-Potter and Maria Rosario T. de Guzman, they examine Mexican immigrant parents that confront challenges to help their children succeed in school. Considering that Latinos now make up the biggest minority group in the United States, most Latinos are less likely to complete college. The study presented in this article is an attempt to examine the experience of Mexican immigrant parents as they guide their children to maneuver the United States educational system. Differences in performances between the United States and Mexico such as, language barriers and other challenges, caused these parents to sometimes feel discouraged…
The 20 articles selected were empirical studies in which within Latino group differences were discussed, addressed one or more of the preliminary research questions, and added to the foundation surrounding this topic. The observed research designs that were most often used were longitudinal, stratified, and cross-sectional. The most observed research methods were semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and surveys. There were no uniform research design or methods used throughout the literature, however for the majority of research findings there was uniformity among the…
The Latino population has been one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the past decades, with an estimate of approximately 60 million Latinos living in the United States. Additionally, the number of Latinos enrolled in schools or colleges have also widened. However, despite the outstanding increase of Latinos enrolled in schools and college, there is one important issue most people ignore, Latinos face an educational crisis that is caused by a number of reasons including economic, social, and environmental influences. Latinos nationally have lower grades and standardized tests than their peers throughout the course of their education.…
I come from a rather large community where Latinos seem to dominate my residence; however, even though there seems to be a vast amount of Latinos such as I, it seems that work is not easy to come by. The opportunities I my community are largely different than those one can see in the movies. California is not as grand as what many outsiders seem to believe. As a student and a daughter of a low income family I have seen first hand the struggles that many have to face if they want to survive the harsh economy that I live in. In my family I will be the first to go to college, so I have to set a good example to my three younger siblings.…
A strong emphasis is placed on family as the major source of one’s identity and protection against the hardships of life. This sense of family belonging is intense and limited to family and close friends. People who are not family or close friends are often slow to be given trust, so it is important for Latino individuals to sustain those strong relationships with family and friends as a means to receive support when needed. The family model is an extended one; grandparents, aunts, cousins, and even people who are not biologically related may be considered…
Growing up with a Chicano (Mexican-American) and a Native-American background, I’ve experienced much of the fulfillment of being included with the URMs (Underrepresented minorities) experience. URMs is defined as African Americans, American Indians/Alaska Natives, and Latinos— who have historically comprised a minority of the U.S. population are growing in size and influence (nacme.org). Growing up in a small town, with primarily Caucasians, can really be intimidating, as most minorities are looked down upon as going nowhere and having no goals coming from a small town. The residence I grew up was located in a small country town, which not many minorities would choose to live in. The reason for this, is because in most small towns, the most prominent race is Caucasians.…
The process of attaining a college degree challenges an individual in many different ways, but those among a 1st generation population are often overlooked. 1st generation college students are the first in their family to attend college and come from low socioeconomic backgrounds. We wanted to take upon this topic to expose many of the disadvantages and challenges that 1st generation college students are faced with at the 4-year university level, particularly at Cal State Los Angeles; considering the demographic of 1st generation students consists of 60% admitted freshman. Cal State LA is also one of the more diverse institutions with 89% people of color and 11% white. While our admission rates are typically high, our graduation rates entail…