Mi Padre: Mexican Immigrant Fathers and Their Children's Education

Mi Padre centers on the promise of parent involvement practices that build upon the range of linguistic and sociocultural resources that Latin immigrant students and their families bring to school. Through the experiences of Mexican immigrant fathers and their children, this book illustrates the need for humanizing family engagement. Gallo identifies the many ways these fathers contribute to their children’s education and how educators can communicate more effectively with immigrant families. Mi Padre also shows the consequences of deportation-based immigration policies on elementary school education and offers strategies for supporting students and their families in the classroom. The author stresses the importance of learning from and with families and offers practical suggestions for how to build relationships with all caregivers as a counterpractice to the one-size-fits-all schooling that many teachers, students, and families experience today.

“By highlighting fathers with a deep longing for the benefits and opportunities that a good education can offer their children, Sarah Gallo has documented how these men redefine what it means to be engaged in their children’s schooling. Teachers, teacher educators, researchers, and others will all benefit from this beautiful and powerful book.”
—Sonia Nieto, professor emerita, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

“A compelling and lucid example of activist scholarship rooted in rigorous ethnographic inquiry . . . a must-read for pre- and inservice teachers grappling with how to work in solidarity with families that are threatened by racism and exclusionary notions of citizenship.”
—Gerald Campano, University of Pennsylvania, author of Partnering with Immigrant Communities