Mi Padre

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.

Book Features:

• Provides practical approaches for drawing on Latin@ families’ educational resources for school-based learning.
• Depicts the consequences of immigration policies on children, families, and elementary school teachers.
• Draws on ethnographic data collected during a period of strong anti-immigrant sentiment in a Pennsylvania town.

Sarah Gallo is an assistant professor of bilingual and immigrant education in the department of Teaching and Learning at The Ohio State University.

"Highly recommended for undergraduate and graduate programs, especially education, sociology, Latina studies in education, multicultural education, English as a second language programs, and social justice in education."

—Teachers College Record

"... a valuable resource for thinking critically about the concept of ‘privilege’ and how to support students who have faced/are facing a particular type of trauma...a required text for teachers at the beginning of their career as well as for more experienced teachers in their continuing professional development."

—Language and Education

" Mi Padre is a thought‐provoking book that urges educators working with minoritized children and families to challenge the status quo and support children’s learning by valuing resources from home under the current constraints of increasing accountability."

—Anthropology & Education Quarterly

"With its humanizing approach, it is a refreshing read during this time of charged political rhetoric and turmoil."

—Harvard Educational Review

“ 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

Mi Padre is a compelling and lucid example of activist scholarship rooted in rigorous ethnographic inquiry. In this timely book, Gallo challenges deficit ideologies of families that are not only evident in glaring stereotypes but also reproduced through subtle interactions between educators and fathers. Importantly, Gallo does not stop at critique but proposes a practical model of more humanizing family engagement that does not shy away from addressing the larger sociopolitical contexts of schooling. Mi Padre can help the education field move beyond us--them dichotomies toward a shared vision of educational equity forged through self-reflexivity, trust, and ideological clarity. It is 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