What do the teachers say is the problem?

As I have talked with different teachers about the common struggles they have seen among their Latino student, I have noticed a trend in their answers.  Speaking with Mr. Mayntz, who teaches physics at Provo High, he said that it’s not ethnicity that correlates with learning challenges but the financial status of the parents. He explained that the students who have good grades are normally the ones with parents who have professional employment or a full education. The parents understand the education system very well because they were once students and went through it. So when their child says, “I don’t have any homework” they know he or she is lying and they can apply the necessary measures to insure their child does his/her school work.  When I spoke with Mr. McIlmoil earlier today at Timpview High he gave me a similar response. He said that when a transfer student, even with language barriers, arrives at his class, if they and their parents value education, he/she does every bit as well as the rest of the students. Both teacher seem to imply that the most important factor in a student success is the value the family places on education.

This is huge for my research in Mexico.  It is contrary to my original hypothesis, which was that Latino students were less successful because of the lower quality of education found within their native country. I was then planning of identifying said limitations and design a system to help improve what their original education system failed to teach. I now understand that there is a greater need to be studied; that for those families that do not fully understand the value of higher education, how can one help parents and student jointly adopt a greater value for their education?

To answer this by my field study research in Mexico, my focus will be on parent-teacher-student relations and what they are doing to encourage further education.  I would like to study the success stories of rural students who do achieve a higher education and the reasons why others do not.  My research would include a lot of interactions with parents and interviews with high school and college graduates who developed a value for their education. 

*Side note. The more and more I research and talk with high school teachers, the more my research question changes.  This has been stressful to me, but I am finding that with every change, my project is becoming more and more relevant to the Hispanic community and more meaningful to me.