“Venimos Para Que se Oiga la Voz”: Activating Community Cultural Wealth as Parental Educational Leadership

Abstract

This article expands a more inclusive parental engagement framework by broadening notions of educational leadership using an example of organizing actions of Latina parent leaders amid a hostile anti-immigrant climate within an urban elementary school. Researchers draw on Yosso’s community cultural wealth framework to analyze how a Latinx parent group and parent leaders activated and nurtured community cultural wealth. The findings describe the ways in which the Latinx parent group fostered community cultural wealth and, in doing so, cultivated parental educational leadership. The authors discuss how the Latinx parent leaders then negotiated tensions that emerged between the Latinx parent group and school officials when a new parent organization was established at the school. We use this study to both disrupt traditional notions of educational leadership and discuss the implications it has for principal preparation programs.