This book sheds new light on the work lives of Latina teachers who service two underperforming multiracial schools in metropolitan Los Angeles. It traces the social mobility pathways and professional workplace experiences of college-educated Latinas entering the teaching field—a new employment niche concentration for them and one in which they are working where the majority of their co-workers are other racial/ethnic minorities rather than whites. This work site– based ethnography argues that Latina teachers are “cultural guardians” who devise and fashion ethical alternatives to subtractive sc ... More

This book sheds new light on the work lives of Latina teachers who service two underperforming multiracial schools in metropolitan Los Angeles. It traces the social mobility pathways and professional workplace experiences of college-educated Latinas entering the teaching field—a new employment niche concentration for them and one in which they are working where the majority of their co-workers are other racial/ethnic minorities rather than whites. This work site– based ethnography argues that Latina teachers are “cultural guardians” who devise and fashion ethical alternatives to subtractive schooling practices and cultural deficit models. Latina teachers actively assist Latino families in schools by creatively moving beyond institutionalized curricula—which is typically geared towards a white- middle-class mainstream. They use their own life histories to draw on Latino cultural resources and serve as agents of ethnic mobility, actively teaching their students how to navigate American race and class structures while retaining their cultural roots. Their efforts meet with varying results in two elementary schools, one predominantly Latino/Black and another predominantly Latino/Asian, as there is interracial conflict with African Americans and attempts at working with Asians.