School support networks and Mexican-American student success

Diversity; Manufacturing Hope and Despair

The article, "Manufacturing Hope & Despair: The School and Kin Support Networks of U.S. Mexican Youth" by Ricardo D. Stanton-Salazar covers the social order of education and adolescence in American and Hispanic young people. He urges school personnel to become more involved with students. He notes, "School agents frequently find themselves acting as co-parents, informal mentors, child advocated, and informal psychologists," and this is especially important to the low-income youth's success in education. He goes on to profile a predominately Mexican high school in San Diego, Auxillo High, and looks at supportive relationships with teachers and counselors in the school. He illustrates several different student/teacher relationships, and shows how they positively affected the student's lives. He also discusses a special program implemented at the school called AVID, and shows how the program has also helped transform some of the students both personally and academically. The author then discusses constraints on these supportive relationships, and why some students simply do not trust the staff, no matter how much help they might need.

This article clearly shows how supportive relationships can help some students become better people, and better academically. Students who trust their teachers and counselors often confide things they would not confide at home and the support staff can help guide students into making better choices for their future. This is an important and valuable lesson for students, and it gives them hope for their futures when sometimes they had seen no hope before. It is quite clear that many educators go far beyond their job description in dealing with their students, and this is to be admired. They make a difference in student's lives, and this is probably the greatest gift they could give to some of these students.