ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses family members’ impromptu reactions to their students’ presentations during a Noche de Familia (Family Night) event as part of a special academic outreach program. In this event, twelve high school students presented a range of original research projects while utilizing different linguistic varieties to communicate their work to their families in their preferred language(s) and style(s). Seven parents shared their impromptu reactions to students’ presentations. Parents’ responses revealed a unified linguistic appreciation toward students’ Spanish maintenance efforts, yet students’ diverse linguistic talents were underappreciated or seen through deficit perspectives. Parents shared their experiences with a growing communicative divide to express a need for language brokers and underscored the importance of students’ Spanish maintenance. Through their stories, elements of linguistic expectations towards ethnoracially marked individuals became evident. Deficit perspectives towards Spanglish and underdeveloped Spanish were also voiced. Parents’ linguistic ideologies paralleled the previously held positionality of the students and the researcher. This finding calls attention to the growing linguistic ideological divide between the worlds that students navigate. This chapter provides a glimpse into students’ linguistic liberation and highlights educators’ responsibility to help reduce incongruences across students’ linguistic worlds.
