Fostering Latinx/e Students’ Familial Capital in the Spanish Heritage Language Program at the University of Washington.  

In this En Acción paper, I show how we (director, coordinator, and instructors) have fostered Latinx/e students’ familial capital in the Spanish Heritage Language Program at the University of Washington. Familial capital recognizes the nurtured relationship students have with their immediate and extended family members and communities. This capital also includes the lessons students learned on caring, coping, emotional, moral, and educational consciousness from their family members. Additionally, this capital pulls from the research of Vélez-Ibáñez and Greenber (1992) on Funds of Knowledge that points out that Mexican Americans learn valuable lessons from their family and community that have been passed down across generations. In the SHL classroom context, familial capital focuses on creating relationships of care among students and educators. This includes building a sense of community in and outside the classroom and developing a mentorship relationship between the students and educator. This is possible by explicitly implementing Latinx/e community cultural wealth in the SHL curricula.