Elite Private TutorsElite Private Tutors
  • About
    • Meet Our Founder
    • Meet The Elite Edge Team
    • Why Pick the Elite Team?
    • Company Culture & Mission
  • Subjects
    • Math Tutoring
    • Science Tutoring
    • English Tutoring
    • History Tutoring
    • Spanish Tutoring
    • SAT/PSAT Test Prep
    • ACT Exam Prep
    • ISEE Exam Prep
    • ERB/OLSAT/HSPT Exam Prep
  • Services
  • Reviews
  • Media
  • FAQ
  • Blog
  • Contact Us
      • Call Now: 469-381-1339
  • About
    • Meet Our Founder
    • Meet The Elite Edge Team
    • Why Pick the Elite Team?
    • Company Culture & Mission
  • Subjects
    • Math Tutoring
    • Science Tutoring
    • English Tutoring
    • History Tutoring
    • Spanish Tutoring
    • SAT/PSAT Test Prep
    • ACT Exam Prep
    • ISEE Exam Prep
    • ERB/OLSAT/HSPT Exam Prep
  • Services
  • Reviews
  • Media
  • FAQ
  • Blog
  • Contact Us

Houston Tutoring

  • Home
  • Houston Tutoring
  • 3 Things We Can Learn From Immigrant Cultures

3 Things We Can Learn From Immigrant Cultures

 

immigrant child performance

According to a 2012 study by researchers at John Hopkins University, immigrant children who came to the U.S. before turning 13 perform better academically than peers with a similar background who were born in the U.S. This study, among others, reveals at least three of their advantages in performance:

1. Gratefulness

As someone who grew up in an upper middle-class home in Houston, I didn’t consider education a privilege. I considered it a rite of passage. Everyone had to go to school, myself included. And while this may be true in the U.S., it is not in many other countries. You may recall the story of Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old girl who was shot in the face for protesting the ban on female education in her native Pakistan. If and when people like this manage to successfully immigrate to our country, they are beyond grateful to have access to educational channels that were not available back home. This gratefulness, in turn, fuels hard work, and hard work fuels good academic performance.

If your child is struggling to see why school is such a big deal, remind them of the things they might not have if school was out of the picture, such as their friends, field day and the prom. If they don’t value school for its educational aspect, they may come to value it in terms of these other things.

2. Sticking Together

Oftentimes, immigrants settle into a community of the same ethnic background. (Think: Little Italy, Chinatown) This advantage comes from being surrounded by likeminded, hard-working individuals in the same place. This means you have a lot of likeminded, hard-working individuals in the same place. For the coming-of-age student, this translates into a wealth of potential role models who can not only show him how to make a successful transition from Old World to New World, but who can also lend an empathetic ear when immigrant-related obstacles pop up, such as racial discrimination.

The takeaway here is to make sure your children are surrounded by hard-working, goal-oriented individuals, whether they’re dish washers, tutors or lawyers, because children imitate what they see.

3. Emphasis on education

My dad loved learning. He earned his PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Houston in 1973 and then went to work for Shell Oil Co. for 24 years. I think on some level I always strove to perform well and obtain academic perfection because I saw the attention my now belated father devoted to school when he was a student, and his example inspired me.

Education is a goal many Asian cultures take seriously, so much so that it has morphed into a kind of sacred family value among many immigrant communities. But not all nations put equal emphasis on education. According to Ruben G. Rumbaut, a sociologist at Michigan State University, “About one American in five above the age of 25 is a college graduate… but three out of five Indian and Taiwanese immigrants have college degrees.”

Maybe you’re a single mom with two jobs who doesn’t have much time to review your children’s homework, much less make it to PTA meetings. You can still emphasize the importance of education and good academic performance through daily conversation. Raising a question like “What did everyone learn today?” every night at the dinner table is repetitive enough to show that learning is important to you, yet casual enough so that you’re not being pushy. Remember that your values become your child’s values.

We tend to think of immigrants as a generally disadvantaged group. And in some ways they are. But when it comes to academics, they have the advantage on better performance – not us. So I challenge you to become a student and allow the immigrant to become the teacher.

5 Mistakes Made By Parents of Students With Low Grades
14-year-old Girl Shot For Going to School in Pakistan
Study: First Generation Immigrant Children Do Better In School Than US-born Kids
Why Immigrants’ Children Do Better in School
Immigrant Intelligence in the Classroom
Immigrant Children Get Better Grades, Study Finds

Elite Private Tutors is a world-class tutoring service helping students in Math tutoring, English tutoring, History tutoring, Spanish tutoring, SAT tutoring, Science Tutoring, ACT tutoring, ISEE tutoring, and much more. We deliver concierge-level service and are a boutique agency located in Houston, Texas. Please click here for more information.

The Four Year Plan is a book and online course that will help students get into the college of their dreams. Plan your strategy to get into your dream college, learn how to make your college application stand out, draft the perfect college essay, and more insider secrets and strategies from our college consultants. Click here for an easy, step-by-step plan for applying to colleges and writing your college essays.

 

    • Share:

    Previous post

    5 Reasons Why Every 4-Year-Old Should Have a Tutor
    August 28, 2015

    Next post

    5 Questions to Ask a Tutoring Agency
    29 August, 2015

    Leave A Reply Cancel reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    Recent Posts

    • Why Do Students Beg for Colleges to Accept them, instead of the other way around?
    • (Don’t) Find Your Parenting Spirit Animal!
    • How to Prepare for a Great University
    • College Consultants – The Dirty Secret
    • Maintaining your Balance During the College Application Season

    Categories

    • Austin Tutoring (20)
    • Dallas Tutoring (18)
    • English Tutoring (26)
    • French Tutoring (15)
    • History Tutoring (11)
    • Houston Tutoring (161)
    • Math Tutoring (17)
    • Science tutoring (10)
    • Spanish Tutoring (16)
    • Test Prep (6)
    • Test Prep Tutoring (18)
    • Tutoring in Houston (36)

    Archives

    • October 2016 (1)
    • September 2016 (6)
    • August 2016 (3)
    • December 2015 (1)
    • November 2015 (12)
    • October 2015 (33)
    • September 2015 (33)
    • August 2015 (7)
    • April 2014 (1)
    • March 2014 (2)
    • February 2014 (1)
    • January 2014 (11)
    • December 2013 (13)
    • November 2013 (10)
    • October 2013 (12)
    • September 2013 (3)
    • July 2013 (4)
    • May 2013 (2)
    • April 2013 (3)
    • March 2013 (2)
    • January 2013 (2)
    • December 2012 (2)
    • November 2012 (2)
    • October 2012 (1)
    • September 2012 (1)
    • February 2012 (1)
    logo-college-shortcuts

    Subjects

    • Math Tutoring
    • Science Tutoring
    • English Tutoring
    • History Tutoring
    • Spanish Tutoring

    Services

    • Academic Coaching
    • College Consulting and Counseling Services
    • 8th Grade Private Counseling
    • College Application Counseling – 11th grade

    Test Prep

    • SAT/PSAT Test Prep
    • ACT Exam Prep
    • ISEE Exam Prep
    • ERB/OLSAT/HSPT Exam Prep

    Elite Private Tutors 2017

    • Privacy Policy

    Want To Get Your Kid Into The College Of Their Dreams?
    Get the shortcut delivered straight to your inbox...