In December 2015 The World Post reported the International Organization for Migration (IOM) statistic that more than 1 million refugees and migrants had entered Europe in 2015. In the context of such extensive cross-national and cross-cultural migration, it is critical that educators consider how migrant and refugee children and their families can be included in education. In the US, federal compensatory education since 1966 has included a program specifically addressing the issues children of migrant workers face (Gouwens, 2001). Children who migrate with their families experience educational discontinuity at the very least; many of them also face cultural contexts and expectations in schools that are very different from their previous experiences, and some have had no schooling at all (Dudley-Marling, 2009). US migrant education has sometimes included a family literacy component to support children’s literacy development as well as to provide adult education including English language instruction and parenting education. As part of the program, home educators often function between home and school, helping parents understand teachers’ and schools’ expectations. We interviewed a group of mothers, who, along with their children, were participants in such a migrant education family literacy program in a rural community in the Midwestern US. All of the mothers had attended school in Mexico and had not experienced first-hand the culture of US schools. Cultural information about rural communities and their schools is typically not explicit; children often go to the same schools their parents attended, and the school culture is inherited or “handed down” from parents to children (Bauch, 2001). Outsiders, children and parents, often struggle to understand and function within the culture of the communities and the schools, and deficit discourses often work against them (Henderson, 2001; Whitehouse & Colvin, 2001). Analysis of the interview data showed that participation in the program led interviewees to become active agents on their children’s behalf. That agency included setting academic goals with their children, making informed decisions about their children’s participation in bilingual and special education, participating actively in parent-teacher conferences, and volunteering in their children’s classrooms. This paper will describe the factors of the program that helped the mothers gain information about the culture of the schools and the community that allowed them to approach, if not gain, insider status in their children’s schools, as well as in the community. The development of the migrant mothers’ agency is highlighted as critical to family success and acceptance.