Diversity in Schools
The Census Bureau predicts that by the year 2066 half of all of the people living in the U.S. will trace their roots to places other than Western Europe. As the demographics of school districts change, school leaders are challenged to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse population. How well they do so is tied to how well they understand the social and cultural backgrounds of their faculty, students and administrators.
Weave Multiculturalism into:
- Recruitment and retention
- Teaching and learning styles
- Curriculum development
- Disciplinary philosophy
- Communicating with families
- Parent/teacher conferences
- Building community
- Working with recently immigrated students
Testimonial E-mail from Brown University Program Participant
The training that KMA provides to educators is an extremely important component of professional development in today’s schools. It’s true that you can’t teach someone you don’t know, and getting to know students and colleagues from a variety of diverse backgrounds means becoming aware of the differences in meanings that members of diverse cultural groups attach to everyday behaviors and interactions—the assumptions we have regarding the personal motivations behind them. KMA present the work of decades of learning about these differences in their seminars and workshops, in a way that engages adult learners in the personal discovery of their own implicit meaning-generating attitudes as well as those of other cultural groups. It is deep and meaningful learning that can change the nature of relationships between diverse cultural groups represented in today’s schools.
Polly Ulichny, Ed.D.
Co-Director of the M.A.T. in Elementary Education Brown University
