Transcript Beaver Country Day School

Making it Real:
Developing Multicultural
Competency in Every
Classroom
Monday, December 14, 2009
Sponsor: Association of Independent Schools New England
(AISNE)
Host: Beaver Country Day School
Workshop Outline
1:30 - 4:30PM
1:30 - introductions
1:45 - overview of the institutional policies and infrastructure that
drive this initiative
2:00 - Department Heads panel
2:30 - Breakout sessions – Beaver faculty will share examples of
curricular innovation incorporating multicultural
competencies *(two 30 minute sessions)
3:30 - participants share strategies from the day and work
collaboratively on an existing piece of their own curriculum
4:10 – 4:30 Closing Q & A
You want change?
“In
a nation of 300 million people with intricate, dizzying
global connections and information networks, it is juvenile to
think that 'change' that endures can come from one man, one
administration or one coalition. It is naive — not earnest — to
think that civic improvement is primarily 'top down.'”
You Wanted Change? It's Time To Help
Dick Meyer
NPR.org, Nov. 6, 2008
How about a little
cognitive dissonance?
The need for change calls educators to take a hard look at
exactly what we are teaching relevant to the global needs of
the 21st century.
We call it, “getting messy.”
Go ahead – “make excellent mistakes!”
Who we areBeaver Country Day School
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Independent, coeducational, progressive, college
preparatory school
421 students in grades 6-12, 119 in the middle
school, 302 in the upper school
Average of 15 students per class
Founded in 1920, first head of school Eugene
Randolph Smith
Students come from 52 communities including the
city of Boston
48% of students come from public and charter
schools, 52% from independent and parochial
schools
Who we areBeaver Country Day School
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25% students of color
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20% faculty of color
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20 languages are spoken at home by our students
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25% of students receive financial aid
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Diversity of family structures
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Tuition for 2009-2010 is $33,450 for all grades
Deeply committed to individual student
success, teachers inspire students to:
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Act effectively within a genuinely diverse cultural
and social framework
Serve both school and society with integrity,
respect, and compassion
BCDS Mission Statement (Excerpt) (Revised January 2006)
Hiatt Center for Social Justice Education
Long term goal:
Building on Beaver’s long-standing commitment to
diversity, multicultural learning, and social action,
our goal is to significantly increase the integration
of social justice education into the learning culture
at BCDS.
Global Rationale
The data collected in the 2007-2008 academic year reveals a need
for BCDS to strengthen the relationship between social justice
education and instructional outcomes.
Hiatt Focus - the needs of the global community and economy
in the 21st. Century challenge our instructional outcomes to:
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produce individuals who are capable of communicating and
functioning effectively within the changing demographics of
today’s workforce
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produce students who by the nature of their education, are
equipped with the understanding and skills to be mobilized as
global citizens and act as agents of social change
Realistic about programming
Intentional about skill development:
Multicultural Competency
http://www.bcdschool.org/ftpimages/40/misc/misc_56899.pdf
The multicultural competencies give us defined standards for
the work (first introduced in February, 2006).
The multicultural competencies are exactly the skills with
which students need to be equipped to act as agents of social
change.
Skill Set A - affirms diversity (identity)
Skill Set B - encourages critical thinking (lens awareness)
Skill Set C - gives students hands-on opportunities (practice)
SJE Alignment – How it all fits
-produce individuals who are capable of communicating and functioning
effectively within the changing demographics of today’s workforce
-produce students who by the nature of their education, are equipped
with the understanding and skills to be mobilized as global citizens and
act as agents of social change
6-12 grade Sequence
Curriculum, Community Engagement, Common Experiences
Leadership - Department Heads; Practice - Unit Design/IPGP
Hiatt Restructuring – Integration of social justice
Inventory
Multicultural Competencies
Data Driven
In the curriculum, in every classroom?
Working to transform the curriculum and
the classroom to address the development
of these social justice related skills can have
a great “ripple effect” on all sorts of
important institutional issues (admissions,
hiring, etc.).
Let’s give a listen…
Moving Forward…
Sharing Strategies
The Data:
What we have learned
about the nature of this work
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programming needs to be positioned to augment what is standard
curricular content (multicultural competency development)
more examination of issues of identity (i.e., race, gender, sexual
orientation), some focus on developing lens awareness
(deconstruct socialization, systemic formation of inequity), less
opportunities to practice the application of these skills (action)
classroom work has to be focused on deconstructing and
reinventing our relationship to sustained inequity by repositioning
content (global or otherwise) to intentionally:
- develop critical social thinking skills
- learn about the systemic formation of events, information, etc.
(asking the question, "Why?")
- create "lens" awareness (Who am I when I walk in the room;
who am I when I walk away?)
- provide students opportunities to act
More Data:
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there is no question - change what you do in your
classrooms and you will address issues of the "inclusive
school community" like never before
students’ developmental needs will be revealed as you do
the work, but beware - their empowered humanity will
surprise you, sometimes blow you away!
the personal to the social... and back again; The personal
to the social... and back again
yes, we must intentionally raise the "complexities" (multiple
perspectives) of social issues - but the realities of injustice
and inequity must be questioned
truth, humanity, and transparency are powerful pedagogy
strengthening our efforts to continually deconstruct the
broad and equally powerful socialization that students bring
to our classrooms
And finally…
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just as with any other learning we must assess (find
evidence) that these skills have been applied to personal,
school, community, global change
this transformation takes time, and faculty need ongoing
opportunities to explore, discover, share, and apply
curricular innovations
The Future of This Work: Community Engagement
The Future of this work:
Moving beyond the management of issues of diversity
“The management of race, gender, sexual and class conflict
stands in for an active commitment to struggle against these
inherited and disabling structures …The practice and pedagogy
of accommodation is profoundly different if not
incommensurate with the practice and pedagogy of dissent
and transformation."
Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, 2003
Movement towards grounding social justice education across
the curriculum is a work in progress.
But there is no substitute.
The future of this work:
Recognizing the impact of first-world socialization
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presenting content to students without it being examined
within the context of our relationship to sustained inequity
runs the danger of reinforcing the already existing distance
that is the reality of being socialized as a member of firstworld privilege and entitlement
this danger is equally as true for many faculty who have
also been socialized as a member of the first-world culture,
and who have been socialized in the traditional framing of
teaching and learning as a cognitive, academic exercise
The future of this work:
Finding the “urgency” to reinvent ourselves as social beings
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the future of this work will see it's greatest potential in
educators admitting, “We can't teach what we don't know”
(the actual functioning of our global economic system)
at the center of reinventing ourselves as social beings is the
work to deconstruct our relationship to systemically
sustained inequity
build the “urgency” – where “does it get ya?”
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The future of this work:
Teaching “thinking in systems”
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refocusing teaching and learning on social justice requires
that we shine the light of “thinking in systems" on issues of
diversity
teachers “thinking in systems” will look to find and use
examples of systems (within their disciplines,
interdisciplinary), and with their students define the
elements, interconnections, and function/purpose of those
systems
Thinking in systems
“Instead of seeing only how A causes B, you’ll begin to wonder how B
may also influence A – and how A might reinforce or reverse itself.
When you hear in the nightly news that the Federal Reserve Bank
has done something to control the economy, you’ll also see that the
economy must have done something to effect the Federal Reserve
Bank. When someone tells you that population growth causes
poverty, you’ll ask yourself how poverty may cause population
growth …You’ll be thinking not in terms of a static world, but a
dynamic one. You’ll stop looking for who’s to blame; instead you’ll
start asking, “What’s the system?” (This) opens up the idea that a
system can cause its own behavior.”
Thinking in Systems, Donella H. Meadows, edited by Diana Wright, 2008
Thinking in systems…
Can we teach this to address issues of social justice?
“The trick, as with all the behavioral possibilities of
complex systems, is to recognize what structures
contain which latent behaviors, and what conditions
release those behaviors – and, where possible, to
arrange the structures and conditions to reduce the
probability of destructive behaviors and to
encourage the possibility of beneficial ones.”
Thinking in Systems, Donella H. Meadows, edited by Diana Wright, 2008
Resources
*Most importantly, the people in this room*
The Hiatt Center for Social Justice Education
(http://www.bcdschool.org/podium/default.aspx?t=111942)
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Iteach
http://iteach.ning.com/
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Read it and Weep: Ortiz trumps Sotomayor
http://iteach.ning.com/profiles/blogs/read-it-and-weep-ortiz-trumps
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Boston Center for Community and Justice (BCCJ)
http://www.bostonccj.org/
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United for a Fair Economy (UFE)
http://www.faireconomy.org/
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Media Matters
http://mediamatters.org/
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Institute for Policy Studies (IPS)
http://www.ips-dc.org/
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Conscious Capitalism Institute
http://www.cc-institute.com/cci/
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Democracy Now
http://www.democracynow.org/
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Thank you!
Hiatt Center for
Social Justice Education
www.bcdschool.org/hiattcenter