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Next Steps In Diversity

By Paul Kivel for The Bureau For At-Risk Youth

It is important to begin any discussion of diversity by considering how we got to the point where diversity is an issue. After all, we have always been a diverse country. For hundreds of years we have been Native American, African American, Latino/a, Asian American, European American living together, contributing to our culture and history. We have been women and men, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, people with differing abilities, Jews, Christians, Moslems, and Buddhists living together. America has always contained multitudes, but it was only with the advent of the Civil Rights Movement, the women's liberation movement, and various other movements for social change that confronted the institutions of our society on their exclusionary practices and policies that there arose a concern about diversity.

The diversity movement is the result of the struggles of disenfranchised groups for access to decision-making power, and access to resources, safety, and protection from exploitation, violation, and abuse. Diversity is therefore about more than cultural awareness, prejudice, and short term or superficial attempts to address "difference." In other words, the question we should be asking ourselves is not "Can we all get along?" but "Can we all share power?" "Can we all share resources?" "Can we all share opportunity?"

The first step in diversity work is assessment -- determining who has access to power and resources, who is safe and who isn't, who participates and who doesn't. Is your school accessible? The only way to know is to ask a group of people with differing abilities to do an assessment of physical access. Is your school safe for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered students and faculty? You'll have to ask them and do a systematic assessment of the school environment including classroom practices, the curriculum, the composition and retention of the teaching and administrative staff, the impact of tracking, discipline policies, funding, extracurricular activities and other areas of school programming, policies and procedures.

Each of these areas should be suspected of being undermined. For example, in terms of racism, national studies continue to show that less money is spent on the education of students of color than on white students, and students of color are disciplined more quickly and more harshly than white students for the same behavior. Tracking systematically channels students of color into lower levels of achievement. The teaching pool is actually becoming more white even though the student body contains rapidly increasing numbers of students of color, and most curricula fail to adequately reflect the contributions and achievements of people of color.

All of these factors have a direct impact on student achievement. Students feel that impact in their daily experiences with each other and with the adults around them. One way to involve students is to engage them in conducting a Days of Respect Survey of students and faculty about the climate at their school. The ERASE Institute in Oakland, CA offers a broad instrument for schools to assess racism using institutional data that is very useful for pinpointing how racism operates in a school or school district.

After conducting an assessment, you will probably find that there is work to do in such areas as: student and faculty attitudes and behaviors, classroom practices, school policies and procedures, curriculum, faculty and staff hiring and retention, training, and school climate. Task forces can be initiated to begin to analyze and make recommendations in each of these areas.

Diversity work does not move forward unless there is strong leadership from the school administration, and substantial participation and commitment from students, faculty, parents, and staff to sustain a long-term process of change in how the school operates.

Other necessary components for serious diversity work include:

• A leadership group, representing all constituencies, that has the power to initiate change
• A process that is systematic and sustained, deep and thorough
• The dedication of adequate resources including money, staff release time, space, administrative support, and technical assistance
• Creating a diverse, multicultural community that is seen as integral to the mission of the school
• The need for students to be involved at all levels of the process
• Specific goals and timetables so that individuals and the institution can be held accountable for achieving the desired goals

Clearly, diversity work in schools is complex, multilayered, multilevel, and multi-issue. This work takes leadership, time, and resources. You can provide the leadership and there is no time like the present. Most schools already have connections through staff, students, parents, and the wider community to the experience, resources, interest, and knowledge necessary to push such efforts forward. There are many books, websites, and consultants to support in-house efforts.

Now is the only right time to begin. Pull together a diversity, multicultural, or human relations committee consisting of teachers, staff, students and parents. Begin or strengthen the process of building an inclusive, safe, multicultural school community in which fairness, justice, and equal opportunity are the norm.

We Need Tolerance Now More Than Ever

By Dr. Kathleen Shea for Living Values Education

On September 11th, at the exact hour of the attack on the World Trade Center, a Miami middle school teacher was at the studio of a local public television station receiving training in a global values education program called the Living Values Educational Program. Like most educators, one of her first thoughts was how best to help her students understand and cope with one of the most horrific events of a lifetime. "I was in the right place at the right time," she says. "I opened the Living Values Activities for Children Ages 8-14, and the first section was on the value of Peace. I walked into the classroom on September 12th, confident that I knew what to do!"

The events of September 11th have given rise to increased incidents of ethnic harassment in schools. Secretary of Education Rod Paige, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and federally funded Regional Equity Assistance Centers, have all issued memoranda to remind schools about their legal responsibilities to protect the rights of persons in our educational communities. According to Dr. Nancy Peck, Director of the Southeastern Equity Center:

"In an ironic way, this tragedy has provided both a checkpoint and a teachable moment for educators. It is a checkpoint because it has become a barometer of the progress or lack of progress that we have made in valuing differences in skin color, culture, and beliefs. It is an outstanding teachable moment, in that our children can see first-hand the results of the fear that intolerance, oppression, and powerlessness produce. Our children are fearful and very vulnerable at this point, and can easily be led to imitate the inappropriate acts of adults."

However, it`s not just the recent tragedies that make tolerance more important than ever. The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified 602 active hate groups located throughout the United States. As children both in the United States and abroad are increasingly exposed to violence and growing social problems, educators, counselors, and parents are asking for help to turn around these alarming trends. Most feel that part of the solution lies in an emphasis on values.

If Peace Is The Goal, Then Tolerance Is the Method!

Tolerance is a powerful, but often-misunderstood value. There are three levels of tolerance:

Enduring a situation which you don`t like anyway. From long checkout lines and highway gridlock, to physical illness, some situations demand tolerance. Simply enduring only increases feelings of anger, hostility, and pent up stress. Many people see tolerance in only this way!

Finding a way to adapt and deal with a situation; i.e. making some kind of a deal with yourself to take action, so that you don`t feel out of control and victimized by the situation. "White flight" from changing neighborhoods is an example of this. Taking medication for an illness is an action that helps people tolerate pain.

Being open and receptive to the beauty of differences. Through understanding, and with a genuine appreciation for the value of diversity, a person demonstrates tolerance in a practical way. A person has no need to endure or make a deal. As a result, relationships bloom and a civil society is the result.
Diversity Is Our Destiny

By 2025, no racial or ethnic group will form the majority of school students. Even traditionally homogeneous schools are changing. For example, at a single public high school in Annandale, Virginia, there are 2,200 students, speaking 34 different languages, from 72 countries. Each of the 200+ nations on the globe is represented in US schools today!

UNESCO proclaimed 1995 as the "Year for Tolerance." As we reflect on the value of tolerance, the Director General`s words help us to realize why we must promote this value to our children:

"Tolerance is not concession, not indifference. Tolerance is the knowledge of the other. It is mutual respect through mutual understanding. Let`s throw out the old myths and take up the results of current research. Man is not violent by nature. Intolerance is not ` in our genes.` Fear and ignorance are the root causes of intolerance, and its patterns can be imprinted on the human psyche from an early age."

The Complexity Of Multicultural Counseling

By Cristina Casanova M.A.; M.Ed. for GuidanceChannel.com"Culture controls our lives.
Culture is not something outside ourselves, but,
rather, an internalized perspective
that combines the teachings of every significant
person or group we have experienced
read about, or heard about and from whom we have
Learned something."
-Paul Pedersen,1993

As the American population becomes more and more diverse, counselors will need, more than ever, to have a strong multicultural foundation in their counseling practice. Pedersen (1994) states that "counselors who disregard a client's cultural context are unlikely to interpret a client's behavior accurately. The same behavior across cultures might have a different interpretation, just as different behaviors might have the same interpretation. Therefore developing multicultural awareness is essential for all counselors to accurately interpret the meaning of cultural similarities and differences."

Although counselors can choose to ignore the influence of culture in the client's life, the fact is that culture is now and will always continue to influence a client's behavior with or without the counselor's awareness.

What Do We Mean by Culture?

Webster's Dictionary (1989) defines culture as "the customary beliefs, social forms and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group." This definition of culture is broader than the narrow one that limits its meaning to ethnographic variables such as nationality and ethnicity. This definition includes:

• demographic variables such as age, gender, and place of residence
• status variables such as social, educational and economic levels
• affiliation variables that may be formal memberships or informal affiliations

Every element in the full range of demographic, status, and affiliation aspects works in similar ways as in ethnographic categories to shape a person's identity.

Multiculturalism makes us as look both at how we are the same and how we are different at the same time. Pedersen says that "each cultural perspective is unique, but each perspective also shares overlapping features with each other group like overlapping fish scales. We can best understand the cultural perspective by focusing one eye clearly on the part that is shared and the other on the part that is unique in a cross-eyed, but accurate perspective."

The Complexity of Culture

If you were asked to depict your culture, you might find the question vague, and might encounter some trouble in finding a comprehensive answer. If instead, you were asked what part of your culture influenced a particular choice in your life, like choosing a partner or a career, the task may still be difficult but less vague.

One way the counselor can appreciate the complexity of culture is by looking at the thousands of culturally-learned identities, affiliations, and roles all people assume at one time or another.

One of the complex tasks of the multicultural counselor is the identification of multiple perspectives within and among their clients. To understand the client, the counselor has to perceive the problem from the multiple viewpoints of the client’s culturally learned roles.

Multicultural counselors must consider the following in order to effectively work within the cultural context of their clients...

It is necessary for counselors to identify conflicting, culturally-learned viewpoints between the client and counselor.

Goldstein & Michaels's research on empathy in counseling established the significance of distinguishing between different viewpoints during counseling interviews. Counselors should not presume that one culture's viewpoint is right and another one is wrong. The multicultural perception requires the counselor to understand that two points of view can be right within their own cultural context.

Counselors must recognize that clients themselves may have multiple and possibly conflicting viewpoints.

The Behavioral counseling approach research conducted by Tanaka-Matsumi & Higginbotham indicates that the same person may take on different culturally-relevant roles or identifications, in different circumstances. In fact, this inner role conflict may be the very reason why the client is seeking counseling.

The behavior of clients must be analyzed within the context of the client's culture.

The capacity to take another's perspective has been an important technique in gestalt therapy and mediation. This capacity is also essential in getting an accurate clinical picture. However, the greater the difference in cultures between the counselor and client, the more challenging it will be for the counselor to accurately interpret the client's cultural perspective.

Counselors must listen and gather information without interrupting the client until all aspects of the conflict or problem are culturally understood.

Ivey (1989) underlines the importance of empathic and careful listening which will assist counselors to endure silence and to stay away from judgments until all perspectives of a culturally different client are understood.

It is important for multicultural counselors to refrain from offering simple solutions to complex issues and to validate the complexity of a client's cultural context.

Ivey (1989) found that the most frequent mistake new counselors made was that of giving a "premature solution" to their client's problem. This is even more of an issue in multicultural counseling when it is crucial to understand the issues from multiple cultural perspectives.

Counselors need to help clients learn to accept ambiguity and not ask clients to resolve the dissonance in favor of one culture or another.

The ability to tolerate ambiguity is now considered in the counseling literature as one of the most important skills of the multicultural counselor. The significance of each event will be composed of both positive and negative elements that have to be explored and understood in all their culturally complex ways.

It is crucial for counselors to understand and respect the values of collective cultures.

Ivey (1989) stated that traditional American counseling is biased towards an individualistic point of view. The individual's well-being is of utmost importance. But in collective societies, the welfare of the group may take precedence over the needs of the individual. The multicultural counselor's challenge is to balance the welfare of the client by examining the collective forces that impact the person and helping the client balance his needs and that of his group.

Counselors must be aware of how changing a client's feeling of power will affect his or her sense of well-being.

Power is an important factor in life and one that is culturally defined. Good multicultural counseling monitors whether the process of counseling diminishes or increases a client's power.

In order to provide accurate and worthwhile insight, counselors must understand their clients' cultural perspective.

Most theories of counseling emphasize a series of skills such as interpretation, reflection of feeling, and reflection of meaning to derive accurate insights. A multicultural counselor's accurate insight of the client's situation requires a high degree of awareness, knowledge and skill in the multicultural context.

A multicultural counselor is able to identify various support systems within a client's culture.

In many cultures family and social support systems are the preferred mode of counseling for the client. The multicultural counselor is aware of such systems and uses them appropriately to help the client achieve his/her goals.

Paul Pedersen says that "culture provides a unique perspective in which two persons can disagree without one being right and the other being wrong when their arguments are based on culturally different assumptions. It becomes possible for a counselor to identify common ground between two culturally different people whose expectations and ultimate goals are the same even though their behaviors may be very different." Multiculturalism gives the school counselors a valuable key for understanding both themselves and their clients. We can no longer ignore culture; to be unaware of our own learned assumptions as well as those of our clients is not consistent with the standards of good and appropriate counseling practices.

REFERENCES

Goldstein, A. & Michaels, G., Empathy: Development Training and Consequences, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1985.

Ivey, A.: Counseling and Psychotherapy: Skills Theory and Practice, Prentice Hall, 1989.

Pedersen, P.: A Handbook for Developing Multicultural Awareness, American Counseling Association, 1994

Tanaka-Matsumi, J. & Higginbotham, H.: Behavioral Approaches to Counseling Across Cultures, in Pederson, P. Counseling Across Cultures, University of Hawaii Press, 1989.

The Path To Inclusion

By Camille Jackson for Tolerance.org

Creating an atmosphere of inclusion should always be a priority for schools, but for many of us, it can be a perplexing task. Although teacher diversity is at an all time low, our student population is becoming more and more diverse.While we want to create an inclusive classroom for both teachers and students, there`s been little discussion on how to do that.

How do we make sure that all students feel valued, respected and represented in the classroom?

Recognize The Need For Change

In Teaching to Transgress, famed author and professor Bell Hooks writes, “If the effort to respect and honor the social reality and experiences of groups in this society who are nonwhite is to be reflected in a pedagogical process, then as teachers – on all levels, from elementary to university settings – we must acknowledge that our styles of teaching may need to change.”

Begin With Respect

According to Dr. Irwin Blumer, the department chair at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education, while multicultural education helps students to live and work in a diverse world, it cannot be implemented in a superficial way. A multicultural curriculum must feature more than just “heroes and holidays.” As elementary school principal Shawn McCullough says it must move beyond “a sombrero in the front office and taco Tuesdays.”

Once respect has been established, Blumer says it can lead to “open and honest discussion about race and racism in this country -- a topic we tend to shy away from.” Christine Rose of Students and Teachers Against Racism explainsin her paper, The Indian Student in Public Education, that when Native history is not included in history class, “Native people are denied closure, as well as the respect and encouragement to succeed in mainstream academics.” She explains that ignorance of these issues can lead to blaming the victim, instead of fostering compassion and understanding. She also encourages multicultural educators to be respectful of and sensitive to the cultural differences, learning styles, and the desires of Native parents, as well.

Talk About It

Ongoing dialogues throughout the year help administrators, teachers, and students speak openly and honestly about respect, the social climate and how to break down barriers in their schools. The Southern Poverty Law Center sponsors Mix It Up, a national campaign to identify, question, and cross the cultural boundaries that separate groups of people. Each year on November 16, the Center coordinates a national event during which students and faculty make new friends by sitting at a different table for lunch. Not only they break down social boundaries, but cliques, and isolation, as well.

According to Beverly Daniel Tatum, President of Spelman College in Atlanta and author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? (Basic Books, 2002), professional development courses can help teachers to address the issue. “In order to increase teacher comfort, we need to talk about [race] -- and not in a blaming way," says Tatum. "We are all the products of our socialization. The idea is to help people, in a constructive way, look at what messages they got growing up…It’s important to be able to say we all have participated in reinforcing the cycle [of racism] and we all try to interrupt it.”

Integrate Multiple Voices

It’s important for educators to ask why the accomplishments of people of color have been missing from the classroom. So many voices have been muted over the years. Tatum says it’s inevitable for teachers who look at a subject area in an inclusive way to run into racism. But when you include them in the classroom, your students will find your lessons, and the world, much more multidimensional.

Make A Commitment

As principal of Georgia’s Gainesville Elementary School, McCullough has molded his school into one of the highest performing majority Hispanic schools in the country, a remarkable accomplishment considering 93% of the student body is impoverished. McCullough attributes his school’s success to the teachers “fundamental commitment to each child’s success and professional accountability.” Whether it means working until 7 p.m. or holding parent/teacher conferences on a Saturday evening when parents are home from work, the school staff is there.

Gather Resources

Teaching Tolerance, a publication of the Southern Poverty Law Center targets teachers looking to make sense out of a multicultural curriculum. The magazine offers teachers tools for educating diverse classrooms and promoting equity and justice. By visiting the Teaching Tolerance website, teachers can order classroom activities, kits and handbooks, and curriculum on subjects ranging from the civil rights movement to respecting physical differences.

Take Responsibility

Principal McCullough, a national keynote speaker on diversity issues, says extraordinary challenges, like incorporating multiculturalism in the classroom, require extraordinary people. Having a multicultural curriculum is not about what activities you do or about having a diverse staff, he says. It’s about responsibility -- and not just for teachers. All educators have a responsibility to challenge the status quo. Blumer adds “a principal has to be skilled enough, knowledgeable enough, and some would say, courageous enough, to get the issues on the table.”