Teaching Diversity: Tips for Educators

As a parent of two middle school students, I am very concerned about the lack of comprehensive diversity education in our city's public school system. Sure, there are a few teachers who do make the effort to bring diversity / multiculturalism into their classrooms on a regular basis. But I'm amazed, annoyed, and often angry that the district has exerted very little effort towards educating our children about each other.

I believe our district's approach towards diversity is much like most school systems across the country. We celebrate Black History Month, and Hispanic Heritage Month. The district does sponsor GAP (Growth in Afro-Centric Program), which is a self-esteem program held in schools with predominantly black enrollment. This program certainly helps African American children to become their best, and I wholly support that. But GAP is not a diversity program; it does nothing to help my white children learn about the history and culture of their minority friends. In the eight years I have been active in our schools, I have heard nothing about any attempt to try something new to benefit all children. But I do remain hopeful, perhaps naively.

As a concerned parent and a diversity facilitator, I do a fair amount of research into multicultural education programs that work. From what I have seen, the programs that work well are those that involve "multiculturalism across the curriculum". As the name implies, this means that culture is a part of every class, every day. In math, for example, students discover that Indians (Aztecs, to be exact) discovered the concept of zero; in science, they learn that a Polish woman (Madame Curie) discovered radium. In social studies, they get into intensive study of each and every country of the world, rather than the brief overview so many schools offer.

Having led a number of diversity workshops for educators, I believe that many if not most teachers do want to "do something" in the area of diversity. Finding resources that work is a major roadblock. This week, I'll highlight some sources which have been used effectively in schools, including some successful programs developed by school districts around the country.

Useful Links I really like the site for Lee and Low Books, http://www.leeandlow.com/l_lbooks/resour... . Lee and Low has a free Teachers Resource Center, which includes thorough teaching guides for using children's books with diversity themes, including gender, ethnicity and more.

The Clearinghouse for Multicultural/Bilingual Education http://www.weber.edu/mbe/htmls/mbe.html is another outstanding site, with tons of links to information of use to teachers: course outlines, demographic date, etc.

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