Workshop Outline

Making it Real: Developing Multicultural Competency in Every ClassroomMonday, December 14, 2009Sponsor: Association of Independent Schools New England (AISNE)Host: Beaver Country Day School

Workshop Outline 1:30 - 4:30PM 1:30 - introductions1:45 - 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 are-Beaver Country Day School • 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 are-Beaver Country Day School • 25% students of color • 20% faculty of color • 20 languages are spoken at home by our students • 25% of students receive financial aid • Diversity of family structures • Tuition for 2009-2010 is $33,450 for all grades

Deeply committed to individual studentsuccess, teachers inspire students to: • 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. Centurychallenge our instructional outcomes to: • 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

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 • 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: 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… 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 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 first- world 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 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?” - - - -

The future of this work: Teaching “thinking in systems” 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) Iteach http://iteach.ning.com/ Read it and Weep: Ortiz trumps Sotomayor http://iteach.ning.com/profiles/blogs/read-it-and-weep-ortiz-trumps Boston Center for Community and Justice (BCCJ) http://www.bostonccj.org/ United for a Fair Economy (UFE) http://www.faireconomy.org/ Media Matters http://mediamatters.org/ Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) http://www.ips-dc.org/ Conscious Capitalism Institute http://www.cc-institute.com/cci/ Democracy Now http://www.democracynow.org/

Hiatt Center for Social Justice Education www.bcdschool.org/hiattcenter Thank you!

Workshop Outline