Diversity in the Classroom

Rethinking Diversity and Multicultural Education for Today’s Successful Schools

Description: This workshop challenges educators to rethink the ways in which their schools define and engage multicultural education and diversity. The workshop provides a general history of ideas related to the creation and development of multicultural education and further challenges the successes and failures of multicultural education within both society in general and individual schools specifically. Participants will be asked to critically consider what happens in their own schools and how practices related to multicultural education and diversity privilege and marginalize students and how these practices also impact student achievement. The workshop will conclude with a reflection of the day's events and the beginning of a discussion about identifying new best practices and the skills necessary to create new practices for the unique needs within individual schools.

Time required: 1 day

CPDUs:  TBD

Audience: Teachers and Administrators

Learning Culture to Enhance Teaching

Description: People have a wide variety of life experiences and the perceptions, styles, and patterns of interactions vary between cultural groups. Therefore it is important for teachers to understand how background and experience impact learning, relationships, and teaching. Through this presentation, participants will learn about how culture affects learning, some of the subtle differences between cultures (including body language, surface and deep structures), and how unconscious stereotypes contribute to the achievement gap.

Time required: 60-90 minutes

CPDUs: 1 – 1.5

Audience: Teachers, Staff, Administrators