Blogs on Diversity

With the release of the film Bully and daily news reports about the devastating impact on students who have been relentlessly bullied, teachers find themselves on the front line in addressing bullying. It is time to move into action. Not In Our School offers solutions-based strategies and tools for change to a network of schools that are working to create safe, inclusive and accepting climates. The core ideas and actions of Not In Our School include:

Heather Hanson, a first-year teacher on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, knew she was taking a risk when she showed a documentary called "Children of the Plains" to her speech class at Todd County High School. Narrated by Diane Sawyer, the 20/20 episode emphasizes poverty, alcoholism, and family dysfunction on the reservation. "I was offended," says Hanson, who is not Native American, "and it's not even about me. I wasn't sure how my students would react."

The burden is heavy for educators who are parents -- and, I dare say, even heavier for those of us who consider ourselves progressive educators in this age of heavy standardized testing and tight curriculum calendars that leave little room for exploration of ideas. Traditional, progressive or somewhere between, all of us who are (simply) educators and parents of school-aged students have to think about when, how and for what reason we interact with teachers.

Naturally, I understand that there's no significant magic or difference in providing college planning and counseling services to students of color per se, but there are important ways to help build upon their college aspirations in the course of doing this work. A while back, several colleagues and I got into a long discussion about the quality of their college advisors during the critical junior and senior years of high school.