2007 Agendas and Packets - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

��r�� .��r�� 1 � March 2007 j Volume 64 j Number 6 Responding to Changing Demographics Pages 16-22 As Di�ersity Grows, So Must We Gary R. Howard Schaols #hat experience rapid demographic shifts can rr►eet �fie challenge hy implemeniing five phases of professional develop�nent. Many schoo! districts nationwide are experiencing rapid growth in March 2007 the number of students of calor, culturally and linguistically diverse students, and students from low-income families. From my work with education leaders in some of these diversity-e�hanced schoo! districts, I knaw they are places of vibrant opportunity—places that call us ta meaningful and exciting work. In these "welcome-to-America" schools, the global community shows up in our classrooms every day, inviting us--even requiring us—to grow as we learn from and with our students and their families. The Need for Growth All is nat well, however, in these rapidly transitioning schools. Some teacY�ers, administrators, and parents view their schools' increasing diversity as a problem rather than an opportunity, For example, in a schoo! district on the West Coast where the number of Latino students has quadrupled in the past 10 years, a teacher recently asked me, "Why are they sending these kids to our schooi?" In another district outside New York City—where the student population was once predominantly rich, white, and ]ewish but is now about 90 percent low-income kids of color, mostiy from the Ca�ibbean and Latin America—a principal remarked in one workshop, "These kids don't value education, and their parents aren't helping either. They don't seem to care about their children's future." In a schaol district near Minneapofis with a rapidly increasing black population, a white parent remarked, "Students who are coming here now don't have rrEUCh respect for authority. That's why we have so many discipline problems." Other educators and parents, afthough less negative, sti[I feel uneasy about their schools' �ew demographics. In a high school outside Washington, D.C., where the Latino immigrant popu[ation is increasing rapidly, a teacher told me that he was disappointed in himself for not feeling comfortable engaging his students in a discussion of immigration issues, a hot topic in the community in spring Z006. °I knew the kids needed to talk, but i just couldn't go there." And a black teacher who taught French successfully for many years in predominantly white suburban schools told me recent{y, "When I first found myself teaching classes of mostly black kids, I went home frustrated every night because I knew I wasn't getting through to them, and they were giving me a hard time. It only started getting better when I finally figured out that i had to reexarnine everything I was doing." This teacher has it right. As educators in rapidly transitioning schoois, we need to reexamine