America has always been known as the great melting pot. Better yet, a salad bowl. As our country continues to embrace people and cultures from all over the world, diversity only makes us better.
The increased number of non-English-speaking immigrants moving to America certainly affects our schools. There is no shortage of reports to show us that we must prepare to educate more students whose first language may not be English.
In today’s era of accountability, test scores are top-of-mind for educators. We must do all we can to help English language learners succeed in literacy, math, science and so much more. However, as we all know, education isn’t just about the brain; it’s about the whole child.
As school district leaders, it’s up to us to set the tone for a positive school community that embraces diversity and nurtures the hearts and minds of students from all backgrounds.
Empowering Families
Too often we forget to put ourselves in the shoes of English language learners. Not only must they learn content in subject areas and acquire academic literacy, they have to navigate two cultures and two languages. This tug-of-war can easily sidetrack the best of students.
Beyond that, parents of ELL students also must be integrated and welcomed into the education community.
In the El Paso, Texas, Independent School District, the secret of success for high-achieving students is best described by Monica’s incredible story. As a student in the largest school district with the largest Hispanic population in the country, next to a third-world country, she definitely blended in with English language learners.
What made the difference for Monica was her family and its total commitment to education. She navigated the school system beginning with a solid bilingual education in the elementary years that reinforced her Spanish-language development while acquiring English from the communicative stages through her highly proficient cognitive development.
At Jefferson High School, she excelled as a student leader and graduated with distinction. As a representative to the Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council, I had the pleasure of getting to know her and her family. We maintained contact as she attended Harvard University.
In early summer while attending an Urban Superintendent’s Advisory Panel, I was strolling through Harvard Square on my way to a meeting. On the steps of a dormitory I saw a young person sitting alone with a baseball cap looking down. As I walked by, the young woman looked up and it was Monica. We were very happy to see each other. When I asked what she was doing, she told me she had a summer job cleaning dorms to save money for her sophomore year. That evening she and her friend joined me for dinner as we talked about her interest in attending law school upon her graduation.
In reflecting on Monica’s incredible journey as she brokered the education system to meet her lofty goals, clearly she did not do this alone. She had a support system with a family that held education as a sacred trust for working hard in this country. Her father worked several jobs to provide the best for his family. Breaking from cultural stereotypes, he and his wife embraced the opportunity for Monica to leave El Paso to attend school thousands of miles from home.
The challenge for school system leaders is to create and instill a tradition of academic achievement for all students. This education foundation is diametrically opposed to the deficit philosophy that focuses on the student as the major problem while ignoring the environment or the ill-fated instructional practices used in the classroom. A strategic goal to empower parents as advocates for their children’s education is central to any hope for sustainable results.
Begin From Within
Wherever you are as a leader, people look to you and follow your example. How much do you know about the various cultures of students within your school district? How savvy are you at adapting to various communication styles?
How well you function in cross-cultural situations is known as cultural competence. Leaders must recognize that their own cultural competence, as well as that of their teachers and staff, is necessary to better connect with English language learners and their families in helping them to realize their education aspirations.
The Center for Effective Collaboration and Practice, a division of Washington, D.C.-based American Institutes for Research, describes it this way: “Operationally defined, cultural competence is the integration and transformation of knowledge about individuals and groups of people into specific standards, policies, practices and attitudes used in appropriate cultural settings to increase the quality of services, thereby producing better outcomes.”
For instance, a teacher with a class of African-American children may find a certain look sufficiently quiets most of the class. Often African-American adults use eye contact and facial expression to discipline their children. However, this is not effective with all African Americans. Intragroup differences, such as geographic location or socioeconomic background, require practitioners to avoid over-generalizing. With other students, one might have to use loud demanding tones, quiet nonthreatening language or whatever is appropriate for different students. The unknowing teacher might offend some students and upset others by using the wrong words, tone or body language. Being culturally competent means having the capacity to function effectively in other cultural contexts.
Five Steps
According to the website for the Center for Effective Collaboration and Practice, five essential elements contribute to becoming more culturally competent.
• Value diversity. Some systems think it’s enough to be accepting of different cultures, but it’s not sufficient. We must appreciate those who bring new experiences into our lives and celebrate them.
The Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nev., values culture in a deeply meaningful way with tremendous residual benefits. When you ask many English language learners why they come to school, they will probably tell you it’s because of their friends, soccer team or mariachi group.
Clark County’s fine arts department developed an exemplary mariachi music program. The department recruited outstanding teachers of mariachi music from Florida, Texas, New Mexico, California and Arizona. A central-office position provided the leadership for the program as it grew to more than a dozen campuses so that now an annual citywide performance brings all of the schools together for the parents and community to enjoy. Nothing tugs more on the heartstrings of parents as when their children perform in public. And, nothing connects students better than participating as a student in middle and high school activities with pride and respect.
In recent years, Clark County continues to provide training and technical assistance to school districts with burgeoning populations of Mexican immigrant students as they strive to address cultural competency.
• Build the capacity for cultural self-assessment. The Los Angeles Unified School District is a prime example of a district that understands its need for improvement in cultural competence. Under the leadership of the school board, resolutions and policies have been approved that reflect a commitment to ethnic studies, English learners and the district dual-language education program.
The school board’s unanimous support for these resolutions clearly marks the direction and change demanded from the administrators, teachers and staff. The board demonstrates a commitment to educate all their students in the nation’s second largest district, including the 290,000 who are identified as English learners. The administration reports regularly to the board on the comprehensive efforts addressing the needs of ELL students.
The district holds itself accountable and monitors the system’s alignment to the defined goals and benchmarks identified in their comprehensive plan for English learners.
At the school level, principals welcome the system’s commitment to provide quality professional development for teachers and staff. They know and appreciate that teachers must center on connecting with the ELL students’ hearts first before unleashing an unrelenting focus on academic literacy. As a result, students are motivated to learn and they feel a special connection with their teacher.
This willingness to assess the district’s own strengths and weaknesses is key to making changes.
Distinctive Tendencies
• Be conscious of the dynamics inherent when cultures interact. Every culture has its own unique sense of the world and how people relate. On the surface level, cultures manifest themselves in folklore, history, personality, food, arts, holidays and such, but there are much deeper levels of culture.
For example, some cultures have a stronger tendency to believe in destiny or fatalism, or a predetermined course of events. In other words, all events or actions succumb to fate or inevitable predetermination. In the Western culture, we tend to believe we can take control of our own futures. These differing philosophies have an impact on how we interact.
A great source for understanding these cultural differences is called “Hofstede’s Framework for Assessing Culture,” which outlines five dimensions of culture identified by Gerard Hendrik Hofstede, an influential Dutch professor of management who has written widely on the interactions among national cultures.
• Institutionalize cultural knowledge. Cultural acceptance goes beyond lip service. It needs to be integrated into every level of education.
At Santa Ana, Calif., Unified School District, administrators have made a point to help immigrant parents understand district procedures and curricula. Parents have the option of participating in Open Court Reading training at particular elementary schools to better understand the materials their children are learning to use in their reading classes.
• Adapt service delivery to reflect an understanding of diversity among and within cultures. For a school district, these elements must be manifested in every level of the service delivery system. They should be reflected in attitudes, structures, policies and services.
In order to affect all levels of service, no area is as important as ongoing professional development. In New York City, a bold vision known as Children First, initiated in 2003, brought about major reform in the system. The Office of English Language Learners was called into action to provide professional development. To date, the office reports training has reached more than 20,000 participants, including teachers, administrators, school staff and parents through forums, workshops and conferences. Their goal is for these key institutes to offer deep, rigorous, ongoing learning specific to language and culture.
Naturally, cultural competence is a developmental process that occurs along a continuum. Six levels exist along this continuum: (1) cultural destructiveness, meaning a system rejects diversity; (2) cultural incapacity, or the inability to recognize differences; (3) cultural blindness, or the tendency to accept but then ignore differences; (4) cultural pre-competence, or an early understanding of the importance of embracing different cultures; (5) cultural competence, meaning the system is successful at valuing cultures; and (6) cultural proficiency, or the highest expert level.
Systems might range from cultural destructiveness or cultural incapacity to cultural blindness, but hopefully one day they will achieve cultural proficiency.
Estanislado (Stan) Paz, a former superintendent, is vice president of McGraw-Hill Education’s national urban markets. E-mail: stan_paz@mcgraw-hill.com