It’s no surprise that schools are in trouble. We hear this sentiment almost ad nauseum, coupled with fervent debate over what can actually make a difference. The problem is complex, and I’m not going to pretend there’s an easy fix, but one approach that can yield a big return on investment is a focus on cultural proficiency.
deepSEE's current work with the St. Paul Public School District was recently written about in the Minneapolis Star Tribune and discussed on KSTP AM1500. A large portion of the comments by readers and listeners shared a common theme: basically, cultural proficiency is smoke and mirrors, a total waste of time and money, money that would be better spent on, say, hiring more teachers. Respectfully, I disagree.
See, here’s the thing—you can hire as many teachers as you want, but if nothing changes about the way teachers interact with students from increasingly diverse backgrounds, well, nothing’s going to change. In fact, it’s just going to get worse. The “achievement gap” we hear about every time a new round of standardized test scores have been published, or a new Superintendent is being hired, is simply not a function native ability; it’s a manifestation of cultural collision: the inability to effectively communicate across cultural difference. So, flip that sentence around and you have a pretty good definition of cultural proficiency. It’s about recognizing cultural differences, accepting the viewpoints that come with them, and applying the insights gained to the task at hand.
And here’s another thing—it’s not just about the teachers. Really. SPPS is visionary in their approach to this work, and what most people don’t seem to notice in the Strib article is that ALL employees of the district are participating in at least 12 hours of cultural proficiency training: approximately 6500 people. The majority of these people are not teachers. In fact, some of them have little or no contact with students. “What?!” howl the enraged. “This is a complete joke!” But again, cultural proficiency is applicable in all directions. Students come into classrooms every day, but they come from a larger, diverse community. Teachers teach students every day, but they also interact with other teachers, and school secretaries, and custodians, and bus drivers, who also interact with them and with each other, as well as district employees no one ever pays much attention to: those who package food to be shipped to school lunchrooms every day, for instance, working in a big warehouse out by the fairgrounds. Or the admin assistants working on all floors in 360 Colborne, the district headquarters. Etc.
In a culturally proficient school district, every person who comes in contact with the district, whether student, staff, parent, vendor, community group, whatever, will have their voice heard. Is this easy to accomplish? Of course not. It’s a shift in mindset, and it’s a developmental process (which is a topic for another post.) It is, however, necessary. Who will benefit the most? All of us.
