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Dear James:

I have begun this letter five times and torn it up five times. I keep seeing your face, which is also the face of your father and my brother. I have known both of you all your lives and have carried your daddy in my arms and on my shoulders, kissed him and spanked him and watched him learn to walk. I don't know if you have known anybody from that far back, if you have loved anybody that long, first as an infant, then as a child, then as a man. You gain a strange perspective on time and human pain and effort.

Other people cannot see what I see whenever I look into your father's face, for behind your father's face as it is today are all those other faces which were his. Let him laugh and I see a cellar your father does not remember and a house he does not remember and I hear in his present laughter his laughter as a child. Let him curse and I remember his falling down the cellar steps and howling and I remember with pain his tears which my hand or your grandmother's hand so easily wiped away, but no one's hand can wipe away those tears he sheds invisibly today which one hears in his laughter and in his speech and in his songs.

I know what the world has done to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it and I know, which is much worse, and this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. One can be--indeed, one must strive to become--tough and philosophical concerning destruction and death, for this is what most of mankind has been best at since we have heard of war; remember, I said most of mankind, but it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.

They have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it.

Now, my dear namesake, these innocent and well meaning people, your countrymen, have caused you to be born under conditions not far removed from those described for us by Charles Dickens in the London of more than a hundred years ago. I hear the chorus of the innocents screaming, "No, this is not true. How bitter you are," but I am writing this letter to you to try to tell you something about how to handle them, for most of them do not yet really know that you exist. I know the conditions under which you were born for I was there. Your countrymen were not there and haven't made it yet. Your grandmother was also there and no one has ever accused her of being bitter. I suggest that the innocent check with her. She isn't hard to find. Your countrymen don't know that she exists either, though she has been working for them all their lives.

Well, you were born; here you came, something like fifteen years ago, and though your father and mother and grandmother, looking about the streets through which they were carrying you, staring at the walls into which they brought you, had every reason to be heavy-hearted, yet they were not, for here you were, big James, named for me. You were a big baby. I was not. Here you were to be loved. To be loved, baby, hard at once and forever to strengthen you against the loveless world. Remember that. I know how black it looks today for you. It looked black that day too. Yes, we were trembling. We have not stopped trembling yet, but if we had not loved each other, none of us would have survived, and now you must survive because we love you and for the sake of your children and your children's children.

This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish. Let me spell out precisely what I mean by that for the heart of the matter is here and the crux of my dispute with my country. You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits to your ambition were thus expected to be settled. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity and in as many ways as possible that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence. You were expected to make peace with mediocrity. Wherever you have turned, James, in your short time on this earth, you have been told where you could go and what you could do and how you could do it, where you could live and whom you could marry.

You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.

I know your countrymen do not agree with me here and I hear them. saying, "You exaggerate." They do not know Harlem and I do. So do you. Take no one's word for anything, including mine, but trust your experience. Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go. The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you. Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority, but to their inhumanity and fear.

Please try to be clear, dear James, through the storm which rages about your youthful head today, about the reality which lies behind the words "acceptance" and "integration." There is no reason for you to try to become like white men and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them, and I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love, for these innocent people have no other hope. They are in effect still trapped in a history which they do not understand and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men.

They are trapped in a history which they do not understand and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.

Many of them indeed know better, but as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case the danger in the minds and hearts of most white Americans is the loss of their identity. Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shivering and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one's sense of one's own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar, and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations.

You don't be afraid. I said it was intended that you should perish, in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to go beyond and behind the white man's definition, by never being allowed to spell your proper name. You have, and many of us have, defeated this intention and by a terrible law, a terrible paradox, those innocents who believed that your imprisonment made them safe are losing their grasp of reality. But these men are your brothers, your lost younger brothers, and if the word "integration" means anything, this is what it means, that we with love shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it, for this is your home, my friend. Do not be driven from it. Great men have done great things here and will again and we can make America what America must become.

It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy peasant stock, men who picked cotton, dammed rivers, built railroads, and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity. You come from a long line of great poets, some of the greatest poets since Homer. One of them said, "The very time I thought I was lost, my dungeon shook and my chains fell off."

You know and I know that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too early. We cannot be free until they are free. God bless you, James, and Godspeed.

Your uncle,

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Dear James: I have begun this letter five times and torn it up five times. I keep seeing your face, which is also the face of your father and my brother. I have known both of you all your lives and have carried your daddy in my arms and on my shoulders, kissed him and spanked him and watched him learn to walk.

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How to turn "I'm not good at this" into "I'm not good at this-yet!"

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Many tough public issues - from crime to racial tension to substance abuse - directly involve and affect young people. But too often youth are absent from discussions on these issues.

Dialogue-to-change programs help people build the trusting relationships necessary for long-term change. People from diverse backgrounds and experiences develop trust, understand each others' experiences, and work together on solutions.

RESOURCES
Sort these resources by date

Listen to how Text, Talk Act, is taking the pain we have experienced around mental health and turning it into a healing process. The talk around mental health is personal, powerful, and raw, and...

Dialogue to Change

Our ultimate goal is to create positive community change that includes everyone, and we believe that our tools, advice, and resources will help foster that kind of change. Whether you're grappling with a divisive community issue, or simply want to include residents' voices in city government, the dialogue to change program can help community members take action and make their voice heard.

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Many tough public issues - from crime to racial tension to substance abuse - directly involve and affect young people. But too often youth are absent from discussions on these issues. Dialogue-to-change programs help people build the trusting relationships necessary for long-term change.

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The Vale School District is committed to making its electronic and information technologies accessible to individuals with disabilities by meeting or exceeding the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C's) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA and Web Accessibility Initiative Accessible Rich Internet Applications Suite (WAI-ARIA) 1.0 for web content.

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Featured news Many families can become quite meticulous about planning their vacations. Not only do they decide on the perfect place usually based on what they want to do, they also plan... When neighbors come knocking on your door, it's usually to borrow a cup of sugar or a glass of milk.

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study from the New School concludes that "reading literature improves theory of mind" - "the capacity to identify and understand others' subjective states." As the authors note, theory of mind is critically linked to empathy, that all-important ability to intuit and experience the feelings of another. Together with the cognitive component of theory of mind ("the inference and representation of others' beliefs and intentions"), empathy is a crucial element of "positive interpersonal and intergroup relations." We need to practice it, in other words, to be effective and considerate people at home, at work and throughout our lives.

Reading fiction had previously been shown to increase empathy by "[expanding] our knowledge of others' lives, helping us to recognize our similarity to them." But in this study, authors David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castono argue that literary fiction helps people practice empathy because of its complexity, too. Because it requires more mental processing, readers of literary fiction are tasked with interpretation or critical thinking. Literary fiction, they posit, has the power to "disrupt our stereotypes"; what's more, it is full of "complicated individuals whose inner lives are rarely easily discerned but warrant exploration."

Literary fiction, that is, requires of us the same kinds of interpretive tasks that we undertake when engaging with other people. At the same time, it reminds us to look beyond the stereotypes we are all guilty of relying upon, if for nothing more than to get through our days.

Upon its release, the study was highly reported, resulting in headlines like " ," and " For Better Social Skills, Scientists Recommend a Little Chekhov Why Reading Fiction Makes You a Better Person." But as Mark Liberman for pointed out, the study was by no means flawless . Key among those flaws are the authors' limited sample sets and their selection of what constitutes "literary," indicating a need for further and much broader study of the issue.

Flaws notwithstanding (and what study is without some flaws?), studies like this one do the necessary work of legitimating readerly practices in a culture that sometimes devalues reading - and it also helps explain, in a firm way, what actually to us when we read. But if you are a reader, you probably don't need a study to tell you that books open us to others and make us better in our own lives. I would challenge anyone to read or Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go or any number of other books, and walk away from them unchanged.

Because stories change us - often for the better. When I think of this, I am always reminded of the moment, midway through Charles Dickens's novel, , when a child character dies. The scene is famous for its extreme sentimentalism: it's designed to provoke emotion, to require readers to empathize with the impoverished, orphaned, sick and dying child. It ends with the child falteringly repeating the Lord's Prayer:

"I'll say anythink as you say, sir, for I knows it's good.""OUR FATHER.""Our Father! - yes, that's wery good sir.""WHICH ART IN HEAVEN.""Art in Heaven - is the light a comin, sir?""It is close at hand. HALLOWED BE THY NAME!"

The light is come upon the dark benighted way. Dead!

Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us, every day.

This scene is so heavy-handed that, if weren't for the dying child, it could almost be Dickensian comedy. It's not perfect writing - the child himself, throughout the novel, is never portrayed in any depth. His accent, with it's "anythink" and "wery" might as well be stereotype. But it affecting. The scene is a touchstone for me. That last, condemning sentence, "And dying thus around us, every day," rings in my head, reminding me of my own failures of compassion and empathy, reminding me to be better. It's proof in one, small, individual way, that narratives continue to act on us long after we put them down. That stories, powerfully told, alter us. While that influence may well come from the act of navigating challenging prose and confronting the unknown, it also comes from the line that speaks to us, the knowledge that touches our hearts.
Further Reading: Sharing Good Books: How Conversation Bridges Differences and Fosters Empathy Idolizing Atticus, Empathizing with Scout How Does Reading Affect the Brain?

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How Reading Fiction Increases Our Capacity for Empathy

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study from the New School concludes that "reading literature improves theory of mind" - "the capacity to identify and understand others' subjective states." As the authors note, theory of mind is critically linked to empathy, that all-important ability to intuit and experience the feelings of another.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Many tough public issues - from crime to racial tension to substance abuse - directly involve and affect young people. But too often youth are absent from discussions on these issues.

Dialogue-to-change programs help people build the trusting relationships necessary for long-term change. People from diverse backgrounds and experiences develop trust, understand each others' experiences, and work together on solutions.

RESOURCES
Sort these resources by date

Listen to how Text, Talk Act, is taking the pain we have experienced around mental health and turning it into a healing process. The talk around mental health is personal, powerful, and raw, and...

Dialogue to Change

Our ultimate goal is to create positive community change that includes everyone, and we believe that our tools, advice, and resources will help foster that kind of change. Whether you're grappling with a divisive community issue, or simply want to include residents' voices in city government, the dialogue to change program can help community members take action and make their voice heard.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Many tough public issues - from crime to racial tension to substance abuse - directly involve and affect young people. But too often youth are absent from discussions on these issues. Dialogue-to-change programs help people build the trusting relationships necessary for long-term change.

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This is patterned after Kelly Gallagher's "Article of the Week" curriculum. The reasoning behind the work is simple:

Kelly recognizes that part of the reason his students struggle with reading is because they lack prior knowledge and background. They can decode the words, but the words remain meaningless without a foundation of knowledge. To help build his students' prior knowledge, he assigns them an Article of the Week every Monday morning.

The PDF version is what I actually provide students with. The instructions are included with the rubric, which is available here.

2016-2017

May 01

The Rise and Decline of the Separate System of Prison Discipline ( English I Honors)
PDF Handout

May 01

U.S. spy agency abandons controversial surveillance technique ( English 8)
PDF Handout

2015-2016

For Teachers

I accompany each article with a screencast in which I explain the words in their context and show students how they could have figured out some of the meaning of the word. Below is an example of one such screencast.

I create my screencasts with Screencastify, a free app you can install on Google Chrome. Once you have it configured, it automatically saves your screencasts to a folder in Google Drive. From there, you can provide students with a link, download it and store it somewhere else, or embed it in a Google Classroom assignment.

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This is patterned after Kelly Gallagher's "Article of the Week" curriculum. The reasoning behind the work is simple: Kelly recognizes that part of the reason his students struggle with reading is because they lack prior knowledge and background. They can decode the words, but the words remain meaningless without a foundation of knowledge.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Featured news

Many families can become quite meticulous about planning their vacations. Not only do they decide on the perfect place usually based on what they want to do, they also plan...

When neighbors come knocking on your door, it's usually to borrow a cup of sugar or a glass of milk. But in the case of the Alcocer family, 22-year-old Orion...

Some people know exactly what they want to be when they grow up from a very young age. And in the case of Eric Abramovitz, his dream to be a...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Featured news Many families can become quite meticulous about planning their vacations. Not only do they decide on the perfect place usually based on what they want to do, they also plan... When neighbors come knocking on your door, it's usually to borrow a cup of sugar or a glass of milk.

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http://www.justiceplanbook.com/justice-plan-book/thematic-resources#hate-and-oppression

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The Beast Inside

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Within Psychology of Immigration 101, the APA Presidential Task Force on Immigration and Public Interest Directorate have developed information and various tools for mental health professionals, educators, advocates, service providers and members of the public on the mental health needs of immigrants in the United States.

Psychology has a unique and important perspective to offer on this topic. Specifically, psychology advances scientific research, promotes the delivery of culturally and linguistically appropriate services, educates and trains psychologists and others who work with immigrants, and informs the development of sound public policy. The Presidential Task Force developed a report based on the most recent research that addresses the psychological factors related to the experience of immigration. The report gives particular attention to the mental and behavioral health needs of immigrants across the lifespan and the effects of acculturation, prejudice/discrimination, and immigration policy on individuals, families and society.

With this mission, the report's three major goals are to:

(a) raise awareness about this growing (but poorly understood) population
(b) derive evidence-informed recommendations for the provision of mental health services to immigrants
(c) make recommendations to improve education, research, practice and policy affecting immigrants of all ages and backgrounds.

The tools and resources that are included in Psychology of Immigration 101, such as the Executive Summary, are based on the content of the Presidential Task Force Report on Immigration. Please check back again and often as new tools and resources will be added continuously.

a. Demographics/diversity

Currently, 39.9 million people (12.9 percent of the population) living in the United States are foreign-born.

As the foreign-born population has grown over the last few decades, so has the population of their children. Another 33 million individuals (11 percent) are native-born with at least one foreign-born parent.

Today, one in five people living in the United States is a first-generation immigrant (born abroad to foreign-born parents) or a second-generation immigrant (born in the United States to a foreign-born parent or parents).

All second-generation immigrants are U.S. citizens as mandated by the 14th Amendment.

Thirty percent of young adults between the ages of 18 and 34 are first- or second-generation immigrants.

Immigrant-origin children have become the fastest growing segment of the child population with one in three children under 18 projected to be the child of an immigrant by 2020.

Immigrants to the United States come from all over the world. During the previous great wave of migration, most new arrivals originated from Europe. But in the mid-1960s, immigrants began to contribute to the great diversification of our nation.

Since 1965, more than three-quarters of new immigrants arriving in the United States are "of color" with origins in Latin America, Asia, the Caribbean and Africa ¹. The largest group of immigrants comes from Latin America, a racially and ethnically complex region consisting of indigenous origin, White European origin, African origin and mestizo (or mixed origin) populations ². Asians account for 27.8 percent of the foreign born and there has been a very rapid growth in immigration from Africa since 1960, from 35,355 to 1.4 million ³, with most of that growth occurring in the last decade.

The four states with the largest numbers of immigrants (California, Hawaii, New Mexico and Texas) have already become "majority/minority" (less than 50 percent White) states. In the past 2 decades, a growing number of states with no previous immigrant population have seen very high rates of new migration. Southern states have experienced the most dramatic change in immigrant population compared to other states.

Immigrants arrive in the United States with varied levels of education but tend to be overrepresented at both the highest and lowest ends of the educational and skill continuum. They comprise a quarter of all U.S. physicians, 24 percent of the nation's science and engineering workers with a bachelor's degree, and 47 percent of scientists with doctorates. It is likely these percentages will be higher when the 2010 Census data are released.

At the other end of the spectrum, some immigrant adults have educational levels far below the average U.S. citizen. Some sectors of the U.S. economy rely heavily on "low-skilled" immigrants, including the agriculture, service,and construction industries. Approximately 75 percent of all hired farm workers and nearly all those involved in the production of fresh fruits and vegetables are either legal or undocumented immigrant adults.

An estimated 460 languages are currently spoken in homes in the United States ⁴. The National Center for Education Statistics estimates that between 1979 and 2008, the percentage of children who spoke a second language at home increased from 9 percent to 21 percent ⁵. Of those individuals speaking a language other than English at home, 62 percent speak Spanish, 19 percent speak another Indo-European language, 15 percent speak an Asian or Pacific Island language, and the remaining 4 percent speak another language ⁶.

Immigrants also contribute to religious diversity. Religion is a fundamental part of life for most people throughout the world ⁷. Newly arrived immigrant adults and children who are feeling disoriented in their new land are particularly likely to turn to their religious communities in times of transition ⁸.

b. What propels migration

Three factors have been identified as driving migration:

reuniting with family members

searching for work

the need for humanitarian protection

Separated families often desire reunification, which may take years, especially when complicated by financial hurdles and immigration regulations ⁹. The longer the separation, the more complicated the family reunification and the greater the likelihood that children will report psychological symptoms ¹⁰.

Trends in the global economy stimulate migration because immigrants tend to follow where investments and jobs flow. Labor markets in global economies rely on foreign workers both in the highly paid knowledge-intensive sector as well as in the more labor-intensive sector. Economic difficulties in home countries along with higher wages in immigrant destinations lead large numbers of migrants to seek jobs outside their native countries.

Seeking humanitarian protection also contributes to U.S. immigration. By the first decade of the 21 st century, there were approximately half a million refugees in the United States. The United States' stated immigration policy goal is to provide shelter to those fleeing their native countries because they face risk of persecution. Reasons for seeking humanitarian protection include wars, violence and environmental disasters.

c. Dispelling the myths

Although the number of immigrants in the United States is at an all-time high, the rate of immigration today is actually lower than during the last era of mass migration from 1880 to 1920, when European immigrants were arriving in America.

Contrary to popular belief, the number of undocumented immigrants is declining. The vast majority of immigrants in the United States are legal. In 1910, the rate of immigration reached a peak of 14.7 percent, while in 2009 the rate was 12.5 percent. After 3 decades of continuous growth, with a peak in unauthorized migration in 2000, the number has dropped by approximately one million during the last 2 years following the start of the recession in late 2007.

Economists have routinely debated the relative costs and benefits of immigration for the U.S. economy. Contrary to popular perceptions, undocumented immigrants are unable to access a host of services even though they regularly contribute to the federal system through taxes and social security payments automatically deducted from their wages.

There is, however, a general tension between federal governments and state governments when it comes to the economic consequences of immigration. The federal government keeps a large share of the taxes generated by immigrants, while local governments must bear many of the costs and provide the services immigrants consume, particularly for education ¹¹.

Despite concerns about the immigrant population's inability or unwillingness to learn English ¹², research finds a consistent pattern of language assimilation within a generation ¹³. Research suggests that immigrants today are highly motivated to learn English and do so more quickly than in previous generations. Compared to their U.S.-born peers, immigrant students have better attendance rates, more positive attitudes toward their teachers and school, higher feelings of being connected to their schools and higher grades when controlling for parental education.

d. Resilience of the population

Immigrants demonstrate a remarkable pattern of strengths. They have very high levels of engagement in the labor market, and the children of immigrants go on to out perform their parents. Although recently arrived immigrants often face many risks, including poverty, discrimination, taxing occupations, fewer years of schooling and social isolation, they do better than expected on a wide range of outcomes compared with their counterparts remaining in the country of origin as well as second-generation immigrants.

(2) Suárez-Orozco, M., & Páez, M. (Eds.) (2009).Latinos: Remaking America (2nd Ed.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press/Cambridge, MA: David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University.

(4) Kindler, A.L., (2002).Survey of the states' limited English proficient students and available educational programs and services, 2000-2001 summary report. Washington, D.C.: National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational Programs.

(5) U.S. Department of Education (2010).The condition of education: 2010. (NCES 2010-028). Indicator 5. Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics.

(6) Shin, H. B., & Komiski, R. B. (2010.)Language use in the United States. (PDF, 1.12MB) Washington, D.C.: American Community Survey Reports.

(7) Holden, G. W., & Vittrup, B. (2009). Religion. In M. H. Bornstein (Ed.).Handbook of cultural developmental science (pp. 279-295). New York, NY: Routledge.

(8) Levitt, P. (2007).God needs no passports: Immigrants and the changing American religious landscape. New York, NY: The New Press.

Stepick, A. (2005). God is apparently not dead: The obvious, the emergent, and the still unknown in immigration and religion. In K. Leonard, A. Stepick, M. A. Vasquez, & J. Holdaway (Eds.),Immigrant faiths: Transforming religious life in America (pp. 11-38). Lanham, MD: Alta Mira Press.

(9) Menjívar, C., & Abrego, L. (2009). Parents and children across borders: Legal instability and intergenerational relations in Guatemalan and Salvadoran families. In N. Foner (Ed.)Across generations: Immigrant families in America. (pp. 160-189). New York, NY: New York University Press.

(10) Suárez-Orozco, C., Bang, H. J., & Kim, H. Y. (2011). "I felt like my heart was staying behind:" Psychological implications of immigrant family separations & reunification.Journal of Adolescent Research, 26, 222-257.

(11) National Research Council. (1997).The new Americans: Economic, demographic, and fiscal effects of immigration. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.

Schumacher-Matos, E. (2011). Consensus debate and wishful thinking: The economic impact of immigration. In M. Suárez-Orozco, V. Louie, & R. Suro (Eds).Writing immigration: Academics & journalists in dialogue. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

(12) Bayley, R., & Regan, V. (2004). Introduction: The acquisition of sociolinguistic competence.Journal of Sociolinguistics, 8, 323-338. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9841.2004.00263.x

(13) Alba, R., Logan, J., Lutz, A., & Stults, B. (2002). Only English by the third generation? Loss and preservation of the mother tongue among the grandchildren of contemporary immigrants.Demography, 39(3), 467-484.

Portes, A., & Schauffler, R. (1994). Language and the second generation: Bilingualism yesterday and today.International Migration Review, 28(4), 640.

Wong-Fillmore, L. (1991). When learning a language means losing the first.Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 6, 323-346.

What is the psychological experience of immigration?

a. Social context of reception

Socioecological model
Ecological approaches acknowledge that behavior does not occur in a vacuum but is affected by the larger culture and society, as well as the local community and its institutions. Thus, the social climate and receiving environment into which immigrants arrive help shape their experience in and adaptation to America. Also, today's immigrants may adopt American culture without losing the connection to their native culture, and thus enjoy the advantages of biculturalism.

Assimilation versus multiculturalism
The arrival of a new racially diverse wave of immigrants to the United States has highlighted the distinctions between assimilation ("the melting pot") and multiculturalism ("the salad bowl"). Those in favor of "cultural assimilation" believe the best approach is for immigrants (and other minority groups) to rapidly blend into the dominant culture. They contend adopting the norms and rules of the dominant culture will eliminate ethnic differences and thus prejudice will be drastically reduced.

On the other hand, "multicultural ideology" holds that all cultural groups should have the opportunity to retain their basic cultural norms, values, traditions, and languages within a greater cultural framework. They believe that prejudice is reduced and self-esteem is enhanced through appreciation of group differences. In the end, the solution may involve preserving cultural distinctiveness while also developing a shared identity with those born in the United States.

The immigration debate, xenophobia and discrimination
In the current anti-immigrant climate, xenophobia (hatred or fear of foreigners or strangers or of their politics or culture), and discrimination significantly impact the lives of immigrants. Many immigrants are discriminated against in employment, their neighborhoods, service agencies and schools. Reasons include immigration status, skin color, language skills, and income and education levels. Immigrants are often negatively stereotyped and these stereotypes have negative consequences for well-being.

Neighborhoods/communities
Neighborhood relationships are particularly critical for new immigrants because many aspects of the new environment can be disorienting. Living in ethnic communities seems to protect immigrants from cultural isolation, which in turn, benefits their psychological adjustment. However, pressure to assimilate may be strong outside their ethnic group and lead to discrimination and its negative consequences.

New immigrants of color who settle in predominantly minority neighborhoods often have virtually no direct, regular and intimate contact with middle-class White Americans. This in turn affects their opportunities to hear and use English, the quality of schools their children attend, and their access to desirable jobs. Concentrated poverty is associated with the lack of job opportunities, and youth in such neighborhoods are chronically under- or unemployed.

b. Acculturation and adaptation

Acculturation and mental health
Acculturation is a multidimensional process that involves changes in many aspects of immigrants' lives, including language, cultural identity, attitudes and values, types of food and music preferred, media use, ethnic pride, ethnic social relations, cultural familiarity and social customs. ¹⁴

Acculturation may occur in stages, with immigrants learning the new language first, followed by behavioral participation in the culture ¹⁵. While some settings, such as workplaces or schools, are predominantly culturally American, others, such as an immigrant's ethnic neighborhood and home environment, are predominantly of the heritage culture. From this perspective, acculturation to both cultures provides access to different kinds of resources that are useful in different settings, and in turn, hopefully linked to positive mental health outcomes.

But even immigrants who have lived in the United States for a long time and who appear to have adopted the American lifestyle may continue to maintain strong identification with, and hold the values of, their culture of origin. This has important implications for providing psychological services to this population. The process of integrating the social and cultural values, ideas, beliefs, and behavioral patterns of the culture of origin with those of the new culture can lead to acculturative stress if they conflict.

Acculturation gaps
Family acculturation gaps extend across a variety of parent-child relationships, and immigrant parents and children increasingly live in different cultural worlds. Because immigrant parents are immersed primarily in one cultural context and their children in another, they often know little of their children's lives outside the home. For immigrant children, it can be difficult to live with the expectations and demands of one culture in the home and another at school. Children may not turn to their parents with problems and concerns, believing their parents do not know the culture and its institutions well enough to provide them with good advice or assistance.

Social trust and civic engagement
Democratic societies require citizens to interact regularly with each other for political, economic, and social reasons. The current atmosphere of general social distrust in the United States coincides with, and is complicated by, the highest levels of immigration since the last great wave of migration from 1880 to 1920. For immigrants, involvement in U.S. society, politics, and communities represents successful integration into the life of the country.

A marker of whether new immigrants feel welcomed and accepted in this country is whether they are able to develop social trust and become involved in U.S. society, politics, and communities. While historically, civic engagement was defined as voting, definitions of civic engagement now include the following:

- attitudes toward political participation
- acknowledge about government
- commitment to society
- activities that help those in need
- collective action to fight for social justice ¹⁶

Although nonnaturalized immigrant adults cannot vote, they can be involved in an array of civic projects. With citizenship and second-generation status come greater civic and political participation ¹⁷. Not speaking English blocks participation in some activities for the first generation. On the other hand, bilingual competencies can serve as tools for civic engagement among immigrant youth who become involved as culture brokers. ¹⁸

Trust and civic engagement do not occur in a vacuum. It remains to be seen how the general climate of distrust in the United States and the current crisis over immigration shape immigrant youths' civic trust and engagement. Research is needed on how the current political climate influences trust in the culture and future civic engagement.

(14) Yoon, E., Langrehr, K., & Ong, L.Z. (2010). Content analysis of acculturation research in counseling and counseling psychology: A 22-year review. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 58(1), 83-96.

(15) Birman, D., & Trickett, E. J. (2001). The process of acculturation in first generation immigrants: A study of Soviet Jewish refugee adolescents and parents.Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 32(4), 456-477. doi:10.1177/002202210103200400

Gordon, M. (1964). Assimilation in American life: The role of race, religion, and national origins. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Lee, R. M., Yoon, E., & Liu-Tom, H. T. (2006). Structure and measurement of acculturation/enculturation for Asian Americans using the ARSMA-II.Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 39, 42-55.

(16) Flanagan, C., Gallay, L. S., Gill, S., Gallay, E. E., & Nti, N. (2005). What does democracy mean? Correlates of adolescents' views.Journal of Adolescent Research, 20(2), 193-218.

Metz, E., & Youniss, J. (2005). Longitudinal gains in civic development through school-based required service.Political Psychology, 26, 413-437.

Morsillo, J., & Prilleltensky, I. (2007). Social action with youth: Interventions, evaluation, and psychopolitical validity.Journal of Community Psychology, 35, 725-740.

Torney-Purta, J., Barber, C., & Wilkenfeld, B. (2007). Latino adolescents' civic development: Research results from the IEA Civic Education Study.Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 36(2), 111-125.

(17) Lopez, M. H., & Marcelo, K. B. (2008). The civic engagement of immigrant youth: New evidence from the 2006 Civic and Political Health of the Nation Survey.Applied Developmental Science, 12(2), 66-73.

Stoll, M. A., & Wong, J. A. (2007). Immigration and civic participation in a multiracial and multiethnic context.The International Migration Review, 41(4), 880-908.

(18) Ramakrishnan, S. K., & Baldasarre, M. (2004).The ties that bind: Changing demographics and civic engagement in California. San Francisco, CA: Public Policy Institute of California.

Information for clinicians/service providers

a. Importance of resilience and context

A resilience perspective

The immigration process can cause a variety of psychological problems related to:

negotiating loss and separation from country of origin, family members and familiar customs and traditions;

exposure to a new physical environment; and

the need to navigate unfamiliar cultural experiences.

These problems, including stress, may be acute for first-generation immigrants emigrating from countries in which the social and cultural setting contrasts sharply with that of the United States.

There is no evidence in the literature that immigrants are any more likely to experience mental illness or psychological distress than nonimmigrants, taking into account who does and does not seek treatment. However, when immigrants do experience mental health difficulties, many are particular to the immigration experience.

A wide range of mental health problems, including anxiety

, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance abuse and higher prevalence of severe mental illness and thoughts of suicide have been observed among immigrant populations in the United States. It is also important to note that there are particularly vulnerable immigrant subpopulations (e.g., refugees, older adults, and LGBT populations) that are likely to experience additional stressors that can negatively impact their mental health.

Context matters

From a cultural perspective, the experience of immigrants can be understood as an effort to fit between cultures. Immigrants bring with them cultural values, beliefs, and attitudes that may fit well or may clash with those in the United States. The settings of the larger society and local community can be a source of stress for immigrants. Stressors that can affect immigrants' mental health and utilization of mental health services include:

poverty

lack of reception by mainstream society

limited networks of social support and opportunities

policies that restrict access to health care

lack of knowledge about mental health services

Individual factors, such as exposure to trauma during the migration process, can further shape the ways in which immigrants experience, express, and cope with psychological distress. On the other hand, the following factors have been associated with psychological well-being:

family cohesion

support from extended family

positive ethnic identity

a sense of belonging and involvement with one's ethnic community

b. Presenting problems related to:

Acculturation

As immigrants negotiate their identities in a new cultural environment and find ways to cope with immigration-related stress, they may experience increasing family tensions. Intergenerational conflicts are common in immigrant households, reflective of an acculturation gap between parents and children and spouses and partners. Some manifestations of these conflicts are verbal arguments between parents and children regarding friendships, dating, marriage and career choices and between spouses about gender role expectations.

In some cases, second-generation children and adolescents experience role reversal, translating for their parents from their native language to English or helping their parents and/or grandparents navigate mainstream culture. Many older immigrants, particularly those who immigrate late in life and have limited English proficiency, experience loneliness and isolation. They may also have difficulties in navigating a cultural context in which they are no longer revered or sought out as respected elders by family and younger members of their communities.

Traum a

A significant number of immigrants have had previous, recent, and/or ongoing experiences with trauma. Traumatic experiences place immigrants at risk for mental health problems, including depression and anxiety disorders, and particularly posttraumatic stress disorder.

Traumatic experiences can occur at various stages of the immigration process, including:

premigration trauma or events that are experienced just before migrating;

traumatic events that are experienced during the transit to the new country; and

ongoing traumatic experiences in the new country, including substandard living conditions due to unemployment, inadequate supports, and discrimination and/or persecution.

Any of these traumatic events can affect the ways immigrants adjust to their new cultural context.

Undocumented immigrant children and youth are frequently subject to particularly traumatic experiences, including:

racial profiling

ongoing discrimination

exposure to gangs

immigration raids

having family members arbitrarily stopped to ascertain their documentation status

being forcibly taken or separated from their families

returning home to find their families have been taken away

placement in detention camps or child welfare

deportation

Discrimination and racism

Immigrants, especially those of color, are often the targets of discrimination or at least the victims of aggression. Whether subtle or overt, the negative impact of discrimination on the psychological well-being of an individual is still the same. Both open and hidden forms of racism and aggression have important implications for immigrants' sense of well-being and belonging. Specifically, experiences of racial/ethnic discrimination have been associated with mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and thoughts of suicide.

Lower socioeconomic status

As noted earlier, immigrants represent a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds. Those who arrive with lower levels of education, or who encounter conditions of unemployment or poverty, face greater challenges to overall well-being.

c. Intervention

Importance of assessment

A challenge in assessment with immigrants is the lack of diagnostic tools that are valid, culturally appropriate, and sensitive and comprehensive enough to capture cultural variability. Clinicians should consider the fairness and utility of diagnostic tests in the context of language, educational background, and cultural norms. It is also important that clinicians understand the implications of psychological testing and diagnosis on an individual basis and recognize that many immigrant clients are concerned about diagnostic labels due to cultural stigma and/or immigration status.

While assessment issues of immigrants are usually in the context of educational and clinical settings, the significance of culture and language has crucial bearing within forensic and judicial/legal settings, including family courts, immigration courts, and criminal courts. Psychologists may be called upon to make critical decisions that significantly affect the lives of immigrants and their families-deportation or asylum, preserving citizenship, uniting or separating families, incarceration or freedom ¹⁹.

Guiding principles

The present state of knowledge concerning clinical practice suggests that to provide the most effective mental health services to immigrants, clinicians should apply the following guiding principles:

1. Use an ecological perspective to develop and guide interventions.

2. Integrate evidence-based practice with practice-based evidence.

3. Provide culturally competent treatment.

4. Use comprehensive community-based services.

5. Use a social justice perspective as a driving force for all services.

Clinicians can benefit by using multiple sources of evidence in their approaches to assessment with immigrant clients. In addition to identifying culture-specific expressions of well-being and distress, it is important that researchers critically examine resources developed in a Western middle-class context before applying them to non-Western, non-middle-class participants. Bicultural and bilingual researchers are better able to establish a rapport and trust within immigrant communities and gain entry into populations that might otherwise be difficult to access.

Collaboration should be sought with family members, community members, and one another to provide effective and ethical mental and behavioral health and educational support for immigrant-origin adults (including older adults), children and adolescents, and families.

Common barriers to treatment

A number of barriers to culturally sensitive and appropriate mental health services for racial/ethnic minority and immigrant populations have been well documented in the literature. Some immigrants may view self-help as the best means of dealing with mental health problems or may lack an understanding as to how psychological problems can be treated from a Western perspective.

Others may prefer alternate sources of help that are rooted in their cultural origin, e.g., priests or imams. Some cultures that maintain strong family ties see individuals with mental health problems as bringing shame to the family, destroying the family reputation, exemplifying an overall family weakness or a retribution for family wrongs.

Other barriers to treatment include

lack of access to appropriate and culturally sensitive mental health services;

lack of knowledge of available mental health services;

a shortage of mental health workers who are racial/ethnic minorities or trained to work with racial/ethnic minority or culturally diverse children, adolescents, adults (including older adults), and families;

lack of access to interpreters; and

lack of resources for accessing services (e.g., lack of child care, transportation, or finances).

In particular, unauthorized immigrants face additional challenges related to their documentation status (e.g., ineligibility for services provided by the county or state, fear of identification as undocumented, and potential for deportation). Those who live a migrant existence typically do not seek help, either due to fears related to unauthorized status or due to moving from place to place in search of work. Immigrants in rural areas may face additional barriers, including lack of access to culturally competent services and service providers.

Information for educators

a. Importance of resilience and context

A resilience perspective

The pattern of high achievement among many first-generation immigrants is remarkable given the myriad of challenges they encounter, including:

xenophobia

economic obstacles

language difficulties

family separations

under-resourced neighborhoods and schools

the struggle to get their bearings in a new educational system

But immigrant children demonstrate certain advantages. They enter U.S. schools with:

tremendous optimism

high aspirations

dedication to hard work

positive attitudes toward school

an ethic of family support for advanced learning

First-generation students show a number of positive academic behaviors and attitudes that often lead to stronger-than-expected academic outcomes. Some age groups have higher scores on standardized tests than their U.S.-born peers, particularly on standardized math tests. However, a decline in academic aspirations, engagement, and performance has been documented over time and across generations.

Immigrant students whose education has been interrupted, or who have had no prior formal education, face particular challenges in making a transition to U.S. schools. This includes children coming from conditions of poverty where older children are expected to work and secondary schooling is unavailable. Many refugee children arrive after prolonged stays in refugee camps, never having been in school, and some come from cultures with no traditions of literacy in any language.

It is estimated that 20% of English Language Learner (ELL) high school students and 12% of ELL middle school students have missed 2 or more years of schooling. Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE) arrive with limited literacy skills in their native language, and yet need to master a new language, literacy, and gaps in their knowledge across academic subjects. They face distinctive challenges in adjusting to school, lacking the expected skills to complete homework assignments or participate in most classroom activities, or in extreme cases, even knowledge of how to use pencil and paper.

Context matters

Resettlement shapes the experiences of immigrant students in their neighborhoods, families, and schools. A number of factors, including family capital and school resources available to newcomer students, can bolster or undermine academic integration and adaptation. Although some immigrant students come from privileged backgrounds, children living in families headed by immigrant parents are more likely to live in poverty than their nonimmigrant peers. This is a significant issue to consider, as immigrant-origin children are more likely to be raised in poverty than any other group of children residing in the United States.

Educational attainment within the first generation is closely, but not exclusively, tied to parental educational levels. Youth arriving from families with lower levels of education tend to struggle academically, while those who come from more literate families and with strong skills often flourish. Highly literate parents are better equipped to guide their children in studying, accessing educational information, and supporting literacy development either in their native language or in English.

U.S. schools are often not well prepared to serve immigrant-origin students. Schools that serve ELL students have chronic shortages of teachers with specialized training, and principals, counselors, and other support staff rarely have specialized training either. In general, education of immigrant-origin students is conceived of as an addition to the "normal" functions of the secondary school. Thus programming to meet the needs of these students often happens in the absence of sufficient expertise or clear standards.

b. Importance of assessment

Approximately 20,000 mental, personality and educational tests are developed and published each year, yet many of these tests suffer from traditional test practices and assessment biases that lead to (mis)diagnosis and inappropriate interventions. For testing and assessment to be culturally appropriate, there needs to be a continuous, intentional, and active preoccupation with the culture of the group or individual being assessed.

The challenge of appropriately assessing immigrants and English Language Learners (ELLs) affects this population in three general areas:

placement in special education

ability, achievement and aptitude testing

use of clinical assessment measures (i.e., the WISC-III and MMPI)

Schools have limited assessment strategies to differentiate between adjustment and learning disorders with regard to English Language Learners (ELLs), or non-English learners, often lacking the means or ability to adapt tests, or make appropriate administration, translation, or assessment adaptations. Thus, many errors are made, in both over- and underdiagnosing adjustment and learning disorders in school settings.

Many school systems do not assess newly arrived immigrant students for mental disabilities for at least one year because they deem it impossible to differentiate adjustment difficulties from mental disabilities. Research suggests that poor, immigrant, and racial/ethnic minority children are disproportionately placed in low-ability groups early in their education.

Students from Spanish-speaking, ELL backgrounds are overly referred to specialized programs for students with speech and language learning disabilities. Teachers referring immigrant students for special education testing may inappropriately assess their behavior because they misunderstand that they are behaving according to the norms of their heritage culture. At the same time, some children who need such services do not receive them because valid assessment instruments do not exist in most immigrant languages.

c. Issues related to immigrant-origin students learning English

Acquiring the language of the host country is a critical aspect of academic transition for first-generation immigrant students. According to an Urban Institute Report, 62% of foreign-born children speak English less than "very well" ²⁰. However, there is a great distinction between interpersonal communicative English and academic English. Although developing academic second-language skills generally requires 4 to 7 years of optimal academic instruction, students in the United States are generally expected to transition out of second-language acquisition programs within 3 years.

While schools place an emphasis on learning English, research suggests that native language retention is also important. When students are well grounded in their native language and have developed reading and writing skills in that language, they are better able to efficiently apply that knowledge to the new language when provided appropriate instructional supports. Unfortunately, many immigrant students do not encounter strong second-language-acquisition programs in their schools.

d. Importance of school belonging and parental involvement

School belonging

In addition to language-related challenges, immigrant students must transfer their academic skills to the U.S. school environment and form relationships with peers and school adults. A sense of school belonging has been defined as the level of attachment, commitment, involvement and belief students have in the value of their school.

This sense of belonging, in turn, has implications for increasing social involvement, motivation, school attendance, academic engagement and ultimately achievement. In addition, for immigrant students, a sense of school belonging has been found to predict better mental health, indicating the importance of feeling "at home" in their new environment.

A sense of school belonging can be fostered by social support from peers and school adults. Positive relationships with school adults can help bridge the gap between home and school cultures and aide language and cultural connections to the new society.

Supportive relationships with caring adults in the school context provide emotional sustenance as well as practical help and advice and can sometimes spark active participation in subject areas that may have traditionally held little interest. Conversely, students may lose interest if they perceive a diminished concern about their progress on the part of the teacher.

ELL (both bilingual and ESL) teachers play a critically important role in the school experience of newcomer students. As "first responders" to the nation's immigrant students, they tend to spend more time, in smaller classrooms, getting to know their students and becoming their advocates in the school.

Bilingual teachers have the additional advantage of being able to communicate with parents in their native language and serve as a bridge between home and school. These teachers are often asked to take on a number of roles both inside and outside the classroom not formally recognized or valued by school authorities. They fill gaps in educational programs that don't meet students' needs, provide professional development for mainstream teachers, reach out to students' families, and search for additional resources unavailable at school.

At the same time, they are often blamed when their students don't perform well in mainstream classes. Despite the tremendous importance of their work for immigrant-origin students, research suggests that ELL teachers are not sufficiently supported.

Parental involvement

Parental school involvement (e.g., participating in Parent-Teacher Organizations, volunteering in class and chaperoning field trips) has shown profound positive effects on performance and adaptation to school for U.S.-born students. Teachers view those parents as supportive of their children's learning. For immigrant parents, however, such involvement may be neither a familiar cultural practice in their countries of origin nor a luxury their current financial situation allows.

Not speaking English and having limited education may make parents feel inadequate when communicating with teachers. Lack of documentation may make them worry about exposure to immigration raids. Low-wage, low-skill jobs with off-hour shifts typically limit flexibility to attend parent-teacher conferences. The impediments to coming to school are multiple and can frequently be mistaken by teachers and principals as parents "not valuing" their children's education.

Despite this perception by many educators, most immigrant parents describe providing better educational opportunities for their children as the goal of immigration. Parents may be involved, but in ways different than expected by U.S./Western schools. Many immigrant parents come from cultural traditions where parents are expected to respect teachers' recommendations rather than advocate for their children. They see their role as supporting their children's education at home and deferring to teachers during the school day.

In addition, not having gone to U.S. schools themselves, immigrant parents often don't understand

how schools are organized,

what schools expect from children (e.g., expressing opinions rather than rote memorization),

how to deal with learning problems, or

how to communicate with the school.

Thus, teachers may perceive immigrant parents as disinterested, reach out to them less, and as a result, the parents know even less about school matters.

Ideally schools should make contact with immigrant parents in positive circumstances rather than waiting for a crisis. Immigrant parents' knowledge of school practices has been found to predict higher grades for immigrant students, suggesting the unique importance of such knowledge. Regardless of parents' preferred form of involvement, keeping them abreast of their children's academic progress, sharing important notices and events, and communicating information about school policies are some of the most critical ways that school districts can work to promote parent involvement.

Information for researchers

a. Assessment considerations

The challenges of the field when assessing immigrants and second-language learners are aptly summed up by the question: "Who is given tests in what language by whom, when and where?"

To assure valid measures and avoid misdiagnoses of ELL students, immigrant groups and racial/ethnic minority groups, the field of psychology must seriously revise testing and assessment practices. Much of the field of assessment is plagued by the challenge of differentiating among measurement errors, learner characteristics (e.g., language, acculturation and socioeconomic status), and learning conditions (e.g., school district, bilingual versus full-immersion program and lack of appropriate instruction). Clinicians and practitioners need to be provided significant training to distinguish learning characteristics from learning conditions and understand multiculturalism in broader terms.

To establish a valid model of identification for English Language Learners and learning disability, researchers have proposed that four important changes need to take place, including:

development of a single, operational definition of English Language Learners;

better understanding of the developmental norms for all ELLs, with or without learning difficulties;

better understanding of longitudinal developmental norms of language and literacy skills and the influence of instruction and demographics over time; and

consideration of differences of immigrant communities by disaggregating factors such as culture and language of origin, content learned in country of origin, socioeconomic status (pre- and postmigration), and ability to negotiate language development between the two languages.

b. Research considerations

To construct valid and culturally meaningful research, psychology must further the understanding of how different cultural groups vary in beliefs and cultural practices around well-being, distress, and healing. It is important that researchers critically examine models developed in a Western middle-class context before applying them to non-Western, non-middle-class participants (21).

Ideally research should be designed to meet the following characteristics of the individual or group under consideration:

age at migration

current age

length of residency in the United States

generational status (e.g., first, 1.5, or second)

English-language proficiency

education

extent of acculturation

gender

race

sexual orientation

religion

social class

disability/ability

country of origin

A representative, comprehensive general population survey of first- and second-generation immigrants, however, is difficult to conduct for a variety of reasons that include:

insufficient funding,

difficulties of validating and translating instruments across groups,

lack of widely representative community samples, and

historically low rates of participation.

A variety of strategies for conducting sound research are recommended, including:

using triangulated data collected from a variety of perspectives,

combining "outsider" (etic) and "insider" (emic) points of view,

collecting developmental and longitudinal perspectives, and

combining mixed-methods-quantitative and qualitative approaches.

c. Ethical considerations

There are particular ethical considerations when working with immigrant-origin populations. Power dynamics between researcher and participant are always a concern but are accentuated between the researcher and immigrant participant, particularly when the participant is less-educated or undocumented ²¹.

Since some portion of first-generation participants may be undocumented, researchers must give thought to that issue when formulating the study, recruiting participants, and conducting the study. In the current climate of deportation, extra precautions must be taken to shield the identities of these participants.

The task force recommends consulting the APA Code of Ethics to resolve potential conflicts. The strictest ethical standards must be upheld to maintain the trust of the community and not place research participants at risk.

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2011 apa presidential task force on immigration

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Immigrants to the United States seek to reunite with families, may need humanitarian protection and are searching for work. Contains tools for mental health professionals, educators, advocates, service providers and members of the public on the mental health needs of immigrants in the United States.

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How can teachers prepare for diverse classrooms? There isn't a definitive answer, but there is a wealth of resources online. Discover some helpful links for teachers.

Photo credit: woodleywonderworks via flickr (CC BY 2.0)

How can teachers effectively engage students from diverse backgrounds? It's a question many teachers face, and of course, there isn't one prescribed strategy that works. Luckily, there are many useful resources to help new and veteran educators explore the subject.

If you're looking for a starting point, How Can We Prepare Teachers to Work With Culturally Diverse Students and Their Families? (an article from the Family Research Project at Harvard University) features insightful advice and useful tips from leading diversity education specialists. These researchers agree on the underlying message that communication plays an integral role; you'll also find insight into preparation and information about connecting with students and building relationships with families.

Resources for Multicultural Classrooms (Teaching Tolerance): Produced by The Southern Poverty Law Center, Teaching Tolerance's classroom resources page offers free lesson plans for exploring topics like race and ethnicity, gender equality, and sexual orientation with students. For specific teaching practices, start with Teaching Tolerance's Critical Practices for Anti-Bias Teaching, a self-paced, four-part, professional development learning program.

Awareness Activities (EdChange.org): The EdChange-produced Multicultural Pavilion is a wonderful assortment of resources for educators. This Awareness Activities collection provides plenty of engaging ideas and activities to introduce diversity at the beginning of the school year. Don't miss the Teacher's Corner for curriculum ideas, strategies, and much more.

Teaching Diverse Learners (Brown University): This website is "a resource dedicated to enhancing the capacity of teachers to work effectively and equitably with English-language learners (ELLs)." You'll find great practical teaching strategies, ideas for engaging elementary ELLs, and tips for reaching out to families.

Lesson Plans and Resources (Teaching for Change): Teaching for Change is a nonprofit, with a mission of providing "teachers and parents with the tools to create schools where students learn to read, write, and change the world." The site features thoughtful and engaging lesson plans, tips for addressing race and diversity in the class, and links to great teacher resources.

Lesson Plans and Resources for Multiculturalism and Diversity: Scholastic produced this collection of resources for teachers. Along with some engaging lesson plans, there are also plenty of articles featuring tips and strategies to help educators engage students and families from diverse backgrounds. Connect With Kids and Parents of Different Cultures is a great place to start.

Strategies for Teaching Culturally Diverse Students: This TeacherVision-produced article is full of useful and ready-to-use tips for welcoming and engaging diverse students. Discover more useful ideas and lesson plans in TeacherVision's Diversity Resources for Teachers collection.

Resource Library (Inclusive Schools Network): This library is rich with resources covering a range of topics on diversity, with a focus on creating equity for students with disabilities. Start with the Inclusion Basics, which provides a great overview of creating an inclusive classroom. The Culturally Responsive Teaching resource page offers great ideas, tips, and strategies for reaching culturally diverse students with disabilities. You can also dig deeper into subjects like assessment, collaboration, and working with families.

Two other sources of inspiration are Yvonne Pratt-Johnson's article Communicating Cross-Culturally: What Teachers Should Know and this book excerpt from ASCD's Diverse Teaching Strategies for Diverse Learners. In addition to these articles, here are a few other resources that will help educators develop inclusive learning environments and approach race, gender equality, empathy, and bullying prevention during class.

More From Edutopia

You'll find a trove of insightful articles on Edutopia. Check out the Culturally Responsive Teaching page for additional resources. Here are a few popular blog posts from Edutopia writers:

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Preparing for Cultural Diversity: Resources for Teachers

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How can teachers prepare for diverse classrooms? There isn't a definitive answer, but there is a wealth of resources online. Discover some helpful links for teachers. Photo credit: woodleywonderworks via flickr (CC BY 2.0) How can teachers effectively engage students from diverse backgrounds?

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May 2009 | Volume 66 | Number 8
Teaching Social Responsibility Pages 32-37

Laurel Schmidt

In an era of homogenized, shrink-wrapped, germ-free curriculum, social justice is the renegade. It doesn't just push the envelope-it's several leagues outside the box. For a start, it has few right answers. Study geography, and you know you're dealing with topography and climate. Even history has some solid content among the questions and interpretations. But social justice is amorphous. It's an unscripted mixture of politics, economics, laws, values, humanitarian crises, and issues that pit common sense against the common good.

For every earnest cause, dozens of well-educated and well-funded countervailing voices explain why the situation can't or shouldn't change. So you and your students must grapple with this question: Are there some behaviors or conditions that we simply must address, no matter how difficult or unpopular our work will be?

There's so much to do, even in our own neighborhoods. Some projects are simple fixes, but many turn out to be a tiny first link in a long, arduous chain of effort. Think of the thousands of discrete actions required over the decades to achieve civil rights for minorities in the United States. So your students may never have the thrill of seeing a bill signed into law, a shelter renovated, or even a municipal code modified to create a publicly funded meals program for homeless people. They may solve one part of a problem, only to discover that they've uncovered a greater injustice or need. Social activists face disappointment and frustration every day, but they keep on trying.

Social activism is also potentially dangerous. A veteran educator explained how one of his students warned him, "You know, Mr. Kohl, you could get arrested for stirring up justice!" You have only to look at the history of the civil rights movement to know how right he was.

So social justice is untidy, exhausting, discouraging, even dangerous work-which may be the reason why it's not on the top ten list of social studies projects in many schools. Better to have kids build a model of a rancho (a group of huts for housing ranch workers) or recreate a potlatch (a festival ceremony practiced by the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest) and be done with it.

From Idea to Action

But whether you ignore or embrace the topic, the truth is that most students experience or think about social justice issues. They know instinctively when something's unfair, whether they're puzzled by the way certain kids are excluded from playground games or worried about where homeless people sleep at night. Kids rarely accept injustice as the status quo. Instead, they look to the adults in their lives-parents, teachers, coaches, and relatives-to help them decide what to do.

In the best-case scenarios, the adults encourage rather than avoid authentic conversations about our collective dilemmas-human rights, environmental protection, economic justice, violence. They embrace the inevitable question, What can we do about it? and teach students to act.

But sometimes the response from adults is less than inspiring. We squirm, change the subject, turn a blind eye. Drop it is the unspoken message. Children may well respond to the discovery that the topic of social justice is off limits by thinking that

Injustice is a fact of life; there's no point in trying to change human nature.

Injustice is unfortunate, but getting involved is too discouraging.

Perhaps the victims brought it on themselves. They deserve it.

Even if kids never get that far in their thinking, they may be left with a vague uneasiness that if they were ever in dire straits, no one would come to their rescue.

Younger students may not be able to define social justice, but they can list the attributes that we value in human relationships: friendship, responsibility, equality, fairness, mutual support, collaboration, and caring. With a little prompting, older students enlarge their sphere of concern, zeroing in on injustice related to socioeconomic status, exploitation, and the abuses of power. They probably won't use those words, but they'll recognize the issues.

They'll notice for example, that certain ethnicities seem to be overrepresented on the homeless rolls in their own town and underrepresented in the local power structure or that hotel workers risk their jobs to demonstrate for a living wage, but the subject is aggressively ignored at city council meetings. And now that classrooms have Internet access, it won't take long for students to discover sweatshops, child labor, hazardous waste, discrimination, and the devastation of the natural environment on a global scale.

Learning about all these injustices would be emotionally daunting for kids if it were just an exercise in cataloguing calamities and human indifference. But social justice education encourages students to act. It is based on the notion that we, the people, agree to live by a covenant that defines how we will behave toward one another in a community, whether you define community as a prairie town or the planet. If individuals, town leaders, or federal officials violate the covenant, then we attempt to restore justice through concerted action.

But kids can't do this alone. They need adult mentors to help them translate their ideas into action. With guidance, they can go from passive spectators to activists, focusing their energy on solutions that could save an ecosystem, a species, or a life. They eagerly master new skills, contact key people, and gather crucial resources-because something real and terribly important hangs in the balance.

The Social Action Autobiography

Most of us become social activists through inspiration. We meet or read about someone who puts everything on the line for a cause, and we're moved-or deeply disturbed-by the realization that we, too, possess the power to make a difference.

Some kids have already had that epiphany, even on a micro-scale, but they may not see themselves as activists yet. That's your starting point. When you decide to include social justice projects in your curriculum, you need to take the all-important first step of finding out what your students already know and what experience they've had in trying to solve problems in the community.

The social action autobiography helps all students recognize the ways they've acted for the good of others. Giving them the opportunity to share their prior knowledge lets them feel smart from the outset and enables you to gather valuable details about their individual skills and interests. For younger students, the prompt might be something like, Think of a time when you helped someone. This could range from taking care of a neighbor's cat to playing with a child who had no friends. The students can respond by writing, drawing a picture, or making an annotated drawing with images and words. Even kindergartners can do this reflective activity by drawing a picture or series of pictures and then dictating to a scribe, perhaps an older student, parent, instructional aide, or the teacher. If you can't arrange for scribes, ask the students to discuss their pictures in small groups.

Ask older students to think about a problem that involved other people, the community, the environment, or animals, and what they did to help. You can pose a series of questions like the following to help them remember details and analyze their actions:

How did you find out about the problem?

What did you think was a good solution?

What did you need to do to make it happen?

Did other people help you?

What did you learn from the process?

How did you feel about yourself?

As students share their experiences, they're building a template for how to pursue social action and starting a list of potential projects.

A Wake-Up Call

But some kids don't seem to have a clue about activism. Their idea of social justice is being first in the cafeteria line at any cost. It's not hopeless-they're probably just not paying attention. But rather than waiting around for them to "discover" social justice issues, you can jump-start the process by introducing them to some extraordinary kids-just like them-who are experts at this game.

Get Phillip Hoose's book, It's Our World, Too: Stories of Young People Who Are Making a Difference (Joy Street, 1993). It celebrates 14 heroic kids who saw problems in their world and solved them. Your students will be dazzled from the very first page. They'll meet Justin Lebo, who reconstructed nearly 200 bikes from used bicycle parts and gave them to kids who were homeless, had AIDS, or were orphans. They'll love James Ale, whose friend was struck by a car while they were playing ball in a busy street. James wondered why he and his buddies had to play in the street, when the kids in the rich part of town had parks. He transformed his anger into a campaign and eventually convinced city officials to build a park in his neighborhood.

Ask your students, Why do you think these kids were successful? What did they know or learn how to do? Have the students list the personal traits and skills that helped these young activists succeed. Post the list prominently and refer to it often as you close in on your own projects.

I've used Hoose's book dozens of times, with adults and children, and the reaction is always the same-awe and discontent. Students recognize that these kids are doing something real and important. That's the awe factor. But they're filled with questions: Could I do that? Would I? Are there problems like that in my community? How could I find them? Do I have the courage to act? A new standard of behavior replaces the status quo, and kids wonder whether they can measure up. That's what causes the discontent, and it's a perfect platform for action.

But What Does It Look Like?

The best social action projects are like an earthquake. One minute you're comfortably ensconced in your classroom, earnestly working through your curriculum, and the next minute, the ground shifts. Even before the room stops rocking, you sense that you're in new territory, face-to-face with a genuine adventure. The best projects come organically from the work and conversations you have with your students every day.

Sometimes students will burst through the door on red alert and demand that their peers sit up and take notice. Here are a few examples:

Barbara Lewis's 5th grade students waged a campaign to have a hazardous waste site near their school closed and cleaned up. Through their efforts, the toxic barrels were removed. The students won the 1989 President's Environmental Youth Award.

Students organized a boycott of chocolate candy manufacturers at Halloween to register their support for fair trade chocolate.

A group of 8-year-olds in Los Angeles were discouraged by the profusion of broken furniture and large appliances dumped on the sidewalks around their school. They worked their way zealously through the sanitation bureaucracy until they made contact with the large haulers responsible for removals. The debris vanished, and in a moment of jubilant inspiration, the students collected any interesting junk left behind and created a 10-foot commemorative sculpture for the school entrance.

Canadian students helped students in Africa and Afghanistan by raising money to remove land mines from schoolyards.

A group of 2nd and 5th graders campaigned for fellow students to boycott any ice cream trucks that sold toy guns along with their sweets. These students had decided that their community didn't need another weapon-either real or a look-alike.

Many students have joined Amnesty International Kids (www.amnestyusa.org) and respond with letters and e-mails to monthly Urgent Action postings.

What About Standards?

When you include social justice projects in your social studies program by teaching what activists do, think, and know, your students will develop and demonstrate skills that are fundamental to a rigorous standards-based approach to social studies. In fact, teachers who are bold enough to embrace an activist approach to teaching find themselves scrambling to add to the standard curriculum impromptu lessons in trickle-down economics, writing a press release, making an effective speech in under three minutes, using graphic design principles for making posters, and learning the fundamentals of negotiation. Many teachers report that their students exceed expectations on dozens of standards. Moreover, students experience the thrill of road testing their courage, persistence, ingenuity, intelligence, and diplomacy-not to mention the pride of contributing to the welfare of others.

Here are just a few of the cognitive challenges that students will face when they're immersed in the work of creating a more just society. Students will

Examine what it means to be a citizen.

Identify ways people can participate in their government.

Discuss the importance of political leadership and public service.

Locate, access, organize, and apply information about an issue of public concern.

Use spoken, written, and visual forms of communication effectively with a variety of audiences to promote their social justice efforts.

Use knowledge of government, law, and politics to make decisions about and take action on local, national, and international issues to further the public good.

Examine and develop others' ethical and moral reasoning.

Responsibility-Ours and Theirs

As educators, we hold the next generation of voters, politicians, and corporate leaders in our hands. Teaching students about interdependence and responsibility through social action is a lesson that can stick.

Active, inquisitive citizenship can begin when kids are very young. They should act out early and often, until championing worthy causes becomes a habit they can't break. You won't regret a minute you spend guiding your students to discover their roles as stewards of the environment and champions of human rights.

Laurel Schmidt is Director of Pupil Services for the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District and Director of her district's Leadership Academy; lschmidt@smmusd.org. She is the author of Gardening in the Minefield: A Survival Guide for School Administrators (Heinemann, 2002) and Social Studies that Sticks: Bringing Content and Concepts to Life (Heinemann, 2007).

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May 2009 | Volume 66 | Number 8 Teaching Social Responsibility Pages 32-37 Laurel Schmidt In an era of homogenized, shrink-wrapped, germ-free curriculum, social justice is the renegade. It doesn't just push the envelope-it's several leagues outside the box. For a start, it has few right answers.

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Ask teachers to describe the impact they hope to have on their students, and most will eventually say something along these lines: I want my students to grow into responsible citizens. I want my students to participate in society in an active, productive way.

And maybe: I want my students to change the world.

But how many of us know how to make that happen, really? Can we explicitly teach students how to change the world? If this question has been whispering in the back of your mind, the resources in this collection will help.

What is social justice, and how does it fit into the curriculum?

The National Association of Social Workers defines social justice as "the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities." To study social justice is to learn about the problems that dramatically impact quality of life for certain populations, and how people have worked to solve those problems.

If you teach social studies, you'll have no trouble finding direct curricular links to social justice. The National Curriculum Standards for the Social Studies includes Civic Ideals and Practices as one of its 10 Themes of Social Studies, and this includes an emphasis on learning how to get involved in influencing public policy. In history and social studies class, social justice teaching is a natural fit.

In other content areas, teachers disagree over whether social justice has a place. We put ourselves in a vulnerable position by exploring issues that are seen as more controversial than others (a topic I will get into in the next section), and some teachers prefer to completely steer clear of those kinds of complications. For others, social justice was a driving force in why they became teachers, and they weave it into whatever content they are teaching. If you choose to address some or all of these issues in your classroom, the next section offers some tips for doing it effectively.

Some Advice for Teaching Social Justice

As an undergraduate, I served as a student counselor for three years and a resident assistant (RA) for one. I regularly delivered workshops on social justice topics, and I learned a few important lessons along the way. Here are some things to keep in mind when studying social justice issues with your students:

Make getting to know students a key component of any social justice teaching. If you and your students don't spend time examining your own backgrounds, biases, and beliefs, you will be missing an essential component of any social justice curriculum. We all view every social justice issue through the lens of our own experience, and these different lenses can block our growth and learning if we aren't aware of them. If we fine-tune our self-awareness, our individual lenses can richly inform classroom conversations and help us understand issues on a much deeper level, directly from each other.

Know that not all students feel the same way about these issues. Most, if not all, of these resources have been created from a pretty liberal, progressive viewpoint. For example, one of the lessons in the Teaching Tolerance series described below is on Confronting Unjust Laws. The lesson uses California's Proposition 8 as an example of an unjust law. But not all of your students (or their families) will see a law like Prop 8 as unjust. In fact, some may strongly oppose same-sex marriage. That doesn't mean you can't talk about controversial issues; in fact, teaching students how to respectfully discuss an issue with people who don't see things the same way is a lesson that will serve them for the rest of their lives.

Familiarize yourself with the material before teaching. Sometimes we just skim materials before we teach. With social justice topics, this would be a mistake. Not knowing exactly what's in all of your teaching materials, including the texts or videos you and your students will be looking at, can leave you vulnerable to problems when unexpected content pops up.

Keep your administrator in the loop. As with any potentially controversial lesson, it is essential that you talk to your administrator about it ahead of time. Show the curricular connections between your planned lessons and the standards you're teaching. Talk about potential problems or objections that may come up and how you both plan to address them. That way, if your administrator gets a phone call from a concerned parent, she or he won't be blindsided.

Featured Resources

When I set out to find good resources for social justice teaching, I was looking for classroom-ready materials, lesson plans with supplementary texts or videos that would prompt students to learn about, think about, and talk about social justice issues. I also hoped to find some that would actually teach students about activism, about how a citizen zeroes in on a problem, formulates a solution, then does the grassroots work necessary to see that solution come to life.

Some of these resources fit the bill perfectly, especially the first one on the list. Others do not include lesson plans at all, but serve such an important and innovative role in social justice education, I thought they were essential to include here.

Anti-Defamation League: Current Events Classroom

The ADL's Current Events Classroom is a collection of lesson plans that use current events as a springboard. For example, What is the School-to-Prison Pipeline?, a lesson for high school students, has students watch the video of the South Carolina police officer who flipped a student out of her chair. The rest of the lesson has students study and discuss the impact of zero-tolerance policies in schools, statistics on the connection between school suspensions and the juvenile justice system, and their own school discipline policy. The end of the lesson offers students a choice of next steps for taking action on this issue.

Most of the lessons in the collection are written for middle and high school students on a wide range of topics including anti-Muslim bigotry, the refugee crisis, homelessness, cyberbullying, and gender stereotypes. The longer I look at this collection, the more impressed I am with it. Definitely worth a look.

Update: Since publishing this post, a few readers have pointed out that some of ADL's other website content (separate from this curriculum) takes a strong stance on issues relating to Israel and may offend some users. I still feel that this curriculum contains incredibly valuable lessons on very recent events that you won't find anywhere else, but this reinforces my second and third points above: Know your audience, and read through the materials carefully. For more details on this issue, please read the comments below.

Teaching Tolerance: Classroom Resources

This award-winning organization comes up most often any time social justice teaching is discussed. There's lots to explore on their site, including the Classroom Resources section, which is loaded with lesson plans and other resources teachers can use for free in their classrooms. One of these lessons is Confronting Unjust Practices, where students learn about the anti-segregation actions taken by the Freedom Riders and the attack on one of these buses in Anniston, Alabama (pictured above).

Other lessons from this library include What is Ageism?, Unequal Unemployment, and What Makes a Family? Lessons are available for elementary, middle, and high school students.

DoSomething.org

No lesson plans here: DoSomething.org is an outstanding organization whose goal is to support the work of young people who want to make a difference in their world. Students browse through a big list of campaigns, public education and activism projects students can launch right in their own communities, and choose one or more that they'd like to participate in. Once they have finished a campaign, students submit a photo or video to prove they completed the required steps. This entry makes them eligible to win prizes, including scholarships. Currently, only U.S. students are eligible for these scholarships, but DoSomething.org is expanding into other countries as well.

Although this site will not help you do any direct instruction about social justice, it provides incredible opportunities for students to actively participate in social justice projects. Most campaigns are just right for high school students, and some would be appropriate for middle schoolers as well. Some topics may be considered risque, so review the content before introducing it to students.

On a related note, DoSomething.org is the organization where Katia Gomez, the college student who started her own school in Honduras (featured in the first Cult of Pedagogy documentary last year), got her start. One more bit of trivia that totally doesn't matter but might if you are a Melrose Place fan: DoSomething.org was co-founded by 90's heartthrob Andrew Shue. Squeee!!

The Global Oneness Project

The Global Oneness Project offers a beautiful collection of multicultural films, photo essays, and articles that "explore cultural, social, and environmental issues with a humanistic lens." Many of the featured stories are paired with a lesson plan for high school or college classrooms, aligned with Common Core and national standards.

One such pairing starts with the film Amar, which follows a young Indian boy living in a high-poverty neighborhood through a typical day that includes rising before dawn to do one of his two jobs and attending school. The accompanying lesson plan is called A Day in the Life, which has students examine the film and other resources related to the economic situation in India.

The films are truly stunning. This collection doesn't include explicit teachings in any kind of civics or grassroots activism, but it will provide students with a deep understanding of lives completely unlike their own. And that kind of empathy is one of the most important building blocks for any kind of social justice action.

Pushing the Edge: Social Justice Resources Collection

Educator Greg Curran's podcast covers a range of educational topics, but quite a few episodes circle around issues of social justice. Recently, he curated these resources into a Social Justice Resources Collection. These episodes will be mainly useful for teachers to educate themselves about social justice education: what complications and questions come up, helpful do's and don'ts, and why it's worth it. He interviews practicing teachers and administrators who are walking the walk with social justice teaching. Listening to them will give you a template from which to build your own practice.

Here's an example of one episode, where Curran interviews Nakisha Hobbs, principal of the Village Leadership Academy, a k-8 social justice school in Chicago.

GLSEN: Educator Resources

For teachers who want to include consideration of LGBT issues in their study of social justice, a great source for materials is GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network. offers a nice collection of educator guides and lesson plans.

Here are a few examples: The ThinkB4YouSpeak Guide for Educators includes lesson plans, resources, and tips for teachers for addressing anti-LGBT language in the 6-12 classroom. Unheard Voices is a collection of audio interviews with "individuals who bore witness to or helped shape LGBT history in some way." And the Day of Silence Guide shows educators how to run a Day of Silence awareness campaign in their schools.

Educational Video Center

I love this idea: The Educational Video Center teaches students the skills of documentary filmmaking, telling important stories in the name of social justice. Although the EVC holds after-school workshops only for students in New York City, they do offer professional development for teachers anywhere who want to learn how to teach these skills to their own students.

Alumni of the EVC have created documentaries on everything from criminal justice to domestic violence to mental health. You can view a collection of trailers for student-created documentaries here.

The Two Dollar Challenge

The Two Dollar Challenge is a challenge issued to people who want to make an impact on poverty. The challenge is simple: For 5 days, live on just $2 per day, publicizing the complexities of global poverty and helping to raise funds for a partner organization.

What's most striking about this organization is their emphasis on cultivating a deep respect for people affected by poverty and raising participants' awareness of their own privilege. One look at the project's code of conduct shows just how serious they are about that mission: "At all times participants must respect those nearby who are truly in need. If at any time those taking the Challenge are using resources which are valuable for indigent residents in the area this action must be re-evaluated."

Further Reading

Stirring Up Justice
Laurel Schmidt, Education Leadership, May 2009
Explores the value and process of teaching students about activism. Offers a template for how to engage students in authentic conversations about difficult issues, ask themselves what they can do about social justice issues, consider ways they have already acted in the past, study how other kids and young adults have successfully solved problems, and participate in their own social justice projects.

Turning Current Events Into Social Justice Teaching
Jinnie Spiegler, Edutopia, January 6, 2016
Spiegler, the curriculum director for the Anti-Defamation League (the first resource in this post) offers advice on teaching social justice topics in a way that's both sensitive and productive.

Educolor Resources
Educolor, an organization dedicated to an equitable, just education for everyone, maintains this list of books, movies, articles, and websites that will educate teachers and students on issues of social justice, especially as it pertains to educational equity.

The Best Teacher Resources Sites for Social Justice
Larry Ferlazzo, Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day, July 1, 2008
A big list of resources related to social justice education.
What Are Your Favorite Social Justice Resources?
This is by no means an exhaustive list. If you have a resource you like to use for teaching about social justice, please share it in the comments below. ♦

Keep in touch.
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A Collection of Resources for Teaching Social Justice

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Ask teachers to describe the impact they hope to have on their students, and most will eventually say something along these lines: I want my students to grow into responsible citizens. I want my students to participate in society in an active, productive way. And maybe: I want my students to change the world.

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Teaching Tolerance | Diversity, Equity And Justice

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Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.