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I would put my current workplace at the acceptance level although I know they would think they are at the respect level. I would put them there because while I believe they support diversity in some very vital ways and believe in multicultural education, that acceptance does not extend into executive management. By this I mean how higher-level managers are treated amongst each other and faculty if they are not apart of the dominant racial or sexual landscape in America (White man). As such, difference or multicultural is not respected due to the decision makers still fundamentally being those who do not respect a very wide range of cultural difference starting with race, gender, social class, religion, and overall background.

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My school is a Pk-5 public school in Atlanta Public School District in Atlanta, Georgia.  I believe we are at the respect level.  Our school offers a Dual Language Immersion Program in grades K-3 (English/Spanish), we have several professional development activities throughout the year geared towards working with the diverse population of students we serve, our ESOL teachers push into our classrooms for services and their students are not isolated from their peers to receive ESOL services, we have a bi-lingual parent liaison to assist with communication and community involvement for our large Hispanic population, and our principal is bilingual (English/Spanish).  During the interview process, I was asked many questions about multicultural education and culturally responsive teaching to ensure I was a good fit for the population of students I would be serving.  As a special education teacher, I work very closely with the ESOL teachers to make sure that we are covering all our bases with our instruction for our bilingual students.  The collaboration of having a general education teacher, special education teacher, and ESOL teacher in the same class is truly wonderful.  We can address needs from every angle for the students that require additional support.

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My workplace is K-12 IB school in Egypt where I would describe the school as acceptance. We cater for academic diverse students without labeling them. Students are well accommodated inside their classes and sometimes they are pulled out. The beautiful part here is the school  moves towards inclusion so many students are moving around the school engaged and no one asks why these kids are outside their classes. Being served by different teachers and in different settings, students with LD and the gifted students, are working on their personalized goals to reach their potential. Another beautiful part is teachers are more confident with their practices. They are not afraid to explore new teaching methods because we are learning outcome oriented not result oriented. So they are not being judged against students' grades. it is heaven .... at least in elementary school :) Blessed to be the principal!

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Hi Earl, how would you say, based on your experience, your organization views its clients and the types of interactions it encourages with them.  Do you think there is some way to assess the organizational culture on Nieto's scale based on their world view of their mission?

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This is a really complex question for me to answer because I work for a non-profit organization who contracts with school districts. While I am employed by that organization, I do 90% of my work in the field at multiple school sites. I do work in the office and engage with others from the organization once a week for approximately four hours, those interaction make me feel like we are at the tolerance level. People speak of events or accomplishments from iconic figures of different ethnic groups, but that’s really about it. We keep our conversations at a superficial level and move on. As long as the administration at the school site or teachers do not complain about my service, I do not interact with others.

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After reviewing Nieto's (2008) continuum, I would have to describe our community college as tolerant. Although our faculty and staff are caring and committed professionals, there is little attention to diversity issues on our campus. I'm guessing this is because virtually all of these individuals share a European-American cultural background. As members of the majority, they are disconnected from the challenges facing our students from more diverse backgrounds. I thought the following statement from Nieto (2008) is an accurate description of our faculty. "Most teachers at the Brotherhood School have had little professional preparation to deal with the growing diversity of the student body. They like and genuinely want to help their students, but have made few changes in their curricular or instructional practices" (p. 23). Our ESOL program also resembles the one described at the tolerant school. ESOL students attend separate classes and instruction is only in English. All of this said, I don't think it would be difficult to move our college along Nieto's (2008) continuum to the acceptance level. Our leadership and the rest of the campus community just need to decide this will be a priority.

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My answers to questions from the diversity assessment were at times disappointing and shocking to say the least. I had to come to grips with the fact that I can be tolerant at times of the status quo in my professional practice. According to Nieto (2008) tolerance is “actually a low-level of multicultural support” (p.18). As the leader of the campus, I can set the tone about what it means to develop and cultivate a multicultural framework with the structural content and processes within our school.

If you were to take a tour of our campus you would find a student body, faculty, and staff that are predominantly Black yet all the canvases on the walls host pictures of European individuals. As a new campus president, I have spent a considerable amount of time learning about the cultural norms, values and attitudes at the school. While the faculty and staff are dedicated to their roles within the college, they do possess negative attitudes about the students, often generalizing most of them to be lazy and disruptive. As I reflect on multicultural education or culturally responsive teaching, I now understand the complexities associated with its meaning and implementation that extend beyond race and ethnicity. It must be viewed from socio-economic, gender, and cultural aspects also. The students at my career technical school are from low-income homes and are typically the first in their families to attend college to earn a diploma or associates degree. The majority of faculty and staff all have bachelor and masters level degrees and did not grow up in the same environment as the students they teach in classrooms. Just as I tolerate status quo at times, my professional practice tolerates student differences rather than embracing them (Nieto, 2008). Reflecting on the examples provided and other observations I’ve made over the last few months, I would situate my place of employment on the tolerance continuum moving towards acceptance. There have been many positive changes at the campus as I have examined and updated processes and systems to reflect more sensitivity to students’ challenges and barriers to attendance, professional behavior, and academic achievement. Furthermore, developing a culture of high expectation and shared accountability has ignited more trusting relationships between students, educators, and administrators.The diversity assessment has helped me as a leader recognize my blind spots so that I can lead by example. I have heard many times over that students will find a way to school to get their stipend checks but not so much to attend class when faced with difficulties. I would remain silent and would not comment. Now I initiate dialogue that challenges us to reflect on the value placed on education in students’ homes and also the impact of stipend checks on the livelihood of our students. It led us to consider how financial courses would benefit our students and how to incorporate into either the curriculum, campus-based activities and workshops, or advising sessions.

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My current place of employment is a higher education institution in Puerto Rico where I work as director of a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) project. I situate this current employment place at the level of acceptance along Nieto’s (2008) model of multicultural education support. Both administration and faculty acknowledge the significance of diversity within the institution, and are working on developing an international program. Likewise, they are aware of the need for programs which increase gender equality in STEM academic majors. Regarding institutional practices and policies that move forward the academic community to the levels of respect, and affirmation, solidarity, and critique along Nieto’s (2008) continuum, they will be further analyzed as part of my problem of practice.

Reference

Nieto, S. (2008). Affirmation, solidarity and critique: Moving beyond tolerance in education. In E. Lee, D. Menkart, & M. Okazawa-Rey (Eds.), Beyond heroes and holidays (pp. 18-29). Washington, DC: Teaching for Change.

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Nieto (2008) presents a continuum of the levels of multicultural education.  However, based on the description of each level and reflection on my school context, I would suggest that my school demonstrates acceptance.  Although the approximately 80% of students are African American of Caribbean descent, insensitivities toward Haitian students was typical ten years ago.  Students were teased due to their language, dress and the perception that as immigrants, they were most impoverished.  The school climate does not reflect the forms of ill-treatment of Haitian students as before.  School practices that afford interactions among students have perhaps contributed to the change.   Classroom libraries are stocked with diverse writers including Edwidge Danticat.  Respect for All campaigns, advisories and peer mentoring support student interactions in a safe environment.

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I currently work at a school-within-a-school that I will soon be leaving.  Greater T.C. Williams High School (yes, the Remember the Titans school) has a diverse population of over 4,200 students.  The International Academy in which I work is made up of 800 recently arrived immigrant students and 50 teachers.  T.C. Williams as a whole is an occasionally tolerant monoculture.  The state curricula, attitudes of the district and school leaders, students, and a majority of the staff value the European White male culture described in Nieto’s (2008) article.  The school prides itself on its history but does little more than point to its diversity as a proxy for culture.  Decisions are made, and resources are distributed in an effort to purse equality at the expense of equity.  The International Academy internally at a place of acceptance, but occasionally struggles with a limited capacity to work out cultural differences in healthy ways.  Students and teachers openly share and discuss their collective cultures semi-regularly, but the prevailing culture of the larger high school frequently creates painful friction between the community’s values and the monoculture it is embedded in.

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My POP focuses on the preparation of military children for kindergarten in the context of a small Marine Corps base in Arizona. In considering Nieto’s (2008) continuum, I would like to consider the experience of the primary caregiving parent (my intervention participants) as they navigate the resources available to them when they consider school readiness opportunities. As I described in my other post, this group is very diverse, from age to income to educational attainment and more.   In some ways, the military programming and resources they encounter are monocultural.  They represent the dominant culture by publicly celebrating Christian holidays and communicating in English, for instance.  However, more important than the dominant culture is the military culture (which is undoubtedly based on the dominant culture) and assimilation to its way of life. Individual differences are acknowledged and respected, but military culture is ultimately the reference point from which all programs are designed and delivered.  Of course, this is unique since service members have chosen to join and willingly assimilate into the military culture.  However, families become an extension of the military member and find the need to understand the military culture to navigate military life. With this said, elements of military resources and programs are also much further along the continuum Nieto (2008) suggests.  For instance, they are very willing to discuss difficult topics such as domestic violence, suicide, and child abuse.

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Nieto (2008) focuses on a continuum of multicultural education to help others visually see the levels of acceptance and tolerance that exist. I think it is a great continuum and it is a great way to lay out what is seen. I work at an all black elementary school (well  I am rounding-technically, we are probably 99% black and 1% Hispanic) with a staff of 90% Black faculty and probably 10% white faculty. As a Black faculty member myself, I would say my school is at the acceptance level because we all accept the students for who they are, the students respect the white faculty and the white faculty gives them that same respect as well. However, I wouldn't say that we actually try to teach about cultures other than African-American or white, yet our school would actively accept any faculty or students that were not of these two races (hence the 1% Hispanic). I do, however, hear students calling the Hispanic students "white" (not as an insult) but because they are not sure what to identify them as (since they live in majority Black communities and are not necessarily exposed to people who look different than Black or white). That becomes a teaching moment but it also goes to show the power of education...when things other than Black or White history/cultures are not taught (even in the home), children are not exposed to it and are misinformed of the facts.   --Autumne Lyberti (I didn't know how to put my name at the top of my post, sorry)

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My current place of employment, as a whole, would be situated at the acceptance level. Nieto (2008) argued, "differences are acknowledged and their importance is neither denied or belittled" (p.23). Because the school I am working is an acupuncture school, the school offers both acupuncture/Chinese medicine and Western medicine courses, the teachers and students have exposure to both medicine. The teachers often encounter questions from the students regarding the difference between Chinese medicine and Western medicine in certain diseases. For example, does acupuncture and Chinese medicine treat anxiety or a migraine? How does that work? How does western medicine think anxiety or a migraine and how does western medicine treat? Which medicine works better for this condition? As a teacher, we know the difference between Chinese medicine and western medicine. Both medicines have their advantage and disadvantage. Their difference should be acknowledged, and their importance or benefits should be neither denied or belittled. The best way to teach the students would be integrated medicine. Therefore, my current place of employment, as a whole, would be situated at the acceptance level.

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As an independent consultant, my business and I operate at the affirmation, solidarity and critique stage. What that looks like is while I work with clients, if I detect or identify a need to address a bias or potential discrimination—I address it. I embrace conflict, and I support my partners doing the same internally and amongst their staff. I advocate for representation so when I facilitate workshops, culture transformation, etc.—there is a diverse representation of roles and perspectives driving the collaboration. Similarly to how Nieto (1994) described the School Committee with diverse representation from school stakeholders, I support leaders who are building and implementing shared leadership models. I use focusing questions such as ‘who are we’, ‘why are we doing this’, and ‘why are we doing this this way’ to prompt critical reflections that challenge status quo and build agility and adaptive qualities amongst groups and individuals. I use these questions to support my work also.

The schools I support operate within the first three stages—and mostly, the tolerance stage. They are often majority new teachers in schools highly impacted by community- and family-level trauma. Thehy operate in survival mode daily. They understand the need to respect families and students, but often center themselves, their personal experiences and assign normative levels on children. For example, they will say a student’s reaction isn’t “normal” or a family is overexaggerating because it doesn’t match their personal experiences. Teachers and administrators are often white, from middle-class backgrounds, and share very little understanding or experiences with the students they serve—99-100% African-American, Latino, and Asian- Pacific Islander. In other words, they do not see themselves within the students. They use terms like “enable” and criminalize students young through harsh punishment and consequences. There is a general assumption that students can’t handle critical thinking assignments, despite the fact that children living in the inner-city have excellent inferential and predicting skills. Instead of asking, how do we transfer that knowledge from familiar life to academic life—students and families are often blamed.  Many genuinely wanting to connect with students more, yet they get in their own way by assigning their lens as judge and jury of students’ academic and social experiences.

As a classroom teacher, my last school operated in the acceptance stage. We celebrated diversity, had bilingual opportunities, and centered our students’ life experience within the curriculum. We collaborated with school stakeholders, had meaningful relationships with students and families, celebrated student body within school climate and environment and 25% of staff were educators of color and/or from the same neighborhood. Unfortunately, the school is no longer in this place—and has reverted to the tolerance stage.

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Nieto (2008) discusses a continuum of multicultural education on four different levels. I work at a domestic shelter and we land within the respect category of the continuum. While we are aware of different cultures and populations and understand some of the disparities, we do not do enough to affirm or accommodate different cultures. For instance, the women at the shelter share rooms with other women from different backgrounds, but there are no accommodation for religion, trans women, or any other population needing accommodation. We talk and work with students in my department and assume what different cultures might go through, but we don't sit down with students to understand their cultural perspectives on domestic violence and trauma. I try to understand my clients and take time to establish therapeutic rapport to meet them where they are. It is hard when the agency as a whole is not totally at that point of solidarity and critique. I can only hope they become more trauma-informed and start utilizing the resources we have in order to be multiculturally minded.

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Before I place my school on the continuum, I believe a little background may prove useful.  I work at a 1,700 student private, Christian school in Atlanta, GA.  The school contains a moderate level of diversity, particularly for a private, Christian; the ethnic breakdown is as follows: 51% Caucasian, 24% African American, 10% Asian, 4% Hispanic, with the remaining 11% being multi-ethnic or falling within another ethnic group such as Native American.

As I consider Nieto’s (2008) continuum and where my school fits within it, I agree with Nieto’s (2008) words of caution in the use of categories – our place on the continuum is not static; rather it is complex and constantly shifting.  With that said, I believe my school falls somewhere between tolerance and acceptance (Nieto, 2008).  In general, I believe the ethos of my school falls more in line with a tolerant school; though, we have certain aspects that mirror accepting schools (Nieto, 2008).  As an example, I would argue that my school is beyond a “color-blind monoculture” (Nieto, 2008, p. 21); otherwise, I’m not sure we would be able to attract over 800 students from diverse backgrounds to pay over $22,000 for an education.  In addition, in our recent school satisfaction survey, each of the above ethnic groups rated their satisfaction levels higher in a statistically significant manner than the Caucasian group.  However, I would make the case that school leadership “accepts differences, but only if they can be modified” (Nieto, 2008, p. 21). As an example, though we have a decent number of parents who only speak Spanish, we do not translate our parent/student handbook into Spanish.  This could also be said of our Korean-speaking families.

Though we act more like a tolerant school, we do possess aspects of accepting schools (Nieto, 2008). As an example, Nieto (2008) highlights that accepting schools generally possess diverse leadership.  At my school, our Middle School principal is African-American and our Lower School principal is female.  Likewise, our 50% of our leadership cabinet is female; though, we only have one ethnically diverse member.  In addition, we require all of our students to take two years of foreign language, offering six languages from which they can choose including Spanish, French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Mandarin Chinese.  In short, we have a long way to go in the area of multicultural education.  I’m hopeful that over time, our leadership team will become more ethnically diverse, which may impact our acceptance of multicultural education.

References

Nieto, S. (2008). Affirmation, solidarity, and critique: Moving beyond tolerance in education. In E. Lee, D. Menkart, & M. Okazawa-Rey (Eds.), Beyond heroes and holidays (pp. 18-29). Washington, DC: Teaching for Change.

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My current place of employment is at the acceptance stage of Nieto’s (2008) continuum. The staff and school only distribute information in the English language.  We have a high population of Japanese and Filipino population, however, we do not have information in their language. This results in misunderstandings between individuals.  Our school is currently undergoing a great deal of change over the last two years and through the next few years.  We are adopting all new curriculum and standards. All trainings have been focused on the new curriculum and ensuring we are teaching up to standards. We also implemented a new standardized computer assessment this year, which had major growing pains. This could be a reason why we recognize and accept differences in individuals, but we as a school have not fully embraced how to integrate different cultural practices into our teaching practices. Our students do visit a host nation class of Japanese typically once a week where they learn Japanese.

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According to Nieto’s (2008) four different levels of multicultural education, my current context accepts staff and student cultures. However, respect and affirmation, solidarity and critique are levels not yet attained. The current curriculum makes an attempt at multicultural education; however, this mostly involves the integration of ethnic names (e.g., Jerome, Sallee, Akelia), into assignments but does not truly integrate multicultural design or instructional strategies. The majority of the teachers were raised in American culture and are challenged with embracing the mores of Arabic culture (e.g., tasks will be completed when “Allah wills it,” favors must be returned). At the current level of multiculturalism, differences are generally tolerated but not embraced. Communication with ethnically diverse students is also challenging. In the Arabic culture, “yes” also means maybe, which does not translate well into the American educational setting. Therefore, culturally responsive teaching (Gay, 2002) is a definite area of need within my current professional context.

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I would place our school between acceptance and respect and maybe closer to acceptance. We are a diverse K-12 school in Atlanta. During a recent school climate survey of teachers, student's respect for diversity was one of the highest scoring items. We cherish and celebrate diversity through many events during the school year. While we have some respect issues at school, it does not seem to stem from cultural issues. I was very happy to hear from one of our graduates that at our school she never felt like there were groups within the cafeteria. When she went to another school she realized most of the people people were sitting based on their races. However, our multicultural education efforts are primarily through character education class, service learning clubs, and other leadership groups. We need to spend more time in integrating multicultural approach to the teaching of core subjects. Dr. Geneva Gay talked about approaching assessment from a multicultural perspective. It makes perfect sense to me.. However, I don't think we ever talked about it within our faculty.

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I quite enjoyed this reading.  The examples greatly helped to clarify the continuum for me.  I’d say my school is currently between tolerance and acceptance.  We proudly inform all comers that we currently have 32 languages spoken in our building.  There is a flag for every country of origin of every student who has ever attend the school since 1953 (there are 28 flags).  We have a strong SEL department and staff and work as a team to include all students in our activities, but our signs are in English, our multicultural celebrations are limited, and our students still feel safer among “their own,” regardless of what group that may be.  We education a large contingent of refugee students from lots of places. Recently many are from Myanmar. Unfortunately, if we need to interact with someone in Karen or Karenni, we must call a service. As these folks have been here for several years, and have families, I have to believe that someone is available in person who can speak one or both of these languages and English. So far, no.

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Although I work in education, my professional context lies within the corporate world. I think we are moving more towards respect, after hovering around tolerance and acceptance for a few years. Outwardly, we support everything and everyone. We have a presence at every parade, we have events for every holiday and cultural event.  Internally, I know it is still a battle. Several years ago the NYC Dept of Education made 2 Muslim Holidays and Lunar New Year school holidays. Our calendar is supposed to reflect that calendar, but the 2 Muslim holidays were left off ours. Several Muslim employees came together to lobby for those days off, citing the fact we are off on Good Friday, and leave early during Jewish holidays (valid points, no?) - but they weren't added. The employees were granted the day off (using their own vacation time) as a compromise. This year, those holidays were finally added to our calendar. (Progress!) But I think the juxtaposition of the outward and inward views of multiculturalism was concerning. I think they are finally moving in the right direction up the continuum.

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My current employment is in the corporate world.  With over 500,000 employees in the technology sector, I would have to say that as an organization we are on the "respect" continuum.  I've been with the company for 33 years and respect for the individual has been the mainstay of the company.  As a senior leader, we have purposely incorporated many programs to be inclusive of all employees and acceptance of all backgrounds.  I have seen specific measures that balance the workforce so that we resemble the culture and diversity of the community in which we serve.  Nieto (2008) explains that respect "implies admiration and high esteem for diversity" (p. 24).  My employer not only practices this important mantra but encourages employees to embrace and practice it as a daily part of corporate living.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          References                                                                                                                     Nieto, S. (2008). Affirmation, solidarity and critique: Moving beyond tolerance in education. In E. Lee, D. Menkart, & M. Okazawa-Rey (Eds.), Beyond heroes and holidays (pp. 18-29). Washington, DC: Teaching for Change.

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I think current professional practice is most reflective of the respect stage of the continuum proposed by Nieto (2008).  This can be attributed to the high levels of appreciation for differences, as I work in a school for students with significant cognitive disabilities.  One example of how we strive to include a multicultural approach to teaching and learning is to provide students with hands on and interactive experiences that highlight cultural differences and present learners with multimodal learning opportunities, an instructional strategy deemed appropriate for individuals with cognitive limitations.  One recent example was our spring concert themed around the various cultures represented at our school.  Students performed cultural dances, designed cultural artwork, listened and sang along with music from various cultures, and recited cultural poems.  In my experience, it can be difficult for educators of students with severe and profound disabilities to provide multicultural experiences, as sometimes the concepts can be abstract.  However, I have to give kudos to the staff at my school for making a great effort to expose the students to as many cultural opportunities and experiences as possible.

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I am at Montgomery College in Rockville, MD - a majority-minority institution of higher education. Our College President is at an affirmative, solidarity, critique stage. However, the institution as a whole is only just coming out of acceptance and teetering on the cusp of the respect. The culture within the College has been static for so long it is taking time for many individuals and departments to think beyond their own needs and agenda and look at the needs of all stakeholders. The particular context for my POP is a maximum security jail, where tolerance is marginally giving way to acceptance and where my team - as educators who pride ourselves on being entrenched in the affirmative, solidarity, critique stage - find it extremely difficult to provide a truly multicultural educational experience.

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Respect and responsibility towards oneself, ourselves, and the world!

Nieto (2008) makes a compelling argument for inclusion by exploring different aspects of multicultural education. She uncovers a variety of developmental stages in schools by presenting case studies that demonstrate each degree to which each school is able to master multicultural learning environment.

This is difficulty question for me to answer. I would like to hope and thus will argue that at KISJ (kis.ac) we are at the respect level, while meeting some of the standards described within the affirmation and solidarity stage of multicultural education. The difficulty, however, is three fold: a) How well establish this approach is at each division and across grade-levels? b) Are we as authentic and true to our own statements in application as we would like to think? And, c) is this true for all of our stakeholders including our parents?

We do not just talk about culture, but cultures, we travel and work overseas with other people and learn about who they are. We include other peoples cultures into who we are what we do, our faculty and our students do not just talk about multiculturalism as I would like to hope we live it by engaging across multiple cultures. How authentic this is, however, I cannot say as we seem to lack any measure that would support or disprove my observations.

Our classes are flexible, our faculty and staff learn along our students, and our governance and leadership organization is open and inclusive of many different voices e.g. student council, faculty advisory council, parent advisory board, etc. Again, it would be the students and their parents, as well as the staff that would be best answering these questions. I might be terribly biased as I was the one who arrived here with my wife Kristine in January 2011 to start and open a school in a place where there was little of a school, but a forest and roaming barking deer … and so respect and solidarity as defined by Nieto (2008) are our values, but critique, well, we have a way to go. It is our mission, after all, which states that our students will become well-rounded graduates who lead responsibly and build positive change around the world.

Thank you for your consideration in advance!

References

Nieto, S. (2008). Affirmation, solidarity and critique: Moving beyond tolerance in education. In Lee, E, Menkart, D., & Okazawa-Rey, M. (Eds.), Beyond heroes and holidays (pp. 18-29). Washington, DC: Teaching for Change.

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I am the elementary principal at a Grade 1-12 international school in Beijing, China. In this, we constantly strive to embrace multicultural education, from working with and teaching our youngest students through our oldest. We use Common Core Standards, but we are expected to bring in resources from other cultures, constantly question and explore global ideas and values, and provide a safe space for students to tackle difficult concepts together that center around understanding identity, bias, and injustices. That said, just as Nieto (2008) noted, there is fluidity and porousness between continuum levels.

Tsinghua International School as a whole falls between respect and affirmation/solidarity/critique; however, there are also pockets of individuals that more openly promote tolerance and acceptance over respect and affirmation/solidarity/critique. Some examples of this would be how propaganda is examined in the 10th grade curriculum- it is a collaborative, multidisciplinary  project between our STEAM program, language arts, and social studies. Ultimately, they look at how China and other countries have used propaganda to shape public opinion, then they use what they have learned to create a propaganda campaign in the school. They develop research questions and hypotheses, then use a variety of surveys and ethnography over the course of a few weeks to test their theories about the power propaganda. In Grade 5, students look at the global impact of Christopher Columbus' journey and trade routes using sources from a variety of cultures; then, students use these sources to show conflicting accounts, ultimately debating and discussing the present day impact of a journey that happened hundreds of years ago. Students in Grade 3 begin to look at issues in civil rights and social justice in America, India, and China; they begin to critique the historical underpinnings of modern day issues. Sometimes what we teach is messy, uncomfortable, and unpredictable, but we, as a school, value the "process of reflection and critique of [the students'] cultures and those of others." (Neito, 2008, p. 26). That said, we definitely have areas of improvement. - Alicia Jones

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I am the elementary principal at a Grade 1-12 international school in Beijing, China. In this, we constantly strive to embrace multicultural education, from working with and teaching our youngest students through our oldest. We use Common Core Standards, but we are expected to bring in resources from other cultures, constantly question and explore global ideas and values, and provide a safe space for students to tackle difficult concepts together that center around understanding identity, bias, and injustices. That said, just as Nieto (2008) noted, there is fluidity and porousness between continuum levels.

Tsinghua International School as a whole falls between respect and affirmation/solidarity/critique; however, there are also pockets of individuals that more openly promote tolerance and acceptance over respect and affirmation/solidarity/critique. Some examples of this would be how propaganda is examined in the 10th grade curriculum- it is a collaborative, multidisciplinary  project between our STEAM program, language arts, and social studies. Ultimately, they look at how China and other countries have used propaganda to shape public opinion, then they use what they have learned to create a propaganda campaign in the school. They develop research questions and hypotheses, then use a variety of surveys and ethnography over the course of a few weeks to test their theories about the power propaganda. In Grade 5, students look at the global impact of Christopher Columbus' journey and trade routes using sources from a variety of cultures; then, students use these sources to show conflicting accounts, ultimately debating and discussing the present day impact of a journey that happened hundreds of years ago. Students in Grade 3 begin to look at issues in civil rights and social justice in America, India, and China; they begin to critique the historical underpinnings of modern day issues. Sometimes what we teach is messy, uncomfortable, and unpredictable, but we, as a school, value the "process of reflection and critique of [the students'] cultures and those of others." (Neito, 2008, p. 26). That said, we definitely have areas of improvement.

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My current place of employment, as a whole, would be situated at the acceptance level. As Nieto (2008) stated, "differences are acknowledged and their importance is neither denied or belittled" (p. 23). As referenced in my last post, through my job I get to work with all of the schools in PA (public and nonpublic/private). So, I have exposure to all types of school contexts. The struggle for my program, which is a statewide brain injury school consulting program called BrainSTEPS, has always been our BrainSTEPS teams in the inner city of Philadelphia School District and Pittsburgh School District. In working on solutions, I recognized several years ago that those I worked with had a definite acknowledgment of the inner city differences in comparison to non-inner city BrainSTEPS teams we oversee. However, the overall importance of changing how we did things remained until this year. This year (after a decade of figuring out how), I was allowed to hire a consultant two days per week to help facilitate the Philadelphia BrainSTEPS team as a pilot. It is the only team, out of 30 teams to have a paid external consultant doing this type of work. Additionally, while working with the Medical Director for the District, a full-time position was recently created to help oversee 504 Plans for students with brain injuries and to serve on the BrainSTEPS team for Philadelphia. There has been a huge improvement in the quality and quantity of student referrals to BrainSTEPS this past year because of the changes. Progress has been slow until now.

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One third of students at Lyman Moore Middle School in Portland, Maine, are from multilingual families with recent immigrant background from a range of countries across Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Central America. As Nieto warns, we don't fit squarely in one stage in her continuum. There are elements of each stage scattered throughout our building. In reading the vignettes, though, I think the preponderance of evidence would put us at Tolerance--with the potential to reach Acceptance. Our curriculum includes literature and imagery reflective of our diverse cultures, there is little in the way of tracking, and all students are part of an advisory with one adult and a team with four content teachers. Our multilingual programming, however, is focused on acquisition of academic English, and our nearly-all-White staff and faculty has limited knowledge of the cultures in our building and does not readily recognize that it has its own culture that drives expectations of the students. Overt racism is not tolerated, but cultural differences in communication are frequently read as disrespect or defiance. Academic expectations are relatively low across the board. To move the school into Acceptance, the Principal and I have to raise our own consciousness and empower school community members who already out in front of us.

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Endeavor is an online program with synchronous and asynchronous classes. The culture of an online environment places a thin veil over my ability to decipher students’ race and ethnicity.  In the microcosm of my class, students base their discussion reflections and assignments in the context of their practices that encompass many races, ethnicities and socio-economic status. Regarding Nieto’s continuum, I believe my class is at the respect level by encouraging students to plan lessons according to their demographic (Nieto, 2008). Now that I read Banks (2016) regarding science and math teachers’ reluctance to incorporate multicultural viewpoints, I plan to try to move the needle toward affirmation, solidarity, and critique. This level of the continuum encourages my students, who are mostly science and math teachers, to reflect deeply on the five dimensions of multicultural education; content integration, knowledge construction process, prejudice reduction, and empowering school culture (Banks, 2016).

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I think we are at the respect level. My HS is low SES and primarily African American, Hispanic, and other ethnicities. Within the English department, I identified with Nieto (2008) when she stated that teachers had "revamped the curriculum into overarching themes" (p. 25) as we have done that as well to address diversity and student perspective.

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My workplace (a 9-12 charter school in Philadelphia) is at acceptance, but there are some elements of respect in there. Serving an almost-entirely black student community, we have actually begun to look at our discipline policies to identify microaggressions, though that work has been a struggle at times.

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We are at the tolerance level - in words but not so much and consistently in deeds