1. Diversity and Learning
A Webinar Sponsored by the Nebraska Department of Education &
The Center for Education Excellence in Alternative Settings (CEEAS)
March 18, 2014
Peter Leone
University of Maryland

2. Two Tasks
Create positive instructional environments that value diversity and promote engagement and achievement
Employ practices designed to address learning needs of all students especially those who have not achieved at the same pace as their peers

3. 1: Create positive instructional environments Principles and Understandings
Learning is innate human behavior
Learning is reinforcing in its own right (I got it!)
Inappropriate behaviors often manifest themselves when students are unable to access instructional material or are unsuccessful learning new material
Diverse learners – those with a range of ethnic, racial, or sexual identities that may differ from the majority as well as those considered disabled – challenge traditional ways of delivering instruction and connecting teachers and students.

4. Ecological Assertions
Behavior that may be adaptive in one setting may be maladaptive in another
Individuals are socioculturally embedded
At an early age, we learn norms for acceptable behaviors from our families
Individual behavior is expected to vary from one setting to another
Setting cues often prompt specific behaviors

5. Classroom & School Ecology
The classrooms we create communicate what is important to our students
Understanding the environment
Physical aspects of the environment
Space, organization, materials, structures
Social aspects of the environment
Structural issues
Tracking, testing, curriculum, disciplinary policies, role of students, teachers, parents
Cultural issues
Shared beliefs, meanings attached to schooling and learning

6. Press of Environment on Behavior
Social and academic behavior is embedded in the social context of the classroom and the school
Bronfenbrenner’s ecology of human development
Teachers, paraprofessionals, and other staff shape school and classroom environments

7. Implications for understanding classroom and school environments for diversity and learning
Please respond to these questions.
What matters in the physical environment? (poll)
What matters in the social environment? (chat box)
How do we ‘read’ the environment? (chat box)

8. It’s OK to talk about race and disability
In the teachers’ lounge….
What do you say to a teacher who makes a broad generalization about a group of students that implies that they don’t do well because their parents don’t care about education? For example, the parents never come to school functions or back to school night or PTA meetings.
In the classroom …
What do you say to a student (or the entire class) when one student makes hurtful comments about another student’s racial identity? About a student who struggles to read grade-level material independently?
"Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim."  -- Elie Wiesel

9. What do we bring to the classroom?
What should we teach our students about diversity? About cultural differences, about disability?
We cannot ignore diversity or pretend that it doesn’t matter.

10. Please respond in the chat box.
What are the biggest challenges you face as an educator in addressing diversity in your school or classroom?
Please respond in the chat box.

11. 2: Employ practices designed to address learning needs of all students
Identify students with low levels of literacy relative to their peers
Intake assessment
Informal reading assessment
Classroom observation
Identify students in need of special education and related services
Student intake interview
Child Find
Records retrieval and review

12. Provide a Range of Academic Services and Supports
Special Education
IEP driven services
Inclusive “push-in” & co-teaching
1:1 intensive supports
Related services
Data collection on student performance
Reading Instruction
Small group and individualized services
Explicit vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency instruction
Student progress monitoring

13. Literacy and literature that reflects students’ backgrounds and experiences
Second Chances, CJCA A Place to Stand, Baca A Question of Freedom, Betts Makes Me Want to Holler, Caul

14. Passion Practice Persistence
Critical Factors – Promoting High levels of achievement in diverse classrooms
Passion
This really matters
Practice
Multiple opportunities
Persistence
Over time

15. What services and supports would be adequate if I were providing instruction to my own child or to someone I loved?
We model the behavior we expect and
want to promote among our peers and our students.