Book Talk on Multi-Cultural Education, Jan. 28 (fwd)

[Eva Ramirez Cunningham]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 10:39:24 -0800
From: KHenry at ci.bellevue.wa.us
Reply-To: uwmosaic at u.washington.edu
To: Bridging the Gap between Diverse Communities <uwmosaic at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Book Talk on Multi-Cultural Education, Jan. 28

The Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington

cordially invites you to our book talk featuring



Improving Multicultural Education:

Lessons from the Intergroup Education Movement

by Cherry A. McGee Banks





Friday, January 28, 2005

University of Washington Club - Conference Room

(formerly the Faculty Club)

11:00 AM to 12:30 PM

Book signing to follow.



Intergroup conflict has been a perennial problem in the United States
since colonial times. Cherry Banks's book describes how a group of
educators, social activists, and scholars tried to reduce intergroup
tensions and create schools where people of all groups could learn
together and from each other. Demonstrating the links between the
current multicultural education movement and the roots of intergroup
education, Banks helps us to understand where we've been, where we are,
and where we might strive to be in our future attempts to understand and
teach diversity.



Sonia Nieto, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, comments on the book:
"In this meticulously researched book, Cherry Banks supplies a critical
and heretofore missing link to current educational efforts in diversity
and social justice. There are many lessons to be learned here...this
book is a treasure for researchers, policymakers, and others."



Cherry A. McGee Banks is Professor of Education at the University of
Washington, Bothell. Her research focuses on the intergroup education
movement as well as race and gender issues in educational leadership.
Professor Banks is associate editor of the Handbook of Research on
Multicultural Education, coeditor of Multicultural Education: Issues and
Perspectives, contributing author of Education in the 80s: Multiethnic
Education, and co-author of March Toward Freedom: A History of Black
Americans. Professor Banks has served on the editorial board of the
American Educational Research Journal. In 1997, she received the
Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of Washington, Bothell.
She has contributed to such journals as the Phi Delta Kappan, Social
Studies and the Young Learner, Educational Policy, Theory Into Practice,
and Social Education. Professor Banks is the president of the Greater
Seattle Chapter of the Links, Inc.



Please RSVP: centerme at u.washington.edu or (206) 543-3386



To request disability accommodations, please contact the Office of the
ADA Coordinator at least ten days in advance of the event.  543-6450
(Voice); 543-6452 (TDD); 685-3885 (Fax); access at u.washington.edu
(e-mail)



Kevin P. Henry
Communications Coordinator
Cultural Diversity
Parks and Community Services
City of Bellevue
PO Box 90012
Bellevue, WA, 98009
425 452-7886
Fax: 425 452-2814
www.cityofbellevue.org/diversity.asp


-----Original Message-----
From: Leslie Morishita [mailto:lmorishita at interimicda.org]
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 11:03 PM
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LMorishita at interimicda.org
Subject: Equity Committee - next meeting is first day after break!
Monday, January 3rd



Hi All,

Given that winter break is coming up and our next meeting is on Monday,
January 3rd, THE FIRST DAY BACK AFTER WINTER BREAK, I'm thinking that we
ought to agree on agenda and dinner details now.

FOOD:
Ernie and I were talking about our respective New Years' traditions and
came up with the idea of possibly bringing New Years foods to our
January 3rd meeting.  Japanese New Years is an important holiday for my
family with some specific meaningful foods that will bring a good year
to those who eat them.  I could bring Japanese New Years food to the
meeting to help us begin the year auspiciously.  Ernie has some New
Years' traditions around food as well.  I'm wondering if any other
people in this committee would be interested in sharing some of their
traditional New Years foods with the group?  Just a thought -- could be
a fun way to weave some cultural sharing into our meeting.   I
understand that it's not easy to bring food to a weekday meeting after a
full day of work so totally understand if you're not able to contribute.
I could swing it for this one meeting --especially since it's New Years
time.  We need to decide soon so that we can coordinate with Children's
Home Society regarding providing the food if need be.  So, please
respond!  What do you think?

AGENDA:
Regarding the agenda, thanks to Ernie, we have Caprice Hollins, the new
Director of Equity and Race Relations for the Seattle School District
coming.  I've included a PI article about her at the bottom of this
message.   I believe she's been invited to share dinner with us at 6:00.
Then Ernie has asked her to speak about the achievement gap and
disparity in disciplinary actions in the schools, in relation to parent
involvement and equity committee activist work we're doing.  I believe
she'll be at the meeting, which starts after dinner at 6:45, for an hour
including some time for discussion.

For the remainder of the meeting time, I'm interested in brainstorming
about meaningful ways to celebrate Martin Luther King Day at AS#1 which
is coming right up on January 15th.  I don't believe that there was any
celebration around Martin Luther King Day at AS#1at all last year,
nothing that I heard of at least.  Anyone interested in talking about
this, organizing something?  Or, is anyone already organizing something?


So, here's a draft agenda for you to respond to.  Please respond with
suggested changes, questions, concerns, ideas, etc.

1.  6:00-6:45  Dinner (45 minutes seems to be more realistic than 30
minutes, allowing time for people to arrive, get their kids fed and
settled in and to eat and visit.)   Also, during dinner, we can have the
sub-action committee lists posted where people can fill in their contact
info, and people who missed the last meeting can sign up.

2.  6:45-7:45  Caprice Hollins, Director of Equity and Race Relations

3.  7:45-8:15   Martin Luther King Day at AS#1

5.  8:15-8:30  Announcements and check in regarding possible conflicts
(per our operating principles agreed on at last meeting)

Thanks for your time!  Please respond to the food question and the
proposed agenda!

Pleasant dreams,
Leslie

___________________________________________
Here's the article on Caprice Hollins:
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/195794_ecenter19.html

Seattle Public Schools' first race relations chief hopes for 'real
change'
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
By DEBORAH BACH
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Caprice Hollins knows about diversity.
She grew up in Seattle's Rainier Valley and graduated from Franklin
High,
one of the city's most culturally diverse schools.
Hollins and her younger sister were born to a white mother and a black
father, and have three older siblings who are white. A single parent,
Hollins' mother was a volunteer fireman -- she doesn't like the term
"firewoman" -- and also worked in canneries and on the Alaska pipeline.
Throw into the mix a gay brother and black grandparents who adopted
Hollins'
mother when she was in her late 30s, and the result is a rich stew of
ethnicity and culture.
That background, Hollins said, helped shape her career path and equipped
her
with the perspective needed in her new position as Seattle Public
Schools'
first equity and race relations director.
"Diversity is my life, and I want to help other people know how to make
it
work," said Hollins, 39. "This is part of who I am, so to serve this
community in that way completely ties in to the difference I want to
make."
A licensed clinical psychologist, Hollins has spent much of her career
so
far serving marginalized populations -- counseling low-income people
with
HIV and AIDS, Latina and African American teenage mothers, sex
offenders,
emotionally dissturbed children and mentally ill patients.
She's taught multicultural issues at local universities, given workshops
on
cultural and racial diversity, and for four years provided crisis
intervention services to families and students at Seattle's African
American
Academy, a K-8 school in the city's South End.
Hollins, who earns $86,000 a year in her new post, was chosen from among
six
finalists interviewed and recommended by an interview panel composed of
employee groups and community organizations, including the NAACP and the
Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle.
District Superintendent Raj Manhas said Hollins has an "exceptional
ability"
to work with a range of people, and will be an asset to the district as
it
strives to narrow the achievement gap between white and Asian children
and
Hispanics and blacks.
"She will provide that lens and filter which we will look through at
everything we do in our system -- our policies, our operational systems,
our
allocation of resources -- so that we can really make the system
equitable
for eeveryone," Manhas said.
The position comes with a broad job description that includes developing
a
districtwide program to train staff, parents and community members on
cultural awareness and understanding; devising instructional methods
designed to combat institutional racism; and responding to requests for
information and support from schools, departments, staff and families.
The job places Hollins within a larger bureaucracy than she's accustomed
to,
but the most striking difference to her is being inside the type of
organization she's usually teaching her students about.
"Now I'll be part of a system that some people see as an oppressive
system,"
she said. "So it's kind of this dual role -- on one hand I'm part of the
system and on the other, I have the role of dismantling that
institutional
racism. So in that wway it's different."
A major cause of that racism, Hollins said, is the lesson children get
early
in life to not acknowledge differences -- don't stare, and don't ask why
someone looks or acts different than you.
"There's no discussion around that, so our children grow up to learn
that we
don't talk about it. We don't talk about anything that is different,"
she
said.
"So then we don't know how to talk about it. There are all these words
out
there, like 'racist' or 'bigot,' that people are afraid that someone
might
aim at them: 'I'm not going to say anything in case someone calls me a
racist.' "
Combating the problem, Hollins said, first requires knowing to what
extent
it exists in Seattle's public schools.
To that end, she has contacted the district's educational directors and
requested referrals to community leaders and events. She wants to hear
from
students, teachers and other staff about their experiences around racism
and
cultural understanding.
"They wouldn't have hired me if there wasn't a need," said Hollins, who
started the job last week. "I just need to find out what that need is."
>From there, Hollins will refine what her role will be in the district's
five-year strategic plan, which has set closing the achievement gap as
one
of its major priorities. Her biggest challenge going forward, she
believes,
will be high expectations of a system hungry for reform.
"I'm sensing that people are hoping that something is really going to
happen. They've been waiting for a long time, and so when we've been
waiting, sometimes we get a little impatient," she said.
"Real change can happen. It's just not going to be tomorrow."

P-I reporter Deborah Bach can be reached at 206-448-8197 or
deborahbach at seattlepi.com
(c) 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer