Creating Culturally Responsive Schools

This text-based course is an edited transcript of the webinar, Creating Culturally Responsive Schools, presented by Stephanie Carnes, PhD, MSW, LCSW, LL.M.

Learning Outcomes

After this course, participants will be able to: 

• Explain the concept of “cultural responsiveness,” how this differs from “cultural competence,” and why the distinction matters.
• Identify how a culturally responsive school climate benefits all students.
• Identify specific skills to demonstrate cultural responsiveness in school-based clinical work.

Risks and Limitations

I'm going to start by just sharing a little bit of housekeeping, and that is there are no risks associated with the content that I'm going to present for you today because the application of a culturally responsive framework in the school setting benefits everybody, right? It's good for kids, it's good for teachers, it's good for school helping professionals. It's something that we can all get behind. In terms of limitations, we're not going to fix it today. We're not going to become experts in culturally responsive education today. I'm still figuring it out, right? Because something that we're going to talk about a lot today is that this is a journey. This is a process of learning and transformation and personal growth and integrating new information with the perspectives and values that we previously held. I want all of us to think of today's conversation as more of a jumping-off point than a, I did this webinar, therefore I'm done, right? If you get to the end of this presentation and you have more questions than answers and your wheels are really churning, that means we've gotten it right. That means we've achieved our goal together.

Introduction

I want to start by telling you a little bit about me. My name is Steph and I am based here in New York's Hudson Valley. I am a trauma clinician through and through, and I've been working with Central American immigrant youth for the better part of the past over a decade. I started off as a lead clinician in a federally funded shelter program that was caring for formerly unaccompanied Central American immigrant newcomer youth. Then, you know, as we all know, the federal government giveth and the federal government taketh. My program lost funding, which was devastating, but I was incredibly lucky in that I landed a position shortly thereafter as a school social worker. I was specifically tasked to work with the school's large population of, you guessed it, formerly unaccompanied Spanish-speaking immigrant youth. I'm bilingual, and my research in my doctoral program and sort of beyond has looked at issues of identity in public schools, specifically how identity messages of xenophobia, of racism, of nativism, of discrimination affect the way in which immigrant newcomer youth think about their identity of origin, their Guatemalan-ness, for example. We know that identity perspective affects all sorts of trajectories, all sorts of outcomes: physical wellbeing, social wellbeing, emotional wellbeing and health, academic engagement, academic achievement, right? Those matters of identity are really at the heart of our work as school social workers. However, I have to caveat all of this with a little disclaimer about the fact that I am giving this presentation today about cultural responsiveness. I am bilingual, however, despite the fact that my last name means meat in Spanish, which is really fun when you work with teenagers. I have no genetic connection to a non-white identity. That in and of itself is something that I chew on, that I'm the very person sharing this information with you today.

I have walked alongside this community of Spanish-speaking immigrants for over a decade, but that comes with a continuous appraisal and reminder of the fact that I don't ever walk with. I am documented in this country. I am white, and therefore my privilege and positionality affect the work that I do. That necessitates a lot of very critical self-reflection. I say all this to communicate to all of you that I know that there is something problematic in our society that I am the person sharing this conversation today on cultural responsiveness. Then I want to just tell you why it gives me such great joy and gratitude to have all of you here with me today committed to this work of cultural responsiveness. As a trauma clinician, I was really proud of this toolkit that I had of evidence-based trauma treatment, right? I knew TFCBT like the back of my hand, and yet I was a pretty sucky school-based clinician at the start with this population because what I didn't realize is that if you are doing the micro right, the micro is always macro, particularly when you're working with members of communities that have been historically minoritized in our society. What I mean by that is that I couldn't confine my work to my little, school-based clinician's office, which was really a converted closet, as is so often the case for many of us. But I couldn't be just clinical because the issues that were affecting these immigrant youth that I worked with were so much bigger than just clinical issues. They were issues of deportation, of racism in the school building, of othering, of siloing, right? Those are macro, systemic issues that necessitate a macro, systemic response, which is exactly what we're going to talk about today.

Core Beliefs

I'm going to try and be really good about occasionally taking a peek at the chat. This is one of those moments that Ellie mentioned where we are going to use the chat. My introduction was important, but nowhere near as important as yours. I would love to know a little bit about you. If you're willing to indulge me, I'll take a minute. If you could put in the chat if your school building or district has seen a demographic shift in recent years, and if so, what that shift has been. In the region where I worked, the demographic shift was from predominantly white and upper to middle to upper class to Guatemalan folks working in the agricultural sector. I'd love to hear. I'll just wait a moment and see if any brave souls are willing to indulge me in the chat of what the demographic shift in your school has looked like recently. Interesting, Michael has shared that in Vermont, they're seeing a shift in refugees from Tibet, Africa, and Ukraine. If you don't work in schools, I'm wondering if your clinic or your hospital or what have you has seen a shift. Casey says an ESL shift, more Spanish-speaking students, students arriving from Mexico. Jennifer agrees, higher number of Hispanic children. Corinne says way more ESL students. I want to thank everyone for using the chat.

The general dynamic I'm seeing in the chat is that the shift has been an increase, a pretty big one in Spanish-speaking immigrants with, you know, Michael mentioned refugees from places like Ukraine and Africa. I'm guessing maybe Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, but the trend has been a diversification of public schools. That's exactly what I would've expected, to sort of scaffold our conversation today, right? Because sometimes I've worked with school districts that have felt that this idea of cultural responsiveness is political or can be polarizing. Here's the antidote that I want to give you to take the politicized sting out of that idea. We are united no matter where we fall on the political spectrum. We are united, and I'm talking about us as social workers, teachers, principals, administrators, we are all united by some core beliefs. Here's what I think they might be. We all want the same thing for our students, right? We all want the best for our students. We want them to have happy, fulfilling lives where they're able to achieve what they want to achieve. That's a pretty simple belief that unifies us. We know from data, this is not me being a snuggly social worker, but this is data, including a long longitudinal study conducted by Yale University's School of Medicine, that culturally responsive climates enable academic learning and social-emotional development.

Evolving Demographics

It's really hard to argue with the idea of cultural responsiveness because the data bears out that it facilitates all the things that we want schools to be doing. The next core belief is that we cannot divorce ourselves, our identities from who we are in a school building. We cannot conceptualize student identities or cultures or lived experiences as a jacket that they can shed before they come into our classrooms, before they come into our clinician's offices, right? Those identities, or even if we are in a psychiatric hospital or a community clinic, the identities of those we serve are sort of like the other client in the room, right? We can't divorce them from the people that we are working with. Then finally from a school-specific perspective, you know, we have to be cognizant of the historical legacy of something known as deficit rhetoric. That is this idea that has traditionally permeated public education through mandates and otherwise, that different from the white, Eurocentric model of achievement is problematic. Different from English language proficiency is problematic, right? That's deficit rhetoric, and it seeps through public education today. I thank you all for what you put in the chat because you're really correct. You've got your fingers on the pulse of these changing demographics. The reason why I'm talking with you briefly about demographics is because the demographic shift that we're seeing in US public schools further necessitates the implementation of cultural responsiveness, right? If we were to look at this chart, you know, I'm not great at math. I'm a social worker. This feels math adjacent. But we can see that public schools in 1995 were far whiter than they are today. I saw some recent data. I'm in New York's Hudson Valley, which is about 60 miles north of New York City, and I saw some data that said New York City schools and the larger metropolitan area in the 1970s were about 61% white. That number today has fallen below 40%. There's a problem here, right? Because the mandates that have designed US public education, the legislation, the policies, the mandates, are all pretty much from that era of the 1960s and '70s.

The problem is that the population walking through US public school hallways today is very, very different than the mandate for whom, than the population for whom those mandates were designed, right? That's borne out in outcome data. We know Latino immigrant youth, fastest growing subpopulation of US public schools, Latino immigrant youth report staggeringly high levels of motivation to succeed academically upon arrival in the country, right? When they first get here, they're raring to go. They understand that education is the key to success in the United States. Studies that have looked at those motivation levels find that they start off here and then three years later, they're here. We get to the point where despite the fact that this demographic group is the fastest growing in US public schools, they have the highest dropout rate. That tells us that there is a disconnect. There is something happening in US public schools that's quashing that motivation, right? The motivation starts off really strong and then it completely levels off. Something is happening in US public schools, and that's why we are taking a microscope to this, right? A microscope, a magnifying glass, science ain't my thing either.

Schools: Melting Pots or Salads?

I know that the melting pot analogy can be a little bit polarizing for folks, right? Some people like this visual, some people really hate it, some people don't want to see it because they're hungry and they're stuck in a webinar, but stick with me for a sec. This is the difference between identity affirmation and assimilation. Assimilation is this idea that individuals who are not from the dominant, white, Eurocentric culture must lose those important, essential pieces of their identity to assimilate into this indeterminate lump of Americanness, right? That's the fondue or whatever it is on the left. But there's another idea, and that's identity affirmation, which is what we are going to be really fighting for. Identity affirmation is when we recognize that that Guatemalan piece of watermelon is phenomenal as a Guatemalan piece of watermelon, right? Tastes great in the salad, but it has some structural integrity. It maintains its watermelon-ness. That's our goal with students in schools. That's the outcome of a culturally responsive school. I want you to take a moment to think, you know, you don't have to put anything in the chat, but to think what it would feel like for a student who is from a historically minoritized community, how would they feel if they're asked to abandon that identity of origin, right? The fondue, or they're told that that identity of origin doesn't serve them, or that Spanish language fluency is getting in the way of their English language acquisition skills. That's the fondue. Now imagine what they might feel like if we tell them, "Hey, your bilingualism, that's going to lead to greater cognitive flexibility and it's going to make it easier for you to learn in the long run. Hey, you know, I think your identity is a superpower. Can you tell me more about your culture?" That's the image on the right, and that's what we're going for today.

The Salad: Indentities As Superpowers

We're going to run with this idea of the salad, which conceptualizes student identities as their superpowers. This is a radical shift from the way we've looked at identities in schools previously. This is counteracting that deficit as the difference as deficit perspective. Instead, we're going to get rid of this idea that students can't bring their identities into the classroom if they're different. We're going to replace it with this idea that unique identities are epistemic resources. There's this theorist and writer named Tara Yosso. She's an academic but doesn't write like one; check her out if you're interested. She writes about cultural capital and cultural wealth; she talks about this cultural wealth as something that members of minoritized communities have used, intrinsic abilities that they've tapped into to fight back against marginalization, to fight back against othering. These resources consist of language, culture, and traditions.

Going back to the language thing, I mentioned it briefly, but we know that children who are able to become bilingual, children who have a strong grounding in a mother tongue that is not English, then go on to display this cognitive plasticity in learning other subject areas. We know that culture and traditions are incredible resources, religious and spiritual traditions, collectivism, right? Oftentimes immigrants come to the United States and are confronted by the idea that the United States is a deeply individualistic country, right? Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. It's every man for themselves. Oftentimes, folks come from societies that are more collectivist, so I'm thinking about Spanish-speaking immigrants, right? Where there's a strong sense of community, where there's a strong sense of wanting to lift others as you yourself climb. That's a resource, right? Like, that's the type of value that we want to inculcate in our students. Historical narratives are incredibly powerful resources, right? We think of spirituals, right? Spiritual songs in the Black community in the United States and their power to lift in difficult times. We talk about, when I worked with Spanish-speaking immigrant youth from Central America, they all had a very clear sense of what it meant to them to be Guatemalan and how Guatemalans, we're workers, we're good people, we're moral people, we're ethical people, right? Those historical narratives of strength and resilience are assets, and we're not using them in the school setting. Then finally, for those of you who have worked with Spanish-speaking immigrant youth, I've, I'm sure that you've heard this phrase a lot, but I often heard the phrase, "I have to move forward." That's a mindset I think particularly in Spanish-speaking immigrants about not just moving forward but continuing to overcome. The reason why I share this with you is that if schools could see these identities as superpowers, that resilience, that strength to overcome that a student used to survive the Sonoran Desert, to survive the journey to the US, that's the same resilience that they need to pass a math exam, right? It just has to be retooled to different situations. We'll get into that a little bit later.

Why The Perspective-Shift Matters

I'm going to talk to you a little bit about identity development in non-white students. This is my area of interest. I love this identity stuff. I'm going to nerd out over it, you don't have to, right? Because if you're in the trenches of school social work or community practice, you don't have time to nerd out over identity development. That's why I'm here. What we know about individuals with non-white identities, individuals who are immigrants, is that there are two types of identities, right? There's a monocultural identity, and that means we're going to use the immigrant example because I think that's probably the most pressing in all of your settings. To have a monocultural identity as an immigrant means one of two things. One, it means completely doubling down into your Guatemalan identity. For example, you don't want to learn to speak English, you just want to focus on your culture, eat the food that's familiar to you, and you stay in sort of a cultural enclave here in the United States. I don't find that to be a very common approach with the population I've worked with. The other end of that monocultural spectrum is assimilation. Again, going back to our slide of food images, assimilation is completely leaving behind that identity of origin, completely rejecting your Guatemalan-ness and becoming entirely American because you perceive it to get you higher up sort of the power rankings of your new country than that identity of origin. Becoming bicultural is where you're able to maintain a foot in both worlds, right? Where you can retain that meaningful connection to your identity of origin, but you can also start to try on elements of US society, the English language, cultural dynamics, etc.

What we know about these two processes is immigrant youth who are able to become bicultural have far better outcomes across the board. Again, physical health, mental health, social-emotional learning, academic achievement, creativity, somatic complaints, pro-social coping skills, across the board. Those who do the very worst on the same measures are those who completely reject that identity of origin to fully assimilate. Moving past assimilation, right? Assimilation, bad, identity trauma, worse. We know that trauma can really reorient our emotional state. It can be incredibly damaging for our psyche, our emotional well-being, our physical health. Identity trauma is the same way. Identity traumas are experiences that make us feel like our connection to our identity of origin has been injured, right? I'm thinking like xenophobia, racism, discrimination, othering, marginalization, nativism, all of these things can constitute identity trauma. Identity trauma is a piece of what I referenced earlier, which is something called the immigrant paradox. That's this idea that immigrant youth see this massive drop-off in school engagement a couple of years in. newcomer youth do far better, and what's at the crux of that is this idea that they cannot be who they are in school because of all these swirling dynamics, right? Some of the dynamics are due to the fact that schools are microcosms of broader society. If society swings to a place where the rhetoric is prevailingly anti-immigrant, all of that is played out in schools and sends very clear messages of belonging or not to immigrant students or other students, right? When I say other, I'm talking about non-white or students who are from historically minoritized communities.

Cultural... Competence?

Now that we've got the basics out of the way, we get to the really good stuff. I want to tell you a very embarrassing story about when I started doing this work in 2017, doing this consulting work. I called my consultancy Create Cultural Competence, and I was all in, right? I bought the business cards, I bought the website domain, I bought the little sweaters and the mugs and all the things, and then I gave my first workshop. At the end of it, I had a teacher come up to me and she said, "Hey, this is great, right? Like we did your workshop on cultural competence, it was great, and now I'm done. I ticked the box. How fantastic is this?" And I went uh-oh, because I realized I had misled people by using the word competence. Here's my beef with competence. When we think about something like here in New York State, the DMV Driving Competency exam, ideally you pass this exam and you are competent, you have achieved a reasonable skill level of driving. Although in New York, you never really know. But in all seriousness, it conveys the fact that your journey, your learning, your skill building is complete. That's really problematic because that is not how this journey works.

Cultural Responsiveness

I would argue that a better phrase is cultural responsiveness. I just want to read the definition that I like to use. This is my definition, sort of cherry-picked to convey what I'm hoping will feel pretty accessible. That's an active process of learning about, understanding, and appropriately including and responding to the cultural identities and experiences of those with whom we interact. Culturally responsive education is characterized by collaboration, flexibility, and curiosity. If you hate cultural responsiveness as a phrase, you can also use cultural humility, culturally-sustaining practice and so on. Here's why I love the idea of cultural responsiveness. Cultural responsiveness captures the idea that this process is dynamic. It is interactive, right? It occurs between people. It is fluid and it involves shifts, right? Learning about, understanding, and responding to. The idea is that when we have these interactions with people who are different from us, we don't just engage with the conversation at the surface level. That's not cultural responsiveness. We actively take it in, we chew on it, and then the most important step is we integrate what we've just learned with our own schema, our own values, our own worldview, right? If we've got some new information that challenges those things, we integrate it and we shift. It's a really dynamic process and that's important.

What is Cultural Responsiveness?

Here's the quick and dirty. It's a journey. It's a process. It's challenging and sometimes uncomfortable, particularly if you are a member of the dominant social group, if you are from a European, white background. It is an act of social justice, right? This is something that we are compelled to do as social workers. It's an essential skill for anyone who seeks to relate to humans on a meaningful level, past a superficial level. It's a core value of social work. Our code tells us so. Here's, you know, speaking to that comment that I had from the teacher years ago, cultural responsiveness is not something we're going to achieve in this workshop. It is not something you'll ever achieve, right? Cultural responsiveness is something that is ongoing. It ain't easy. It's definitely not colorblind. It's not bias-free, right? Because we know as humans, we are never bias-free. Instead of being bias-free as a goal, we seek to cultivate awareness about our biases and how those biases are operationalized through our actions. It's not optional if we really want to do this work meaningfully. I told you what it isn't. Now I want to tell you what it is. In my conceptualization, cultural responsiveness is like this wonderful, two-headed monster. Head number one is an awareness of who we are as individuals, right? That means doing a deep dive to understand your culture, your heritage, your childhood, your beliefs, your religion, your worldview, your personal trauma history, your privilege, the structural barriers you faced, where you fall in that sort of pecking order of societal power rankings. Then we want to look at exactly those same factors for the specific population that we serve, whether it's in our school or our psychiatric hospital or our community clinic.

Operationalizing Cultural Responsiveness

Whenever I do workshops similar to these, I usually get to this point in my shtick and teachers are getting antsy, right? They're saying to me, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is great, buzzwords, cultural responsiveness, cool. But like how do we do it, right? Like how, what does it consist of?" So in my sort of conceptualization of cultural responsiveness, I think there's sort of four main pillars of how we do this work on a day-to-day basis. Pillar number one is we evaluate. We have to understand the current situation in our school building. What is the climate like? What has our school's historical legacy been, right? I went in to do a presentation for a school back in November here in New York State, and I didn't know that the school had had a very sort of controversial influx of Spanish-speaking students from another district that had merged. Those historical legacies in a district are incredibly important because they do dictate climate. How do we find out the climate of a school? Well, the most important part is talking to the experts, talking to those who are walking through the halls of that school every day as well as the families, right? Then figuring out are we currently embracing the superpowers, the wealth? Are we tapping into the identity richness of those walking through our halls and our staff? The second piece is exploring, right? This is, I think, where things get really exciting for teachers because it's a new way of looking at things. I say exciting because I want them to see it that way, and not just another sort of put upon of things they have to do, and that is being willing to become students of our students' identities and lived experiences, right? That's totally different from the typical power dynamics of public education. Another piece of this is modeling to our students' reflective practices, being honest when we screw it up, particularly if we are members of the dominant social group in this country, right? I don't get it. I goofed, I'm sorry. I would like to learn more, right? Those are such powerful statements.

The next step is creating something new, creating a climate of safety and affirmation. Despite the fact that social workers are forces to be reckoned with, we can't do that alone, right? We can lead the charge, but we need help to do that work. We create, we work with educator colleagues to create classrooms that recognize cultural wealth. We seek out opportunities to collaborate with students and families, not for them to hear our spiel about stuff, but for them to step into the role of being in the driver's seat, right? Of dictating school policies, of talking about curriculum. Then finally, this is the part where I think social workers are absolutely prepared to shine. That is challenging, right? This is what our profession has done since its inception, and that is challenging unjust power dynamics. Boy, do school buildings have a lot of those. Challenging biases in ourselves and others, challenging previously held ideas. Then how do we help students do the same, right?

Cultural Responsiveness in the Classroom

I'm going to talk a little bit about what we can do with our educator compadres and colleagues because we can't do this work alone, yet we are uniquely tasked to be the fire starters, the catalysts for this work. When your teacher colleagues come to you and say, "But what, it's another buzzword. What do I do with it, right?" This is what you help them to operationalize. You help them to understand that before you ask a student to conjugate a verb, to read a passage aloud, to learn algebra, whatever, there needs to be some semblance of relational safety in that classroom. Educators have to recognize that all students have culture, right? It's not just the students who aren't white. Everybody has culture. Everybody has a unique identity, and everybody's identity is worth understanding. We encourage our educator colleagues to bravely step out of that authority role, right? In the classroom, the power is typically concentrated with the teacher. We want to do something different, where they feel empowered to step out of that authority role into a more collaborative one. I guarantee that if a teacher conveys that they're willing to learn about their student's identity, that buy-in that the student offers them will be increased tenfold. We want educators to understand that they're all part of a shared community, right? It's not the students' community, it's not just the classroom's community. It is a school building and everyone is a part of it.

I had one teacher come up to me a few years ago and say, "Well, I believe that one size fits all teaching is the way to go, right? Good teaching is good teaching no matter whom you teach to." No. The same teacher said to me, "Well, I speak Spanish, but I would never speak it to one of my Spanish-speaking immigrant students because I don't want them to think that I treat them differently." Best of intentions, completely incorrect approach, right? We want students to know that you see the uniqueness of their identity and that you affirm and celebrate it, right? I know that all of you know that. It's turnkeying that with our educator colleagues. The question from them is going to be, "But yeah, what specifically are you wanting me to do in the classroom?"

Specific Strategies in the Classroom

Connection and safety - we want students to feel safe with their teachers. We want to give students the opportunity to shape learning approaches when it's possible. I read a study recently about ELA curriculum in New York City, which is ostensibly the most diverse district in the United States. Something like 70% of the authors were - actually, I think it was higher than 70. I'm sorry that I don't have the exact figure, but I think it was 80% of the authors in this ELA curriculum were white. That sends a very clear message about the value of non-white identities in the classroom. We flip that script when we can. I worked with a group of Spanish-speaking students in high school five or six years ago, and I was talking to them about what they felt they had achieved. I knew that they had achieved so much. I knew one was sending home money for her mother's diabetes care in El Salvador. I knew that the other had just bought her mother a couch in her home country by working so hard. I knew that the other was caring for two small siblings despite being 18 years old herself. When I asked one of them, the one who was entirely funding her mother's diabetes care, she told me, "I haven't achieved anything." That broke my heart because the issue there is that academic achievement is conceptualized as something very specific. These students feel they don't have the tools to achieve it. We go back to this idea of retooling the resilience they have. Again, if you were abandoned in the Sonoran Desert by your human smuggler, yet you had the wits about you to figure out a way to get out of it and get to the river and get to Border Patrol, you've got some resilience, you've got some steadfastness, you've got some motivation. Those are all the skills that we need to succeed academically. We find ways to fine-tune that. I guarantee that if your teacher colleagues know some community resources for students, that will foster relationship building instantly. We want our educator colleagues to become increasingly comfortable identifying instances in which deficit thinking seeps into their day-to-day work, but perhaps the most important strategy is expressing cultural curiosity.

Expressing Cultural Curiosity

Now, this is one of my favorite things to share. What does cultural curiosity mean? That's being willing, again, to be that student of your students' identity. It's so powerful because students aren't used to teachers taking the time to really figure out what it means to walk in their shoes. Then I get that question again of, but how? How do we do it? How do we convey this? At the clinical level, I think that we can do this. Actually, I just want to add something. When our teacher colleagues ask us how we can express cultural curiosity, I have some really quick suggestions for you to share. One is expressing genuine interest in what their culture is all about, but also understanding that if you are a white person, it is not the job of your non-white clients or students to school you on what it means to be a part of their culture. They can say, "No way, that's not my job," and that's fair. I've never had that happen though. We express cultural curiosity by saying things like, "Hmm, you mentioned that religious festival in our session last week, or in the classroom last week. I don't know much about it. Would you be willing to tell me a little bit about it? 'Cause it sounds really interesting." Or something as simple as, "I don't know any phrases in Ukrainian, but I'd love to be able to greet you when you come in for a session or when you come into the classroom. Can you teach me good morning?" Then if they teach it to you you have to try to say it and you get bonus points if you butcher it inadvertently because that shows them two things, right? It shows them that one, their language is worth learning to you. Their language is worthy of your time and energy. Two, it shows them that learning a new language is hard, right? Even for that authority person of the school helping professional or the teacher.

At the Clinical Level

At the clinical level, what can we do as school-based clinicians to promote cultural responsiveness? You want your office to be the most beautiful microclimate, where students can feel entirely safe to be themselves. I'm guessing that if you're here today, your office already is that, but we also have to lead the charge for facilitating a shift in climate at the building level, right? We'll talk a little bit about that in a few minutes because that's not an easy process, right? We as school social workers are incredibly good at advocating for our clients. We use those very same advocacy skills and those elbows when we need to to push for a climate of inclusion for all students, right? We support and we celebrate and we safeguard student identities for all students. We make space in our clinician's office for storytelling, right? For telling our personal story, for creating new narratives, particularly for students from historically minoritized communities. There can often be a sense of my story doesn't matter, my voice doesn't matter, and the work that we do is to affirm that oh, it absolutely does. Let's create a new narrative where you can reclaim that deserved strength. This is what I did really poorly when I started off as a school-based clinician. I was immediately honed in on an individual level of pathology. Meaning, I really wanted to treat trauma at the individual level until I realized that the pathology was far more insidious in the system. What I mean by that is there was so much systemic discrimination, marginalizing policies, that if I were to focus exclusively on individual work, I would've missed the boat, right? Then I want to add another "don't be like Steph" note of caution. That is, use evidence-based practices with caution. Because most evidence-based practices are grounded in evidence with primarily white populations. If you are not serving a primarily white population, think twice before turnkey-ing that evidence-based intervention or practice. This is the real crux of the work that we will do.

At the Building Level

At the building level, school helping professionals are really prepared to lead the charge for transformation. We understand commitment to social justice. We understand the importance of inclusion and affirmation of identities. We are also prepared to work with resistance, right? People are going to push back when you fight for cultural responsiveness in schools. Why? Teachers are burdened. They have a new demand placed on them every week. Some of them didn't get into this field to learn about identities. Some of them just want to teach math, right? But the dynamics of the current demographics in schools make that unattainable, right? We can't teach math at this juncture without getting some identity affirmation and inclusion present first. We can provide professional development and support to educators, right? We have unique knowledge as social workers at both the macro and micro level that our buildings need to hear. I'm hoping that when you read this slide, you are feeling emboldened to lead this charge. We have to be involved even if we don't want to do macro stuff, we have to be involved in program and policy design. I know that it is really hard to get a seat at the table in terms of developing school policies. It was for me. If I had a dollar for every time I was told essentially, "Sit down, shut up and stop being the squeaky wheel", I'd probably be living in a condo in Florida right now and not staring out at a snow-filled backyard in New York. But in all seriousness, we have the skills to do this work.

We just have to turn up the volume on our voices. What we can do in this process of program and policy design at the building level and beyond is identifying marginalizing or assimilationist policies, right? I worked with a school where the ENL students, which is the name for English language learners in New York State, weren't allowed to attend prom. Do I have any explanation for this? I do not. But that's an incredibly marginalizing policy, right? For teenagers, that's the darn Super Bowl. We have to be wary of hat tips to culture and diversity. We have to call our administration out when they do these hat tips. I worked with a district that did very little by way of identity affirmation, but was really proud of their once a year multicultural night that almost no non-Spanish-speaking students attended. That's a hat tip. That's lip service, right? Putting up a poster is not cultural responsiveness. Having a once a year multicultural night or salsa concert, it's not cultural responsiveness. We can do better. Our job is holding the policymakers accountable for that. Then finally, we know that there are true experts in these conversations. We know that members of historically minoritized populations in public schools are the experts. They're the consultants we want. They're the ones we want to weave into these conversations such that their perspectives, that have so long been excluded from the conversation, can shape the school's trajectory forward.

Case Study and Questions

Now we're going to use the chat again. I'm just going to close this down. I just, I want to read this case study to you. Then I would love for you to, I know that this format is a little tricky in terms of discussions, but I know that we can do a little bit of discussing in the chat. Here's the case study that I have for you. Imagine you're a school social worker in a semi-rural high school in an area that's rapidly becoming more diverse, which is sort of a callback to the dynamics that so many of you put in the chat. Your community is, in particular, has a large population of Central American immigrants, although it has historically been mainly Italian American. The principle has come to you, woo hoo, to help create new policies and practices for an inclusive and welcoming environment.

What's the first thing you do? That's question number one. If you'd like to sort of demarcate your responses in the chat, you can put one for that. Two, what are your subsequent action steps? Remembering I am a clinician, so whatever you say will be right. No one will be put on the spot. While we wait for folks to share their response, Casey has said in the chat that it was validating for her to hear the importance of us as school helping professionals being the squeaky wheel. Here's the thing with change, right? Change is often a painful process, particularly for folks who want things to stay the same because the status quo benefits them, right? I'm talking about white folk, generally. Being a squeaky wheel is really important because we wear down the process and ultimately that's what precipitates change, okay?

Now I'm going to look at the chat 'cause it's flying fast and furious, okay? Here's what we're doing first. Matthew says start with a survey. Oh, I love this so very much. We're going to take the temperature, we're going to figure out what the situation really is on the ground, right? Lauren says ask students with varying, oh my gosh. I'm giving Lauren a chef's kiss, right? Both Matthew and Lauren's responses are to ask students to shape the process, to ask them their lived experiences. My goodness, I love that so very much. Donna wants to find out what the current policies and practices are, right? Oftentimes there's so much red tape around just a very clear description of what do we actually do? For how long has that been the case? Sarah similarly says research or talk with the students, right? I've found in my research that if you talk to the students, they have a lot to say and no one's listening to these perspectives.

After I finish looking at the chat, I'll circle back and tell you what I found when I talk to the students, okay? We've got lots of messages. I'm scrolling, I'm scrolling. Michael says reach out to Central American immigrants and create dialogue. I love this, right? Bring parents into the school. That may be tricky if they have historically felt marginalized, right? There's been an engagement piece here that's incredibly important. Brittany says that they want to make sure that they're educated on this population. Good. Greta says evaluate where the school has been and where it is now. Absolutely, this is such a good point. Discuss, Linda says discuss hiring new teachers. Absolutely, right? Because if we've got a population that speaks Spanish and no teachers or paraprofessionals that speak Spanish, we've got a big problem. Somebody said learn students' stories. Absolutely. I'm really inspired to see all of your responses. Reach out to leaders of the immigrant community. This is so good. Bring in the churches, bring in the soccer clubs, right? Get them all around the table. That does two things, right? That allows you to get expert perspectives, number one. That allows you expert data. It also is a show, it is a direct communication that your position in this community is respected and valued. For some folks, this might be the first time that they've felt that way.

I just want to give it one more quick scroll. Oh, I love this, Judith, thank you. Judith says ask people from other districts what worked for them. This is brilliant. Chances are there are other districts that have been in this boat. What we know right now is that fall of 2023 saw the highest numbers of Spanish-speaking immigrant children at Border Patrol at the Southern border ever, right? Along the lines of what Judith's saying is if your school has not seen this population, this burgeoning population of Spanish-speaking immigrant youth, they will, right? Chances are there are other districts that have been sort of a migratory trajectory for this population for a while. Reach out to them. It's a great connection. You can sort of steal their expertise. That always makes districts feel really good, to know that they're the model.

These are amazing, amazing perspectives. Oh, I love what Eileen is saying, set up time to meet with students individually, right? This individually is so time-consuming but so important because chances are students will feel most comfortable speaking when it's individual, right? Then Anne, I could, again, there's a chef's kiss coming out for Anne, and that is Anne says identify students' superpowers, right? This is going back to the idea, I'm going to tell you quickly, I worked with a school district a while back that had this spectacular, really slick strategic coherent plan thing. Basically, it was a document that delineated the characteristics that they hoped to foster in the ideal graduate from their district. They were characteristics like resourcefulness, motivation, civic engagement, adaptability, flexibility, compassion, right? All the things. Immediately I said to the district you know, you've got a population already, that's got these characteristics, particularly resilience, flexibility, adaptability, motivation in spades, right? That's your Spanish-speaking immigrant population. They have these characteristics by virtue of being Central American immigrant students, right? It's recognizing those superpowers and moving away from this idea that achievement and strength look like one specific outcome, right? Test scores or what have you.

I want to tell you very briefly before we take some more questions, if you have any, when I conducted a study asking immigrant, Spanish-speaking immigrant students, primarily Guatemalan, about their experiences in US public schools, the overwhelming response that I got was, "We want to become bicultural. We want to know what it's like to be a US teenager. We want to learn about US culture. We want to tell American teenagers about our culture that we're so proud of, that we celebrate so deeply." But those spaces, that structural mechanism to bring students together, just didn't exist because they felt siloed into their language learner programs. They didn't have lunch with the English-speaking population. They didn't play on sports teams with the English-speaking population because so many of them worked after school. Those sorts of conduits for cultural exchange just don't super exist in the landscape of many public schools, at least not here in New York. That's a huge aspect of policy revision and really structural change that would facilitate the exchange of so much cultural wealth and a strengthened school community.

- We have a response to the case study with a participant saying they would use the district translator to connect families and see what concerns or challenges are.

- That's a great idea. That's fantastic. You know, I mentioned the power of you know, I'm not asking you to go out and become fluent in Ukrainian, right? But if it is possible to learn some phrases, to learn some words in the language that your district is starting to see, even if you butcher it, you are manifesting this idea that your identity, your language has value to me, a member of this school community.

- Our first question asks "what if you cannot learn languages and how to engage?"

- Yeah, yeah, that's a tricky one, Linda. I've worked with a lot of school districts that have had really rapid influxes of a population where they do not have the support staff with the language capability. I think a lot can be done through nonverbal communication, a lot of smiling, a lot of pantomiming, a lot of Google Translate, right? I think there are opportunity, you know, I worked with a student who only spoke, it was either K'iche' or Mam, which are indigenous languages from Guatemala. We spent hours using the Google Street View. I don't know if you're familiar with this function, and stick with me a sec. It's where you can take a little person icon and walk around an area on Google Maps. This student and I couldn't communicate very well to one another because K'iche' is an entirely different language. But I could see his hometown. I could see where he played soccer and that at the very least, did we do good trauma therapy? We certainly did not. But there was a connection, right? He knew that he was loved, he knew that he belonged, and he knew that I cared enough about him to try and get it, right? That goes, it's imperfect, but it goes a long way.

Here's the thing, when I was a school social worker, I was unable to dive deeply into the research the way I would've liked to, right? Because when you're in the trenches, you're in the trenches and having not only the time but also the bandwidth to do extra research, it's just not super feasible. You know, by virtue of this presentation, I want to say that if you're struggling with a population or you're looking for a resource, I'm happy to help. I'm happy to go diving for you, right? If you want to understand a little bit more about this whole biculturalism thing, I'm happy to shed some light. This work feels deeply personal to me. This feels, you know, this work also feels a bit like activism, right? Because I believe so strongly that to support immigrant students, we have to radically change climates. If there's anything I can do to support your processes or the dynamics that you're grappling with, I'm here. I have my contact information in the next slide. I just, you know, I'm happy to answer any other questions you may have, but I also just, I want to commend you for your commitment to this work. It is just as easy to stick your, if not much easier to stick your head in the sand and go, "La, la, la, la, la, we're going to keep doing things the way we've always done them in schools. "But all of you have identified the need for something different to meet student needs and celebrate student identities. I really, I honor you and I commend that commitment.

References

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