The Chicago suburbs are experiencing a dramatic change in demographics. As the city gentrifies, minority and poor families have been priced out of the city and are moving to outlying areas. These same areas have seen an influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America. Our schools are now struggling to educate students from a range of cultures.
To address how principals and teachers might better meet the challenges presented by these new groups, the Midwest Principals' Center invited Mawi Asgedon to run a daylong workshop for 200 school leaders. Asgedon came to the United States as a 7-year-old refugee from Ethiopia, speaking no English. He attended schools that educated few other minority or poor students. Although he experienced poverty and subtle, often unintended, racism, Asgedon persisted—and graduated from Harvard in 1999. He now gives motivational presentations to students in high-poverty schools, drawing on his own experiences.
Qualities of Good Minority Outreach Programs
Asgedon surveyed 200 principals of schools in the counties surrounding Chicago, asking what practices they have found successful in reaching minority students. Drawing on their answers and his own experiences working in schools, he identified characteristics shared by schools that successfully enable poor and immigrant students to achieve.
- Programs for immigrant and minority students must be intentional. Successful programs were well-planned, focused on the needs of particular populations, and involved the entire staff. They built communities that drew on the nontraditional students' strengths and did not expect immigrant students to immediately assimilate into existing programs. Programs included newcomers' classes focused on teaching social skills or literacy; college information nights geared to Latino families; and partnerships with "Estudiante to Student," a nonprofit group encouraging minority achievement.
- School staff members must focus on building personal relationships with students. Teachers must give students the unequivocal message that they are valued. It is not enough to "do things" for students; teachers and administrators must care for each student deeply. Asgedon spoke of his sense of invisibility in elementary and secondary school. His face, story, and hardships went undetected.Successful schools solicited, heard, and appreciated students' life stories. One school made it a high priority for students to write about their personal experiences and then share that writing with peers.
- Programs for struggling students must be instructionally driven. Teachers must examine data carefully and implement specific interventions suggested by this data. Principals and teachers may need professional development to become skilled at gauging the kinds of instructional interventions different populations need. Understanding cultural differences and strategies for accommodating them does not come automatically.
- Attention to students from impoverished backgrounds must pervade the school culture. In contrast to sponsoring one club or organizing a token multicultural day, good outreach involves a whole host of staff members, some from diverse backgrounds, working together. Minority students are not the sole responsibility of English as a second language teachers or special education departments. Schools must not pack these students into the crevices of such programs, relieving mainstream teachers of responsibility.
A Question to Ponder
Asgedon closed with a question: To whom do our schools truly belong? Kids may know the answer to that question better than we do, and their lack of ownership, their sense that they don't belong, may be one reason that some students from backgrounds of poverty show disaffection. Principals in schools with changing demographics must ask themselves whether they are holding on to traditions and beliefs appropriate for populations that no longer fill most of their classrooms.
Some of the rhetoric of No Child Left Behind resonates with me because, in truth, many students from poor backgrounds are "left behind"—unless they have the kind of extraordinary persistence Mawi Asgedon exhibited. Schools serving poor kids are also left behind. It's no secret that school funding for affluent communities often surpasses that for poor communities. But teachers and administrators are not powerless. We can create programs—characterized by strong personal relationships, culturally relevant instruction, and schoolwide commitment—that empower nontraditional students. We can accept the challenge of making "our" schools everyone's schools.
