Empower, Unite, Build Global Citizens!

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Bridges to Understanding empowers and unites youth worldwide, enhances cross-cultural understanding and builds global citizenship through storytelling and the use of digital technology. Programs provide youth the tools to share their vision, hopes and dreams by connecting middle and high school students in the northwest United States with peers in South Africa, India, Guatemala, Peru and other countries using teacher-guided online dialogues, curriculum-based programs and the creation and sharing of digital stories. Bridges to Understanding offers a number of different program offerings. For more information go to: www.bridges2understanding.org.

Courageous Conversations About Race

Billed as a “field guide for achieving equity in schools,” the book, by Glenn Singleton and Curtis Linton, examines the achievement gap through the prism of race. It points to the need for candid, courageous conversations by educators in order to improve how curriculum ought to be developed in order to promote true academic parity, and provides a system-wide plan for transforming school systems.

Navigating Diversity by Dealing with Offensive Behaviors

Patty Bates-Ballard and Gregory Smith have written an “advocate’s guide” to navigating the maze of race, gender, religious matters and more, offering ways to deal with comments that are offensive or insensitive. A practical primer, it offers concrete steps to having diversity conversations, one of the most divisive topics in the country today.

The Race Card - Confronting America’s Legacy of Racism

Richard Thompson Ford, Stanford Law School professor, has written an insightful book in an effort to redefine civil rights, reveal racial opportunists, and confront the need for long-term solutions to persistent problems of segregation and poverty. The Race Card stimulates thought provoking examinations of today’s complex issues.

Academic Achievement Studies

To view a brief summary of each of the minority achievement gap studies, click on the study below:
African American Report
Asian American Report
Latino American Report
Native American report
Pacific Islander American Report

Bias & Sensitivity Guidelines: Key to Improved Environments

Not sure whether or not a material reflects bias or is insensitive? A useful framework for providing a guideline in determining the existence of bias and sensitivity in materials and other areas can be helpful. For a copy of a Bias and Sensitivity tool, click on Bias and Sensitivity Guideline.

New Book Defines Strategies to Ensure High Academic Achievement

Dr. Johnnie McKinley, Ed.D. has written a book for educators, administrators and trainers specializing in equity, achievement and multicultural education programs. Planning for Effective and Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning: Strategies That Ensure Equity and High Achievement for All Students is timely in its topic and a welcome addition to the educational field.

"Abundant research confirms the dramatic academic improvements poor minority students attain when educators address factors associated with causes of achievement gaps," according to McKinley. "Benchmark research proves that effective and culturally responsive instruction and assessment and positive interpersonal relationships help ensure no student is left behind, by establishing learning contexts congruent with students' cultural backgrounds, and motivating students through constructive teacher attitudes and beliefs."

McKinley's book is based on an examination of practices of urban teachers in the Pacific Northwest that significantly closed the achievement gap between black and white students. The book, published in 2008, is available for purchase at: www.booksurge.com.

America-I-Am: Black Facts ? A Valuable Resource

Dr. Quintard Taylor, the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American History, University of Washington, Seattle and creator of BlackPast.org, one of the leading websites on the Internet on all aspects of African American History, has a new book out. America-I-Am: Black Facts - The Timelines of African American History 1601 ? 2008. Available at bookstores as well as on www.amazon.com, the book is an excellent resource for home and educational libraries.

Study of High Achieving Minority Youth Yields Results Worth Noting

The problem with urban schools, according to Dr. Gilberto Conchas, Senior program Officer of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and associate professor of education at University of California Irvine, is their long list of failures: low test scores, low grades, racial achievement gaps, high dropout rate, poor attendance, ineffective teachers, unmotivated students and an endless series of educational reforms.

Following a three-year case study of high achieving minority students in four urban school settings in California, Conchas delineates a number of recommendations to rectify urban youth failures. His book, The Color of Success: Race and High-Achieving Urban Youth is available at bookstores.

Latino Education Crisis Captured in Recent Book

School failure, according to Dr. Frances Contreras and Dr. Patricia Gåndara, co-authors of the book, The Latino Education Crisis: The Consequences of Failed Social Policies, is a symptom, not a cause. Based on over three decades of research on Latino success and achievement, the book provides statistical information on the Latino population in general, issues related to their schooling, promising program models for successful intervention, and descriptors of high achieving Latino students.

Contreras is an assistant professor of education at the University of Washington. Gåndara is professor of education at University of California Los Angeles.

Museums: A Resource for Learning About Cultures

Museums can provide a variety of materials for classrooms. Various hands-on kits of artifacts, objects and materials are available from many local museums. To access a listing of some museums that provide cultural teaching materials, click on Museum Culture Kits.