| 1. | 2/5/2008 1:56:00 AM | I think we have made great gains in this area. I think we still have work to do, but the district should give itself credit. |
| 2. | 2/5/2008 3:48:00 AM | This includes all types of diversity, social, economical, cultural. |
| 3. | 2/5/2008 4:11:00 AM | Teachers provide diverse instruction, we are lacking in the area of having a translator available for parent communications at each building. We can not build community with diverse families if the lines of communication stop from teacher to child. We need to get the parents on board and active! |
| 4. | 2/5/2008 2:08:00 PM | Our demographics are changing, let's make sure our staff demographics change too. |
| 5. | 2/5/2008 2:29:00 PM | I feel that providing guidance instruction in the classroom to students is extremely important in developing a respectful learning community. Although we’re recognizing the need for such instruction, teachers feel that it is hard to fit into their schedules. I try to incorporate social skills and guidance topics into my reading curriculum for students with special education needs, as well as do a 30-minute guidance instruction 3/10 days. I can understand how general education staff feels overwhelmed with curriculum and perhaps we need to explore some writing or reading curriculum that has a guidance message to it. |
| 6. | 2/5/2008 4:58:00 PM | With this in mind, should we really have cut elementary guidance services so drastically? |
| 7. | 2/5/2008 6:21:00 PM | It's hard to build a learning community when we have a very full and expanding curriculum and assessment requirements. Where's the time? Also, what has happened to the class size guidelines? |
| 8. | 2/5/2008 6:53:00 PM | Yes, but lets focus on the diversity within our community of learners |
| 9. | 2/5/2008 7:02:00 PM | Hire minority teachers when possible. |
| 10. | 2/5/2008 7:20:00 PM | Time is needed for this, it is impartive know in our schools but I am afraid we are not being provided with the flexibility at the Elementary level to meet this need. To much to teach, 1 period to plan, and no time to work on social, emotional growth. |
| 11. | 2/5/2008 7:53:00 PM | If you're talking about learning communities, we can't let go of the time we use to build a sense of community in our classrooms. Many of our students do not come equipped with the skills to work together, with empathy, with a sense of providing service to others. Our academic agenda is so full that we have less and less time to spend on life and social skills. Things like morning meeting, TRIBES, etc. do so much to build relationships and build happy kids, but we have less and less time to do this. Our academics are truly important to teachers, just as they are to you, but please don't forget that we are in there everyday with them and there are more and more needs that kids come to school with than was ever true in the past. |
| 12. | 2/5/2008 8:44:00 PM | With continued inservice for INSTRUCTION and support for the differing population. Also more thought about poverty as a diversity group. |
| 13. | 2/5/2008 9:28:00 PM | We need to address this more...meeting the needs of all of our students and their families...no matter what type of family it is. We also need respect learning communities in the classroom! Research shows that activities like the Morning Meeting or TRIBES...including guidance counselors in the classroom increases classroom cohesiveness and respect. We are seeing huge issues in these areas in our buildings because we have been told there is not time to include that in our day! This is not respecting what our students need! Academics will never increase...proficency will not increase if there is a classroom where students do not feel like they are connected to each other and their teacher...and their building. Respect of each other...a learning community must come first in the classroom...respect of how we learn differently needs to happen before any academic area or differentiation program. Teachers must be heard and understood on this topic! |
| 14. | 2/5/2008 9:58:00 PM | Again, we need student time to do this, 10 minutes twice a week, or 15 minutes once per week does not work. |
| 15. | 2/5/2008 11:03:00 PM | Roger Goppelt helped a lot with this when he was in the classrooms. I feel our students are beoming more violent and less sensitive. |
| 16. | 2/6/2008 3:05:00 AM | Recognize that some schools, such as Luther have a very diverse population. ELL's, special ed. kids, and some lower income kids require a lot more time and effort. Understand that smaller class sizes might be necessary to meet the needs of our diverse population. |
| 17. | 2/6/2008 3:07:00 AM | Additional counseling support is essential for this to occur. Again, our students have many needs outside of academics. In order for such a community to exist, they need support. As their general education teacher, I do not have the time or training to play this role more than I am currently doing. I still observe students needing more. |
| 18. | 2/7/2008 5:36:00 PM | I firmly believe in building classroom community. There is not a lot of time to include this into our already busy schedule. I also feel that there are many student emotional needs that the grade level teachers cannot help the students out as much as they need. Throughout the years the students are coming with more and more social/emotional/special needs and they need more help and support from a regular guidance teacher that can give the attention that they need and deserve to receive. If there are emotional problems happening in a student's life whether it be with friends at recess or outside of the school day, it is going to affect that students ability to learn. The students need and deserve to have a person to talk to one-on-one without the other classmates around to hear the conversation. |
| 19. | 2/7/2008 9:39:00 PM | I don't think diversity is addressed enough with our students. Diversity is more than just celebrating a holiday or special day or month. Diversity needs to be seen in everything we do! |
| 20. | 2/11/2008 6:16:00 PM | We need to establish parent participation, increased knowledge about parenting and following school and community rules, respect and honor. |
| 21. | 2/12/2008 10:07:00 PM | Our ELL community is growing and we need to support students and parents. |
| 22. | 3/4/2008 2:50:00 PM | The diversity survey indicated an interest in bully prevention and intervention. This is an issue which we could do more on in our schools. |
| 23. | 3/5/2008 1:23:00 PM | Without this, we've got nothing. If ever the budget should allow it, our first priority is getting a guidance counselor back in every elementary building. I have students with emotional issues. Some days, they are so upset that they are not learning anything. They need to talk with someone who has time to listen. Not with me, who can give them 2 minutes after recess and a quick hug. Also, our guidance counselor did an outstanding job at addressing issues like good touch/bad touch, drugs, bullying, peer relations, etc. I used to use the same language she taught to the kids when dealing with recess issues, friend problems, etc. She would give us posters for our rooms to refer to. She was top notch and the children really benefitted from her time in the classroom. She became a friendly face and kids were very familiar with her. |
| 24. | 3/5/2008 4:13:00 PM | Within the diversity training, we need to also focus on how to meet the needs of our expanding population of ELL students and their families within the district. |
| 25. | 3/5/2008 7:40:00 PM | My main diversity issue is religion. I'd also like to see an effort to show diversity in our staff and administration |
| 26. | 3/6/2008 4:52:00 PM | Building learning communities is essential at the elementary level. We try spending time and energy with relation to respect and responsibility but once again that time is often “taken” from an academic subject area. It was much nicer for the kids when we had a guidance counselor at Barrie School. |
| 27. | 3/6/2008 5:05:00 PM | Amen. |
| 28. | 3/6/2008 6:38:00 PM | All people need to respect and honor all people! |
| 29. | 3/6/2008 8:05:00 PM | The district will need to recognize that this is a time commitment. A daily time commitment. And we need to be able to have it in our schedules. The last I spoke with an administrator, it was not going to be included. |
| 30. | 3/6/2008 10:51:00 PM | We've got it. Let's move on. |
| 31. | 3/17/2008 9:19:00 PM | I like the character education point that was brought up. I don't feel the community/school spirit like in years/decades past. |
| 32. | 3/18/2008 4:17:00 PM | We especially need help in understanding students and parents with mental health issues. It doesn't matter how advanced our curriculum is if we can't deliver it to a group of students effectively due to one child's behavior that demands all of the teacher's focus and energy. We need to know how to manage their behaviors. |
| 33. | 3/18/2008 4:44:00 PM | students need to treat all with more respect, other students and teachers. |
| 34. | 3/19/2008 1:50:00 PM | Respect and honor make me think of character education. I have found that I need to spend more time on this in my classroom than just modeling it myself. |
| 35. | 3/19/2008 4:54:00 PM | Character education starting in the elementary level is needed now more than ever!!! |
| 36. | 3/19/2008 5:02:00 PM | Character education has become essential. Too many kids are not getting it at home. The growing lack of respect, empathy, and personal responsibility among the students is frightening and sad. |
| 37. | 3/19/2008 7:20:00 PM | Very laudable. How can we evaluate progress toward it? |
| 38. | 3/20/2008 3:18:00 AM | The kids in my homeroom will not take hot lunch on a day where they serve Mexican dishes. I have heard them whisper,"Mexican food tastes terrible and I would never eat it." Even though I will make a point to eat it that day and say how good it sounds I can tell by their eyes they have made a silent agreement to not eat it. We really need to work with the students on diversity training and not just the staff. The students seem to believe all people of hispanic desent are here illegally. |
| 39. | 3/20/2008 1:48:00 PM | The meaning of that word is hard to define at this level! |
| 40. | 4/7/2008 9:39:00 PM | It is also important to stress not only respect for diversity, but maybe more importantly respect for adults, for each other, for one's self. |
| 41. | 4/7/2008 9:56:00 PM | Too much time is spent in here in relationship to other areas. A very important goal, but not more so than others. Learning and instruction should be focuses of full day inservices...awareness is great |
| 42. | 4/8/2008 12:31:00 AM | I would really like to see us working more with the students in this area especially regarding poverty, race and culture. |
| 43. | 4/8/2008 1:03:00 PM | difficult to define and with rising cultural conflicts, gang activity, etc....maybe something that needs a more pro-active, definitive approach. |
| 44. | 4/8/2008 12:26:00 PM | Who will monitor this? What steps will we take to build these communities? |
| 45. | 4/8/2008 4:21:00 PM | There needs to be a change. I see hillbilly attitudes every day; we have no recourse with these kids otehr than to model it and address behaviros as they |
| 46. | 4/8/2008 5:08:00 PM | We do this daily. However, certain rules should be followed by all staff and faculty to emphasize this to all students. |
| 47. | 4/8/2008 4:59:00 PM | I liked the qoute about the supreme court justice on pornography. It fit. But how do we move beyond tolerence and acceptance to true integragtion? |
| 48. | 4/8/2008 8:52:00 PM | Although this is an altruistic goal, your staff members are set in their own belief systems. Inservices in diversity actually have a backlash of heightened myopia and prejudice for quite some time. |
| 49. | 4/8/2008 9:06:00 PM | You can teach, but biases are an individual choice. People must want to change and no amount of inservice can force that change...unfortunately. |
| 50. | 4/8/2008 7:58:00 PM | Respect and honor is what the students need to be taught to have. What instructors need is the supportive services and technology to beable to teach this group of students. This topic will emerge high on the list due to increasing numbers of students who will enter our district with out English as their primary language. |
| 51. | 4/9/2008 4:57:00 PM | "respect and honor" are top shelf priorities, but that shouldn't be manifest in taking a majority of our inservice hours (especially if assessment practices and technology changes are to be effectively implemented). |
| 52. | 4/10/2008 1:16:00 PM | This is such a difficult goal. You are on the right track with the emphasis on building an understanding of diversity in our schools. The problem is you are fighting a losing battle. Kids think they are ahead of the game on this (even if they aren't). They believe they already accept everyone and that issues of diversity are something they've already dealt with/tackled. As adults, we know better, but you've got to overcome that barrier to growth for them. To be honest, unless the district is willing to develop a partnership with other schools in which their is open exchange of students and student's ideas/feelings (where our kids can interact with other kids, considering we are not really that diverse of a school, at least when it comes to matters of race), this is a fruitless effort. A speaker that comes in and represents their race or their socio-economic class is not going to change anybody's thoughts or feelings about diversity. To experience true diversity, maybe our students need to see what an inner-city school looks like. Maybe they need to attend a spanish immersion school. Maybe they need to put in community service hours working with the elderly, or serving food at a homeless shelter. To be quite frank, the second semester of the senior year is a PERFECT time to do this. Students are coasting on their way out of here. Maybe that would be the time to really prepare them for the world they are about to encounter. Maybe we can force them to give back to their community, and in the process, learn an awful lot more about diversity than any speaker or talk would ever provide them. I know that my understanding of diversity didn't come from an inspired speaker. It came from real-life situations in which I was forced to combat the stereotypes that had grown with me my entire life. That inspires change, and little else can achieve that. |
| 53. | 4/10/2008 6:13:00 PM | I understand the desire for this, but there needs to be differentiation for educators who have had HUGE amounts of training in this already. If the district finds differentiation important, it must also be important for the district to use that with teachers who have different backgrounds and training. If not, the idea of differentiation is useless - we can't say that differentiation of instruction ends with 12th grade. It would be very nice to see some choices on what we are able to attend with diversity things, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. I think this would be cool, rather than feeling like a waste of my time. |