School staff receives cultural competency training

 

As Albert Lea school district teachers and staff prepare to return for the new school year, they also prepare to meet a student body that continually grows more diverse.

Most teachers attended the training in March. The Monday training was held for remaining district staff, like paraeducators, success coaches and custodial workers, and educators from other districts in southern Minnesota. The training is required for teachers who wish to renew their licenses.

As of March, families in the district spoke 36 different native languages, said Executive Director of Teaching and Learning Mary Jo Dorman. According to the Minnesota Department of Education, over 36% of Albert Lea Area Schools students are Hispanic or Latino, American Indian, Asian, black or African American or two or more races.

Still, Dorman said diversity is about more than race. Presenter Angie Ellsworth, a behavior specialist for the Southeast Service Cooperative who also does consulting, reminded those attending that it touches on religion, age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, gender, education, generation and nationality.

And everyone has an unconscious bias: beliefs, attitudes, feelings we cannot really control, Ellsworth said.

“They just come out without even thinking, and they’re not good or bad,” she said. “They just are.”

But everyone is impacted, at some point, by bias, and students achieve more when their teachers are culturally competent and aware of their needs, Ellsworth said, citing the National Education Association. She said it boils down the relationships educators have with their students — how they get to know, appreciate and value them.

During an activity, attendees were asked to respond to a group of people with their first and next thoughts. Anonymous answers were displayed real-time on a projector screen at the Albert Lea High School auditorium.

The elderly: “Slow.” “Fragile.” “Stuck in their ways.”

But also: “My parents.” “Wise.” “Foundation of our community.” And, amid chuckles, a lone “It me” scrolling by amid other word associations.

The group also responded to the words of teenager, gay, African American, female, Latino and Jewish.

During the workshop, Ellsworth said the purpose was for teachers and staff to explore and share their own personal cultures, to bring awareness to cultural sensitivity and personal bias, to experience culturally responsive instructional strategies — with the intent to increase engagement and decrease behaviors — and experiment with appropriate responses to challenging situations.

“There are still going to be offensive comments,” Ellsworth said. “There’s still going to be social media. There’s still going to be the newspaper or conservative or liberal feedback that you’re getting, that your students are hearing from, from numerous sources. So how do we as educators, as people who work with kids, build our confidence and build our capacity to be able to respond to some of those things?”

Albert Lea Area Schools paraeducator and nurse Cindy Helgeson, who works at Halverson Elementary School, said she sees diversity as a way people can learn from each other and become more accepting.

“I think it’s very beneficial for us all to be reminded how we should have empathy for others and be valued,” she said. “We all should value each other.”