A Diversity Primer for independent school teachers, some suggested reading

Here are some works and essays to start with in our attempts to educate ourselves as Independent School teachers fully committed to diversity and the principles of multicultural education.

 

 

Striving for Balance in an English Curriculum

The struggle over curricular issues is never an easy one and it is usually one that people are passionate about. It is important work to be done and Independent Schools have a responsibility to try and strike a balance between the powerful and important literature that we were taught as students and the equally valuable literature of those writers not previously represented in secondary education.

 

 

Some notes on the Slave Narrative -

A discussion with Prof. Greg Hampton of Howard University           

         The Slave Narrative is one of American LiteratureÕs most original genres and, perhaps, one that takes our literature farthest from the European influences and formsÉ For us, they also provide an important source of connection between three of the major works of this course, The Narrative of Frederick Douglass, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Beloved.

 

Affirmative Action and Diversity Page

This site, by a member of the English department at the University of California Santa Barbara, is an academic resource and provides scholars, students, and the interested public with on-site articles and theoretical analyses, policy documents, current legislative updates, and an annotated bibliography of research and teaching materials. Because of the physical location of this resource, it contains a substantial amount of information on California politics and the current debate over California's Classification by Race, Ethnicity, Color, or National Origin. However, the materials at the site are helpful for putting this week's Supreme Court decision on affirmative action in historical perspective.

 

W.E.B. Du Bois Redux:

Double Consciousness in Independent Schools

An interactive workshop from the NAIS People of Color Conference 2002 in Chicago, presentedby Mark H. Tashjian who is Head of Middle School at Collegiate School in New York City.  This is an ÒinteractiveÓ lesson using poetry and essays of W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes and others.