To prepare young people to succeed in a multicultural and economically diverse future, educators should be intentional about fostering meaningful and sustained relationships across race and class. Students who develop friendships with people of different races exhibit lower levels of racial bias throughout their lives; furthermore, they have reduced anxiety about difference, greater empathy, and enhanced leadership skills.
In this video, experts on school integration, including TCF researchers as well as leaders and teachers from diverse public schools, discuss the principles and concrete steps that diverse schools should take to facilitate relationships across race and class, including using a combination of in-classroom pedagogical methods, schoolwide norm-setting, and dedicated space and time for trust building and relationship development.
The strategies described in this video are presented in more detail in a toolkit for educators, “Fostering Intergroup Contact in Diverse Schools,” which is part of a series on strategies for creating successful diverse schools that includes two other toolkits: “Recruiting and Enrolling a Diverse Student Body in Public Choice Schools” and “Integrating Classrooms and Reducing Academic Tracking”.
Strategies for Fostering Intergroup Contact in Diverse Schools
To prepare young people to succeed in a multicultural and economically diverse future, educators should be intentional about fostering meaningful and sustained relationships across race and class. Students who develop friendships with people of different races exhibit lower levels of racial bias throughout their lives; furthermore, they have reduced anxiety about difference, greater empathy, and enhanced leadership skills.
In this video, experts on school integration, including TCF researchers as well as leaders and teachers from diverse public schools, discuss the principles and concrete steps that diverse schools should take to facilitate relationships across race and class, including using a combination of in-classroom pedagogical methods, schoolwide norm-setting, and dedicated space and time for trust building and relationship development.
The strategies described in this video are presented in more detail in a toolkit for educators, “Fostering Intergroup Contact in Diverse Schools,” which is part of a series on strategies for creating successful diverse schools that includes two other toolkits: “Recruiting and Enrolling a Diverse Student Body in Public Choice Schools” and “Integrating Classrooms and Reducing Academic Tracking”.