Multicultural Education Resources
Kent School District 415
Available in the Kent School District Program and Staff Development Library
Located in the Educational Support Building, D-1000
Access on KSD Website or call ext. 7093
Payne, Ruby K. 2005. A Framework for Understanding Poverty. Fourth Edition. Highlands:
aha! Process, Inc. People in poverty face challenges virtually unknown to those in middle class or
wealth—challenges from both obvious and hidden sources. The reality of being poor brings out a
survival mentality, and turns attention away from opportunities taken for granted by everyone else.
This is the book that the fundamentals class of the same title is based on. 370.1 PAY
Shirts, R. Garry. 1977. BaFa’ Ba’Fa’ A Cross Culture Simulation. Secondary/ Adult Version. Del
Mar: Simulation Training System.
Shirts, R. Garry. 1976. RaFa’ RaFa’ A Cross Culture Simulation. Elementary Version. Del Mar:
Simulation Training System.
What is it like visiting a new culture? Participate in these activities and you will have an idea of the
challenges, frustrations, and joys of immersion into another culture. Taped instructions, game pieces
and discussion questions make this interactive experience easy and fun to use! (Two facilitators
needed. Groups of 15-50) KITS
Minnesota Humanities Commission. 1991. Braided Lives: An Anthology of Multicultural
American Writing. St. Paul: Viking Press, Inc. An anthology bringing together vivid stories and
poems of Native American, Hispanic American, African American, and Asian American writers, created
by Minnesota teachers for their students. 808.803 BRA
Hetherington, Cheryl. 1995. Celebrating Diversity: Working with Groups in the Workplace.
Duluth: Whole Person Associates. Structured exercises are presented that will encourage employees
to: examine stereotypes, confront prejudices, and develop appreciation for cultural differences among
coworkers. 808.803 HET
Diller, Jerry V., and Jean Moule. 2005. Cultural Competence: A Primer for Educators.
Belmont: Thomson Learning Academic Resource Center. The authors have joined together
multicultural counseling with multicultural education and have created an engaging introduction to
cross-cultural teaching, loaded with real-life stories, reflective exercises and clear conceptual
grounding. 370.117 DIL
Simons, George F., et al. 1996. Cultural Diversity Fieldbook: Fresh Visions & Breakthrough
Strategies for Revitalizing the Workplace. Pacesetter Books. This book brings together
examples of the leading thoughts and best practices on one of the most-talked-about business topics:
Diversity in the Workplace. 808.803 SIM
Lindsey, Randall B., Laraine M. Roberts, and Franklin Campbell Jones. 2005. The Culturally
Proficient School: An Implementation Guide for School Leaders. Thousand Oaks: Corwin
Press. By valuing diversity and preserving the cultural dignity of students, cultural proficiency enables
educators to create an inclusive and instructionally powerful learning environment.
Myers, Selma, and Jonamay Lambert. 1994. Diversity Icebreakers. Amherst: Amherst
Educational Publishing. This guide provides short experiential activities that can be used as
icebreakers to increase awareness of diversity and its influence in the workplace.
Kame’enui, Edward J., et al. 2002. Effective Teaching Strategies that Accommodate Diverse
Learners. Second Edition. Upper Saddle River: Merrill Prentice Hall. This book is based upon six
principles—big ideas, conspicuous strategies, mediated scaffolding, primed background knowledge,
strategic integration, and judicious review—and the application of these principles across different
and sometimes unwieldy knowledge structures and skills in reading, science, social studies, and
mathematics. The assertion is made that the six principles serve as the organic basis for the design
of instruction and curriculum for diverse learners. 371.102 KAM
Kuykendall, Crystal. 2004. From Rage to Hope: Strategies for Reclaiming Black & Hispanic
Students. Bloomington: National Educational Service. Second Edition. This is a compelling and
informative examination of the academic underachievement, apathy, and rage among America’s Black
and Hispanic youth, and provides information and strategies to motivate students. 371.97 KUY
Payne, Ruby K. 2005. Learning Structures. Third Revised Edition. Highlands: aha! Process, Inc.
Strategies for learning the principals set forth in A Framework for Understanding Poverty and
Understanding Learning. 370.1 PAY
Nieto, Sonia. 1999. The Light in Their Eyes: Creating Multicultural Learning Communities.
New York: Teachers College Press. In this book, the author makes student learning the primary
objective of multicultural education. Going beyond “curriculum integration,” Nieto draws on a host of
research in learning styles, multiple intelligences, and cognitive theories to portray the ways in which
students learn. Centering on multicultural education as a transformative process, many reflections of
teachers who have undergone this experience are included in this book. 370.117 NIE
Sleeter, Christine E., and Carl A. Grant. 1999. Making Choices for Multicultural Education:
Five Approaches to Race, Class, and Gender. Third Edition. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall,
Inc. Explores concepts of race, class, gender, and disability within a framework of five approaches.
370.117 SLE
Barbarash, Lorraine. 1997. Multicultural Games. Champaign: Human Kinetics. This book
provides ideas and strategies that will help students develop an awareness of and appreciation for
other cultures while enjoying physical activity. It features 75 games from 43 countries or cultures on
6 continents. 808.803 BAR
Dresser, Norine. 1996. Multicultural Manners: New Rules of Etiquette for a Changing
Society. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. This is today’s incisive guide to etiquette for the
multicultural society. This informative and entertaining book gives you the understanding you need,
the perfect words to say, and the correct behavior to use in a wide range of cross-cultural situations.
808.803 DRE
Delpit, Lisa. 1995. Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. New York:
The New Press. The author poses an urgent question: Why do we have such a hard time making
school a happy place for poor children and children of color? This book provides an important, yet
typically avoided, discussion of how power imbalances in the larger U.S. society reverberate in
classrooms. 370.19 DEL
Johnson, Barry. 1996. Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable
Problems. Amherst: HRD Press. Dilemmas crop up everywhere, in culture, leadership, strategy,
and in daily living. The angst created by these “problems without solutions” involves both personal
and organizational pain. It is the task of leaders to find a way to work through the problems and
forge new solutions to these perennial issues. The methodology of Polarity Management is one of the
most valuable approaches found yet for learning to deal with unsolvable problems. 658.4 JOH
Lewis, Amanda E. 2005. Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the Color Line in Classrooms
and Communities. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Based on studies done in children’s
classrooms, Race in the Schoolyard reveals how the lessons about race are communicated there, not
officially, but how it insinuates itself into everyday life in schools. 306.43 LEW
Teaching Tolerance Project. 1997. Starting Small: Teaching Tolerance in Preschool and the
Early Grades. Montgomery: Southern Poverty Law Center. The vision of community that the early
childhood classroom provides can color children’s ideas and expectations about equity, cooperation
and citizenship for a lifetime. 808.803 STA
Jaworski, Joseph. 1998. Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership. San Francisco: BerrettKoehler Publishers. This book draws upon Carl Jung’s “synchronicity” concept and the author’s life
story to present a plan for living that combines conscious awareness with morality in order to shape
the future with “predictable miracles.” 158.4 JAW
Berlak, Ann, and Sekani Moyenda. 2001. Taking it Personally: Racism in the Classroom from
Kindergarten to College. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. This is a book about the micro
dynamics of racism in the classroom. It is well conceptualized—a cross-racial teachers’ dialogue
framed by two authors’ race-awareness autobiographies. 306.43 BER
Tatum, Alfred. 2005. Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males: Closing the Achievement
Gap. Portland: Stenhouse Publishers, 2005. For those who truly wish to leave no child behind, the
racial achievement gap in literacy is one of the most difficult issues in education today, and nowhere
does it manifest itself more perniciously than in the case of black adolescent males. 371.829 TAT
Davidman, Leonard, with Patricia T. Davidman. 1994. Teaching with a Multicultural
Perspective: A Practical Guide. White Plains: Longman Publishing Group. This book presents an
integrated multicultural model of curriculum and instruction, along with practical tools prospective and
veteran teachers can use, and links the idea of multicultural education to the concept of effective
teaching. 808.803 DAV
Muse, Daphne, ed. 1997. The New Press Guide to Multicultural Resources for Young
Readers. New York: The New Press. This volume features over 1,000 reviews of multicultural
children’s books organized by theme and reading level. 808.803 THE
Howard, Gary R. 1999. We Can’t Teach What We Don’t Know: White Teachers, Multiracial
Schools. New York: Teachers College Press. The author shares personal stories and compelling
analysis from his experience as a multicultural educator looking deeply into his own racial identity to
discover what it means to be a culturally competent White teacher in racially diverse schools.
808.803 HOW
Please note that the above list is a sampling of the multicultural resources
to be found in the library; there are many more books and videos available.
Kent School District Staff Development Classes
7071 - A Framework for Understanding Poverty: Fundamentals
10 hours
Participants will examine the needs of students from different socio-economic levels, particularly
those of low socio-economic status. Topics will include language structures, "hidden rules" and how
they impact students in our schools, discipline interventions, relationship building, working with
parents, and strategies to improve mental processes in all subject areas. Participants will have an
opportunity to learn new skills and try them out in their classrooms and reflect on their effectiveness.
7072 - A Framework for Understanding Poverty: Learning Structures
10 hours
This course is a second level and follow-up to the pre-requisite class, 7071, A Framework for
Understanding Poverty: Fundamentals. Topics will focus on learning structures and strategies to
improve mental processes in various subject areas.
3249 - Cultural Competence and School Issues
10 hours
This course will teach five elements of cultural competence, cultural competence continuum, and
answer cultural competence questions. Additional time will be allotted for sharing of experiences from
participants, dealing with site-specific issues, and provide a snapshot of different site-specific cultures.
6126 - ESL and Multicultural Awareness
10 hours
This class will explore the problems facing ESL students and parents and the many student/student,
student/parent, and student/teacher issues. The office staff should come away with the knowledge
needed to deal with these issues.
6154 - Multicultural Awareness and Sensitivity
10 hours
This course will provide information that will help prepare participants to work effectively with the
diverse population of students currently in the Kent schools. The class will cover interpersonal
communication skills, cultural characteristics, behavioral differences, dealing with parents from
diverse backgrounds, student to student relationships, and other related issues.
3342 - Multicultural Education: Theory and Practice
10 hours
This class is for certificated staff and paraeducators who wish to explore a multicultural approach to
curriculum and instruction. This class will focus on the three primary domains of race, class, and
gender as they relate to an educational system. Participants will consider personal biases, institutional
racism, and the value of diversity to improve the educational experience for all students. During the
first three classes theories behind Multiculturalism are discussed. During the last class participants talk
about application strategies for specific subject areas.
6173 - Valuing Diversity
5 hours
This overview class will help participants appreciate differences and recognize the contributions these
differences make to our community and world.
6187 - Working and Living in the Multicultural World
5 hours
In this highly experiential class, students will learn how cultures function, how to operate within
foreign cultures, and how to actively influence their own culture. Students will interact with citizens of
another culture and transfer that experience to their lives and work settings.
Register for Classes Online:
Go to the KSD Website: www.kent.k12.wa.us
Click on
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