Serve your students better by understanding their cultures

How many different cultures do your students represent? What do you know about those cultures? How well do the staff who work with diverse students understand them? Are you able to communicate with parents appropriately? Does your district have bilingual and bicultural staff who can help you communicate with families?

When COVID-19 closed schools in March, the answers to these questions became imperative. Understanding a student’s home environment suddenly meant the difference between being able to teach them online or leaving them without access to the free, public education the law requires schools to provide.

Schools that understand their students can serve them more effectively. This was essential as school staff rushed to meet emergency needs, including providing Chromebooks and internet connections, delivering lessons and free and reduced-priced meals for eligible students, and ensuring that teachers could transition to online instruction with limited resources while enlisting parent help. 

Schools are diverse places. The July 1, 2019, U.S. Census population estimate data shows: 

•	African Americans make up 13.5% of the U.S. population and are the second-largest minority group. 
•	Latino, an umbrella term describing people from a wide range of cultural backgrounds, including Mexico, Central and South America, Cuba and Puerto Rico, is the fastest-growing minority group in the U.S. This group represents 18.5% of the population.
•	Asians, Pacific Islanders make up 5.9% of the population and come primarily from China, Japan, Korea, The Philippines, Asia, Pacific Islands, Indonesia and Malaysia.
•	Indigenous populations — Native Americans, Native Alaskans, Native Hawaiians and Native Pacific Islanders represent just 1.5% of the population. 
•	Eastern Europeans from countries that were part of the former Soviet Union are also coming through the schoolhouse doors, often in large numbers in urban and suburban school districts, swelling the languages spoken by school families to 50 or more.
•	Homelessness and poverty are impacting more and more school families each year. With COVID-19, statistics today certainly include many more than the 11.8% of the population listed as living in poverty in 2019. Homeless families are often less visible because they live in emergency shelters, sleep in cars or abandoned buildings, share housing with others (often just the children), camp or live in motels. When schools closed in March 2020, it came as a shock to Americans to learn that more than 30% of the children in U.S. public schools depended on free and reduced lunch programs for their food.

There is no “one size fits all” way of communicating with the various cultures represented by the students in your classrooms. Each student comes with his or her unique set of family values. They come with that family’s preferred methods of communication, its own suspicions of anyone in authority and, especially, with their hopes and dreams for their children’s education and opportunities for success — achieving their version of the American Dream. 

Building cultural bridges

The uncertainties of the coming school will require good communication with families. These 10 tips can help build communication bridges to the cultures in your school:

1. View cultural diversity as an opportunity. Start by celebrating the diversity in your schools and classrooms by learning as much as you can about student cultures, customs and challenges. Use the resources at the end to find out more about the cultures you have in your school community. Identify facts and myths about these cultures and best practices for communicating with each group. Then develop a plan for sharing this information with all staff.

2. Start with the data. The U.S. Census website (www.census.gov) and your state’s department of education have demographic statistics for your community and school district. District enrollment information for your students may include data about students’ ethnic backgrounds and cultural home environments. 

3. Identify your students. Include an inventory of your student population to find out the countries and cultures they represent. If most are English speakers and American-born, they may be acclimated to our American culture and would resent being singled out for any special attention.

4. Make this information available to staff. All staff need to know about the children in your district beyond who is and isn’t eligible for free and reduced-price meals. Teachers need to know the backgrounds for each of their students and how best to communicate with their parents, especially if school starts online this school year.

5. Set the tone for an inclusive and welcoming in-school environment. When parents and students come to schools in person, they “scan” offices and body language for clues to determine inclusivity. They are generally nervous about coming to school for any reason and need visual and verbal help to make them feel welcome and comfortable. Smile and make eye contact, if possible. Make every effort to pronounce parents’ and especially students’ names properly.

6. Set the tone for an inclusive and welcoming online environment. Check the district website to make sure it reflects the demographics of your district. Is the site easy for any parent to navigate? Is the content in more than one language? Do the pictures look like the children in your classrooms? For classroom instruction, are there clear expectations and adequate resources to help teachers fully engage their students and their families in successful online learning?

7. Build relationships on mutual respect and trust. It takes time to learn about students’ cultures and to identify the best methods of communication for each group. Written and electronic communications may not work for many families. One-on-one communication is often not possible. Translators and/or translations may be required. Sometimes a third party — a pastor or trusted community member — is required to convey school messages. 

If parents aren’t English speakers or American-born, find out more about their family values and who the primary person to contact should be. For example, in Latino and Asian Pacific Islander families, it is essential to involve fathers as well as mothers. In lesbian and gay families, both parents generally want to be included.

8. Connect with community partners. Explore all the communication options available in your community for communications with diverse populations. Non-English radio and television stations or newspapers likely carry school announcements and news. Churches, ethnic associations or neighborhood groups can help too. Social service agencies often have identified networks that can help. 

9. Include a count of families in your schools that may be homeless. Keep track of the number of children in free and reduced-price meal programs. If the count is going up, find ways to connect with other social service agencies that help families find housing or supply food. If your district participates in a community program that supplies food for children on weekends or during school vacations, make sure all eligible students in your schools are included.

10. Use the diversity of your school population as a teaching opportunity. Inviting families to share their cultural celebrations can be organized virtually as well as in person. Encourage teachers to include lessons about other cultures and diversity as part of the curriculum. Highlight and celebrate this diversity on your website too.

Additional resources
•	U.S. Census Bureau: www.census.gov/quickfacts
•	U.S. Department of Labor: www.bls.gov
•	PEW Hispanic Center: www.pewhispanic.org 
•	The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Kids Count Data Center: www.datacenter.kidscount.org 
•	National Center for Children in Poverty: www.nccp.org
•	National Coalition for the Homeless: www.nationalhomeless.org

Contributed by Jeanne Magmer, communications consultant