At The Table

Connect with others, share information, and help build the worldwide movement for youth participation at this online clearinghouse featuring everything you need to know about effectively involving youth in your organization and community. Hosted by the Innovation Center for Community and Youth Development.

Resource Link: http://www.AtTheTable.org

Choices for the 21st Century Program

The Choices Program at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies offers deliberation-focused supplemental curriculum units for U.S. History, World History and Global Studies. Choices units feature historical background, a role play centered on alternative policies, primary source materials, detailed lesson plans and study guides. Units are affordable.

Resource Link: http://www.choices.edu

Community Public Art Guide: Making Murals, Mosaics, Sculptures, and Spaces

Olivia Gude, Editor. Chicago Public Art Group.

The Chicago Public Art Group claims that their web-based Public Art Guide is the most comprehensive manual for making public artworks through collaboration with community that has ever been produced. The website represents the collective experience of dozens of dedicated community public artists, working on hundreds of projects, with thousands of participants.

Resource Link: http://www.cpag.net/guide/index.htm

CRS Programs For Managing School Multicultural Conflict

A multicultural learning environment has become the norm in many school districts and communities throughout the United States. The diversity found in these settings offers many opportunities for people to learn more about one another. Yet too often schools are ill prepared to adjust to this diversity positively. To address this reality, the Community Relations Service of the U.S. Department of Justice has developed several racial/ethnic conflict prevention and management programs for schools or school districts.

Resource Link: http://www.usdoj.gov/crs/pubs/pubflyercrsschoolprograms92003.htm

Democratic Dilemmas: Joint Work, Education Politics, and Community

Julie A. Marsh. SUNY Press (SUNY series, School Districts: Research, Policy, and Reform), 2007.

This 228-page book written by policy researcher Julie Marsh explores ways to engage citizens in the process of educational improvement. The book highlights the inherent tensions of deliberative democracy, competing notions of representation, limitations of current conceptions of educational accountability, and the foundational importance of trust to democracy and education reform. It further provides a framework for improving community-educator collaboration and lessons for policy and practice.

Resource Link: http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?id=61456

Dialogue at Washington High

Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Group, San Mateo, California, 2007.

This 43-minute DVD shows a Jew and a Palestinian modeling how to connect with the "other" beginning with personal Story. Tenth grade high school students then engage each other in dyads with a new quality of listening, and the diverse youth speak about their new way of communicating. Len and Libby Traubman are distributing DVDs of their films ?“Dialogue at Washington High?” and ?“PEACEMAKERS: Palestinians & Jews Together at Camp?” at no charge to whoever will use them.

Resource Link: http://traubman.igc.org/vidschool.htm

Guidelines for Deliberation

This resource from the Choices Program at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies provides a great introduction to deliberation. The resource, which is designed for use in high school classrooms but is useful for any group that is unfamiliar with deliberation, provides a jargon-free definition of deliberation, describes how deliberation is different from debate, explains why it is important to know how to deliberate, and lists guidelines and tips for deliberation.

Resource Link: http://www.choices.edu/resources/guidelines.php

Just Waiting to Be Asked? A Fresh Look at Attitudes on Public Engagement

Steve Farkas, Patrick Foley and Ann Duffett. Public Agenda, 2001.

This research study finds that school district leaders say they are eager for public engagement in educational decision making, but the venue they rely on most - the school board meeting - is primarily seen as a vehicle for the most vocal and disgruntled citizens. This 48-page publication is available for $10 through Public Agenda.

Resource Link: http://www.publicagenda.org

Mix It Up

Launched in November 2002, the Study Circles Resource Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Mix It Up" campaign helps young people identify, question and cross social boundaries in their schools and communities. Hundreds of thousands of students in thousands of schools have taken the challenge to sit with someone new during Mix It Up At Lunch Day. Students and teachers are welcome to order the free Mix It Up handbook, Reaching Across Boundaries: Talk to Create Change.

Resource Link: http://www.mixitup.org

Mobilize.org

Mobilize.org, formerly Mobilizing America's Youth, is an all-partisan network dedicated to educating, empowering, and energizing young people to increase our civic engagement and political participation. We work to show young people how their lives are impacted by public policy and in turn, how we can impact public policy.

Resource Link: http://mobilize.org

Montgomery Co Public Schools Study Circles

Montgomery County Study Circles, 2006.

This 6-minute video highlights the efforts of Montgomery County Public Schools (Maryland) Study Circles Program to address racism and student achievement in the district's schools and community. Includes Spanish subtitles.

Resource Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iusbihd0qK8&NR=1

NAME Listserv

National Association for Multicultural Education.

NAME-MCE provides a forum to discuss multicultural education, share resources, post job openings, announce conferences or other events, and ask questions of educators and activists around the world.

Resource Link: http://mail.nameorg.org/mailman/listinfo/name-mce_nameorg.org

Reaching Across Boundaries: Talk to Create Change (2nd Edition)

The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Study Circles Resource Center, 2003.

This free guidebook was developed for teens who are interested in discussing the cliques and social boundaries in their schools. It's part of the Mix It Up program, a partnership between the Study Circles Resource Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Helps young people identify, question, and cross social boundaries in their schools and communities with a Mix It Up Dialogue.

Resource Link: http://www.mixitup.org

Reclaiming Public Education By Reclaiming Our Democracy

David Mathews. Kettering Foundation Press.

This book considers what citizens and educators alike want from public education and how they might come closer to getting it. It is also about the obstacles that block them, beginning with significant differences in the ways that citizens see problems in the schools and how professional educators and policymakers talk about them. This book offers ideas about the work citizens can do to reverse this trend and improve education.

Resource Link: http://www.reclaimingeducation.org

Socratic Seminars

"Socratic Seminar" is perhaps the most widely varied and commonly known name for a class discussion model in which the teacher poses questions concerning a text or idea, and students respond. No individual or organization claims ownership of the model, and most practitioners trace its history to the Platonic Dialogues, in which Socrates engaged his interlocutors in a methodical line of questioning.

Teachers, Study Circles and the Racial Achievement Gap

Catherine Orland. Capstone paper for the School for International Training (submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Master of Arts in Social Justice in Intercultural Relations), 2006.

The subtitle of Orland's 76-page thesis is "How One Dialogue and Action Program Helped Teachers Integrate the Competencies of an Effective Multicultural Educator." Study Circles, a dialogue and action process, brings together teachers, parents and students from diverse racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds to talk about the racial achievement gap. This study asks "How does the experience of participating in Study Circles bring teachers closer to integrating the competencies of the effective multicultural educator?"

Resource Link: http://www.thataway.org/exchange/files/docs/Orland-AchievementGap.doc

Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice

Maurianne Adams, Lee Bell, Pat Griffin. NY: Routledge, 1997.

This much-acclaimed sourcebook is aimed at educators working in the field of social justice education. It addresses theoretical and practical issues that confront teachers who introduce diversity and social justice issues in their classrooms.

Teaching Tolerance

Founded in 1991 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Teaching Tolerance provides educators with free educational materials that promote respect for differences and appreciation of diversity in the classroom and beyond. Our magazine and curriculum kits have earned Oscar nominations, an Academy Award, and more than a dozen honors from the Association of Educational Publishers (EdPress) including the Golden Lamp Award.

Resource Link: http://www.tolerance.org

Telling Stories of Self-Trust and Hope: A Tool for Engaging Youth in Community Change

The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, 2003.

Change happens in communities when people change the story they tell about themselves and others. Stories of self-trust and hope help us to see the community and ourselves differently. This kit helps get youth telling their stories - to each other, to the community, to themselves.

Resource Link: http://www.theharwoodgroup.org

Thirdside.org

Thirdside.org is sponsored by the Global Negotiation Project at Harvard University. The idea of the Third Side and the initial content of this website are drawn from Bill Ury's book The Third Side: Why We Fight and How We Can Stop. Thirdside.org offers numerous tools for negotiation, including high school and college curriculua, workshop facilitators' guides, Third Side stories and case studies, and a variety of exercises.

Resource Link: http://thirdside.org/