Culturally Proficient Learning Communities

"Cultural proficiency challenges learning communities to go even deeper when inquiring about student barriers to success. This perspective is necessary to truly address the achievement and expectation gaps in our schools. Before we ask ourselves why our students are not succeeding, we must understand and examine our own perceptions and assumptions about them."
—Timothy A. Bias, Administrator
Pomona Unified School District, CA

Close the achievement gap with equity-focused professional learning communities!

Professional learning communities (PLCs) can be a powerful force for creating equitable, inclusive schools where all students succeed. Integrating the four Tools of Cultural Proficiency with the PLC framework, this relevant guide offers school leaders, district administrators, and staff developers a collaborative approach to address bias and inequity.

Culturally Proficient Learning Communities discusses the impact of our history on cultural understanding and provides a wealth of practical PLC-building strategies—including assessment and inquiry-driven planning, instructional design, curriculum development, coaching, leadership, and shared decision making. The authors examine the goals, purpose, and process of creating and sustaining equity-focused PLCs through:

• Templates, protocols, activities, and rubrics for deconstructing inequity in student achievement
• Stories, tools, and thinking prompts to guide an inside-out transformation toward cultural proficiency
• An extended example of one school district′s journey in becoming a culturally proficient learning community

Schools that view diversity and differences as assets and opportunities will experience stronger holistic growth and increased academic achievement!

Dr. Delores B. Lindsey served as assistant principal, principal, and county office administrator. She served as Executive Director of the regional school leadership center. Delores uses her skills as Cognitive Coach and Adaptive Schools trainer blended with her understanding and skills as a cultural proficiency trainer to design and implement the 10-Day Certification Program for Culturally Proficient Educational Practice. She served as assistant professor at California State University San Marcos for more than 10 years. She retired from the institution; however, she has not retired from the education profession. Her primary focus is developing culturally proficient leaders. She helps educational leaders examine their organizations’ policies and practices and their individual beliefs and values about cross-cultural communication. Her favorite reflective questions are, Who are we? and, Are we who we say we are? Delores and her husband, Randall (her favorite SAGE/Corwin author), continue to co-write about the application of the four tools of Cultural Proficiency. Her most recent publications which are on Corwin’s bestseller list are Leading While Female: A Culturally Proficient Response for Gender Equity, and My Leading While Female Journey: A Guided Reflective Journal with Trudy Arriaga and Stacie Stanley. Dr. Linda Jungwirth, Association of California School Administrators (ACSA) California Educator of the Year–Professor of Education (2013), and President of Convening Conversations, Inc., is passionately devoted to supporting organizations in Culturally Proficient Leadership, building trusting, inclusive, collaborative communities. Dr. Jungwirth taught middle and high school science, and served as: district technology coordinator; county office curriculum and professional development coordinator serving 66 districts in Southern California; and director of the Center for the Advancement of Small Learning Environments for 19 high schools in 11 Southern California districts. Dr. Jungwirth is adjunct professor for Pepperdine University’s Educational Leadership, Administration, and Policy doctorate program teaching culturally proficient leadership and communication. Dr. Jungwirth is recognized internationally for her work in Cultural Proficiency, and is co-author of Corwin’s bestseller, Culturally Proficient Learning Communities: Confronting Inequities Through Collaborative Curiosity, and Rowman-Littlefield’s 10 Models of Teacher Evaluation: The Policies, The People, The Potential. Dr. Jungwirth is a National Training Associate for Thinking Collaborative (ThinkingCollaborative.com) in the areas of Cognitive CoachingSM and Adaptive Schools—Facilitating and Developing Collaborative Groups. Additional recognition includes Administrator of the Year, California League of High Schools, Region 10, and the Association of California School Administrators (ACSA) Wilson A. Grace Award for her ideals of tolerance, compassion, and professional leadership, and as a leader who motivates and inspires personal and professional growth in others. . Jarvis V.N.C. Pahl is executive director of Pahl Business & Educational Consortium (PBEC). She taught biology and microbiology in California, Maryland, Connecticut, and Brazil. She also taught while in the Peace Corps, and in Botswana Africa. As a school administrator, she worked in California high schools and school districts. She was a member of the Graduate School of Education’s School Management Program at the University of California in Los Angeles. She has traveled in Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, South America, Antarctica, and the Arctic Circle. She speaks Portuguese, some Setswana (language of Botswana), and Spanish. As a consultant, she has designed, planned, and facilitated hundreds of learning experiences for parent groups, students, teachers, administrators, and blended groups of educators, parents, students, and individuals from the business world. She believes individuals have a gene for leadership in their area of specialty. Randall B. Lindsey is Emeritus Professor at California State University, Los Angeles. He has served as a teacher, an administrator, executive director of a non-profit corporation, as Interim Dean at California Lutheran University, as Distinguished Educator in Residence at Pepperdine University, and as Chair of the Education Department at the University of Redlands. All of Randy’s experiences have been in working with diverse populations and his area of study is the behavior of white people in multicultural settings. His Ph.D. is in Educational Leadership from Georgia State University, his Master of Arts in Teaching is in History Education from the University of Illinois, and his B.S. in Social Science Education is from Western Illinois University. He has served as a junior high school and high school teacher and as an administrator in charge of school desegregation efforts. At Cal State, L.A. he served as Chair of the Division of Administration and Counseling and as Director of the Regional Assistance Centers for Educational Equity, a regional race desegregation assistance center. With co-authors he has written several books and articles on applying the Cultural Proficiency Framework in various contexts. Email – randallblindsey@gmail.com Website - CCPEP.org Twitter - @RBLindsey41