Celebrating cultural diversity is an integral component of our whole child learning environment at Grace Holistic Center for Education (GHCFE). Our focus on holistic education addresses the diverse needs of students, including their emotional, social, and intellectual development. This comprehensive approach ensures that all students receive a well-rounded education that prepares them for success, regardless of their backgrounds. A whole-child holistic education supports the students mind, body and soul, and with this approach comes benefits to the great community.
Here are a few examples of how our holistic approach to education advances equity in school and our community:
Mindfulness Practices: By integrating mindfulness into the curriculum, GHCFE helps students develop essential life skills such as self-awareness, emotional regulation, and stress management. These skills are crucial for creating a supportive and inclusive school environment, which can positively impact students from various backgrounds.
Personalized Learning: GHCFE’s smaller class sizes allow for more individualized attention from teachers. This personalized approach helps cater to the unique learning styles and needs of each student, ensuring that all students have the opportunity to succeed academically.
Community Engagement: GHCFE encourages students to engage with their community through service projects and volunteer initiatives. This involvement helps students understand and address community issues, fostering a sense of social responsibility and equity.
Parental and Community Involvement: GHCFE promotes strong connections with families and the community, encouraging their active involvement in the educational process. This collaboration ensures that the school’s programs are responsive to the needs and concerns of the community, promoting a more equitable environment.
Financial Accessibility: GHCFE offers scholarships and financial aid to ensure that high-quality education is accessible to students from all economic backgrounds. This reduces financial barriers and ensures that more students can benefit from GHCFE’s educational offerings.
Cultural Competence: GHCFE incorporates cultural competence into its curriculum, celebrating diversity and teaching students to respect and value different perspectives. This fosters an inclusive school culture where all students feel seen and heard.
Social and Emotional Support: GHCFE provides robust social and emotional support services, recognizing that students’ well-being is crucial for their academic and personal success. This support helps create an equitable learning environment where all students can thrive.
Through these initiatives, GHCFE ensures that all students have the opportunity to achieve their full potential and contribute positively to society. Recent studies are now finding that the whole child approach to education benefits the student, as well as their family and the greater community. In recent months, the CDC, National Library of Medicine, and leading Universities have published findings that show the statistical connection from a whole child education and it's positive outcomes on it’s community.
Below are examples of how we help prepare our teachers as well as integrate cultural celebrations into our curriculum.
Culturally responsive teachers tend to have qualities such as a sociopolitical consciousness, positive views of students from diverse backgrounds, responsibility for and the capability to bring about educational change, and the ability to build on students’ prior knowledge while exposing them beyond the status quo. Our staff attend classes to expand our social justice awareness and give greater depth to the challenges students may face. This awareness gives our educators the information needed to ensure an inclusive learning environment.
Our curriculum is structured in two- or three-year cycles (depending on the course) and seeks to give students exposure to content they would not find in public school, including mindfulness, philosophy and world religions, just to name a few. Our selections of reading materials are chosen with grade and reading levels in mind and a desire to expose students to cultures not like their own as well as authors of color.
Stronger partnerships and collaboration between schools and communities improve family engagement, which is critical to bridging home and school cultures. Additionally, these partnerships increase the sense of trust between students, families and schools, which in turn improves student connectedness to school and feelings of inclusiveness. Often students who are most difficult to reach also come from families that struggle in various ways which makes building a strong support network for students and families even more important. Creating a positive school climate also means that student multiple identities are valued and nurtured, which allows students to feel safer and more connected to their schools.
Here at Grace Holistic Center for Education, we want students to feel comfortable in our classrooms while learning the reality of our world. This means subjects such as social studies are taught with an eye for the honest teaching of history. Our Language Arts curriculum seeks to expose students to authors of color while also giving them exposure to what would be considered classic literature. Even when we are reading a book such as The Great Gatsby, we do so with an honest eye toward history in this country, recognizing, for example, that the Harlem Renaissance was a part of the history of the time that is ignored in the “Great American Novel.” We take time in class to recognize and discuss this.
In celebrating cultural diversity, we expose students to the diverse backgrounds and cultures of all scopes of ethnicities we all bring to our community. One of our popular special elective courses has been our “Taste of the World” class where students spend the quarter learning about people of all backgrounds and ethnicities from around the world and celebrate their culture by bringing “tastes” into the classroom to accompany each lesson. In recognition of Hispanic Heritage Awareness month, students are learning about the accomplishments, traditions, and history of Hispanic Americans as well as how their achievements are celebrated in the United States today. Additionally, grades preschool through high school receive Spanish lessons weekly where students are encouraged to grow in their understanding of the Spanish language through the arts and play.
The advanced classes also use standard Spanish curriculum to supplement lessons for their age group. During Spanish lessons, students explore language and culture and learn more about Hispanic heritage throughout their course work.
Upcoming Cultural Activities:
Next month students will be learning about the Mexican tradition “Día de los Muertos” (Day of the Dead), celebrated on November 1st and 2nd. Dia de los Muertos acknowledges the symbiotic relationship between life and death, and it is believed that on November 1st and 2nd of each year, the spirits of the dead are believed to return home and spend time with their relatives.
Students will learn about the rituals and customs celebrating Dia de los Muertos, traditions that trace back over 3,000 years ago when the Olmecs and subsequent Toltecs, Mixtecs, Zapotecs, Maya, Aztec, and Indigenous people of the Americas honored their past loved ones.
In the U.S., the altar-making rituals have been a cultural practice beyond the individual space, where museums, art galleries, community centers, and schools make their own altars for the Day of the Dead. The Chicano Movement introduced this celebration where its original elements went beyond the common family household and became a community expression of cultural heritage that commemorates the ancestors of the Americas.
This is just one of many ways we celebrate cultural heritage in our learning environment and model respect and appreciation for people of all backgrounds and heritage. Stay up to date by following our school online at www.ghcfe.org (or) on our social media channels to keep up to date with our school year activities.
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