To that end, Beckman and Henry administered Intercultural Development Inventories, or IDIs, to Ellis Middle School teaching staff as well as district administrative staff and even the school board. The inventory, according to Lori Henry, the district’s English Language Learning coordinator, analyzes how people deal with cultural differences based on their background, providing some much-needed baseline data on how district staff approaches teaching students of different.

“It creates awareness of how our personalities differ and what our perspective is,” Beckmann said.

The results from the inventory could show a person denies cultural differences, tries to frame cultural differences as not being acceptable in a certain culture in an us versus them sort of way, tries to emphasize how similar everyone is without looking at deeper cultural differences, accepts the fact that there are similarities and differences between each culture, and someone could adapt well to any cultural differences and similarities.

While the goal for any person, or school district for that matter, is to be accepting or adapting in cultural differences, in reality most districts tend to overemphasize everyone’s similarities without paying attention to each other’s differences.

Beckmann and Henry revealed to school board members monday that, based on inventories taken by 32 district administrative staff and board members, the district administration would tend to overemphasize cultural similarities. Of the 32 staff, 42.3 percent tested in the overemphasis category, while 15.4 percent tested that they would accept cultural differences and 19.2 percent tested in the polarization, or the us vs. them, category. The other percentages lie somewhere in between these three ranges.

What that shows us, according to Beckmann, is while the district means well in treating everyone as though they were similar, they would tend to miss differences in cultures that could help students learn.

“When it comes to act on issues that involve differences, we usually tend to make decisions that are based on our own value set, our own perception of similarity,” Beckmann said, explaining further that this may mean missing the opportunities to connect with students on a deeper learning level as the district may not know what lessons are culturally understandable to people who aren’t necessarily used to our school system.

Beckmann cautioned that receiving one inventory result over another doesn’t mean a person is racist or not, but rather shows how, from the experiences each inventory taker has, they deal with people not like themselves. It’s useful to know this, as it shows educators how the district is run and gives an idea of what changes can be made to be more culturally accommodating.

“It really allows us to understand the perspectives of the staff we’re working with,” Henry said.

Beckmann and other members of the community’s Integration Collective Council will meet once every two months to go over the Desegregation Plan details until April, when they’ll bring the plan before the school board for approval before sending it to the state. Beckmann encourages anyone who has ideas or solutions, or who just want to learn more about the Desegregation Plan to contact her directly, as she hopes to get more of the community involved in diversity efforts. In this way, maybe someone will come up with a good idea that will benefit students of all backgrounds.

As things stand, efforts like the Desegregation Plan will continue for a long time if nothing is done to reach out to underpriviledged students.

“I think we’ll be engaged in it perpetually,” Lori said. “As long as we demonstrate an achievement gap based on race.”