Understanding each other

Accepting the differences in their student populations and learning about diverse ethnic groups has become a significant educational component for Five Towns schools — private and public — whether it’s through training for teachers and administrators or classroom lessons for the students.
The curriculum at the Brandeis School, a private Jewish community day school that serves children from the nursery level through eighth-grade in Lawrence, encourages acceptance and understanding, said Heidi Goldenberg, the school’s spokeswoman.
At Brandeis, where the great majority of students are white, the second-grade studies Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and the struggle for civil rights during Black History Month. The fourth-grade does an extensive unit on Native Americans, which culminates in a day-long workshop on the culture. The fifth-grade reads the book “Seedfolks,” a short novel that focuses on characters who each represent a different ethnic group. The sixth- through eighth-grades study racial prejudice in the South through the young adult novel “Sounder” and study the life of African-American statesman Frederick Douglass. They also learn about the persecution of Jews, gypsies, Catholics and gays during the Holocaust.
“Our teaching staff is trained to embrace and explore the idea of ‘otherness’ as living as a Diaspora Jew is all about being different and therefore necessary to understand our own condition,” Goldenberg said. “We teach our students to see the world broadly and actively teach an inclusionary philosophy in which everyone is and should be valued.”
This new diversity education series began last month in the Lawrence School District at the middle school level. In May, noted speaker Charlie Harary, district resident, spoke to district administrators and middle school faculty about Judaism and the Jewish culture.
“Recent events in State Island, Baltimore, Ferguson and throughout America, highlight the need for deepening our understanding of each other,” said Lawrence Superintendent Gary Schall.