Teaching Diversity In School Nic, Foundation Offer Free Training To Teachers

Teachers throughout the Inland Northwest will have the opportunity to undergo free diversity training thanks to a new partnership announced Monday.

North Idaho College is pairing with the Human Rights Education Foundation to offer a two-day seminar in September. It is open to all educators from preschool teachers to college professors.

“This is the gift we want to give to educators,” said Tony Stewart, a member of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, which created the foundation.

The seminar will be held Sept. 15 and 16.

NIC will provide facilities for the seminar while the foundation will deliver veteran diversity trainers from throughout the country, Stewart said.

“We’re trying very much to mix into that two-day session really dynamic speakers who can talk about diversity from different perspectives,” Stewart said.

The seminar will include two workshops for hands-on training, with each session lasting two hours. “The only way to attack hate is through education,” Stewart said.

The project grew out of the “Lemons to Lemonade” campaign, which began in response to the Aryan Nations parade through downtown Coeur d’Alene in 1998. To counter the parade, the task force took pledges for every minute the Aryans marched and donated that money to human rights activities. More than $35,000 was donated to schools, teachers and organizations to further educational programs about diversity. Teachers applied for grants of up to $1,500 to bring programs or resources to their schools. Some 18 grants have been awarded.

This year, Stewart said, the task force decided that the grant program would be more effective if educators were more skilled in teaching diversity. The seminar was developed for that purpose.

In the future, Stewart said, grants will be limited to schools in which at least one teacher has undergone diversity training.

The foundation plans to contact all schools in Eastern Washington and North Idaho to invite teachers to the seminar. Also, the foundation plans to ask regional colleges to grant credits to teachers who complete the training. NIC already has agreed to do so.

“It’s a great opportunity for NIC to work with the foundation,” said Jerry Gee, chairman of the college’s diversity committee and vice president for instruction. Gee said teachers don’t often have the resources and training necessary to provide proper diversity education.

“The generations to come have got to have the ability to work with others,” Gee said.

NIC President Michael Burke said the seminar provides an opportunity to collaborate further with the community in its fight for human rights.

“I’m pleased to know we’re still at the forefront of cultural and intellectual events for Idaho,” he said.