All educators understand the need to be culturally responsive to the broad spectrum of pupils that comprise California’s student population. The state’s students are truly a widely diverse group, and educators know that must be honored and acknowledged if equitable student learning is to take place.

That’s one of the reasons ACSA has a Valuing Diversity Award. The recipient is a person who fosters school climates that celebrate diversity and encourage staffs to take risks in reaching out to find success for all students. The 2009 Valuing Diversity Award honoree, Janet Amani Scott, is just such a person.

Scott is currently working with the Efficacy Institute as the director of school and district initiatives, but just last year was the principal of Peres Elementary in West Contra Costa USD. While there, she led her school – one of the lowest performing in the district, and serving a multicultural, multilingual student population in an area of urban blight – out of Program Improvement status.

Scott said there were two basic factors at work in achieving this.

“One was the overarching mission from which we based our efforts to build student, teacher and staff capacity,” she said. “The Efficacy Institute provided that philosophical foundation and the corresponding perspective from which we viewed all of our subsequent work. The second contributing factor was the work we did with our PI coach.”

In fact, Peres Elementary was so effective that the California Department of Education recognized it as an Honorable Mention School for the 2007-08 Title 1 Academic Achievement Award. 

The importance of valuing diversity was made at a very early age for Scott when she and her mother marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Around 1966 at the age of 7, I accompanied my mother on a march with Dr. King,” Scott said. “He was in Chicago to protest the city’s unfair treatment of the poor and people of color. My memories of the event and time are many and vivid.

“I recall walking with my mother and a multitude of people, young, old, black and white from Chicago’s Soldiers Field downtown to city hall. As we walked past the people standing along the street they began to shout and call us names. These people also threw things and spat at us. The worst was when I was spat on.

“But this is not the reason it remains vivid in my memory, it is because young black and white men and a white priest encircled me to shield me from the spitting. While this incident could have shaped my life in many ways, I believe it was the action of those that shielded me that has had the lasting impact. Even in the face of extreme intolerance people can choose to act in very humane ways.” 

Perhaps because of this experience Scott has done significant work in bringing diversity to staff development, getting all staff to believe that all students can achieve academically if they work hard, a belief that was not necessarily universal when she came on board. By implementing rigorous, culturally responsive teaching and learning, Scott and staff at Peres made big strides in closing the achievement gap for African American and English learner subgroups on the California Standards Tests.

Scott credits part of this to her efforts to make open discussions on issues of race, equal access and the need for equity in schools such as Peres an intentional part of her work.

“One outcome of these discussions was a desire to explore and implement culturally responsive teaching and practice,” she said. “I found the work we did with Dr. (Sharroky) Hollie and the Center for Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning particularly informative and effective. We shared relevant articles, looked at student engagement strategies, and disaggregated student data, both achievement and behavioral.”

Scott’s work did not stop at the boundaries of her campus either. She served as a panelist on Congressman George Miller’s African American Women’s Forum on Education, along with six other prominent African American Women from the field of education working in the Bay Area.

“This was one of five community forums hosted by Congressman Miller’s office to engage the community in relevant dialogue with congressman as well as to capture the African American Women’s voice on important issues in education such as the achievement gap, No Child Left Behind legislation and higher education,” Scott said. “I felt honored to be given the opportunity to speak with such an informed group of women on such an important topic. My participation was both enlightening and rewarding and served to energize my daily work in a very meaningful way.”

These are but a few examples on the extensive list of accomplishments and efforts Scott has made in the area of promoting cultural responsiveness, both in schools and in the community.

Despite all her work in this area, she was modest in talking about this ACSA award at the awards presentation ceremony Nov. 6 at the annual Leadership Summit.

“I am extremely humbled,” she said. “To me I was just doing what I think is the right thing to do. What I’ve learned is every child should have the opportunity to achieve.”