Middle School Diversity in Practice

In the Middle School we integrate diversity into our curriculum throughout our English, history, and foreign language classes and into our advisory program.
  • We focus on providing students with the opportunity to learn from literature while they make informed decisions about their own lives.
  • We look at Harlem Renaissance poetry in our poetry unit and Cambodian experiences with book groups that study Children of the River.
  • The classic, American novel To Kill a Mockingbird and the newer book The Book Thief make clear the evils of racial, sexual, and religious discrimination.
  • We hear New Orleans voices by exploring Mardi Gras Indians, slavery, civil rights, and the Vietnamese culture in New Orleans.
  • Students read, discuss, and write about social ills, discovering that those being pushed out of the community suffer, as does the community at large. Our students have an opportunity to explore positive solutions leading to inclusion rather than exclusion.
  • We explore slavery and its legacy in the south. We visit the Destrehan Plantation and the Herman Grimma House where students are exposed to life of the slaves in the city and on a plantation. They get to see the location of the largest slave revolt in American history.
  • We discuss the involvement of African American soldiers in the American Revolution, War of 1812, and the Civil War. We study the Abolitionist Movement.
  • We also focus on the plight of the Native Americans throughout every unit and the loss of their land to white settlers.
  • Students study the south during the Civil War and Reconstruction, learning about the racial the beginnings of the Klan, and the violence carried out against unionist, both black and white—much of it taking place in New Orleans.
  • We study the 13,14 and 15 amendments, which are considered the civil rights amendments that provide the foundation for the later civil rights movement.
  • All Middle School students study two foreign languages, either French or Spanish for three consecutive years and Mandarin in both seventh and eighth grade. Our foreign language curriculum explores language in context so that students not only learn to speak in a foreign language, but also become familiar with the cultural and social contexts in which these languages are spoken.
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