Sponsored by Mitchell R. Hammer, Ph.D. IDI, LLC and the College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota

Register for the IDI Summit online.

May 25 and 26, 2010
8:30AM – 3PM
Continuing Education Conference Center
1890 Buford Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55108

The IDI Education Summit is an opportunity for P-12 education leaders to come together to collectively address our most pressing educational challenges. This Summit is a collaborative, “call to action” for building intercultural competence as a primary means of reducing and eliminating cultural and racial disparities in achievement scores, graduation rates, disciplinary rates and attendance rates.

This summit directly focuses on a cultural competence approach for eliminating cultural and racial disparities in education. This approach addresses the cultural competence of leaders, teachers, and staff in our P-12 schools and identifies powerful ways to develop a “cultural competence system” that can support the educational mission of each school.

The Goals of This Summit are Both Ambitious and Urgent

• To provide education leadership a framework for developing intercultural competence as an effective approach for eliminating cultural and racial disparities in our schools.
•  To provide a practical blueprint for connecting cultural competence to the goals of the school and elimination of cultural and racial disparities.
•  To clarify the differences between “culture and poverty” and “bias” (e.g., race-based oppression) approaches compared to an IDI “cultural competence” approach.
•  To reach consensus on a “call to action” among educators and to identify ways to make the “call to action” a reality in Minnesota.

Who Should Participate

This summit is designed for educators from schools and/or school districts who have made a commitment to building intercultural competence as a means of addressing cultural and racial disparities. This commitment is demonstrated through each school’s application of the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) as an assessment tool for identifying the level of intercultural competence individuals and groups possess in meeting the multicultural challenges in our schools in order to eliminate achievement gap, graduation rate, disciplinary and attendance disparities in our schools.

Summit Schedule and Session Descriptions

Day 1: Leadership in Building Cultural Competence across Schools and Cultural Communities

Invited participants represent upper leadership levels within school systems and individual schools, at the Superintendent and Principal levels. In addition, key IDI Qualified Administrators who have multi-school responsibilities for the use of the IDI are also invited.  A full day of presentations and small group dialogue among leadership levels will take place in order to better situate cultural competence development as a mechanism for eliminating cultural and racial disparities. The collective leadership group will also discuss the need for establishing relationships with key culture group community resource organizations and individuals in order to develop a cultural competence system that educators can engage to support learning with each school.

Day 2: Implementing Intercultural Competence Development in a School Environment

Invited participants include the Day 1 key IDI Qualified Administrators who have multi-school responsibilities for the use of the IDI, IDI Qualified Administrators whose responsibilities with the IDI reside largely within one school, and IDI Qualified Administrators who work with K-12 schools as IDI consultants. A summary from the Day 1 Leadership Summit will be provided along with specific guidelines for effectively (1) implementing cultural competence development programs and (2) how these efforts connect to eliminating cultural and racial disparities. During the day, presentations will be made and small group dialogues among participants will take place that focus on implementing IDI Guided Development™ in ways that eliminate cultural and racial disparities.

Registration: The registration fee is $40 per day. A light breakfast, lunch and complimentary parking are included. Register for the IDI Summit online.

CEUs: Continuing professional education clock hours for administrators and teachers are available for participants.

Location: Continuing Education Conference Center (University of Minnesota St. Paul campus), 1890 Buford Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55108

More Information: Please contact Vanessa Abanu at steel012@umn.edu, 612-626-5123.