Third in a series
Re “Multi-Culturalism Not Only Breathes but Smiles and Plays on Culver High Campus”
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Mr. Farris and wife Lindsey, the high school's cheer coach.
Second-year Principal Dylan Farris takes strong but tasteful pride in the assertion that the United Nations student body at Culver City High School is a national model with scarcely any defects, a genuine experiment in universal living.
“We have certain groups that come to us with one common question,” says Mr. Farris.
“They ask, ‘What are you doing to promote the outstanding performances of some of your sub-groups of students, particularly African Americans?’
“I think I mentioned this at the last School Board meeting – when we were first approached, we were taken a little bit aback because we have not been deliberate about that.
“Because African American students were high achieving, they wanted to know, how did we do that? What strategies were we using to get them to perform better than they were at other schools?
“The answer was: We have no idea. We are not targeting them specifically.
“This is a culture on our campus that says ‘we are all in this together.’ That is what has yielded these results,” Mr. Farris said.
“But we did start asking ourselves that question: Is there something occurring here that we could tell other people about?
“Again with the help of members of our staff, Carlos Valverde, counselor Rebekah Howard and Lisa Cooper, we approached our African American student population. We said we wanted to establish focus groups to find out what your experience here is like.”
(To be continued)
