Diversity


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Professional Development

Charlotte Country Day School considers professional development an important activity that is necessary to ensure the highest level of faculty proficiency. Professional growth benefits the individual as well as the school. Our faculty are offered a number of national professional development opportunities in the area of cultural diversity, including:

  • Blumenthal Leadership Institute for Change—Annual summer diversity conference open to teachers and school administrators in the Southeast.
  • EASTED Summer Diversity Institute—New Dimensions in Diversity Training and Multicultural Professional Development.
  • National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) Summer Diversity Institute—A learning and training opportunity for school leaders, faculty, and diversity coordinators in the areas of diversity, multicultural education, and equity and justice.
  • Milton Academy Cultural Diversity Institute: Implementing the Commitment in Independent Schools—A sampler of programs, methods and techniques for implementation of school's commitment to diversity and equity.
  • Facing History and Ourselves Charlotte Institute—Explores Facing History's content and methodology by connecting history to the moral questions inherent in a study not only forms oppression such violence, racism and anti-Semitism, but also of courage, caring, and compassion.
  • SEED: Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity (National)—Educators meet monthly for seminars, and renew books, articles, and videos to examine what gender-inclusive and multi-cultural curriculums look like.

For additional information, email the Cultural Diversity Office.

Accomplishments

We believe students benefit significantly from an education that affirms diversity as a value that is central to educational and academic excellence. As a result, in an effort to strengthen our school's commitment to diversity, we:

  • Host an annual diversity conference in July entitled "Building an Inclusive School Community" that is open to teachers and school administrators in the Southeast.
  • Instituted a Parents of Color In Independent Schools (POCIS) action group.
  • Enhanced the school's curriculum to reflect the needs of our multicultural world.
  • Became the first school in North Carolina to become affiliated with A Better Chance (ABC), a national organization that helps identify and place qualified minority students in schools and colleges.
  • Established three endowed scholarships specifically for minorities.
  • Instituted the William Randolph Hearst Teaching Fellowship Program, which introduces minority first-year teachers to Charlotte Country Day and to the teaching profession.
  • Hired a full-time director of diversity planning to oversee the school's diversity programs.
  • Increased enrollment of students of color.
  • Became the first independent school in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg area to implement a national faculty development seminar called "SEED" (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity).