The influence of the National SEED Project upon teachers' professional practice in a rural, midwestern school district

Abstract

The United States is becoming more racially diverse, and it is imperative that PK-12 teachers receive high-quality professional development in diversity and inclusion issues to better understand the students whom they teach. The National Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity (SEED) Project has been a prominent diversity training opportunity for PK-12 educators since 1987 and has been in operation in Black River Falls (BRF) since 2012. BRF is a small town in West-Central Wisconsin and is the context for this hermeneutic phenomenological study. There are three sub-communities discussed in this dissertation: The city of BRF, the BRF School District (BRFSD), and the Ho-Chunk Nation. Approximately 23% of the students in the BRFSD are Native American (mostly enrolled members of the Ho-Chunk Nation) and nearly 100% of the faculty are White, which means that the faculty is not necessarily representative of the students whom they teach. This study discovered that voluntary participation in BRF SEED produced transformative results in teacher participants and deepened their awareness of diversity issues. Teachers interviewed for this study described a greater willingness to infuse their curriculum with diversity-related content and reported having a better understanding of their Ho-Chunk neighbors as a result of participating in BRF SEED.