DEI IN SCHOOLS
My eighth-grade math teacher told me I was “pretty smart for a Black girl."
I want you to be the teacher that I needed growing up.
You want to have great interaction with ALL your students and promote diversity in schools
But sometimes the cultural differences can make that tricky.
Maybe your Black and brown students don’t seem to be engaging and performing as well...
Or you’re not sure how best to tackle the subject of race in the classroom.
Or perhaps you’ve heard of “implicit bias” and you just want to learn more.
Either way, I know you’re committed to helping all your students become productive and anti-racist citizens of the world.
The first step? Taking a look at your own life stories and how they shape your own bias... whether you realized it or not.
We all have them. Ready to get started?
Art, race history, and storytelling: The secret ingredients we use to help you self-reflect and think critically to be the best possible teacher and leader.
The results you can expect when you invest in our diversity, equity, and inclusion workshops in schools.
- Increasing teacher confidence to help lower turnover
- Creating stronger relationships with students to help reduce the dropout rate
- Creating an inclusive classroom leads to greater academic achievement
- Creating more productive citizens
When teachers have the opportunity to move out of a power position and embrace student empowerment, it can yield amazing results.
After the training with Melissa Crum, I had the confidence to start the conversation on multiculturalism with my students. “They were excited to engage with one another as we discussed cultural appropriation, cultural exchanges and cultural assimilation. The interesting thing I found is that they were hungry to learn and embrace multiculturalism. I was able to join them in the conversation not just lead it.
John G.
Allen High School
Visual Arts Department Head
DEI SERVICES FOR SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES
Audits, assessments, and workshops that break down bias to build up educators.
Audits: Shine light on the ignored areas within your school or college department
This is the best place to start.
We’ll investigate the systems and practices in your school or university department (maximum of 200 participants) to give you a highly customized diversity, equity, and inclusion action plan.
We’ll read through your policies, guidelines, and hold focus groups with staff to uncover unspoken rules that are holding your institution back from leading the way.
Audits are not essential, but are a great place to start, so we can recommend the best path for workshops and further action.
Assessments: Metrics to make your interactions more productive
This is a great place to set benchmarks for personal and team growth.
The Intercultural Development Inventory® (IDI® ) allows you to see an individual’s or group’s progression along a continuum of cross-cultural competence. Because of this, the IDI provides in-depth insights into how individuals and groups make sense of cultural differences, and also how they respond to cultural differences.
The Intercultural Conflict Style Inventory® (ICS®) is an assessment that helps you understand your conflict and communication style, so you can better resolve conflicts and solve problems across cultural boundaries.
Both assessments come with additional tools. Click below to set a meeting with Dr. Crum to learn more.
Unlocking Inclusive Leadership in 90 Days:
Create a DEI Committee Governance Structure without Certification or Formal Experience
Tired of navigating the complexities of inclusion and belonging with few resources and no support from leadership? Let me be your resource!
Learn more about my transformative 90-day course for DEI advocates like you. In this course, you'll:
☑️ Gain clarity and find power in your role.
☑️ Gain support and buy-in from leaders and colleagues.
☑️ Learn a data-based sustainable strategy.
☑️ Align work with your organization's needs.
Stop the confusion and burnout—feel confident in your inclusive leadership and create a workplace where everyone thrives!
Interactive workshops that invite self reflection and critical thinking
We offer three series of workshops for educators.
You can book one, two, or all three - but they must be followed in the order below.
The time it takes to deliver each series is up to you - the workshops can be held as often as twice a week or as little as twice a month.
We also have two stand-alone workshops that are exclusively offered to schools and universities.
YOUR JOURNEY STARTS HERE
Series 1: Understanding Bias: The Work of Anti-Racism
This series of three workshops addresses the following big questions:
What does it mean to be anti-racist vs. non-racist? How do we combat personal bias? How can we create space for others' experience within the classroom and beyond?
Get ready for some critical thinking to unpack your belief systems, influences, and background.
Goal: To help teachers reshape their expectations for students, consider every learner’s background, and introduce diverse curriculum development.
Included workshops (each one is 2 hours):
- Understanding Implicit Bias through Self-Reflection
- Critical Reflection with Peers
- How to be an Anti-Racist
Now you’re ready for...
Series 2: Race and Identity Definitions Toolkit
This series of seven workshops equips teachers with all the verbal tools necessary for productive conversations and purposeful action.
In breakout groups, we'll process and unpack terminology and discover how we can mindfully use our words.
By equipping educators with powerful language, it will be easier to lead difficult, inclusive, and enagaging conversations in the classroom.
*Note: Your organization can have fewer than seven sessions, but they must be taken in order.
Goal: To empower teachers with accurate language and clear communication to tackle difficult conversations with confidence.
Workshops will look at the following terminology (each one is 2 hours):
- Session 1: “Normal," discrimination, prejudice, and privilege
- Session 2: White supremacy, race, systemic structural racism, and power
- Session 3: Anti-Blackness, racial battle fatigue, colorism
- Session 4: Ethnicity, latinx/e, BIPOC, gender, cis
- Session 5: Microaggressions, microinequities, intersectionality
- Session 6: Diversity, equality, equity
- Session 7: Inclusion, belonging, liberation, allyship, accompliceship
And finally...
Series 3: Collaboration, Conflict Resolution, and Community Building
This four-part series provides your teachers and staff with the essential strategies to build stronger relationships with students and colleagues to overcome adversity.
Together, we’ll discover how to respond to unexpected challenges, learn key components of critical discussion, identify personal triggers, and activate best classroom practices.
Goal: To create radical growth through boosting productivity, authentic communication, and developing robust and transparent policies.
Included workshop (each one is 2 hours):
- Best practices for collaboration, conflict, and community building
- Investigating dominant culture “norms” in your organization
- Taking risks in a growth mindset community
- Who am I as a teacher?
Not exactly what you’re looking for? Create your own customized workshop...
This option allows you to craft a session tailored to fully meet your school's needs.
Whether you want to take a more critical approach to choosing curriculum, reassess how you view students and the communities they come from, or improve classroom dynamics, we’ll work with your team to reach their goals and create a more equitable environment.
Want a different approach?
We’ll create an informal weekly club for your staff where we use books as tools to break down bias
Dialogue and Action: A club for shifting workplace culture
Designed to foster connection and community, this weekly one-hour club uniquely gathers colleagues, regardless of their title or position, into honest and critical conversation.
By creating a space where authentic dialogue can occur, teams have the opportunity for greater productivity, empathy building, higher retention rates, and greater academic success.
This action-oriented club meets for eight weeks, focusing first on discussion and then on applying DEI concepts specifically to your school or college.
Participants leave with the tools and courage needed to create change from wherever they are.
Potential books include:
Implicit Bias in Schools: A Practitioner’s Guide by Cheryl Staats, Gina Laura Gullo, and Kelly Capatosto
Diversity Regimes: Why Talk Is Not Enough to Fix Racial Inequality at Universities by James M. Thomas
Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education by Robin DiAngelo and Özlem Sensoy
Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy by April Baker-Bell
Today’s leaders can no longer wish away or wait for someone else to engage their organizations about diversity and inclusion.
Dr. Crum drove this point home and provided real world experiences and examples when dealing with implicit bias by using the multi cultural, critical, reflective and practice (MCRP) professional development process.
Jay J.
Director
Professional & Executive Education
Ohio University
Your questions answered
(and maybe a few more)
How many people can attend the workshops?
We have a maximum capacity of 50 people to keep the sessions intimate and interactive.
For schools and colleges with more than 50 people we can hold multiple identical workshops.
Do you help with registration?
Sometimes, when organizations register large groups and need to repeat workshops (because there are more than 50 people), we are asked to register participants in different sessions. There is an extra fee for this, but it’s no problem to do.
Will you (Melissa) facilitate all sessions?
If I am available, yes! If not, I have a fantastic team that I have trained who can deliver these workshops with the same results.
Can we have a workshop shorter or longer than 2 hours?
Only the customizable workshops can be longer or shorter than 2 hours.
Do you lead virtual and in-person workshops?
Yes. I have traveled across the country and have held workshops in Ohio, California, South Carolina, to name a few. I’ve also held plenty on Zoom.
How do we decide who should be in which workshops?
It’s important to have a real mix of all staff in each workshop - it’s important not to separate educators based on their position in the organization. Mixing up hierarchy is key.
Which workshop should I book?
The three series of workshops have been designed to go through consecutively.
Series 1 is the place to start so you can start with Understanding Implicit Bias through Self-Reflection. Then you can work through series 2 to build up your language toolkit, and finally series 3 which is where we look at systems, practices, and power.
Do you lead workshops for students?
While our focus is educators, we can customize learning experiences for students so please get in touch.
Hmmm, none of your proposed workshops meet our objectives. Will you create a customized workshop?
Yes, absolutely. Just get in touch and we can have a chat to put together a proposal.
Dr. Crum's presentation was something our district has needed for a long time!
Her conversational style captivated her audience, while providing many facts, realizations, and helpful tips.
I am excited to see the impact Dr. Crum's presentation has among our staff as we continue to strive to honor and include all students!
Jenny V.
English Learner Teacher
Ready to start leading the difficult conversations in your classroom with confidence?
A Resource Just for You!
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The 400: An Afrikan Epic Curriculum Guide brings together socio-political and spiritual aspects of art, music, and race to encourage middle school, high school and college students to think critically about identity, systemic oppression, and culture.