I said a little about it on Sandra’s Blog (A Shot in the Dark) but it’s our population that makes the difference.
I hired on there 14 years ago, when we were artifically 30/30/30. 30 white, 30 black, 30 hispanic and 10% other. Artificially as it was done by court order. We had a lot of interesting programs to get us that way. One was a scholarship program, that if you would go to a school in our district where you were the minority, you would get your college tutition paid if you want to a state supported college.
What makes it so cool, in my opinion, is that with that history of diversity, and with the diversity we have, we just don’t have the problems with cliques and social exclusion that a lot of schools have.
I did my student teaching at a much bigger school, that had a huge majority in one race. As a result, lots of students felt excluded. Even worse, they broke up by social/economic groups too, which we don’t see much of either. I really hated that experience, because you felt like you were always the referee.
So do have some cliquiness, but it mostly has to do with what kind of student you are. The AP kids tend to hang together, mostly because they have classes together.
One of the things that I think helps the most, is that we have a common feeder school, so all of our students attended the same middle school also.
We haven’t had the problems with the New Orleans kids that some of our other schools have, more proof to me, that we’re more accepting than most.
Anyway, as a teacher, it’s fun, since the kiddos on the whole seem to accept anything that comes their way.