Louisville Teacher Selected for Tolerance Project Advisory Board

A Louisville teacher has been selected to participate in a program that helps teach students to be tolerant.Kathleen Crawford is a teacher at Louisville Collegiate School and one of 22 board members selected out of 500 applicants to advise the Southern Poverty Law Center's “Teaching Tolerance” project.The project helps educators develop anti-bias classroom activities and offers educators various resources to reduce prejudices. The organization has asked Crawford and others to support its project from an on-the-ground perspective.“I think that it’s important that we fight hate and extremism, that type of thing, and the Southern Poverty Law Center does that through legal action. But when you start looking at the future, where’s the future? Those are the kids sitting in my classroom," said Crawford.Crawford has spent time in both public and private schools in Jefferson County and all students could learn how to be more tolerant, she said.“Regardless of the student assignment plan or if a school’s private or if it’s rural or urban, we all have to do something to embrace each other and learn from each other and not be scared of each other,” Crawford said.Crawford will head to Montgomery, Alabama in January. Meanwhile she said board members will offer feedback and advise the organization on various resources the project produces, like how to have a classroom conversation about 9/11 and religion. She will also offer feedback and give advice on the Teaching Tolerance bi-annual publication.