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Intercultural Practice and Equity · Foundations
How culture, identity, disability and power travel through the ordinary decisions a state division makes every day.
40–45 minutes · 4 lessons · Voluntary learning
Culture is not only something other people have. In a state division it shows up as defaults: which channel counts, how fast an answer is expected, what proof is accepted, and who is expected to speak.
Disability meets language, age, income, work and distance in the same person, on the same day. Records are built from single categories, and the gap between them is usually filled by an assumption.
Public authority is rarely exercised as a dramatic decision. It sits in a definition, a deadline, a required channel and an agenda — and its effect is often different from its intent.
The practical tool for this module: take one step in a real process, find the assumption it relies on, check where it is written, and make the smallest honest change with a named owner.
Choose one step in a process you touch — a notice, a deadline, a form field, a contract requirement, a meeting rule — and complete the assumption check in the last lesson for that one step.
Every state process carries a culture, whether anyone designed it that way or not. A notice assumes a reader. A deadline assumes a week. A required form assumes a person who already knows the program exists. This first module gives you a shared way to talk about culture, identity, disability, intersectionality, power and cultural humility inside public administration, and ends with one practical tool: a way to find a single point where a state process may be relying on an assumption nobody has checked. Nothing here is scored, and nothing you write is collected.
The process already carries a culture. The only question is whether anyone can say what it is.
Keep the foundations in reach while you draft a policy, write a notice, set a deadline, build a survey, award a contract or run a workgroup.
Run one step through the five-line assumption check this month and make the smallest change that is within your own authority.
Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.
The design reference for this curriculum: multiple ways to engage, plain language, and instruction built for a range of learners rather than adapted afterward.
The national standards for culturally and linguistically appropriate services, including governance, workforce, language assistance, community partnership and accountability.
Minnesota's policy, training and technical resource on disability, including accessibility guidance for public bodies and information on state disability policy.
The state office supporting Minnesota's Olmstead Plan goals for integrated, self-determined community life, including co-creation of the plan with people who have lived experience of disability.
Federal information and technical assistance on the Americans with Disabilities Act, including state and local government obligations under Title II.
Practical guidance on accessible documents, presentations, meetings and digital content for public-sector staff.
Federal plain-language guidance on writing so that readers can find, understand and use information the first time they read it.
Description of the continuum this program uses as its theory of change, from Denial and Polarization through Minimization toward Acceptance and Adaptation.