At a class for Washingtonville teachers on how to make their curricula -- and students -- more culturally inclusive, an elementary school teacher shared how one of her students asked why a classmate looks a certain way.

"He said, 'Why are you so extra crispy?' " the teacher recounted. "The other kid goes, 'What do you mean, extra crispy?' The first kid goes, 'You know -- dark.' "

That is one of the areas this optional weekly class addresses, said Little Britain Elementary School Principal Sagrario Rudencindo-O'Neill, who teaches the class in the Little Britain library.

"I thought it was important that we were able to give people tools of what to do, and what to say to understand the students they were working with," O'Neill said.

According to O'Neill's records, Hispanic students made up 10 percent of her school's student body in 2007 when she began this job. Today, she says, that figure is 28 percent.

About 65 percent of the students in the district are white, while the teaching staff is 96.7 percent white, O'Neill said, but she added that does not mean the teachers are outmatched.

One of the first steps O'Neill suggested was to change up students' reading assignments.

"Let's look at what our kids are reading, and start ordering different kinds of stories so that all our kids are represented," O'Neill said. "We're doing the same books over and over again, but our kids are not the same kids anymore."

She is also helping teachers incorporate students' respective cultures into their lessons, and resolve uncomfortable moments like the one described at the top of this article.

"The other boy it was said to didn't really get it. I said [to myself], 'I have to address it,' " the teacher said. "I just said, 'People are like a box of crayons,' because I'm trying to think on their level. ...I said, 'Look in the box. How many colors do you see?' ..."I was just trying to explain to him that if everybody was the same, if we had one box of crayons with all the same colors, how boring would that be? Then, he says, 'Yeah. I get it now.' "