Finding innovative and effective methods to infer the ability of culturally diverse students continues to present a problem for educators. This paper proposes the House-Tree-Person (HTP) projective technique as a way for school educators to gather important data about student functioning without the use of culturally biased instruments. This technique is intended only as a means of establishing rapport or improving communication between teacher and student. In the HTP, the subject draws a house, a tree, and a person and then tells something about each drawing. Over a period of 10 years, 200 protocols of HTP drawings were collected from culturally diverse subjects aged 5-65. The HTP succeeded in establishing positive rapport with subjects in order to facilitate and assess effective communication. Student comments on their drawings may be used as the basis of teacher inferences about students' social awareness, communication skills, cognitive abilities, knowledge in content areas, and psychological development. Criteria are outlined for each of these areas. Professional ethics and standards concerning classroom use of projective tests are discussed. (SV)