
Creating a Culture
of Safety and Belonging in Changing Times

Resources to help navigate student and family needs.
Printed Resources
Belonging Through a Culture of Dignity
While efforts to achieve equity in education are prominent in school districts across this country, the effective implementation that results in meaningful change remains elusive. Even with access to compelling theories and approaches such as multicultural education, culturally responsive teaching, culturally relevant instruction, culturally sustaining pedagogy, schools still struggle to implement equitable change that reshapes the academic experiences of students marginalized by the prevailing history, culture, and traditions in public education. Instead of getting it right with equity implementation, many schools and districts remain trapped in a cycle of equity dysfunction. In Belonging through a Culture of Dignity, Cobb and Krownapple argue that the cause of these struggles are largely based on the failure of educators to consider the foundational elements upon which educational equity is based, belonging and dignity. Through this work, the authors make these concepts accessible and explain their importance in the implementation of educational equity initiatives. Though the importance of dignity and belonging might appear to be self-evident at first glance, it’s not until these concepts are truly unpacked, that educators realize the dire need for belonging through dignity. Once these fundamental human needs are understood, educators can gain clarity of the barriers to meaningful student relationships, especially across dimensions of difference such as race, class, and culture.
Unearthing Joy: A Guide to Culturally and Historically Responsive Curriculum and Instruction
In this sequel to Cultivating Genius, Gholdy Muhammad adds a fifth pursuit—joy—to her groundbreaking framework. Dr. Muhammad shows how joy, which is rooted in the cultural and historical realities of Black students, can enhance our efforts to cultivate identity, skills, intellect, and criticality for ALL students, giving them a powerful purpose to learn and contribute to the world. Dr. Muhammad’s wise implementation advice is paired with model lessons that span subjects and grade levels.
Identity-Conscious Educator: Building Habits and Skills for a More Inclusive School
Learn powerful, practical strategies for creating an inclusive school community. The Identity-Conscious Educator provides a framework for building awareness and understanding of five identity categories: race, social class, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. Connect with vignettes and personal stories from the author that illuminate how to address identity topics in your personal and professional life. Then, develop skills in engaging in meaningful interactions with students and peers.
- Discover how identity affects both personal and professional lives.
- Review a framework for building habits and skills of identity-conscious teaching and learning.
- Build knowledge of five different identity categories and experiences --race, social class, sexual orientation, gender, and disability --and then act for positive change.
- Reflect with end-of-chapter questions.
- Review practical, research-based strategies, and activities for having difficult conversations and creating more inclusive communities.
Fix Injustice, Not Kids and Other Principles for Transformative Equity Leadership
Six principles for leading unequivocally in ways that disrupt inequity at its roots.
Fix Injustice, Not Kids and Other Principles for Transformative Equity Leadership offers a deep dive into the leadership values, commitments, and practices that help educational leaders create and sustain equitable schools and districts. Drawing from their extensive equity and inclusion work with schools, Paul Gorski and Katy Swalwell introduce key components of the equity literacy framework. They then challenge principals, equity professionals, and other K–12 leaders to embrace six guiding principles for meaningful equity leadership:
• Direct confrontation: Honestly naming and directly addressing the conditions that perpetuate inequity.
• Fix injustice, not kids: Avoiding deficit views, focused on "fixing" people who are marginalized, and embracing structural views, focused on eliminating inequitable conditions.
• Prioritization: Reimagining policies and practices and rebuilding institutional cultures in ways that account for historical and present inequities and their ramifications.
• Just access: Reconsidering what we provide equitable access to and whether it is itself equitable.
• Evidence-based equity: Applying an equity lens to the ways we collect and interpret data and exercising caution about popular data collection tools and methods.
• Care, joy, and sustainability: Withstanding inevitable resistance while embracing visions for love, joy, and community that cultivate and sustain transformative equity.Powerful stories from students and staff members reveal the troubling gaps between their everyday school experiences and the often high-optics, low-impact equity and diversity programs, events, and strategies embraced by school leaders. They also reveal key moments of growth as leaders learned how to deepen their equity understandings and enact more meaningful equity approaches.
This thought-provoking book offers guidance to those who want to do better and are on the path to achieving some of today's most crucial goals: disrupting inequity and becoming transformative equity leaders.
Making Americans: Stories of Historic Struggles, New Ideas, and Inspiration in Immigrant Education
- A landmark work that weaves captivating stories about the past, present, and personal into an inspiring vision for how America can educate immigrant students
Setting out from her classroom, Jessica Lander takes the reader on a powerful and urgent journey to understand what it takes for immigrant students to become Americans. A compelling read for everyone who cares about America’s future, Making Americans brims with innovative ideas for educators and policy makers across the country. Making Americans is an exploration of immigrant education across the country told through key historical moments, current experiments to improve immigrant education, and profiles of immigrant students. Making Americans is a remarkable book that will reshape how we all think about nurturing one of America’s greatest assets: the newcomers who enrich this country with their energy, talents, and drive.