Resources for Identity Safe Classrooms
We designed this resource guide to provide additional information on many of the ideas shared in the books. We annotated the resources to explain their links to identity safety. This guide is presented following the organization of the book.
INDEX
STEREOTYPE THREAT AND IDENTITY SAFETY
“On Thin Ice” by Claude M. Steele (1999)
Professor Claude Steele explains what stereotype threat is and how it can reduce academic achievement. For example, when capable black college students fail to perform as well as their white counterparts, the explanation often has less to do with preparation or ability than with the threat of stereotypes about their capacity to succeed.
Claude Steele Speaks About Stereotype Threat
In this interview, Dr. C. Steele explains the concept of stereotype threat and its antidote “identity safety.” Many African-American men go to great lengths to counteract the pernicious stereotypes to avoid being profiled. For example, when journalist Brent Staples was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, he realized that his very presence was making others as he returned from the library to his apartment. Mr. Staples’ solution was to whistle Vivaldi to indicate to white students that he was not a thug, but a graduate student, like them.
Steele’s book “Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do About It” (2010) offers a more in-depth discussion.
Reducing Stereotype Threat
Reducing Stereotype Threat is a research site with articles and strategies on stereotype threat and negative stereotypes. The site offers suggestions for reducing the negative consequences of stereotyping in academic settings and strategies to address negative impacts.
Self-Affirmation Theory
This short book section by Geoffrey L. Cohen and David K. Sherman explains self-affirmation theory, which “…posits that people have a fundamental motivation to maintain self-integrity, a perception of themselves as good, virtuous, and able to predict and control important outcomes.” In virtually all cultures and historical periods, there are socially shared conceptions of what it means to be a person of self-integrity. Having self-integrity means that one perceives oneself as living up to a culturally specified conception of goodness, virtue, and agency. Self-affirmation theory examines how people maintain self-integrity when this perception of the self is threatened.
CLASSROOM RELATIONSHIPS
Belonging Research
Stanford psychologist Gregory Walton explains how a relatively small psychological intervention can help improve student achievement and workplace environments.
Empathic Civilization
In this animated TED Talk, author Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways it has shaped human development.
U.S. Department of Education / StopBullying.gov
The Department of Education maintains a comprehensive website with resources on identifying, responding and combating bullying and cyber-bullying. The site offers statistics, research, and practical tools for use by schools, educators, families, and youth.
CULTIVATING DIVERSITY AS A RESOURCE
Transforming Schools for Multi-Lingual Learners
This book supports educators to design and enact policies, practices, and structures for multilingual learners (MLs) to feel a sense of safety, belonging, value, and competence.
A World of Difference Institute
A World of Difference Institute provides a comprehensive array of anti-bias education and diversity training programs, curricular resources and online materials and curricular content for Pre-K-12 educators, students and families.
Gender Spectrum
Gender Spectrum is working to create a gender-inclusive world for all children and youth. To accomplish this, we help families, organizations, and institutions increase their understanding of gender and consider the implications that evolving views have for each of us. They provide information, professional development, research, and advocacy.
Center for Multicultural Education
The goal of multicultural education is to create equal educational opportunities for all students by changing the total school environment so that it will reflect the diverse cultures and groups within the nation's classrooms. Professors James Banks and Cherry Banks identified five dimensions of multicultural education. The five dimensions include content integration, the knowledge construction process, prejudice reduction, an equity pedagogy, and an empowering school culture and social structure (Banks, 1995a). The Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington offers publications, courses, and an overview of current research.
Facing History and Ourselves
Facing History and Ourselves is an international educational organization whose mission is to help teachers engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, and antisemitism, in order to promote the development of a more humane and informed citizenry. Their website has a wealth of primary source and historical materials and lesson ideas. While it is mostly aimed at the secondary level, some materials may be appropriate for upper elementary students.
Gay, Lesbian, & Straight Education Network (GLSEN)
GLSEN is the leading national education organization focused on ensuring safe schools for all students, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. GLSEN provides school-based programming and training, conducts research and sponsors campaigns such as Day of Silence and No Name Calling Week.
Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the Colorline in Schools and Communities
According to the author, Amanda E. Lewis, “The book is geared mainly for teachers, school personnel and people who want to work in schools. The main point is that intentionally or unintentionally, our implicit assumptions about people and race shape our interactions with them, as well as our expectations for them. If we don't pay attention to how that's happening, we can generate unintended outcomes. By far, most teachers have the best intentions and want to be doing the right thing. My hope is that the book will help teachers serve all kids better.”
Learning for Justice
Founded by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Learning for Justice, formerly, Teaching Tolerance, now known as is dedicated to reducing prejudice, improving inter-group relations and supporting equitable schools. The organization provides numerous lesson plans and other free educational materials and programming to educators including Mix It Up at Lunch Day program and Teaching Tolerance Magazine.
Dreamkeepers, Successful Teachers of African American Students
In this widely read book, Gloria Ladson Billings shared the stories of teachers, both black and white who have successfully taught African American students. Holistic practices illustrated in these profiles mirror many aspects of identity safety.
CHILD-CENTERED TEACHING
Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain
In this book, Zaretta Hammond draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to offer an innovative approach for designing and implementing brain-compatible culturally responsive instruction.
Teaching to Strengths: Support Students Living with Trauma and Chronic Stress
In this book, authors Debbie Zacarian, Lourdes Alvarez-Ortiz, and Judie Haynes write about teaching this population and doing so from a strengths-based perspective using real-world examples as well as research-based principles.
The Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL)
CASEL is a leading organization that works to advance the science and evidence-based practice of social and emotional learning (SEL). They provide research, model programs, policy and advocacy.
SEL is based on the understanding that the best learning emerges in the context of supportive relationships that make learning challenging, engaging, and meaningful. Social and emotional skills are critical to being a good student, citizen, and worker; and many different risky behaviors can be prevented or reduced when multi-year, integrated efforts develop students’ social and emotional skills.
Differentiating Instruction
Diane Ravitch defines differentiating instruction as a form of instruction that seeks to "maximize each student's growth by recognizing that students have different ways of learning, different interests, and different ways of responding to instruction.”
Mindset (updated edition)
Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck has brought to light the relationship between students’ theory of mind about ability and their efforts at persisting with difficult work, she calls this “mindset.” Students who believe ability is unchangeable have a fixed mindset, based on the notion that their intelligence or talent is given and not modifiable by practice and effort. Students who believe ability can grow/change have a growth mindset. They believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through opportunity and effort. Students’ views of ability, whether it is fixed or changeable through effort have important implications on their ability to learn new and challenging things.
Self-Reg: How to Help Your Child Break the Stress Cycle and Successfully Engage with Life
Self-Reg is a groundbreaking book that presents an entirely new understanding of your child’s emotions and behavior and a practical guide for parents to help their kids engage calmly and successfully in learning and life.
Building Resilience in Students Impacted by Adverse Childhood Experiences
This workbook-style resource shows K-12 educators how to make a whole-school change, where strategies are integrated from curb to classroom. Readers learn how to integrate trauma-informed strategies into daily instructional practice.
Teaching Adolescents with Autism
This book offers ideas to help teachers, understand the causes and manifestations of autism, solve adolescent behavior challenges, implement academic and behavioral intervention, and help students adjust to social situations.
PART FIVE: CARING CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENTS
Responsive Classrooms
Responsive Classrooms offers a set of resources, including video clips, blogs, and professional development to create school cultures that promote effective teaching that engages students in academic learning and nurtures the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in and out of school. Responsive Classrooms - Morning Meeting Ideas.
National School Climate Center (NSCC)
NSCC promotes positive and sustained school climate: a safe, supportive environment that nurtures social and emotional, ethical and academic skills. They work with schools to integrate crucial social and emotional learning with academic instruction, to enhance student performance, prevent drop-outs, reduce physical violence and bullying, and to develop healthy and positively engaged adults.
Alternatives to Zero Tolerance
The ACLU has examined the impact of “zero tolerance” policies on students’ academic outcomes. The school-to-prison pipeline is one of the most important civil rights challenges facing our nation today. The school-to-prison pipeline refers to the national trend of criminalizing, rather than educating, our nation’s children. The pipeline encompasses the growing use of zero-tolerance discipline, school-based arrests, disciplinary alternative schools, and secured detention to marginalize our most at-risk youth and deny them access to education.
Using Restorative Justice to Transform School Culture
Restorative justice is an approach to student guidance that provide an alternative to punishment for unwanted student behavior. This process brings students into the school community instead of pushing them out as “bad guys.” This works by teaching conflict resolution skills, building stronger relationships, and providing alternative approaches to discipline. This Educatopia blog discuss how to implement restorative justice and the experiences schools have had with this approach to school discipline.
AbilityPath.org
AbilityPath is an online community that brings together professionals and parents of children with special needs to connect and learn about the process of supporting ongoing healthy development of children with special needs and disabilities. The site couples social networking with expert medical advice to provide maximum support and encouragement.
Learning Policy Institute
Founded in 2015, the Learning Policy Institute (LPI) conducts and communicates independent, high-quality research to improve education policy and practice. LPI seeks to advance evidence-based policies at the local, state, and federal levels that support empowering and equitable learning for each and every child. Linda Darling-Hammond is the CEO of LPI and a Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University. Her research, teaching, and policy work focus on educational policy, teaching and teacher education, school restructuring, and educational equity.
Rethinking Schools
Rethinking Schools is a publisher of education materials committed to equity and to the vision that public education is central to the creation of a humane, caring, multiracial democracy. While writing for a broad audience, Rethinking Schools emphasizes problems facing urban schools, particularly issues of race.