Identity Safe Classrooms, Grades K-5
Places to Belong and Learn
- Dorothy M. Steele - Executive Director, Stanford University, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (Retired)
- Becki Cohn-Vargas - Curriculum Consultant and Educational Coach
Foreword by Linda Darling-Hammond
Identity Safe Classrooms, K-5, focuses on a set of strategies that have a positive effect on student learning and attachment to schooling, in spite of the very real and powerful social inequalities that currently exist in today’s classrooms. It is a book based entirely on evidence, revealing how to set up a stereotype-threat-free environment in which students from all backgrounds learn better and value school more.
How do identity safe classrooms work? Teachers strive to ensure students view their identity as an asset rather than a barrier to school success. They teach prosocial skills and cooperative learning in the context of high expectations and challenging curriculum.
Using these strategies—rooted in social psychology research and child-centered teaching practices—reflective exercise, and practical advice, you’ll discover how to create an academically challenging classroom where students come to understand the empowering message that who they are and what they think matters.
