Identity Safe Classrooms, Grades K-5: Places to Belong and Learn

Every child valued and empowered to learn--this book shows you how!

This book is focused on a set of strategies that have a positive effect on student learning and attachment to schooling, in spite of real and powerful social inequalities. This evidence-based book is drawn from research showing that students from all backgrounds in identity safe classrooms learn better and like school more than their peers in other classrooms.

In identity safe classrooms, teachers strive to ensure that students feel their identity is an asset rather than a barrier to success at school. Elementary teachers will learn the importance of teaching pro-social skills and cooperative learning in the context of high expectations and challenging curriculum.

Use these strategies, rooted in social psychology research and child centered teaching practices, to build communities of learners in diverse classrooms. Invaluable teacher vignettes, reflective exercises, and practical advice make this comprehensive guide a must for creating an inclusive, academically challenging classroom where students come to understand the empowering message that who they are and what they think matters.

"In this timely, engaging, and needed book, Steele and Cohn-Vargas describe creative and captivating ways in which teachers can construct identity safe classrooms where students from diverse racial, social, economic, and linguistic groups can learn and flourish."
--James A. Banks, Professor, University of Washington
Founding Director, Center for Multicultural Education

"This timely and pragmatic book thoughtfully lays out a new vision of education with design principles for inclusive, respectful, and rigorous classroom environments that promote expansive and culturally validating forms of learning."
--Kris D. Gutierrez, Professor of Learning Sciences and Literacy
University of Colorado at Boulder

"The authors combine their scholarship, experience, and wisdom in this amazing book. We all want to know: How can we help students enjoy school and become eager learners? Educators, read this book and find out!"
--Carol Dweck, Professor
Stanford University

Author: Dorothy M. Steele,Becki Cohn-Vargas
Publisher: Corwin Publishers
Published: 09/05/2013
Pages: 232
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 9.90h x 7.00w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9781452230900

About the Author
Dorothy M. Steele, Ed.D., has been working with teachers, children and parents since 1968 when she taught and directed one of the first Head Start programs in Columbus, Ohio. After directing a large university childcare program in Seattle, she began work in school improvement research and development efforts including Accelerated Schools located in Stanford, CA and the Child Development Program in Oakland, CA. From 1996 to 2009, she was the Executive Director of Stanford University′s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. There, in collaboration with Claude M. Steele, Hazel Rose Markus, and Daniel Solomon, she served as the research director of the Stanford Integrated Schools Project (SISP), the research project that uncovered identity safety practices.

Becki Cohn-Vargas, Ed.D. began her career in early childhood education at the West Santa Rosa Multicultural Center in rural Sonoma County, California in 1975. She did community service in Central America in the Guatemalan Highlands and later in the Preschool Department of the Nicaraguan Ministry of Education. She then returned to California and worked as a bilingual teacher and principal in Oakland, a Curriculum Director in the Palo Alto, and most recently as Superintendent-Principal of a one-school district in San Jose. She also worked as a staff developer for the Child Development Program of the Developmental Studies Center. In each of these settings, she focused on developing, implementing effective teaching strategies for diverse student populations and creating environments that promoted educational equity. In 2003, she learned of the research on identity safety with the SISP project and designed a small follow-up study with a group of elementary school teachers to identify, describe, and implement effective identity safety strategies.