How To Build Equity And Inclusion Into Family Studies Classrooms

Our Family Studies classrooms, we talk a lot about topics like identity, relationships, family diversity, equity, social issues.

We get into everything.

What are some key conditions that teachers can establish in their classrooms to ensure that kids are feeling psychologically safe when we're talking about these conversations?

The fact is that when we're talking about these issues, you know, it's a really tricky situation where we can't just kind of go into it thinking that it's just a simple lesson of the day.

Unfortunately, we've seen a lot of pushback in many different communities from even being able to talk about like different aspects of your identity.

Fair enough.

Some families might not be comfortable and maybe there are certain school boards that don't want to take on certain topics.

But the fact is that we need to recognize that as kind of the initial foundation before we get into specific nitty gritty details about a particular lesson plan on a certain issue or social justice topic.

I think just ensuring that there is a meaningful connection between educators that are working with their students in their classrooms or their schools, that that relationship exists, that there's some form of connection, trust, understanding.

And so I think before we get into those topics, for example, identity or family diversity, social justice issues in particular, I would really stress that we focus on sharing our stories, letting our students know who we are, and trying to find out more, a little bit more about them.

So those would usually be some of the starting points.

Now we are in September and so we just started a new school year.

And so I'm currently in the flux of that.

I actually have a new set of grade nine students.

I'm meeting them all for the first time.

And that's one of the things that I realized that you're just pacing ourselves, especially at the start of the year, start of a semester when we're meeting a new class of students to ensure that we build up that trust over time.

And then once we feel like the class is prepared, that we have a meaningful connection, then when we get into those areas of conversation or those topics, I often find that we get a lot more out of the students and we go a lot deeper that way.

and those kids are prepared to have those conversations.

I think that's fantastic.

As educators, we sometimes are concerned, we're worried that we're gonna say the wrong thing.

Sometimes myself, I worry, my lived experience is very different than another student's lived experience.

So I don't wanna say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing.

We don't have all the answers when we're discussing these topics of conversation.

What advice would you give to teachers who wanna create those inclusive classrooms, but may feel a little uncertain about navigating some of the topics?