Dr. Becki Cohn Vargas and Dr. Debbie Zacarian
Identity safety has been shown to have a positive influence on student’s performance in school. When students’ backgrounds and identities are validated, and they feel a sense of belonging, they achieve higher levels. Additional research demonstrates the benefits of families and schools partnering to draw from culturally sustaining practices and build on strengths to apply identity safe principles at school and at home.
Identity Safe Spaces at Home and School: Partnerships to Overcome Inequity was written in response to this urgent need. To bring the research to life, we interviewed 29 people aged 8 to 70+ from many backgrounds, including different races, languages, cultures, ethnicities, neurodiversities, and gender and sexual orientations. We asked our contributors three primary questions.
What actions made a difference in your life to help you feel positive about your background and identity?
What actions helped you develop resilience to overcome negative or unfair experiences (such as bullying or discrimination)?
We also asked educators and parents, “How do you support children’s positive identity development and resilience?”
Their responses connect the research and practice to real-life experiences that identify and amplify the ideals of employing identity safety at home and school.
In this blog, we draw from our book to present three big ideas to parents, guardians, and educators.
1. Support Positive Identity Development
As humans, we possess richly diverse social identities, including, to name a few, our racial, religious, linguistic, cultural, ethnic, socio-economic, and gender identities. One of the most important aspects of human development is the need to feel safe, a sense of belonging, value, and competence. This happens when we affirm all aspects of our identities and intentionally create home and school environments where we express care for and about each child and each other and bolster resilience. This is especially true for the epic number who have experienced adversities, including those who have faced bullying, stereotyping, and othering.
An example of what we mean comes from Sameer Jha, a college student we interviewed in the book. He was bullied from second grade through middle school for what he shares was his “having a high voice” and “preferring dolls to rough play and violent video games.” The adults in his school did nothing to stop the bullying. Sameer’s circumstances dramatically changed in high school. During those years, he received support from teachers and participated in a Gender-Sexuality Alliance (GSA). As a result of his feeling safe, affirmed, and accepted, he took the bold move of returning to his middle school to meet with the principal and school counselor and recount the relentless bullying that he experienced. His courageousness and confidence in sharing what happened to him led to their receptivity to listen to his painful experience. And they took it one step further. They accepted Sameer’s offer to help train teachers to provide anti-bullying lessons and interventions to ensure better that students were not bullied the way he had been. Positive identity development occurs when we support each other to (1) feel safe, have a sense of belonging, value, and competence, and (2) have the confidence to speak on behalf of ourselves and others, as Sameer did.
2. Harness the Power of Autonomy, Connectedness, Cooperation, and Compassion
We can support our children’s sense of identity, safety, and belonging by helping them mediate their emotions and learning how to be receptive to and assertive with others. We can also support their growth by sharing our ideas, feelings, questions, and more in ways that demonstrate caring for and about each other and ourselves, solving problems respectfully.
An example comes from contributor Rebecca Mikulski, mother of Matthew, a 7th-grader on the autism spectrum. Rebecca contacted the school’s guidance counselor when Matthew told his parents that he was embarrassed because he couldn’t open the combination to his locker and was often late to class. At first, the guidance counselor suggested that the school would simply remove the lock to make it easier for Matthew to get in and out of his locker. Rebecca helped the school see that the suggestion might further Matthew’s feeling of being different. With the school’s cooperation, his parents sought a better solution. They found that the school’s locker company made an ’unlockable’ lock and shared this finding with the counselor. A new unlockable lock was immediately installed. With the new feature, Matthew rotates his locker combination like everyone else, bolstering his feeling that he is a member of the social fabric of his school. The trusted partnership that his parents have built with Matthew’s school community has greatly helped him feel a sense of safety, connection, and belonging to his middle school community. It has also promoted his parents’ feeling of trust, cooperation, and compassion on behalf of their son.
3. Foster Meaningful Home-School Partnerships
Children from PreK-12th grade can develop a positive identity and feel a sense of belonging and agency by:
- Experiencing positive relationships amongst and between their family and school community.
- Understanding different aspects of their evolving identities and feeling confident to express their authentic self.
- Developing agency and increasingly becoming critical thinkers.
- Being able to deconstruct negative stereotypes about identity
- Learning to cooperate with others.
Identity safe home-school partnerships begin by creating trust and inclusion. While many schools have parents and guardians who seem to naturally gravitate to being involved with us (and we appreciate their involvement!), we must be vigilant in creating strong, sustained partnerships with our ever-changing family community. Additionally, just as we want all students to be empowered with us, we can reach out to all parents and guardians, especially the ones who are reluctant or feel disconnected from joining us. A helpful way to encourage partnerships is to share the many positives we observe children doing in school and support families in seeing these at home. We suggest that educators:
- Provide children with rich, positive experiences affirming their multiple and varied identities.
For example, share positive experiences you have observed and had with their child, such as: “Abdul is a careful listener with his class partners. He takes time to clarify what he has heard and affirms what classmates have stated. I appreciate his collaborative leadership. Please share the activities you engage in at home to support Abdul’s strengths. I am excited to learn from you!”
- Help children celebrate different social identities and cultivate diversity as a rich shared resource.
For example, it is helpful to learn about students’ and their families’ various personal, social, cultural, and life experiences. We can do this by asking questions about children’s strengths and assets and encouraging them to share what family traditions and activities they do together at home.
- Offer tools to foster empathy and compassion.
For example, share positive experiences you have observed and had with a child, such as: “Jamille is very strong at seeing when things are unfair in our class. For example, she noticed a classmate wasn’t participating in a small group discussion. I appreciated her noticing this and asking the group to give everyone a chance to speak before they speak a second time. She did this in a very polite and respectful way. What activities do you do at home that support Jamille’s leadership and empathy?”
Our overall goal should be to learn about each child’s and family’s rich identities to support them in feeling safe, having a sense of belonging, value, competence, and, as importantly, the confidence to share their thoughts, hopes, dreams, questions, and more in partnering with us.
Dr. Cohn-Vargas began her career in early childhood education in Sonoma County, California. She lived abroad for five years where she did earthquake relief at a hospital in the Guatemalan Highlands and produced educational films for the Nicaraguan Ministry of Education. She returned to California and worked as a bilingual teacher, principal, curriculum director and superintendent in the San Francisco Bay Area. She also served as an adjunct professor at University of San Diego, Mills College and Cal State University, East. Bay. In each setting, she focused on educational equity and effective strategies for diverse populations. Dr. Cohn-Vargas and her husband own a rain forest preserve in southern Nicaragua where they do environmental education for local students and international student groups. They live in the SF Bay Area and have three adult children and one grandchild.
