ABSTRACT
Identity safe teachers and identity safe schools welcome, support, and value students from all backgrounds. Through their personal stories, powerful research supported insights, and years of working with educators to create identify safe learning environments chapter authors Pompei and Cohn-Vargas guide educators to integrate identity safe teaching practices and strategies that align with the latest research on English Language Arts (ELA) instruction. The chapter begins with the many reasons why identity safe practices are so essential, drawing from the body of research on student needs, culturally responsive teaching, and school climate that considers demographics and other influences on student identities. Also articulated in this chapter are the many challenges leading to identity unsafe schools, including marginalization and bias. The authors share the history of research on identity safe teaching, and in their words, “propose a path forward,” showing how educators can reflect on their own sense of identity safety, raise awareness of diverse student needs, and examine and deconstruct biases. They also provide a detailed set of identity safe guiding principles and strategies that ELA educators can incorporate in their classrooms.
