Introducing Identity Safety at Home and School: Partnering to Overcome Inequities

Becki Cohn-Vargas and Debbie Zacarian The practice of identity safety is critical to educators’ ongoing quest to create spaces where every child feels welcomed, supported, and validated, and where they can embrace and celebrate their diverse social identities. Renowned social psychologists and educational scholars have heralded this transformative approach- which …

Using Our Voices to Uplift Our Communities

In the documentary series, Daughters of Destiny, about the Shanti Bhavan School, there’s a scene of a sex education class where boys are taught to take responsibility to protect and value girls and women. The series, about a boarding school that provides free PreK-12 education for India’s most impoverished children, …

Interactions Matter:  impact learning through student, classroom, family and community partnerships

by Debbie Zacarian and Michael Silverstone Whether you are an administrator, teacher or a parent–a fan of standardized testing-indexed sanctions, or an advocate for student-directed learning experiences, there is one point of agreement that we all share. We want all students to feel and be successful.  For well over a …

What is a Growth Mindset and How Can It Be Applied in the Classroom?

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, founder of ‘growth mindset,’ defines the concept as believing that every student can succeed and teaching them to believe in their abilities to: (1) embrace the challenges and complexities of learning; (2) learn the positives of being persistent (3) value effort as a positive; and (4) …

Rethinking the Possibilities of Strength-Based Teacher Evaluation Systems

With all of the time, effort and money being poured into teacher evaluation systems, the outcomes of students from underrepresented populations have not changed enough to see that what we are doing is working. Only 61 percent of English learners, the fastest growing group in the U.S., are graduating and …

We Can Only Make Education Work When We Are In It Together

by Debbie Zacarian & Michael Silverstone How do two separate people from different places and with different roles actually go about writing one sentence let alone a book? Our answer takes some explaining as it reflects what we believe is needed in education, now. Partnerships are key  The process of …