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 is increasingly recognized as essential for positive identity development.

Earlier books on identity safety described ways to promote it in classrooms and schools. The existing work in the field led us to an important question:

“How might educators and parents and guardians partner to build identity safe spaces at home and school using a strengths-based approach?”

ORIGINS OF IDENTITY SAFETY

Dorothy Steele’s Stanford Integrated Schools Project Research (Steele & Cohn-Vargas 2013) demonstrated the profound impact of identity safety on students’ academic progress and overall well-being. The findings revealed that classrooms that fostered identity safety witnessed higher levels of student engagement, satisfaction, and achievement across diverse ethnic identities.

These classrooms shared key qualities: they were child-centered, cultivated positive relationships, embraced diversity as a resource, and fostered a caring environment. The findings can be applied to home environments to support positive identity development, caring, compassion, agency, and empowerment-crucial factors in fostering identity safety.

ORIGINS OF STRENGTHS-BASED HOME–SCHOOL PARTNERSHIPS

Before the 1990s, the fields of psychiatry, psychology, social work, and education focused on identifying and treating what was perceived as wrong or missing in a person’s life. Research on this approach demonstrated that it had little effect on improving one’s life. Psychologists Maslow (1999) and Dweck (2006), among others, have helped to shift our focus to identifying and drawing from the assets and strengths that every human possesses. Sociologist Joyce Epstein (2019), educational scholars Moll, Amanti, Neff, and González (2005), and others have shown us the importance of strengths-based family-school partnerships.

CREATING CARING AND EMPOWERING HOME SCHOOL PARTNERSHIPS

Our interviews of 29 diverse people ranging in age from eight to seventy identified crucial elements for identity-safe home-school partnerships. We can partner with families to foster pride in each child’s unique identity, validate the intersections of their many social identities (race, ethnicity, gender, religion, etc.), offer strong and inspirational role models, and give them tools to address negative experiences with courage, empathy, and resilience. We can build and strengthen our partnerships by fostering a sense of curiosity and openness to their many assets and strengths (“funds of knowledge”), and demonstrating that we care for students and their families. Identity safety also requires that we reduce our authority as the “all-knowing” educator to become a true partner with students and families.

We identified five key areas to enact co-powered partnerships with individual students and parents-guardians.

SUPPORT INDIVIDUAL STUDENTS

Support a child’s academic progress. One of the parents we interviewed, Lenore, described the years she searched for a school for her son Emmanuel who would positively address his reading challenges. Lenore shared her joy at finding such a school. Not only did her son thrive, the staff communicated regularly with her to share his progress.
Use creative problem-solving to ensure a child’s engagement with school. Another interviewee, Rebecca, whose son is on the autism spectrum, described working with his 3rd-grade teacher to promote his participation in class during story time. His teacher asked Rebecca to describe activities that motivated her son and that he liked to do. Rebecca shared that he liked tangible rewards, making puzzles, and Star Wars characters. With this information, his teacher created puzzle pieces from his favorite Star Wars characters and privately rewarded him with one piece each time he voluntarily participated. With continuous support from his parents and teacher, he regularly earned puzzle pieces that became smaller and smaller, requiring higher and higher levels of participation. Rebecca’s son was continuously inspired to make and complete a weekly puzzle.

FIND OPPORTUNITIES FOR PARENTS AND GUARDIANS TO PARTICIPATE IN THEIR CHILD’S EDUCATION

Listening tours. In addition to individual meetings with school leaders, small groups of parents and guardians might share their thoughts with educators. A small group representing a particular ethnicity or identity group can offer important insights that we might otherwise miss.
Parent/guardian education. Educators can provide opportunities for families to learn about identity safety, strengths-based practices, and other ways to support their child’s well-being and success in school.
Working groups. Engage parents’ involvement in a school’s working group or leadership team. Involve parents in creating, revising, and reviewing school policies and structures and enhancing family engagement in school and their child’s academic and social development. Remember that people have different ways of interacting. For example, some use texts, some prefer phone calls, some video calls, and some use email. Find out the preferences of the parents and guardians in your class or school. Secure translators to ensure meaningful back-and-forth communication. (Note: Under federal law, we must meaningfully communicate with parents in a language they can understand and notify them “about any program, service, or activity” as we do parents who are fluent in English (U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Education, January 7, 2015, p. 37).

Our book shows that fostering identity safety is a collaborative journey that requires the collective efforts of educators, parents/guardians, and communities. By embracing diversity, nurturing empathy, and prioritizing relationships based on cooperation and empowerment, we can create inclusive environments where every child feels valued, respected, and empowered. Together, we can build a brighter future where identity safety is not just a goal but a reality for all children.

REFERENCES

Cohn-Vargas, B. & Zacarian, D. (2024). Identity Safe Spaces at Home and School: Partnering to Overcome Inequity. Teachers College Press.

Dweck, C.S. (2006). Mindset: the new psychology of success. Random House.

Maslow, A. (1999). Toward a Psychology of Being, 3rd edition). John Wiley and Sons.

Moll, L, Amanti, C., Neff, D., & González, and Neff (2005). Funds of knowledge for Teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. In N. González, L.C. Moll, and C. Amanti, (Eds). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms (pp. 83-100). Routledge.

Steele, D.M. & Cohn-Vargas, B., 2013). Identity Safe Classrooms K-5; Places to Belong and Learn. Corwin Press.

U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Education, (2015, January 7). https://www2.ed.gov/ocr/letters/colleague-el-201501.pdf

This piece originally appeared in a Teachers College Press blog. It is drawn from: