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“Introducing Gender: Girls, Boys and More!” is a K-2 lesson from Gender Spectrum originally published in The Gender Inclusive School: concrete strategies for creating a safer and more accepting school climate for all students. The lesson offers a set of activities that prompt students to think about what they like (favorite colors, toys, activities) as individual preferences—not due to them being a boy or girl.

Challenges to school names that no longer represent community values are being heard throughout the South. In this toolkit, students will consider the complexities of naming and name changes and explore a strategy for convincing decision-makers that such changes are needed.

Educators can use this toolkit to reflect on school-based policing in their schools and districts and to conduct a school climate survey among colleagues.

Editor’s note: The author of this essay prefers the pronoun they. In a poignant letter to their teenage self, Jey Ehrenhalt—a transgender educator and advocate—recalls jarring and painful experiences of their youth and describes how many schools urgently need to become more welcoming and supportive places for transgender students.

On Feb. 10, 2015, three Muslim university students of Arab descent were shot and killed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, leaving an educational community shocked and reeling. Criticisms quickly surfaced in the United States and internationally that many U.S. media organizations did not adequately cover this horrific crime or its aftermath. This toolkit offers a media literacy activity that educators can use to explore these topics with students.

As “Girls, Interrupted” documents, girls now account for 30 percent of juvenile arrests and 15 percent of juvenile incarceration—making them the fastest-growing demographic in the juvenile justice system. But they are the least talked about. This toolkit offers a list of resources that educators can consult to expand their knowledge about at-risk girls and build gender-responsive practices to support their needs.

More than 60,000 youth are confined in 2,500 juvenile justice facilities in the United States every year. This toolkit provides a snapshot of effective practices used by educators who work in locked facilities—with application in other educational settings.

Educators at mainstream schools can use the three activities in this toolkit to teach their colleagues and students about deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

This toolkit describes how affinity groups help marginalized students to be seen and heard, and provides step-by-step recommendations on how to launch an affinity group—or revamp one that already exists—at your school.

This toolkit provides a professional development framework for looking at common misconceptions surrounding race and ancestry, as well as ways to debunk them and build identify-safe classrooms and schools.