The Power of Self-Reflection: Helping Educators Create Identity Safety and Belonging in Schools

Our students are increasingly diverse, with a rich mixture of social identities (race, ethnicity, culture, language, religion, gender, sexuality, and more), including an epic number who have had adverse childhood experiences. With this as our backdrop, our task as educators is to use strength-based, multifaceted strategies to support all students to feel safe, valued, and competent and create identity safe spaces where their identities are validated and they feel a sense of belonging. Educator self-reflection is one of the most helpful means for strengthening our professional practice to support identity safety. By reflecting on our own social identities, we can examine our lived experiences, values, and beliefs so we may best support and honor the multidiverse experiences of our students. In this session, we will ask: How can we strengthen our practice through self-reflection? What tools can help teams of educators engage in self-reflection together?

In this 2024 Share My Lesson Virtual Conference session, participants will:

•  Learn about identity safe teaching and the value of educator’s identity self-reflection to strengthen our professional practice.
• Discuss the benefits of exploring and reducing implicit and explicit biases to better support our students’ sense of identity safety, belonging, and achievement.
• Identify strategies that educators can use to collaboratively reflect on our identities, values, and beliefs in ways that bridge differences and foster empathy, compassion, and collaboration.
• Review tools and resources for teams of educators to put into practice to engage in self-reflection on our identities and experiences that you can put right into practice at school.

This webinar is part of Share My Lesson's 2024 Virtual Conference! View all sessions here.