If we want to be allies to our students, we have to recognize—and honor—their full identities. That means also recognizing and working to remedy interlocking systems of oppression.
Elementary educator Skye Tooley emphasizes the power of LGBTQ+ visibility in fostering positive spaces of understanding and empathy where all students feel visible and accepted.
Twenty-eight teachers in my master’s level class silently moved en masse to the right side of the room to signify that they would teach the civil rights movement to their elementary students. In fact, most considered it negligent to ignore this historic movement that brought about the end of segregation in our country.
Leslie has been an elementary educator in central Virginia since 2008. As both a fourth-grade teacher and diversity resource teacher, she collaboratively designs and co-facilitates a variety of professional developments on multicultural education and culturally responsive instructional strategies. Wills-Taylor also organizes diversity awareness events that build sustainable home-school partnerships. She is one of the recipients of the 2016 Teaching Tolerance Award for Excellence in Teaching. She can be reached via Twitter @LeslieWillsTay1.
Naomi oversees the Southern Poverty Law Center’s legal and advocacy work on behalf of immigrants in the Deep South. She represents clients who have experienced wage theft, discrimination, human trafficking and other abuses. Tsu was counsel for immigrant workers in David v. Signal, one of the largest labor trafficking cases brought in the United States, which resulted in a $14 million jury verdict and for which her team was awarded Public Justice’s 2015 Trial Lawyer of the Year award.