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.
Addiction can suffocate a community—especially its youngest members. But schools that employ trauma-informed practices are giving childhood victims of the opioid epidemic a fighting chance.
Many educators profess, as a virtue, that they treat all students the same. But when a student’s specific needs and story are erased, it’s not equitable—it’s damaging.
This lesson, part of the Digital Literacy series, addresses the importance of locating and verifying reliable sources when working with online information. This lesson is aimed at a young audience and operates on the assumption that many students in the class are not yet reading and writing independently.