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Exploring our differences does not divide us; it highlights our identities and reveals our shared humanity.

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.

Think Mix It Up can’t work at your school? This counselor at a school for students with a variety of special needs says it can.

A 9th-grade English unit helps students analyze legacy behind Native American mascots.

As a student, seventh grade was a really scary time for me. Even now, I distinctly remember the churning in my belly every morning when I arrived at school. I was crippled by insecurity when the teacher called my name in class and all eyes turned my way. School felt aggressive and frightening. Students struggled for power and to be seen as “popular.” I began to realize that my anxiety was something that made me different from the other kids.

Each spring, at the start of baseball season, fourth-graders at my school connect with Shorty, a character from Ken Mochizuki’s book Baseball Saved Us. Shorty’s a Japanese-American child who plays baseball on a makeshift field in an internment camp during World War II. Mochizuki’s consummate read-aloud story encourages a fired-up discussion in the library. Students talk about the inequities and intolerances foisted on kids and adults alike. It’s the kind of lesson that I thoroughly enjoy teaching, year after year.