Young people have always fought to create a future that is safer and more just—for themselves and for all of us. As students around the globe walk out this Friday to support environmental justice, we hope you’ll find ways to celebrate and support student action during the climate strike and beyond. Here’s how to start.
As an onslaught of anti-LGBTQ efforts—particularly targeting trans and nonbinary youth—continues at the start of the new school year, it’s imperative for educators, parents and caregivers to help young people understand that justice requires an appreciation for the value of identity and diversity among individuals, and that there are actions to take to ensure equity. These LFJ resources can help foster such understanding.
We can teach young people the honest history of the United States in age-appropriate ways and help them understand commonalities across cultures to develop a strong sense of self and identity as they honor diversity. To support these conversations and learning experiences, we offer parents, caregivers and educators teaching strategies, talking points and activities.
As we continue to celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we hope educators commit to uplifting the diversity of AAPI identities year round. These resources offer ideas for including AAPI stories and valuing the lived experiences of AAPI people in our learning spaces, regardless of our own identities and those of our students.
Anti-Blackness is pervasive and has material consequences for all people, including and especially Black children whose presence is often overlooked—and, ironically, villainized—in favor of all things that uphold white supremacy. These LFJ resources offer specific actions educators, parents, caregivers and communities can take to insist upon the well-being of Black children.
The systemic devaluation of Black people that originated during slavery continues today in punitive practices that disproportionately push Black children and other children of color out of schools and into the criminal legal system. To ensure equitable education for all youth, educators and communities must play a role in decarceration, which begins with school discipline reform.
Started by the Campaign for Youth Justice, October is Youth Justice Action Month (YJAM), a time to “raise awareness and inspire action on behalf of young people impacted by our criminal justice system.” These resources explain how the school-to-prison and school-to-deportation pipelines all too often begin in the classroom. And they offer ways educators can interrupt these systems.