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Use these ideas to include the religious and nonreligious diversity of students’ home lives in your practice.

General Mills recently ran an ad for Cheerios cereal featuring an interracial couple and their child. This is cause for celebration and an opportunity to help students explore race and expand media literacy. Unfortunately, not all viewers saw it that way.

When I was growing up, most of my friends’ families had a mom and a dad. A few parents were divorced and that meant stepdads and stepmoms were also in the picture. That was about the extent of family diversity in my experience. During my teaching credential program, I learned about children having two moms or two dads. I made a mental note to remember this. I have discovered that family configurations are limitless and I now work to be inclusive, aware and respectful.

It was meet-the-teacher night at my elementary school. The room was ready for a new class of second-graders. The rubric for grading paragraphs and stories was on the wall around the writing center. A scientific method poster hung on the wall in the science corner. Essential questions for numbers and operations were on the chalkboard in the math area. And a picture commemorating the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education was on the social studies wall. I was ready to help my children become successful students.