How Teachers Can Create Identity-Affirming Classrooms with Kwame Sarfo-Mensah

You will learn practical strategies and frameworks to create inclusive, identity-affirming spaces throughout this S4E24 conversation with Kwame Sarfo-Mensah.  This episode highlights Kwame’s book, Learning to Relearn: Supporting Identity in a Culturally-Affirming Classroom. Kwame brings seventeen years of education experience, including nine years as a middle school math teacher in Philadelphia and Boston. He is the founder of Identity Talk Consulting and host of the Identity Talk 4 Educators podcast. As a former middle school math teacher, Kwame discusses the journey from classroom teaching to global education advocacy.

Key Topics:

➡️The three P's of intersectional awareness: Privilege, Power, and Positionality

➡️Strategies for being an authentically active community-engaged educator

➡️The importance of origin stories in teaching

➡️Counter-storytelling and celebrating marginalized communities

➡️Creating culturally affirming classroom environments

Highlighted Frameworks:

💫Origin Story Components (STORI):

💫Racial Literacy Development Framework:

Practical Strategies:

✨The "Me Bag" activity for celebrating student identities

✨Reflective questions for educator development

✨Community engagement at multiple levels

✨Ways to incorporate counter-storytelling

Tune in to explore how educators can use intentional, inclusive practices to strengthen student engagement, emotional wellness, and academic success, creating classrooms that are not just places of learning but spaces of healing, growth, and transformation.

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When coaches, teachers, administrators, and families work hand in hand, it fosters a school atmosphere where everyone is inspired and every student is fully engaged in their learning journey.