5 Steps for Creating Welcoming and Inclusive Learning Environments (2024)

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1. Build Trusting Relationships

Know all of your students as people not just as learners
Learn about the communities where your students come from and the migration stories that shape the world
Invite students to share their stories of movement and migration with each other to create a shared understanding.

Identify the “in” and “out” groups at school and the ways that people define who is “we” and who is a “they”
Notice the way that students and faculty talk about, and respond to, immigrants and people who are perceived as newcomers
Intervene to support those that are targeted by discriminatory language and behavior when it is necessary

Embrace and honor the diversity of languages, identities, cultures, and family practices in your school and community.
Infuse school rituals, daily routines, and the rhetoric you use with the value of diversity.
Display messages of inclusion in the hallways, in public spaces, and in classrooms.

Build upon the knowledge and language that your students bring with them to the classroom.
Recognize that migration is a throughline of the human story and a lens through which to see the world connecting students’ lives to core themes in the humanities and STEM.
Build habits of perspective-taking, inquiry, and help them recognize inequities and opportunities to take action to nurture inclusive communities and healthy democracies.
Encourage engagement with the civic issues that are connected to migration and teach about bridge-builders across communities

Prepare yourself and your colleagues to support the social and emotional needs of all students.

This resource was developed by Adam Strom and Veronica Boix-Mansilla and it first appeared as a blog on Share My Lesson.