Gender-Inclusive Schools: How to Affirm and Support Gender-Expansive Students

Help gender-expansive students feel safe, included, and affirmed at school.

Gender-expansive youth need school policies and practices that focus on their happiness, health, safety, and privacy. Schools and teachers need concrete, accessible strategies and tools for supporting them. This book empowers every educator with those tools and strategies. Whether educators are brand new to or already familiar with gender diversity topics, they'll find opportunities to learn and practice in a judgment-free, low-stakes way.

This must-have resource:

• Helps educators understand, advocate for, and implement research-based best practices for gender-expansive youth.
• Includes discussion prompts and reflection activities at the end of each chapter.
• Shares strategies for affirming students through social transitions at school.
• Supports educators by offering model language to address challenging questions related to gender in school communities.
• Provides concrete actions educators can take to adopt gender-inclusive language and create learning environments that welcome students of all genders.
• Offers perspectives from gender-expansive youth in their own words.

Written by educator and advocate Dave Edwards, founder of the Gender Inclusive Schools organization, this book grew from the resources and education-specific trainings he has developed working with school districts, independent schools, and educators throughout the United States and in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Digital content includes reproducible forms from the book.

Dave Edwards is a queer person and career educator who has served in almost every role in preK-12 school communities: special education paraprofessional, special education teacher, middle and high school classroom teacher, special education coordinator, dean of students, and assistant head of school. Dave was lead instructor for the nontraditional teacher licensure program in emotional and behavioral disorders at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and a professor in the teacher preparation program at Hamline University before devoting his efforts full-time to Gender Inclusive Schools. Dave is the proud parent to a transgender daughter. The discrimination she experienced in kindergarten led to his vocation of helping school communities create safe learning environments, which in turn informs Gender-Inclusive Schools: How to Affirm and Support Gender-Expansive Students. He serves on the board of the Minnesota Transgender Health Coalition, and his family is heavily involved with Transforming Families Minnesota. Dave has been quoted by the New York Times, Rolling Stone, NBC News, and Into. He lives in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, area.