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 organisation, 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.

"As an educator, a teacher of teachers, and a parent, I have gained so much wisdom and so many inclusive strategies and tools from Dave Edwards. His message is clear, kind, practical, and powerful. If you work with children in any capacity, you should have this book in your possession. It might even help you save a child's life."
- Shanie Israel, M.Ed., associate director of curriculum, professional development, and multicultural innovation, Montclair Kimberley Academy, Montclair, New Jersey

"As a transgender educator who has known and worked with Dave Edwards for seven years, I wholeheartedly endorse his book. Dave combines practical and accessible strategies with a passionate personal connection as a parent of a gender-expansive child. This invaluable resource equips educators with essential tools to support and affirm gender-diverse students, offering model language and reflective activities to foster truly inclusive learning environments."
- Mitchell Klages-Bombich, M.S.Ed., professional development coordinator, United Federation of Teachers Positive Learning Collaborative

"As a pediatrician, I see the outsized mental health impact that schools have on gender-expansive children, for better or worse. When a school community approaches all its students with intention, love, and a sense of duty, these children blossom and thrive. Schools that embrace the concepts so thoughtfully organized and articulated here by Dave Edwards will be doing more for their students' mental health than all of us medical providers combined."
- Rhamy Magid, M.D., pediatric hospitalist at Children's Minnesota, former medical director of Hennepin Healthcare's Pediatric Gender and Sexual Health Clinic

"This book is a resource that every educator, no matter their role, should possess, study, and use to move the needle of school climate toward affirmation, inclusion, celebration, and safety."
- Toni Smith, board member and professional development lead, Georgia Safe Schools Coalition

"Every student deserves the opportunity to learn, and it is the responsibility of the adults in their lives to create safe and supportive environments for them to do so. In this necessary book, Dave Edwards offers resources and implementable strategies to ensure that school leadership has effective tools to create and maintain affirming learning communities for gender-expansive students."
- Martinique Starnes, Ed.D., director of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, Westside Neighborhood School, Los Angeles, California

"Seminal, ground-breaking, and thoroughly user friendly."
- Library Bookwatch, Midwest Book Review