How Educators Use "All Are Welcome" in the Classroom

Millions of students and educators across the country have returned to the classroom with high hopes of success, growth, and excitement. To support them, we choseAll Are Welcome- a picture book by Alexandra Penfold and Suzanne Kaufman - as the focus of our back-to-school campaign to help theFirst Book community of educatorscreate a welcoming environment to help kids feel comfortable upon their return to school.

From arts and craft projects that inspire students to own their uniqueness to conversations of diversity and inclusion, several educators have usedAll Are Welcometocreate opportunities for students to celebrate inclusiveness and diversity within their community.

“As a kindergarten teacher at a school with a very diverse population, it is important for me to ensure our students and their families feel welcome and that their different cultures are honored. One way we do that is by ensuring that the children authentically see themselves in our classroom,” said Carolyn Matson, a Kindergarten teacher in Ottowa, Ontario.

Matson usedAll Are Welcomeas a springboard to help students celebrate cultural diversity and to identify variations in skin color by creating a multicultural poster filled with paint swatches of the skin tones of each student in the classroom.

"By looking carefully at our skin color, we could see both dramatic and nuanced differences," said Matson. "Asking the children to look closely allowed them to slow down and really observe... and often we would see the children go up and look carefully with a friend, comparing and contrasting and naming the colors. An added bonus for sure!"

Some educators have taken arts and craft elements from the book and applied them to their own schools, like creating yarn hearts on school fences, which expresses messages of love and acceptance to the outside community.