When ‘Just Joking’ Is No Joke: How to Respond When Students’ ‘Jokes’ are Biased or Offensive
Tools and Strategies
There are many benefits to humor. A good joke can ease tension in a stressful situation. Humor can connect people and bring them together. Jokes can bring levity to a situation that begs for lightheartedness. Being funny can signal to others who you are. Humor can even open a conversation that previously felt closed or off-limits. However, jokes and humor, when they target social identity groups, can do the opposite. They can make people feel unsafe, disconnected, excluded and…
Table Talk: Family Conversations about Current EventsJuneteenth, also known as “Juneteenth Independence Day,” “Emancipation Day,” "Jubilee Day," or “Freedom Day,” is an annual holiday that marks the end of slavery. The holiday’s name is a blending of the words “June” and "nineteenth." Juneteenth commemorates the day in history that Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas and informed the enslaved…
Increase your awareness of religious obligations and ethnic and cultural festivities that may affect students, colleagues and neighbors in your community.
For parents, families and young people Topic SummaryIn recent years, there has been a lot of attention paid to the diversity of children’s books, shining a light on the lack of diversity and amplifying the need for more children’s and young adult literature that reflects our multicultural society. In 2014, an organization named We Need Diverse Books formed, following a regularly trending hashtag with the same name (#WeNeedDiverseBooks) that helped bring attention to the issue. We…