Welcome to the Making IT Better collaborative resource for Civic Engagement. This resource is designed to help students, parents, and teachers understand identity and embrace differences in American culture. National and local current events impact the hearts and minds of our community. Many students may enter the classroom disillusioned. Some adults encourage schools to help while others ask, “Are schools supposed to fix everything?” The answer is that while schools cannot fix all problems, we do have a responsibility to facilitate and stimulate positive change.

Through Making IT Better we are creating a safe and reflective space to assist our community. These resources are intended to support a framework for initiating thoughtful dialogue around potentially difficult subject matter.

Our main goal is to provide the resources and support needed to understand intersectionality, which is the philosophy of accepting individual identity and embracing difference to guard against social inequities and the imbalance of power.

We take pride in supporting Charlotte’s future leaders with life skills and equipping them with constructive strategies to manage conflict. We also embrace our role to support educators with appropriate social and emotional responses through salient and relevant educational curriculum.

Making IT Better supports our schools, as part of the greater Charlotte community, believing our students should make themselves heard in constructive ways. We call this “Courageous Conversations”…. an approach that is both instructive and inspiring.

• Understanding Differences

  A key to positive social change lies in our ability to understand our own identity, the ways in which we different and the ways in which we are all fundamentally the same. Grasping these concepts gives greater insight into how we can work together for a common good. Using these resources provide students with a broad perspective on diversity to mold empathetic leaders of the future.

• Taking Action

  Empower your community to take action for social change! After educating students about understanding their own identity, as well as the identity and experiences of others, they will be ready to actively participate in social change. Employ these resources to consider the challenges facing their community, to help them assess their community’s assets, to formulate a plan to achieve their goals and to put the plan in motion.