Before your student goes off to private school in the fall or you welcome new students to your campus, we have an empowering book recommendation for you!

Dr. Traci Baxley has thirty years of experience teaching diversity and inclusion. Her book, Social Justice Parenting provides a guide for parents navigating raising their children in a compassionate, anti-racist, and justice-minded way in an unjust world.

Within the book you’ll be able to explore Dr. Baxley’s perspective on parenting as activism. She teaches parents to review their actions, thought-processes, discover their self-awareness, and step into being the best role model they can be. 

One of our favorite parts of this book is Dr. Baxley’s willingness to be honest and authentic. She shares her story so that parents everywhere can learn from her experience. She challenges readers to get to the bottom of the question “how are you showing up for your children?” Throughout the book, she offers parents the tools and resources they need to help their children be more socially conscious. 

Dr. Baxley gives parents the tools to learn and grow alongside their children to foster an understanding of on-going social justice issues. Her approach to these topics and her writing acts as an inspiration and motivation to parents with children of all ages. 

And guess what? So much of what Traci talks about is relevant to caregivers too! For all my school and admissions colleagues reading this, you’ll want to add this book to your bookshelf too! As educators, you play a huge role in developing and influencing socially-conscious, compassionate students, regardless of their age! 

As Dr. Baxley says, “Social justice is about the small changes we are making in our own lives that over time have a rippling effect on society.” I love how Traci uses the analogy of planting seeds when she illustrates how what we do and how we show up for the children in our lives dictates how they will respond in a world beyond us. As she says, “it’s about what seeds do we plant as they’re growing up with us so that they are people who stand up for others and who are more compassionate and kind as they go on their way without us in their lives.” This is at the heart of raising pro-justice children versus just “good kids” and that’s a thought provoking proposition that I suspect many don’t ponder. 

We encourage you to use this book as motivation to not shy away from hard questions, but take them on with responsibility and compassion. To further quote Traci, “Just because you’re not talking about it, doesn’t mean your kids are not picking up messages around it.” 

We hope you’ll be adding this to your reading list! Join us as we use our energy to create space and opportunities to be vulnerable and honest with the children and students in our lives!