“[Being accepting means] respecting and acknowledging the humanity of everyone.”
– 10th Grade Student
ACCEPTING
“A lot of people judge people by how they look; for example, their skin tone or how pretty they look. People judge other people because they think if they are pretty they are nice. [Being accepting means] never judge the book by its cover or the way people look.”
– Third Grade Student
Use the information in this section to help you introduce the “accepting” attribute to students. You can use the question stem “How does this attribute make you a better leader?” to start a discussion with your students and to check for comprehension (see Additional Resources for more information to further your personal understanding).
Explaining “Accepting” to Students
At school, and in life, you are surrounded by people with different beliefs, interests, genders, cultures, abilities, and backgrounds than yours. How often do you work with people who have different ideas and skills than you? How much time do you spend trying to understand another person’s culture or point of view? Do others see you as someone who is understanding and non-judgmental? Accepting means appreciating the views of others, even if they are different from your own. When you are accepting, you are able to work better with a wide variety of other people. To be accepting, it is important to recognize and respect that not all people think the same way you do. If you are accepting, then you are willing to listen to others’ opinions, even if they differ from yours. This will help you work better with others, build stronger relationships, and expand your understanding of the world around you. Leaders need to be able to work with many people from different backgrounds.
What “Accepting” Looks Like
Leaders who are accepting:
• appreciate others’ viewpoints even when they are different from their own
• move beyond stereotypes and treat each person as uniquely gifted
• remain aware of their own biases and cultural influences
• understand how individual differences strengthen the community
• strive to see problems and seek solutions from many different perspectives
• are seen as interested in other people, respectful, perceptive, curious, open-minded, adaptive, and good listeners
• seek opportunities to learn about different cultures and customs
• try to understand what other people think without judging them
• understand differences among people with varied backgrounds
• ask questions to learn about and understand others
What Gets in the Way?
Without acceptance, you will lose out on opportunities to learn from people who have different experiences than your own. Review the following list and note the items that might be keeping you from being accepting.
• You have had limited exposure to different cultures.
• You have not had diverse experiences.
• You surround yourself with people who are like you.
• You are rigid and set in your ways.
• You tend to see problems or issues from a narrow perspective.
• You make incorrect assumptions about what people need.
• You are inconsistent or unfair in your treatment of people.
• You do not take the time to understand others who are different from you.
If you are accepting of others’ views, you open yourself up to learning more and broadening your perspective. This will allow you to work more effectively with others to find unique solutions to challenges.
Suggestions for Improving “Accepting”
Work with your students to discuss and establish some ways to build competency in this attribute. Below is a list to help support this exercise. Feel free to develop your own strategies or modify these suggestions.
You may also consider doing an activity with your students (see Activity Center for suggestions) or asking them to write about the attribute (see Journal Prompts for suggestions) to help build student understanding.
In conjunction with your students, figure out how you are going to support each other as a group or class to build competency in this leadership attribute.
• Experience different cultures where you are. You don’t have to travel the world to experience culture firsthand—odds are you can experience new things and unique people in your school and community.
• Read about other cultures. Research people who have different backgrounds than you.
• Challenge yourself culturally. Are you particularly inexperienced with a specific group of people? Try to get to know someone who is from a different culture than you. Introduce yourself and ask respectful questions.
• Learn cultural competence from others. Seek out peers and adults who demonstrate a high level of cultural awareness and experience, and notice how this awareness is reflected in their interactions.
• Examine your cultural foundations. Study and reflect on your own cultural background. Consider how your cultural identity influences your perspective and behaviors.
• Foster inclusion from the start. Ask your peers to brainstorm ways to help new students or group or team members feel included. Some ideas to get you started:
» Look for something that new team members have in common with you, like extracurricular interests.
» Ask new people to talk about their previous experiences.
• Learn another language. It’s natural to rely on your native language for most communication. But if you learn another language, you create an opportunity to make a personal connection with people from other cultures. Even a basic understanding of another language can provide a deeper appreciation of the beliefs of other cultures.
• Anticipate cultural differences. Be alert to the role of cultural background in your school and in your interactions with your peers.
Activity Center
Here are some suggestions for activities that may be modified to fit your context and the students with whom you are working.
• Book introduction. Find a book to read with students that has a character who demonstrates the attribute “accepting” or who would have benefitted from being more accepting, and have students discuss or journal about the character’s behavior (see the Suggested Books section of this chapter for books that could be used for this activity).
• Practice people watching. Tell students the following: “Watching others is a good way to learn more about how people behave, and those observations can give you a chance to think about how you respond to behavior tied to differences. You can learn about such things as how different cultures view personal space, how different people use public space, etc. Record your observations like a scientist, writing down exactly what is happening without judgement.” Then ask students to share their observations with a partner and discuss what they noticed about how being passive observers helped them to be more accepting.
• Why not accept? Have students identify reasons that can keep people from being accepting. Have them discuss with a peer a situation in which they could have been more accepting and what they could have done differently.
• Acceptance stories. Have students think about a situation (fictional or real) where a person displays acceptance. Have students write two stories (or comic strips, videos, plays, etc.), one in which the character is accepting and one in which they are not. In each story, students should focus on the impact of these actions.
Journal Prompts
Choose one or more of the journal prompts appropriate for the age level you work with. Feel free to modify or extend the prompt. Give students time to reflect on the questions in a personal journal. To extend the exercise, ask students to share their reflections with a peer or small group.
• When have others made you feel valued and appreciated for who you are? What did they do to make you feel that way?
• Think of a situation in which you were not accepted. How did it make you feel? How did you respond?
• Think of someone whose perspective or background is different from yours. What can you learn from that difference?
• What types of diversity do you value? How can appreciating diversity help you be a better social-emotional leader?
• Are there any stereotypes that you’re trying to overcome? How do you react when someone makes assumptions based on how you look or where you’re from?
• How can you show others that you appreciate them sharing points of view that are different from your own?
Integrating the Attribute into Your Curriculum
Choose an activity from your planning guide or syllabus. After your students complete the activity, relate the activity back to the “accepting” attribute with a debriefing conversation. Below are suggested questions. Choose or modify questions based on your students’ developmental level, your activity, and your context.
This debrief can take the form of a full-group discussion. You might consider giving students time to reflect on their answers with partners or in small groups before asking them to share responses with the larger group. Alternatively, you may decide to ask students to work in small groups to share their responses on flip charts, and then have a gallery walk where students walk around the room and read what other students have written, potentially adding their own comments or thoughts.
• How did the activity help you understand the attribute “accepting”?
• How did you work on being accepting during this activity?
• How did other students demonstrate being accepting during the activity?
• What does it mean to be accepting?
• Why is it important to be accepting?
• How can being accepting make you a better leader?
• How can a lack of being accepting impact leadership?
• How can you become more accepting?
• What are some ways you could practice being accepting moving forward?
• How will you demonstrate being accepting in your interactions with others?
• What impact can increasing your ability to be accepting have on you?
• Identify a person, past or present, who demonstrates being accepting. What specific actions does this person do that demonstrate being accepting?
• Identify a book character who demonstrates being accepting. What specific actions does this character do that demonstrate being accepting?
Questions to Assess Understanding
Consider giving the following questions to students to determine if you need to spend more time explaining this attribute.
• What does it mean to be accepting? Give an example of someone you know who is accepting. How does this person demonstrate being accepting?
• What are three things you are going to work on in order to become more accepting?
Suggested Books to Introduce “Accepting”
The books listed below can be used to deepen younger students’ understanding of the “accepting” attribute.
• All Are Welcome by A. Penfold & S. Kaufman
• Bein’ with You This Way by W. Nicola-Lisa & M. Bryant
• Chocolate Milk, Por Favor! Celebrating Diversity with Empathy by M. Dismondy & D. Farrell
• Chrysanthemum by K. Henkes
• I Accept You as You Are! by D. Parker
• The One, the Only Magnificent Me! by D. Haseltine
• Out of My Mind by S.M. Draper
• Same, Same but Different by J.S. Kostecki-Shaw
• The Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss
• The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by J. Scieszka
• We Are All Alike… We Are All Different by the Cheltenham Elementary School Kindergartners
• Who We Are! All About Being the Same and Being Different by R. H. Harris & N. B. Westcott
• Wishtree by K. Applegate & C. Santoso
• You Are (Not) Small by A. Kang
This section provides additional places to look for help and advice to develop your personal knowledge, as an adult, about this attribute.
Bullard, S. (1996). Teaching tolerance: Raising open-minded, empathetic children. New York, NY: Doubleday.
Deal, J., & Prince, D. W. (2003). Developing cultural adaptability: How to work across differences. Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership.
Ernst, C., & Chrobot-Mason, D. (2010). Boundary spanning leadership: Six practices for solving problems, driving innovation, and transforming organizations. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Gay, G. (2018). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Grant, A. M. (2016). Originals: How non-conformists move the world. New York, NY: Viking.
Hannum, Kelly M. (2007). Social identity: Knowing yourself, leading others. Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership.
Hannum, K. M., McFeeters, B. B., & Booysen, L. (2010). Leading across differences: Cases and perspectives. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.
Tatum, B. D. (2007). Can we talk about race? And other conversations in an era of school resegregation. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.