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The Respect For All Project
The Respect For All ProjectThe Respect For All Project (RFAP) seeks to create safe, hate-free schools and communities. A program of GroundSpark, RFAP provides youth and the adults who guide their development the tools they need to engage in age-appropriate discussions about human difference, preventing prejudice and building caring communities. |
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The project offers a comprehensive set of resources for educators and youth-service providers, including award-winning documentary films, high-quality curriculum guides and a comprehensive workshop series for professionals and community members.
Download The Respect For All Project Fact Sheet (pdf)
See where The Respect For All Project team has been this year.
Films and Curriculum Guides for The Repect For All Project
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Now in production, Straightlaced features intimate interviews with teenagers about the pressure to conform to traditional gender roles. Boys who have to act tough even though they may feel vulnerable, and girls who have to dress provocatively just to fit in, talk about the toll it takes on them to live up to gender role expectations and how that limits who they really want to be. Read More About The Film » |
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 Film: The film takes an honest and unflinching look at the epidemic of name-calling and bullying among middle school youth today. Told entirely from a youth perspective, Let's Get Real features not only kids who are targeted, but also the youth who do the bullying and the allies who intervene when they witness harassment. Curriculum Guide: The 130-page Let's Get Real Curriculum Guide includes valuable lesson plans, discussion starters, activities and further resources for teachers. Studies consistently show that name-calling, bullying and school-based violence are on the rise. These problems have become so widespread that many young people and adults have come to accept them as inevitable rites of passage. We created Let's Get Real and this curriculum guide to challenge this belief. |
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Film: That’s a Family! is an entertaining half-hour video that breaks new ground in helping elementary school–age children see and understand the many different shapes that families take today. Teaching Guide: The That's a Family! Teaching Guide features activities for young children as well as resources for teachers and parents about family diversity. That's a Family! can validate each student's own family while expanding all students' notions of what makes a family. This guide offers ways of using That's a Family! as mirrors of and windows into children's families and the diverse world around them. |
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Film: The inspiring, award-winning film, It’s Elementary, explores how teachers can include discussions about gay people in their classrooms with elementary and middle school students. Accompanying the original film on the DVD is a new retrospective documentary, It’s STILL Elementary, which follows-up with some of the students and teachers and explores the impact It’s Elementary had on their lives. It looks at what happened when the film was screened across the country and is a call to action for parents and educators to continue working for safe, inclusive schools. Curriculum Guide: The newly produced It's Elementary Curriculum Guide provides educators with a comprehensive lesson plans, activities, resources for teachers and discussion starters. As awareness about the links between homophobia, school-based violence and hate crimes grows, so does recognition of the tremendous need to dispel stereotypes and promote respect at the earliest possible age, before prejudices become entrenched and harmful. It’s Elementary helps teachers do exactly that. |
Workshop Series
The Respect For All Project offers a series of professional development workshops for educators, human service professionals, and youth service providers. The workshops in this series center around the effective use of our films in educational, clinical and social service settings. This series consists of three different workshop packages: Basic, Intensive and Mentor.
Over 6,000 professionals have already attended our workshops, which focus on showcasing promising practices related to the use of our films when working directly with students, families and other human service professionals. Each workshop package is described below in more detail. Choosing the right package for your school or group is an important first step to ensuring respect for all.
Family and Community Forums
The Respect For All Project also offers family and community forums featuring That’s A Family! and Let’s Get Real. These forums are focused on facilitating dialogue among families and community members about issues related to our films including, but not limited to, welcoming all families, building safe schools, preventing prejudice and bullying. In preparation for a family/community forum, an RFAP community facilitator will work closely with local leaders and community members throughout the planning phase to ensure a strong fit between the forum agenda and the desired goals and outcomes of the host community, school or agency. These forums are usually no more than two and a half hours in length, and are designed to take place in a community or public setting.
PTAs, community non-profits, Boys and Girls Clubs, religious organizations and schools from across the country have worked with us to host family and community forums. Schools and community centers often find value in hosting a Family and Community Forum prior to using of our films and curricula with students. The forums provide a structured opportunity for helping family members and community leaders address issues featured in each film, which can serve as a departure point for ongoing discussions and efforts to create long-term community change.
The Respect For All National Coalition
With support from the Marguerite Casey Foundation, The Arcus Foundation, and the Walter and Evelyn Haas Jr. Foundation, The Respect For All Project (RFAP) has spearheaded a collaborative initiative to reach out to educators, youth-service providers and human service professionals. Working in partnership with the National Education Association, the Afterschool Alliance , the Association of Children’s Museums, the Child Welfare League of America, the American School Counselor Association and the National Association of School Psychologists, the national coalition has helped to bring RFAP films and professional development workshops to cities across the country since 2003. The centerpiece of the Coalition’s work has been the RFAP films That’s a Family! and Let’s Get Real. The free workshops take place in children’s museums and help build a community network of educators and youth-service providers working to build safer and more inclusive learning environments for all children, foster respect for diverse families and strengthen the link between family, school and community.
For more information and upcoming National Coalition events, click here, or call 1-800-405-3322.
The Respect For All Project Advisory Board
- Ellen Hofheimer Bettmann, former Director of Training and Resources Anti-Defamation League; author of Hate Hurts
- Patricia A. Boland, EdS, NCSP National Association of School Psychologists
- Reveta Bowers, Head of School, Center for Early Education
- Michael Funk, Executive Director, Sunset Neighborhood Beacon Center; Steering Committee Member, California Afterschool Advisory Committee
- Jan Goodman, Founder, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development's Network for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Issues in Education
- Beth Hall, Director, Pact -- an Adoption Alliance
- Stacey Horn, Associate Professor of Educational Psychology and Human Development, College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago
- Dr. Irvin Howard, past-president, California League of Middle Schools
- Kevin Jennings, Executive Director , Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN)
- Michael Kimmel, Professor of Sociology, SUNY at Stony Brook, author, The Gendered Society
- Paul Kivel, author I Can Make My World a Safer Place
- Beth Reis, Public Health Educator, Public Health-Seattle and King County; Co-Chair, Washington Safe Schools Coalition
- Nan D. Stein, EdD, Senior Research Scientist -- Center for Research on Women; Co-Director, National Violence Against Women Prevention Center, Wellesley Centers for Women
- Frieda K. Takamura, Human/Civil Rights Coordinator, Washington Education Association
- Tamara Teichgraeber, Coordinator of Student Services, Oakland Unified School District
- Hugh Vasquez, Diversity Educator, former director Todos Institute
- Riki Wilchins, Executive Director, GenderPAC