This month’s Next Gen Navigator is focused on Supporting Equity in the Classroom. Many educators have heard the term equity, but some confusion still exists about how it looks in the classroom.

In this issue, the contributing writers discuss how they ensure their lessons are accessible and fair for all of their students. They also examine how educators empower students to access and lead their own learning when equity is a driving force in a unit/lesson design. The writers share their successes in implementing accessible and fair assessments, allowing every student an opportunity to demonstrate the science ideas they have learned.

I hope that readers of these pieces understand that equity is neither an afterthought nor something to inject into our lessons after they are designed. Rather, equity is something to focus on when we choose relevant, authentic phenomena, and it impacts how we engage students with the science and engineering practices and crosscutting concepts, as well as how we ensure students understand the science ideas. When we make equity a priority, we communicate to our students that we have considered each and every one of them before they even enter our classrooms. We show them that who they are and how they learn is just as important as what they are learning.