Sara K. Ahmed

Sara K. Ahmed is an educator and author focused on social comprehension, identity, and equity-oriented literacy instruction. She is the author of Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension (Heinemann, 2018), which offers classroom practices to help students understand themselves and others as they navigate issues such as race, gender, politics, religion, and social responsibility. She has also coauthored Upstanders: How to Engage Middle School Hearts and Minds with Inquiry with Harvey “Smokey” Daniels.

Ahmed has worked as a classroom teacher in urban, suburban, public, independent, and international schools and has served as a literacy coach at NIST International School in Bangkok, Thailand. Her work emphasizes helping students consider their own identities, develop empathy, and engage in difficult conversations about contemporary social and political issues, including through her involvement with Facing History and Ourselves, an organization devoted to fostering critical thinking and empathy.