The time has come for hard conversations.
That’s the feedback we have been receiving from educators across the country. There are plenty of tough conversations educators are trained, taught, or feel equipped to handle with children and families - gently bringing up a developmental concern, facilitating a disagreement between students, or explaining what happened with the classroom goldfish are all part of a day in the life. But in the last year, since the killing of George Floyd and other Black people at the hands of police, educators are increasingly asking for help in communicating more comfortably with young children about diversity and difference.
Children Develop Consciousness at an Early Age
In addition to the milestones they reach in the major domains of development, young children are also developing a consciousness of who they are in society. In fact, babies as young as 6 months old notice race - and may already internalize racial bias. Whether the adults in their life are explicit and intentional in teaching about diversity, children are learning it all the same. That’s why experts such as Jeanette Betancourt, Senior Vice President for Social Impact at Sesame Workshop, suggest that adults need to be proactive in helping children build a positive awareness of diversity, rather than waiting for children to bring it up.
The good news is that teaching on this topic is not an add-on. It’s simply part of good teaching. That’s why Teachstone has put together this resource, which pairs information about how CLASS relates to diversity, equity, and inclusion with clear, CLASS-aligned strategies for bringing these concepts to your classroom.
As with any topic, not all families will be in complete agreement about how and whether topics of race, equity, and social justice belong in a preschool classroom. But educators and families alike share the same underlying desire: to make sure their children are cared for, safe, encouraged, included, and supported. Understanding that shared foundation can help educators foster with families many of the same elements that are important in having hard conversations with their students - Positive Climate, Teacher Sensitivity, and Regard for [Adults’] Perspectives chief among them.
We hope that with a little more knowledge and a few more tools, educators will take steps forward in their anti-racist teaching. And, as I would share with my preschool students, deciding to try is sometimes the hardest part.
Ready to get this conversation started? Download our resource on Supporting Current Events, hear from and share with other educators in our CLASS Learning Community, or dive deeply into CLASS-aligned learning on this and related topics, including antiracist education, in Interactions at the Heart of Healing.
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Originally published October 18, 2021
There is always an opportunity for interaction. Some opportunities are easily recognizable: times of play, free choice, centers, small group. We often see teachers engaged in activities alongside children during these times or hear questions being asked. Other opportunities might be a little less obvious. These are the times of your day that you might see as mundane moments that merely require your supervision or monitoring. The times where you’re going through the motions. “I’m doing this thing so I can move on to the next thing.”
In a previous blog, colleague and early childhood environment extraordinaire, Heather Sason, discussed how your classroom environment can help promote effective teacher-child interactions. In this blog, I propose we explore some of the often overlooked times in your day that are ripe for interactions with children and that do promote exploration, learning, and development!
Originally September 15, 2021
How do you make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? I posed that question to a random selection of contacts via text message. What did I discover? Everyone in my sample group spreads on the PB first, then the J. There are a variety of ways though to apply the jelly, but in my random group, the jelly always comes second.
Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches make me think about Behavior Guidance, a dimension in the CLASS® toddler observation tool. Especially the first two indicators of behavior guidance: proactive and supporting positive behavior. Proactive is the peanut butter! It goes first. That layer of peanut butter is the base for the jelly, which promotes positive behavior.
Originally published March 21, 2022
In recent years, mindfulness has gained popularity in our society, including in the early childhood education field. In fact, recent research has shown that mindfulness has many benefits for young children, including supporting their self-regulation skills.
In this blog, we explore the importance of supporting self-regulation during the early years. We discuss self-regulation and its impact on children, not only during their first years of life but the benefits that stay with them in their adult life.
In addition, we define and explore mindfulness focusing on two developmentally appropriate mindful activities to support self-regulation in young children, which are mindful breathing & mindful yoga.
Originally Published April 8, 2021
The foundations for language and literacy success are built in the early years. Trajectories for reading proficiency in third grade and beyond are set in birth to five early learning environments. Knowing this, preschool and early elementary educators work hard to provide literacy-rich environments and interactions, but the COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench into the plans of even the most veteran teachers. These disruptions have changed learning across the board, including in the critical area of early literacy.