Cindy Sheaks-McGowan: Alright well hello, and welcome. My name is Dr. Cindy Sheaks-McGowan and I am a faculty member and Department Chair for Child Development and education here at Moorpark College.
I want to thank you for making the time to join us today for our teaching social justice presentation. I'm so excited to have our presenter Nadia Jaboneta.
I believe you will all find something wonderful to take away from her presentation. And I will share a few things about her, and then I think she's going to share a few more things about herself when she begins the presentation.
So Nadia is a program coordinator and classroom teacher at Pacific Primary Preschool in San Francisco, California.
She has 22 years of experience in early childhood education, teaching young children and training teachers. She is passionate about social justice and has written numerous articles focused on anti-bias education practices.
She's also the author of two popular professional books one entitled, You Can't Celebrate That: Navigating the Deep Waters of Social Justice Education and Children's Lively Minds: Schema Theory Made Visible.
So before Nadia gets started, I'd like to connect today's presentation to last week's amazing campus conversation with Dr. Cornel West that some of you may have seen.
In the conversation Dr. West referred to his well known quote, "That justice is what love looks like in public."
Many people say they go into teaching and early education, because they love children. So I invite us all to learn a little bit more today about how we can create just spaces in early childhood, that allow all children to feel safe to be themselves and to fulfill their great potential.
So at this moment, then I would like to turn over the conversation to Nadia.
Nadia Jaboneta: Hi everybody. Can you hear me and see me okay?
Okay, I guess I'll get started.
Oh yes, I got a yep. Thank you. Try to make sure I'm not just talking to myself. Hi everybody I'm super excited to be here. My name is Nadia Jaboneta coming to you live from
San Francisco, California. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen now so that I can show you my slides. One moment please.
Okay, if I can get a thumbs up, if you can see my slides, that would be, actually I don't see the, oh, there goes the
chat. Can you see my slides?
Great. Thank you so much. Alright so let's get started. I'm excited to be here with all of you today to share with you about,
teaching social justice navigating the deep waters of equity in early childhood. Today we'll be learning together, I'll be sharing some of my journey with you but, even though this isn't interactive,
my hope is that we will be learning together as you hear a story that I'm going to be sharing about my classroom and share my journey with you and my learning experience. I thought before we get into the story, that I could share a quote with you.
Let's see if I can turn my page. Here we go.
So this quote is by Carol Brunson Day she has this quote in a book called Anti-bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves.
And in this book, she says, "What if someone told you that you could contribute in a small but significant way to making the world a better place?
What do you want to do it? You can achieve this grand goal from a place, you have already chosen to be- in your daily work with children and families." I really connect with this quote and I enjoy sharing it and presentations that I've been doing, because often
people ask me, "Where should I start? I don't know where to start. There's so much information out there and I'm reading so many articles, books, going to presentations, and I'm not sure
where to start." So it's important to think about that you've all already started. You're all in some capacity, working with young children and families, whether you're a student, you're in the classroom, you're a professor, etc.,
that's your first step you've already started. And today again will be learning together on what other steps can you make, where are you in your journey, and where can you go. So we will be at the end, we can be, excuse me, at the end, we can share some ideas on,
perhaps you have some questions on or maybe making some connections, so we will make time for that at the end, and on my next slide let's see,
sorry I'm having a little there it goes my menu. My next slide I'll start with just telling you a little bit more about myself.
So, my name is Nadia Jaboneta. My pronouns are she, her, and hers. I have many hats that I wear. I'm a children's teacher, an adult educator,
I'm a consultant, an author. I've written a couple of books like Cindy mentioned. Also been writing some articles over the last seven years or so, about my experience working with young children.
And I'm also a mom and a wife, a daughter, and a sister, and I consider myself a fierce social justice leader. Like many of you,
I have children who have been distanced learning at home and they're home, right now. So you hopefully won't see anybody walking behind me, but who knows it's been known to happen so they're here at home.
So I work at Pacific Primary School, which is in San Francisco. I have been working there for 12 years now and,
I before that, I worked at a school at... a preschool and infant toddler as well in San Francisco at San Francisco State University.
Something that really drew me to Pacific Primary and it's important to know before I start telling you the story of my social justice teaching journey,
is that Pacific primary is a place that from the very beginning in 1974 when the school was created,
one of the main values in creating the school, which was a group of parents coming together, was the social justice, values and using the anti bias
goals as a lens in creating this community. They wanted it to be a diverse community. They wanted it to be accessible to all kinds of families.
And so that's been part of our mission ever since, since 1974. So working in a place like Pacific Primary,
I have the support of my director and my colleagues and really thinking deeper on what it means to be a social justice leader. And we have the support of the families who are coming from the very beginning knowing about our mission. And so that really again keeping that
as part of your lens as you're listening to my story it really makes a difference.
I've had the great pleasure of collaborating with Margie Carter and Ann Pelo. Many of you might have heard of them, they have other books and they are
great mentors in the field, but I worked with them to write this book that I'll be sharing with you about it's called You Can't Celebrate That:
Navigating the Deep Waters of Social Justice Teaching and they actually have a whole series that I highly recommend it's called the Row series Reimagining our Work.
It's a whole collection, again, that I highly recommend about just really, really seeing children and seeing their lively minds come alive, but also thinking about what is your role as educators and really making the time to pause, reflect, and see the wonder in young children.
So that was again, a just a wonderful experience in going deeper on what this work really means to me and being able to share this work with all of you.
So as I'm doing these webinars as well as when I was doing these in person pre-Covid,
I used to not share that much about Pacific Primary I started right with just a story and the anti-bias goals and I didn't share much about my own teaching journey. Again, I just shared about the story that happened with children, how we responded about the anti bias schools, and
almost every time people had very, very similar questions they wanted to know more about my journey. How did I become the anti-bias educator that I am now?
Like, what are the steps that I took to get to this place where I am now in doing this work? Folks want to know where should they start what are some specific steps that they should take?
What is a formula, let's just say? And a main question I get as well as should we be exposing young children to social unfairness, such as racism? So these will be some questions that we will be thinking about together as I'm sharing the story with you.
We'll also be thinking together about the critical thinking and collaborative planning process that goes into social justice education.
How children learn about identity and appreciate difference. And we'll also be using the thinking lens as a tool to support us in really thinking deeper.
So going back just to tell you a little bit more about myself, so you can know about my journey and how it connects to the story that I'll be sharing with you today.
So this is me on the
on both photos, that's me on the left. On the left there's me with my dad. My mom is here, all the way on the right and I'm a super proud daughter of immigrants who came from Lima, Peru back in, let's see, 1965. They came to this country
particularly, they chose San Francisco as a place where they can give my sister, myself a great education and have more opportunities for work and have
a family and have a home and bring more of our family over to join us. So my family is super proud of just being Peruvians. We have,
let's see, I don't know, I've lost count over there's lots of lots of us now over 40 of us who live here now. My sister and I were both born here in San Francisco, California.
My grandma came shortly after I was born to help with me and my sister and I spent the summers with her, after school with her. So English was my second language I didn't learn English until I started kindergarten. So Spanish was my first language.
This is my sister, who's 10 years older than me. So I grew up as I always tagged along with her, and she was my idol I wanted to do everything she did and
she probably thought it was really annoying, but we stuck together through everything. And here we are many years later, and we're best friends. And in the last five maybe four or five years or so, my sister,
whenever we have get together with the family, which has not been recently, but before Covid she shared with us some
some conversation rules that she had about how we were going to talk to each other at these family get togethers. She said to us,
"Never ask about finance, sexuality, politics social standings, or religion." So we kind of laughed it off and
it was a joke, but she was really serious. These were some some conversation no no's for her and after I thought deeper about it
I believe that these were some rules that she established as a way to not have conflict with others and really feel safe in conversations. Especially with things that were happening politically in our country, in the last four years.
So this is me with more of my family and my cousins. That's me, I believe it was my first birthday and
I had really great until this day, really great family pride. I'm really proud Latina. I'm a proud woman of color. I, you know, tell everybody that I'm Peruvian. Talk about my culture. Now I speak English and Spanish and
when I'm looking at an anti-bias lens I connect that with the children with how important it is to have family pride.
When I turned five I went to the same school that my sister went to, which was a private education, starting from kindergarten
all the way to eighth grade, this school went and that's where I learned English. I clearly remember my first day of kindergarten and coming in, not knowing that much English, but I remember just really quickly picking it up.
So let's see. I want to say it took about maybe four or five years for me to notice that the school was predominantly white.
It's not something that was apparent to me right away, but as I got older and my critical thinking started developing more, I really started to notice it and I wondered why people didn't look like me. I wondered,
I wondered where these people were. "Why aren't there, people that looked like me? Where are they?" And, as I got older I
didn't want to look like myself. I wanted to be Irish. It was a big Irish community. I wanted to have blond hair.
And it really affected my my family pride. When my dad would pick me up I would tell him to, you know, "Meet me on the corner and don't talk Spanish to me when the door opens," and
that continued for many years of me just being embarrassed of who I was. I didn't feel like I fit in. So when I graduated
from eighth grade, I was able to collaborate with my parents and really pick a high school where I felt I was going to build many connections and identify with
people and again just see people that looked like me people that had similar cultures, similar language, but I also wanted to learn about people that were different.
I wanted to go to a very diverse place. So I was able to find that place and I slowly saw that family pride start to come back and I really
got to know what an important impact it is to be in a community where again, there's people who look like you, people that you're making connections with. It was so important for
my identity.
So after I graduated I went to San Francisco State University and I didn't want to go into Early Childhood Education right away.
It was something that maybe about maybe a year and a half in I was originally a business major and then I started to take care of my niece and nephew more and more to help my sister out,
and I really started to like it and I thought to myself, "Well, maybe I'll take a few classes, so I actually know what I'm doing." So I took a few classes some child development classes and I fell in love.
I loved it and I changed my major and I haven't looked back ever since. And that was in 1995. So this is an actual real it's a photo
of a polaroid of my first classroom, I taught with toddlers. And from very, very beginning, I knew how important family was.
And how I wanted these children's families represented in the classroom. So those little purple squares that you see are the children's family photos that are posted up there.
I also, as I started to get more towards graduation, I started to learn more about
what it was that I loved about being with young children. Where did I want to go with this and I
thought to myself, you know, "I want to be, I want to be in the classroom that's what I want to do forever. I just really love being with children."
So I worked at San Francisco State with infants, toddlers, preschoolers for about 10 years.
And then I had my daughter, she was about maybe, let's see, two years old, but I just felt I needed something different. I felt like I wanted to make a change, so I went and started working
at Pacific Primary, where it was a different environment and I wasn't too familiar with anti-bias education, so I started to learn more and more about it with my colleagues, with the support of my director and the community, and it was something that I really connected with.
Also, before moving to Pacific Primary I had been introduced
to reflective practice. This is a book that my director had given me it's called Reflecting Children's Lives: A Handbook for Planning Child Centered Curriculum. So it wasn't something I was too familiar with. At that time I was
still really young, I was fresh out of college, and I really felt confident in what I was doing. I had a book I believe it's called The
Survival Guide for Preschool Teachers, something like that. And I really, I used it every day. I had a monthly planning guide,
where it had different things that I can do, it had all kinds of activities, it helped me set up my classroom environment and
it was really helpful for where I was, early on in my career. I really loved it. The children really loved it.
And when I read this book, it was pretty much the opposite of my survival guide. It encouraged teachers to really observe children. It encouraged teachers to really plan curriculum that was child centered. It encouraged
me to really think outside the box and plan the curriculum based on what I was seeing, not straight from a book.
A colleague gave me this book, she said, "I think you're really gonna like this. I want you to read this book. Let's read it together."
So I read it in one day. I remember, I was going on a short trip. I think it was to Southern California and I read the entire book on the plane.
I was able to highlight. Oop, I'm hearing some beeping, I wonder if I got a message. I was able to highlight so many pages of everything I was connecting with and
I ended up reading it again and again, because it really I'm not, some people call me dramatic, but it really it transformed the way that I was teaching.
It was a whole different way that I didn't know about and I thought to myself, "This is the kind of teacher, I want to be.
I want to seek children. I want to connect with children and families, my colleagues. Plan curriculum, that is something we're both excited about that we're planning together, not just straight out of the book," and again it just really transformed my teaching.
I invited my fellow teacher Brian, to join me to start a group of teachers who would be thinking together on how we can use this lens the thinking lens
to go deeper in our practice. To learn more about what it meant to be a reflective practitioner. So we invited whoever wanted to come to join us to study this thinking lens in how we can go deeper in writing about ourselves as educators.
So here is a copy of the thinking lens. Some of you might be familiar with this.
I definitely after, we have our webinar today, send a link to this for those of you who haven't seen it before but, again, this thinking lens. Oopsy sorry about that.
Really transformed my role as an educator to really begin with knowing yourself and thinking about, you know, perhaps why I might be reacting to something
in a certain way, a child's behavior or the way a child was using a material? What in my background influences my reactions?
What in my background influences the way that I'm connecting with these children, with the families? Really taking the time to pause and examine the environment, and what I could provide.
Really, seeing the children as competent and looking for those details that really touched my heart and my mind.
Seeking the children's point of view. Collaborating with others to expand our perspectives. And really considering other opportunities and other possibilities for action. Like what our next steps in my planning and my thinking?
We also began to study the anti-bias goals and really incorporate the thinking lens with the anti-bias goals in our thinking and planning.
We felt that using those two things really supported our mission statement, and it really supported our work in this diverse community in San Francisco.
In case you're not familiar with the anti-bias goals, here they are. There's four of them. The first goal is identity. So each child will demonstrate self-awareness,
confidence, family pride, and positive social identities. Goal two is diversity. Each child will express comfort and joy with human diversity;
accurate language for human differences and deep caring human connections. Goal three justice. Each child will increasingly recognize
unfairness, have language to describe unfairness, and understand that unfairness hurts. And goal four activism. Each child will demonstrate empowerment and the skills to act with others or alone, against prejudice and or discriminatory actions.
So Brian and I became really, really close colleagues and friends, in really bringing Pacific Primary on this journey with us to think deeper about our role as educators and how we can use
both the thinking lens and the anti-bias schools in our everyday work. How can we learn more about them. How can we go deeper. How can we all become social justice leaders together.
And we thought, one of the steps that we could take was to study children's books. And use these with the children, as well as with each other as a way to introduce
anti-bias and also introduce the goals to families and children. So this book, The Other Side was one of the books that we chose to learn to learn more about and how we could use it
in the classroom and we brought it to a professional learning day that we were going to have with all of the staff.
Before we started that day, we brought the book to one of our meetings with our directors and lead teachers, and Brian I were really excited about bringing this book, it was something different.
It was a book that was about two young girls, a Black girl and a White girl. It was told in the context of the segregated South. And it was a book about how they overcame all that, and it was about friendship and love. And Brian
and I both thought that it was a very poetic book and we were really excited about it and to our surprise, our directors and the other teachers were
they were not as excited about it. They were worried about using it. They were nervous about using it. They were scared to use it. They didn't want to introduce children to
this book. They didn't want children to know about racism, about segregation. They thought it was going to be too scary for the children.
And Brian and I had to take a step back and really think about how we were going to move forward together with different perspectives and how could we move forward together
in doing something, because it wasn't a choice for us to to say, "Okay we're not going to do anything, but if this book is not going to work let's think of something that we can all agree on and move forward together in this anti-bias work that we are we're doing together."
So during that time, it was the very beginning of the school year and after our professional development day, we began school and the children in my classroom are five and six, excuse me, five years old.
All of them going to kindergarten the following year. So, most of them had been there for about maybe this is their third year now.
So this is a picture of us having a meal and it was very early on the school year it was in September.
And most of our conversations that are with children are just sharing about home, sharing about their families or siblings,
sharing about something that might have happened that day, really often happen during a meal. So on this day,
one of the children was sharing about how they were going to have a celebration that evening with their family.
As he called it, he called it Shana Tova. He was super excited to sharing with everybody at the table how they're going to have apples and honey at home that evening.
And how they were going to read his favorite book and he just couldn't wait to go home that evening to celebrate Shana Tova.
And I could tell that one of the children at the table, she was a White Jewish girl was really looking at him, really listening, but she had a look on her face where she wasn't too sure about what he was saying.
This child who was sharing the story is biracial. His dad is black from Jamaica and his mom is white Jewish.
And again he just continue to talk about how excited he was and then she interrupted and looked at him pretty seriously and said, "Well you can't celebrate that. Only people with white skin can celebrate that.
That's what my dad said."
So, at that moment,
I couldn't believe what I had just heard. It was the first time that I had been there and witness a child, excluding another child saying they couldn't do something because of the color of their skin. It was my first time experiencing
racism in such, with such a young age, and also for her to include, "Well that's what my dad said" I wasn't sure how I was going to respond I knew I had to do something.
And it wasn't sure what was going to be my best response so that I can support Harry, the child who was so excited to go home and celebrate Shana Tova that evening, but also wanted to support Kiley the child who said this.
So I want you to all take a big breath with me, because this is, you know, I feel like an intense thing that happens. So I'm gonna take a big breath you're welcome to join me.
And think about just to yourselves, what is your initial reaction to what happened at this table? How would you respond?
So again, this happened.
I didn't have time to say, "Let me go think about it, and come back kids," I had to respond at that moment, but it felt like I had forever to think about it. I felt like time
froze and over my shoulders, I can see all these people in my life, who had influenced me and I was able to
really think about all of these people everything I had learned and it influenced the way I was going to respond.
I thought about my dad and I thought about how he always growing up told me that I needed to follow the rules, you know, be a hard worker, never
break any of the rules or do anything to cause too much attention. So again, I had that in the back of my mind, "Okay, the way. I'm going to respond. I don't want to call too much attention to this. I don't want to
break the rules that, you know, the other teachers and my director, you know, had asked for us not to introduce racism to the children."
Also, I thought about my sister and her conversation rules, maybe
that would help me out in this moment, like this is not something we're supposed to be talking about, that's how we protect ourselves and stay safe not talking about any of these difficult things, especially with young children.
I also thought about my role as an early childhood educator. I thought about all that trainings that had gone to,
where we actually practiced. We did lots of role playing and how we could respond to young children when something biased like this happened.
I thought about all the books I had read and the all the articles, but at that moment, I was tongue tied. None of that practice was coming to me.
I also thought about myself as a person of color and growing up in a predominantly White community and I remembered how it felt to feel different. I remembered
how it felt to be told I couldn't do something, because of the color of my skin or because of my language or my culture, and it was hurtful. I didn't want him to feel this way.
Again, I thought about my director and the other teachers on, you know, what would they do? How should I respond so I'm also pleasing them?
And I thought about my thinking partner, Brian and all the work we had been doing together in supporting the staff and thinking more about the anti-bias goals.
What might he tell me, you know, how could I respond if he were here, what would he told me to do? So again I'm thinking about all these things, and then I thought about
a couple of other teachers who had recently written a story about something that had happened in their classroom working together with three year olds.
They were playing dress up and had fabric and tape and they were playing kings and queens and one of the children a boy wanted to be the queen.
And the other child who was a girl said to him, "Well, you can be the queen only girls can be a queen, you have to be a king because boys are kings."
And at that moment, one of the teachers that stopped and said, "At Pacific Primary you can be whatever you want to be. Girls can be a queen or king. Boys can be a king or queen. You can be whatever you want to be." And I remember reading these this story and feeling
like I was in the children shoes and feeling really safe, feeling really supported, and this is the way I wanted Kiley and Harry to feel. Safe and supported by the words I was going to say. So that really inspired me and
here's what I said to them, I called everybody's attention at the table, and I said I want everybody to listen, about what, listen to me about what just happened to have a
response I want all of you to hear I said, "At our school, you can celebrate whatever you want to celebrate,
no matter what your hair looks like how tall or short, you are or whatever your skin color is.
You can celebrate what ever you want to celebrate and Harry's really excited to tell us about Shana Tova. I want to keep hearing about his plans tonight. Harry tell me more."
And his smile came back to his face, where he before he looked worried and uninsured and confused. The smile came back to his face.
Kiley stayed there and wanted to hear more about his story. He told us about how he wanted to bring in this book and show it to us, and I said to him, "We should invite your mom.
Maybe your mom or your dad can come in to share, about
this book and maybe they can bring apples and honey." And he got super excited and said, "Yes, can you call them and ask them to come in and bring the apples and honey tomorrow?" I said, "Okay I'm going to call them right after lunch."
And Kiley looked so worried, and she said, "Wait no I'm going to Lake Tahoe tomorrow I can't I can't miss it. I can't miss the book and the apples and honey," and just like that
the children worked it out and she was able to switch this lens from no you can't celebrate that to wait I don't want to miss it and I want to celebrate with you. So,
a lot of questions stayed with me after that happened, I really thought about how do I bring myself, my full self a Latina raised by immigrant parents,
in a predominantly White community, how do I bring that self to my teaching how to bring that experience? What do I think about my sister's rules? Had I been using those rules when I redirected
rather than engaged conversations like this in the past? How are children thinking about race and racism, and what is my responsibility to them?
What is my role as a teacher? What about my colleagues' perspectives about keeping children safe from the violence of segregation and racism?
How am I going to bravely work my way through these questions, moving forward from here? How will I be safe, secure, and supported as I continue my journey as an anti-bias educator?
So the next step was to see my director, and I told her what had happened and I told her what I said, what the children had said, and she
really supported me and said I had responded in a way that was supportive of the children, not just the two children,
but the whole class that was there present during that happened," and I asked, you know, "Should I call the parents, so that they know? she said,
"Absolutely." I really secretly hope she'd say, "Don't worry about it, I will call them, I will tell them," because I was really nervous to make these calls.
But she said, "Yes that's your next step go for it. You can add my office," and I was feeling really nervous. I had never made a phone call before to a parent
to tell them something that was racist had happened to their child or that their child is the one who said it.
My phone calls were usually about, you know, their child scraping their knee or bumping their head on the monkey bars, and, you know, how I took care of them. This was going to be a very
different type of phone call. I was really extremely nervous, but I really had to bring my courage and be brave and make that first call. So I decided to call Harry's mom.
She was mostly the parent who dropped off and picked up a lot. I feel like I was really getting to know her and I felt really comfortable with her. I felt like we had a great connection.
Me being a mom children who are mixed race also, I felt like that could be a piece that connected us in this conversation. So I chose to call her first.
I started by telling her that I was calling that he was okay, he was safe but that I was calling to tell her that something had happened in the classroom and that a child had told him that he couldn't celebrate Rosh Hashanah because of the color of his skin.
And I told her how I responded and I thought I could read an excerpt of my my book, to tell you the next piece on what I was thinking, what I said, how his mom Alexis was feeling. So I'm going to read this piece to you.
"I told Alexis about how excited Harry was about celebrating Rosh Hashanah. Then came the hard part. I described Kiley's response
(though I didn't identify her by name, in the interest of confidentiality). Alexis took a long audible breath before responding.
Much of our conversation is a blur to me now; my head was spinning with everything that had happened that day for the children-and for me.
What stood out the most was Alexis saying, 'This is my worst fear for my brown babies.' I could tell by the sound of her voice that she was trying not to cry.
My eyes teared up, too, as I felt her ache, and our shared dismay that we need to worry about our children being excluded and treated unfairly because of the color of their skin, even in preschool."
Our phone call was pretty short, probably because we were both feeling nervous. We we're both feeling like we needed
time to think about next steps, but I assured her that he was safe and that I wanted to talk to her more,
and also talk to his dad and that we were going to come together on next steps and how I was going to support, not just Harry, but the whole classroom
in thinking about what had happened, but, most importantly, working together with the children and the families in seeing differences as something wonderful,
not something to exclude others about. So we planned that we would meet soon in person or over the phone to talk more about next steps and how we can collaborate.
So my next call was to Kiley's dad I was feeling definitely more nervous about calling him, since she's the one who had said this unkind biased comment to this child and also she had added that, "Well that's what my dad said." I knew in my gut in my heart that
most likely, this is not how he felt. I did have to in the back of my mind, be prepared for him not agreeing with how I responded,
but, again, I had to just bring my courage and be vulnerable and just give him a call tell him what had happened and wait to see what his response was. So I gave him a call again assured him that she was safe. I explained what had happened and what she had said and
again, I'll read a little expert excerpt on my book, to tell you what happened next.
"Mark's immediate, astounded response was, 'I am so sorry I don't know where Kiley got that idea!" I could hear his embarrassment and worry.
Even as Mark fumbled for words, I assured him that I didn't judge him or Kiley but that I did want us to take this seriously as something to figure out together.
Mark wanted to understand where Kiley's statement came from. He had never heard her say anything like that, and was shocked by her comment.
'We don't really talk about race at home,' he said. I explained my understanding is that children are influenced by what they see around them and Kiley was just pointing out what she
knew about her own experience, about being Jewish. Mark gulped, saying, 'I see now that Kiley has ideas about race and religion that we didn't know she had.
Her mom and I need to take a more active role in discussing these big topics with her."
So we also ended with planning a meeting in person to talk about how we were going to support each other through this journey and next steps for their family, as well as our classroom and our school community.
So in these follow up meetings, my director and I planned about how we were going to talk to these families and learn together and share what we already knew about how children learn about identity
and difference. We were prepared with sharing some resources with them, as well as sharing some things that we were going to be planning in the classroom as part of our anti-bias curriculum.
Our first meeting was with Harry's, excuse me, with Kiley's family with her mom and dad they came into school and we sat down.
And before we could even start talking about tips, and what we were all thinking, they said they wanted to tell us something first. They said that
their child Kiley had told them who she said this comment to. They knew it was Harry and that they had called, his family that evening to apologize,
and also to invite them over to have apples and honey together, as two families who were coming together and celebrating
Rosh Hashanah, and Harry's family agreed and they ended up going to Harry's house and celebrate it together. This was a grand surprise to me and my director, and
I almost was in tears, because here we are having this meeting to talk about next steps and things that they can do, and they took it upon themselves to
go ahead and they wanted to repair this. They wanted to help their daughter see that "Look, we can celebrate together people all kinds of people can celebrate Rosh Hashanah," and
huge piece of it was to really show her and be a model of coming together and apologizing and repairing the hurt that she had caused him, and
it was just beautiful to hear the story, see photos of them celebrating together. So and again, for them to do this on their own was great to hear.
So, some things that we thought about together in our planning for our classroom but also in our meetings with these families and are also including other families on what had happened,
I wrote a story about the incident. I didn't use the children's names to keep confidentiality, but I wrote a little story, a learning story I don't know if you're all familiar with learning stories
that we learned about in New Zealand as a way of really sharing how brilliant children are.
So that was a way that we communicated with the families about
what sparked us going deeper into our anti-bias work and we shared
lots of the curriculum, we were doing with them on a weekly basis through newsletters and photos and we continue to meet weekly with Kiley,
and also Harry's families about work that they were doing at home and connecting it to our work at school. So some considerations were, children notice differences and similarities, particularly in people from their early months
after birth. So, as, you know, when they're very, very young, they're noticing differences.
When we remain silent or even shush children when they talk about what they notice, we send the message that something is wrong here.
So again, this was research that we found that again, if we did not engage in these conversations, what message are we giving the children?
We're giving them the message, it was not okay to talk about differences and we wanted to give them the message that differences were great like as great as similarities. So we continue to learn about how
prejudice and racism can grow and they don't acknowledge these similarities and differences.
Becoming comfortable with describing differences and taking practice, as many of us have been giving messages that talking about them causes harm and racism. So we thought about that a lot with the teachers.
And our goal was to normalize differences through everyday moments with children by having accurate language to describe them and to do this often. And these were all inspired as well by the anti-bias goals.
I'm not going to read all of this to you by will send this as a resource, but this is a tool that was created an infographic by The Children's Community School as
a way to have all this information based on research about young children and how they're not too young to talk about race.
So again, starting from birth, babies, what babies abilities are to, for example, they prefer to look at faces of their own race as young as three months,
but then, all the way, looking at children that were five and six years old and what their abilities were. So again, this is just a resource for you that I will share but it's something that we studied in helping our thinking and moving forward.
During that time, we also learned about schema theory and we were able to connect the schema theory with what Kiley what Kiley's understanding was about who could celebrate Rosh Hashanah.
In schema theory, in learning more about it a big piece of that, is children are sorting
toys, they're sorting food, they're sorting sorting all kinds of things, and what we learned is there also sorting people.
That is part of what schema theory is, is children's minds and brains really making sense of everything. The only thing is that most often us growing up stop children from being able to point out differences they see in people and
say it's okay with toys. "Oh yeah you're right that car is different than that toy car, look they have different colors or different wheels."
But children's minds again they're, they're seeking these ways to connect with the world and pointing these things out. So our role we realized was to support children
in being able to, be able to talk about this and we quickly realized that that's what Kiley was doing when she went to her temple and she saw
that everybody was white and looked very similar. She sorted that into one group and when Harry said he was celebrating
Rpsh Hashanah he didn't fit into what her mind had sorted out to be who can celebrate that. So her mind said, "No, you can't celebrate that only people who have white skin can celebrate that." So this was important for us to learn that
and really highlight to her family that she wasn't doing this to be racist. She was pointing out something that she noticed.
And this is just a cover to a book that Deb Curtis and I wrote about schema theory if you're interested in learning more about it. We have a whole section on how we're able to connect schema theory with anti-bias work.
We again, we just started to go deeper and learning as teachers, together with the families on what our role was in these young children's life.
And we acknowledge that as Jetta Jacobson said that, "Race is a tricky topic to write and talk about- for both young children and grown ups, but we need to tackle it head on, because it's real,
it's everyday, and it's an opportunity to do right by our children." So that's really the stance that we took that we're going to tackle this head on, because it's real and it's happening. So what is our role?
So some things that we did in the classroom with the children, was to really start off with the first school of identity, and really having them be proud of who they are.
So in this photo you'll see two children are doing some portraits. They have their picture there, and this book, Who Are You?, one of the children had brought in, and the children really connected with this book.
Which is specifically about gender, but the piece that they connected was a quote from the book that it was, "You know you best." So they really held on to that and we use the book as a
way to inspire them to learn more about themselves and share about themselves. So we made these boards we called
them identity boards. Excuse me. And in the photo that you see here, the children are decorating it and teachers were dictating their words on it, things about them things that they wanted people to know about themselves.
Again we looked at the anti-bias goals to really help us guide our planning with our curriculum.
Here's just another look at the identity boards. Here's an example for you this child decorated theirs and we wrote all her words, "I like rainbows. I like cats. I have a cat named Gypsy. I like owls. My mom and my grandma, I love them so much. I like to run. I like to run really fast."
We use books as a way to really use them as both mirrors. So books were away for children to see
themselves represented and be excited to see that and be happy to see someone that looked like them, but also as windows, for them to learn about
families that were different, learn about culture, different cultures, different languages, see all kinds of skin color, and also as a way to engage in conversation about human diversity with comfort and joy.
So you just some examples of
just having things in the environment, having the books out, having mirrors out, having skin tone pencils and crayons and markers out for children to explore in the art area.
After reading the stories, we'd also invite the children to explore paints and children looked at their skin and they started their skin tone and mix pains to match their own skin tone.
We did also self portraits as a way to strengthen children's
self confidence and also be really proud of their families, their family identity. So this is one of the children's self portraits and he wanted us to add his words on
the ways that his family describes their skin tone. So he told me to write, "My skin color is peanut butter and a little bit of chocolate."
There's some research, excuse me, not research but there's some articles that I've been reading about people's perspective about using foods to describe skin color. Some people
don't like it. So I think it's important to, if you're doing this work and you're describing skin color, to really just be respectful of what that family
perhaps thinking about the words that they use to describe their skin color, and not
you choosing those words for them. So that's something that we did is write the children's words about how they describe
their families, how their families describe skin color, and so we had words written all over their portraits, all over their journals that we had, and really again, just really having the children's words
just really be powerful part of our curriculum.
Here's an example of self portraits.
Using lots of different mediums and just taking our time for children to
study themselves and not only learning about themselves, but learning about their peers as well.
Here's an example of doing some family portraits and children would sit together and do their own portraits but also peek over at their friends and have a conversation about similarities that they saw as well as differences, which is so important.
We provided opportunities in the classroom through the materials that we had for children to have like a spark to talk about similarities and differences. So, for example, having family photos up, having a binder with family photos.
Really, being aware as educators and families that children notice differences. So really having that be something that
we worked on being comfortable and okay to talk about, whether it was through materials that we set up, such as these dolls here, which one of the children lined up and they purposely really studied the skin tones of the dolls and lined them up from on the right
to darkest skin tone to the left to the lightest skin tone. And also opportunities that emerged just from the children. On this photo on the left,
the children happened to be barefoot that day. It was a hot day. They were hanging out and they put their feet and their hands in and one of the children pointed out, "Look,
we all have different skin colors," and they started pointing out what was also similar with about them like, "Look you have nail polish too, have nail polish." So using these natural moments that the children, bring up as opportunities as well to to support this type of thinking.
We invited families in to look at the identity boards with their children, and it was again, another way, just to bring the children
and the families together in an authentic way to think about the importance of differences and similarities and how it's such an important part of being human.
We invited families to come in and read a favorite book from their home.
And families brought in all kinds of books. This book on the left was about a girl who didn't want to wear a dress to a wedding but one to wear her plaid shirt.
This book on the right, was about people just being appreciative of people's differences. So it's all kinds of photos of different people. All kinds of different people.
We also invited families to come in and share about their family culture. Whether it was
their language, whether it was food, whether, in this case, it was celebrations. So we were celebrating Dia de Los Muertos and we invited families to share how these celebrated that, as well as bring in some photos.
I want to
I really want to say if this is something you're you're already doing or interested in doing, really working to make it meaningful and having the children and the families
make it authentic. It's really tricky to celebrate holidays if it's not something you celebrate. So staying away from the tourist approach of that.
So again, having the families come in and share what made it really authentic and meaningful.
There's we had families that year, who celebrated Diwali. So they brought in an art activity and a book to do with the children, to share, about how they celebrated and what it meant.
We also
started to go deeper into the third and the fourth goals of the anti-bias,
which was to really increase have increasingly children increasingly recognize unfairness, to have language to describe unfairness,
and understand that unfairness hurts. So a way that we started doing this was also by reading books. One of the peace heroes that our school really looks up to is Dr. Martin Luther King. So we started as
a group of five year olds really learning more about his life. First starting off with who he was as a child growing up.
Things he like to do. His role as a preacher, as a father. What he likes to do with his friends. Really bringing the parts of him that were joyful before introducing
the parts that the children might have been surprised about, which was the racism, the segregation. So children really, after reading that piece about the injustice,
really came together about that's not okay that, that was happening and we talked about how it is still happening today
and what can our role be. So children wanted to make signs for Dr. King's birthday. We have a parade every year, and they wanted to have signs with words that really inspired them to move forward and
as the children would say really make really there was a song that they connect with about making the world a better place and what can one little person do.
So they wanted to use words to make this world a better place. So we wrote down the children's words and they were copying them. We used skin tone colors to make paintings.
So again, this was really to support goals, three and four about children's awareness of unfairness and what their role is and what they could do.
This is also in that same school year, one of the children was really inspired by us making signs and having our powerful words on it and
he shared that this world quote unquote really needed a little more kindness. This was during the time where the previous President had just been elected and
children were hearing a lot of things at home. Things that were scary. So this child really focused on
what can we do to spread kindness? We need to do something. He said, "Let's make signs and right be kind on them and just give them to everybody, so that
people can be kinder." And the children really listened to him and wanted to do it. So we made lots of signs we wrote be kind on it.
And we passed them out to our school, to our neighborhood, and even went to City Hall, to share these signs. So it was really a way to empower the children and really think about how powerful their words are and what actions they could do.
Also, a piece of this story that really
grew and was so important was the collaborations. I was able to connect with teachers, particularly teachers of color, our director that
really supported me through this was such a big piece, but something
also, that I thought about and collaborating with her was that I really wanted to hear different perspectives, particularly one
that was a voice of color. Her being a White woman she's definitely supportive and an ally, but I felt like I needed to connect with somebody who was also a person of color who
could really make a connection with the way that I was feeling about what had happened. So I went to teacher Eric, who is also biracial, similar to Harry, and is also Jewish,
and he had also been Harry's teacher when he was two years old. I told him what had happened in our classroom and
he said, "Well that happened to me as a kid. People would tell me that I couldn't be Jewish, because of the way I looked, because of the color of my skin," he said.
"Can I come in and do a circle time in your classroom and share with the kids about that happening to me, and what I did, and how he responded,
and how important it is to be proud of your differences?" So I said, "Yes absolutely." So he came in and we had a puppet show and a circle time,
and Harry just had a smile on his face the entire time and he turned to a child that was next to him and said, "That happened to me too."
And he just was again, to have someone that he can look at and have that mirror someone that was like him, but also someone who had a similar experience, and just share what they did about it and how powerful it was to acknowledge differences. And
other teachers started to come to me saying we, you know, we want to help too, we want to think about this together as a school. So that year our collaborations really grew as a school and thinking deeper about the anti-bias goals together.
So again, going back to the beginning of our webinar, some of the questions that we were going to think about together.
So again, often I get asked where should I start? What are the specific steps that I should take?
So I want to tell you all that there is no recipe. There's no formula.
Unfortunately there's no survival guide, like the one I used when I first started off in teaching young children that tells you, you know what to do every day, what to plan.
There's lots of research out there, there's lots of resources, but I can't tell you all, what exact steps to take. We all have such different journeys. We all come from different places. We are all have
we're working in different contexts, in different places, different aged children. They all are coming from such different backgrounds.
So, again, I don't have an exact recipe for you, but I'm hoping that the story I just shared
really inspires you to think about your role as educators, and also have some some tips for you and one more story to help your thinking through, what your role is and what you can do or continue to do.
So, here are some questions to guide my responses.
What touches my heart about this situation?
What in my background or personal life is influencing my feeling and thinking right now? What might the children's families hope I'll say or do?
How do my values about diversity and equity play into this situation? So again, these are some questions that I can share with you and I'll send to Cindy,
that I have adapted from the thinking lens that really helped my responses when there's just these tricky situations in my classroom, particularly about race or racism or any kind of bias. I have found this to be really helpful.
Using facts and research to guide my thinking, that is extremely important. So I encourage all of you to
do more reading, attend more webinars, and really use these facts and research to help you in your planning. If you don't already have the anti-bias goals book, I highly encourage you to get that book.
Again, using this resource was extremely helpful for us as educators, but also for the families to know what children's capabilities are in thinking about race.
Also, a few years ago we had a presentation by Nadiyah Taylor. I don't know if any of you had her have heard of her, but she's also a contributor to one of the books from the ROW series, and she had some suggestions for us in how
to do this anti-bias work and help us plan. She said to really separate the conversation about skin color from one about racial justice. And I found that really important that, that be separated.
Also to think about and share with the children and families that people of all skin colors work to make things fair. So we all work together.
Social justice is all year long. So it's, not just in February for Black History Month, it's not just during Dr. King's birthday, but social justice is all year long.
Children should learn about people as human beings long before learning about their oppression. So like my example about Dr. King, we learned about his life first and about his joy before talking to the children about the oppression.
A question I leave you all to think about is how are young children thinking about race and racism, and what is our responsibility?
Again, something to think about.
So for our next and last story, I want to share with you it's a sneak peek of a video I'm going to tell you about the story, one of the stories that's in this video that
the directors are Debbie LeeKeenan and also John Nimmo.
I don't know if you've heard of them, but I highly recommend you looking them up and reading about their work. This is one of the books they've written, Leading Anti-Bias Early Childhood Programs
and they've teamed up to make a video about what does anti-bias education, what is this really look like in classrooms and what are teachers
doing. So it's a glimpse into a classroom. It's a glimpse into teachers thinking, and it's about 45 minutes long. It's teachers from Seattle, as well as San Francisco, myself and Brian share a story in it and I'm going to give you a sneak preview today.
Let's see.
Perfect.
There we go. So,
this is in June right when we reopened in
during Covid and the story that I shared earlier about Harry and Kiley, that was three years ago now. So,
part of my intention in sharing the story with you is to see where I was in my thinking and my journey, two years ago, and how really having the support and the collaboration with my team members and the families,
just really how much I've grown, but this work, it's never over as Nadiyah said this work is every day, and I feel like you'll see once I tell you the story that really
really children's voices are so important to hear and art can lead us in this journey. So again, this was in June
of last year. It was the first week of us being open after Covid. We reopened with lower ratios.
And it was again, a meal time, it was snack time and, as we were eating, one of the children
took a bite of his graham cracker and then looked over and said to all of us at the table, "Did you hear about what happened in Minnesota?"
And right away, it was a "Uh oh, I know what he's going to say." I knew he was going to share the horrific murder that had happened in Minnesota of George Floyd.
I had been talking to my thinking partner, Brian, days before that about thinking, "Is this something we should talk to the children about?
Is this something you think they've heard about at home? Should we be prepared?" And we had a meeting plan for that week to think about what our roles could be and what was going on in our country, at that moment, but this child
he was ready to talk about it. He wanted to talk about it and I let him talk and I let him share his feelings with everyone at the table.
He said, continued to say, "A man his name is George, he was murdered. People are mad about it. People are angry. People are destroying buildings. He didn't even do anything and he was black. Did you know that I'm black?"
And then I, right away, I responded, and I wanted to mirror back what he was saying to us, and I said, "Yes, I did hear that doesn't happen and yes,
you're right that did happen. Yes, he was black. Yes, people are angry. People are mad and
I'm mad too. I'm angry too. This was not okay."
And then I looked at all the children, I said, "You know what I do when I'm feeling mad and angry? I think about what I can do to help."
What do you think?
Looked at all the children, our classroom's called the coyotes and I said to them, "Coyotes, do you want to join me? Should we
think together about something that we can do?" And they all agreed, "Yes, we need to do something about it that's not okay that
this man was killed," and children started to share what they knew about the story and some children were in complete surprise and shock, they didn't know anything about it,
and the children all agreed, we need to do something about this, it was not okay that this police officer murdered this man. So I told them that we would
have homework that night, that I want them to go home that I sent their families, an email about what what we talked about at the table that their homework was to think about what we could do
as a classroom community. Something to make people hear voices. Something that would help. So the next day, the children came back and we had a meeting and I had children
who had thought of an idea to raise their hand and share and right away a child raised his hand, he said, "Has anyone heard of Black Lives Matter?"
And none of the children have heard of it, so I said to him, "Well tell us more what is that? What does that mean? What is the Black Lives Matter?"
And he said, "Well, I think we should make signs that say 'Black lives matter', because we need to spread the word that Black lives are important, too, and we need to
put them on our windows and give them to people, that way they know that we care about Black lives," and I looked around, and I said, "What do you think of his idea?" and all the children
raised their hands and said, "Yeah that's what we need to do. That's a good idea. We want to do that. Let's make signs and give them to everybody. People need to know that we care."
So I said to them, "Okay well tomorrow, I will gather paper, will gather markers and paints and we'll make signs,
we'll make a plan together," and how we're gonna as the children kept saying, 'spread the word,' and one of the children, said to me, "Nadia no we can't do it tomorrow, this is too important, we need to do it now. We have to make the signs now."
And he was right, this was too important. It wasn't something that could wait till the next day. So I said to him, "You're right, this is too important let's do it now." So we right away went to get paper, we got markers, we got paints, children who could write letters
did their own sign. I wrote down children's words and every child in that classroom made a sign with their important words.
So here's some examples of their signs.
So,
I was thinking that we can hang them up and that we can make copies for the children to take home, and as I was gathering them to make the copy is one of the children, said to me, "So when is our parade?"
I said, "What parade? "Well we made the signs, everybody has to see them now. We have to have a parade and walk around. We have to have a march," and I said, "Oh
okay that's a great idea. Let me talk to our director, because we need to social distance and I'm not sure how we would, you know, put a march together. So let me
let me ask our director Balan, and we will make a plan," and then the child said, "Well, can you will get her now? This is too important we can't wait. We have to ask her now." And again just really listening to the children's words, listening to their ideas, listening to their feelings,
it was just a way to empower them and have them lead the way, and they were right, this was too important it,
it couldn't wait, we needed to ask her now. So I went ahead and went to go ask her, she helped me organize it, we put stickers on all our signs and we walked around the yard
with our signs for everyone to see and we walked through the classrooms that were empty because everybody was outside. So this is us walking through the classrooms.
So the children,
as we were thinking about what Black lives matter meant, had lots to say. They had lots of ideas.
And for about three weeks my co-teacher and I we wrote down their ideas, we
got more books to help inspire our thinking, we communicated with families and sent newsletters out, we had them share what are you talking about home, here's what we're talking about, what language are you using, really supporting each other through this thinking.
So the next step, the children one to do was to go in to every other classroom at our school because they wanted those children to know about it, and for them to put our signs up but,
again, there was the dilemma of well we couldn't do that because of Covid. We're not allowed to go into the other classrooms. So,
our director came and said, "I have an idea what if you wrote something? What if you wrote your ideas down,
and we could share that with the other classrooms?" And then she gave us an example and she read to the children, our schools diversity statement to inspire them.
The children really took this idea on and were all extremely excited said, "Yes, we have to write our words down. We're going to write our own statement.
And we're going to give it to all the other classrooms and we're going to give them our signs and they could put it on their windows,
and then the whole community will know that we care about Black lives." So here is what the children, the statement that the children put together this is all their words, except for
I think I wrote the last sentence, together with them. So I thought you've been listening to me for so long. I'm going to let one of the children from
this classroom. He's now kindergartner who's reading. I'm going to let him read it to you. So I have a little video to share with you. If you just bear with me while I pull up that video. If you get to see my desktop do not get scared I promise it's very organized. It just looks messy.
But hold on for one second please?
Okay I'm gonna share screen again now.
Okay, someone in the chat could let me know if you see the child, that'd be great?
Great. Okay I'm gonna press play, and if you don't hear it, let me know, but here goes a friend reading our Black lives statement for you.
What is Black Lives Matter mean?
The Black Lives Matter movement is a group of people who want to make sure that people of all skin colors are treated fairly.
Black lives matter means to treat Black people fairly. Some people say all lives matter, and they do, but right now, Black lives matter, because Black people are not being treated fairly.
And that's not nice or respectful of the people's feelings. People are mad and angry that this is happening. They are marching and protesting.
We need to listen to other people. Don't treat people differently, because the color of their skin. Why is the Black Lives Matter movement important?
This work is so important. We are also feeling mad, and we want to do something about it and we need to let everyone know we care.
We can put up signs that say Black lives matter. When people see the signs, they will know that we care about Black lives.
We care about brown lives too.
They can tell other people.
And spread the word.
We are like a rainbow, and a rainbow should have all skin colors.
Dr. King died, but we can continue his work. We can take Dr. King's place. We hope you can join us and put up our
Black Lives Matters sign on your window for everyone to see.
Love the Coyotes.
Nadia: Drop the mic at the end, but dropped his paper. So I want to tell all of you that these are some stories again just to
inspire all of you. There's no, there's not one right way to do this work. There are some wrong ways, but there isn't just one right way to do this work.
There's so many things to think about in this planning. Again, we are all on such different journeys. I do want to say that I feel that it is our obligation as educators to do something. If you're scared to do this work,
I don't think it's an option to do nothing. We can all do something and all our some things are going to look so different. So I leave you all, with just thinking about what is your something? What is
your something you can do now? Maybe it's tomorrow, maybe it's next week, but I leave you with thinking about what your something is. I also
I'm leaving some time for any connections you want to make about what I shared today, any questions, and I'll have some final slides after that time.
So thank you all of you for listening to me for an hour and a half. I'm going to hand it off to Cindy to help coordinate some questions and comments.
Cindy: All right, so please feel free to put your questions in the Q&A.
Or just some words of
of comments as well.
Maybe Nadia while we're waiting for some questions, I wrote down a couple questions I thought might be of interest.
And I think in a way, your presentation's already touched on these but,
I wondered what brings you the most joy, when you are working with children, particularly doing this work around anti-bias and anti-
racist
education?
Nadia: That's a great question Cindy and I've been asked this before and I kind of chuckle to myself at the answer because I always say what I love is
engaging conversation with them, particularly spontaneous conversation, but always that's always the trickiest as well, and can be the hardest because
you don't have time to plan your answer ahead of time. You have to be present and in the moment, but they are the moments that I love the most the spontaneous conversations, the hearing children's thinking, and also just
really just
connecting with them during those times is my favorite.
Cindy: All right.
Thank you.
Anna Rodriguez: Nadia we are starting, it's Anna.
[Nadia]: Hey Anna. [Anna]: We are starting to get some comments in the Q&A section. First comment is that, "That child who read that letter is such a great reader."
And another comment from Alexandra said, "I found this extremely beneficial. Thank you for sharing." From Johanna, "I really enjoyed this presentation. There were so many hands on examples for all teachers to start implementing right away."
From Tony, "What an inspiring presentation. Thank you for sharing your great work."
We have another one from Giselle, "Thank you so much for being such an amazing and inspirational teacher and advocate for children and families."
From Cindy, "Thank you Nadia and Cindy for the work that you are doing to empower children. Your story was so touching especially how you supported the children's voices."
Melanie has I think our first question, she first commented, "Inredibly inspiring work, thank you. When implementing this in your classroom did you ever have any pushback from parents?"
Nadia: Thanks Melanie for asking. Well, fortunately, for me, no, I didn't.
But again, just going back to sharing a bit about where I worked, these families all come into our school knowing that we have a mission statement, a diversity statement, that we are
extremely committed to the anti-bias goals in supporting a diverse community that we are wanting to have these conversations and go deeper with children, particularly having conversations that support their self identity and family pride. We don't necessarily
start off the beginning of year in talking about racism. In these both these stories that I shared these children
initiated the conversation because again, that's something that, as a school, particularly thinking about the age range, we have two year olds all the way to five year olds is
what is developmentally appropriate in thinking about racism. So we are still we're still on this journey and thinking about
if we're going to celebrate Dr. King, for example, it's, you know, we can't do that and not acknowledge the work that he did, which was about treating everyone fairly regardless of skin color, to talk about racism. So we're thinking about how to do that
in a way, that's age, appropriate, and particularly talking about it more in the older classrooms. So again, parents are all, they all know about this work we're doing. They come into our school knowing about it's a big piece of our tour and our website. So I didn't get any pushback,
but I can see how, in a different school, in a different setting you might get some some pushback. But I feel like I was set up for this to be
as successful as possible with all that support. So I hope that answers your question, yet, you know, how do you deal with pushback? You know, do you stop the work that you're doing if you do get pushed back? So I think it's something important to think about.
Anna: Thank you Nadia and Melanie. Thank you for answering her question and for
[Nadia]: Yeah. [Anna]: Being such an
advocate. We have another question this time it's from Monica, "My students are from primarily Hispanic homes, so there is not a lot, there is not much quote unquote diversity. How would you recommend introducing anti-bias curriculum?"
Nadia: Thanks Monica, that's also a really good question and that's something that I've been thinking a lot about, especially now that I've been doing more of these webinars and sharing about my work and not all schools are as
diverse as Pacific Primary, so I think something I really highly encourage you to think about is
that diversity comes in all forms, it's not just race about race or culture, but we are all diverse people. So whether it's abilities, things people like to eat,
hair color, eye color, you know, all kinds of things. So looking at the diversity in that group and highlighting those differences as something to appreciate,
connecting on similarities, so again, there's diversity in that. But also something that I really use as an important tool is having books.
So using books as those windows that we talked about earlier. A window into other cultures, other abilities, other languages, etc. I feel like books are really strong tool. I hope that helps Monica.
Anna: Thank you Nadia. Our next question is from Jenny, "Will a recording or a second presentation be available to share with fellow teachers and Child Development students? I'm sure, a lot of other participants are asking this question as well."
Nadia: I'll let Cindy answer that.
Cindy: Yes, we are recording this and we'll be posting it for our students to enjoy, if they couldn't be here in person.
Thanks Cindy.
Anna: Thank you Cindy. Melanie thanks you for answering her question Nadia, and for being an amazing advocate. We have another comment from the Lasandra,
"It is really wonderful to hear ways teachers are engaging the students in the moment. As you mentioned, there usually isn't planning time, so we have to respond in the moment. It helps to see and hear suggestions, thank you."
[Nadia]: Can I make a comment about that? [Anna]: Absolutely.
Nadia: I want to say something I learned is that if you don't have the answer, it's okay to tell children, "Hmm I don't know,
What happened in Minnesota. Let me find out. Let's talk more about it later," or, "I don't know the answer to that, let me find out and come back and let's talk more," or, if you feel like you, you made a mistake,
being okay with it and say, "You know when I answered your question yesterday, I made a mistake and here's what I really want to say to you." So coming back to repair it. I think that is all okay to do, and I want to encourage you all to
think about that as well.
[Anna]: Thank you for that and Monica also says, "Thank you for your excellent ideas." [Nadia]: Sure.
Anna: While we're waiting for more questions Cindy, Nadia did you have anything else to share?
Nadia: I do, once we're
done with anyone sharing any connections or questions, I have a few more slides just to share with you.
Again I'm really super excited about this video that is being put together about anti- bias teaching. It's going to be, I think a really important tool, because teachers who are out there in the field,
there's so much research out there, there's so many books and articles, but it's so different to see a teacher speaking, see a teacher with children in the classroom doing this work and just seeing those ideas
that are the anti-bias goals come to life. So I'm really excited about this video. It's not out yet so I gave you a sneak peek. It's going to be a free resource for everybody for families, for teachers, professors.
So that's also super exciting too, that it's going to be free an online resource.
And as soon as it's officially out, I will let Cindy know so she could send the link to all of you, but I'll share a slide with their website if you're interested in learning more about their work, but just want to say how excited I am about that.
Cindy: That is very exciting and I'm excited that it's free so that we can really get the word out and share.
One other thing that's going to be happening on our Moorpark campus, for those of you interested in extending this conversation as well, in April, we are going to be doing a book group, campus book group through MC Reads, Moorpark College Reads,
about Ibram X. Kendi's Antiracist Baby. So we'll be posting more information about that soon, and I think it'll be a great way to continue this conversation great
Anna: Okay, it looks like we don't have any more questions coming in. So Nadia if you want to share that video snippet?
Nadia: Right yeah. I will go to my last slides one, second, let me share screen again. One moment please.
So again, I just want to leave you with some questions to think about. These are all inspired by the thinking lens, but after today's presentation, I encourage you to really think about what touched your heart and your mind about these stories. What challenged you about these stories?
Finding the details of children's competence. So thinking about what examples of the children strengths and competence did you hear in these stories.
For seeking children's point of view. Thinking about how might the curiosity and ease with which the children explore similarities
and differences inspire your work as you navigate the complexity of supporting their development. And for opportunities and possibilities,
how might the anti-bias goals help you think about how you plan your space and your curriculum? What might you doing your own work to explore these ideas? Again, I will share some of these slides with these questions and some of the research with Cindy to share.
Here is the website for John Nimmo and Debbie LeeKeenan again, if you're interested in learning more about their work, you can Google and Anti-bias leaders and early childhood education and it'll take you right to it.
Also, if you want to connect with me, you're welcome to email me. Here's my email and njaboneta@gmail.com.
Also, if you're interested in learning more about these stories, you can go to Child Care Exchange or Redleaf Press to find both of my books.
And I'm excited to have a new Facebook group that we just started about a month ago and Deb Curtis and I are just using it as a way to share how amazing children are.
It's called Children's Lively Minds. So if you are on Facebook you just look for that "Children's Lively Minds," and
again, we're just sharing stories of children's competencies and how amazing they are and seeing how amazing
all all these educators all over the world. We have people like all over from Australia and New Zealand, we have people in the Philippines, people in Peru, Brazil just coming together to share about our work as educators. So I invite you to join us on Facebook.
And like we're done a little early, but thank you Cindy for inviting me. Thank you to all of all of you for being here with me today.
Cindy: And thank you Nadia.
Nadia: You're welcome.