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Advancing Social Justice

In early childhood Classrooms

Personal identity and Critical Self reflection

What are my personal identities and what experiences have i had?

how have i critically explored my intersectional positionality?

Check your biases

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

Check your biases

There are compelling arguments against the accuracy of these tests, but they remain an interesting piece of data for you to explore.

Conduct an Audit

  • Who are the authors I read?
  • Who writes the news that I read/watch?
  • Who do I spend my time with?
  • Where do I spend money?
  • What political campaigns do I support?

Conduct an Audit

Examine your identities, consider where you have privilege

Examine your identities

Social Identity Wheel

https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/inclusive-teaching/wp-content/uploads/sites/732/2020/07/Social-Identity-WheelDefinitions.pdf

ASk yourself...

Ask yourself

  • How are my experiences influencing my reactions?
  • Where is my culture influencing my actions or my interpretation of others?
  • How has my identity been racialized?
  • Internalized privilege
  • Internalized oppression

how strongly do I believe I should engage in these topics to advance social justice?

Social Justice orientation

0%: Not my job.

30%: Wait until kids bring it up

60%: Teachers should bring it up

10%: b and c

Equity content knowledge

WHat do I know and how am i continuously learning about equity, power, structural oppression, privilege, culture, etc?

REad

Read

For the classroom:

  • Anti-bias education for young children & ourselves (glossary of terms)
  • What if all the kids are white?
  • Since Time Immemorial

For your learning:

  • So you want to talk about race?
  • How to be an ant-racist.
  • White supremacy and me.

Anti-bias Education goals

Are the children in your classroom growing towards these goals?

Are you meeting these goals as teachers?

anti-bias goals

Identity

Children will demonstrate self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities.

Identity

Teachers will nurture each child’s construction of knowledgeable and confident personal and social identities

Diversity

Diversity

Children will express comfort and joy with human diversity, use accurate language for human differences, and form deep, caring connections across all dimensions of human diversity. 

Teachers will promote each child’s comfortable, empathetic interaction with people from diverse backgrounds. 

justice

Justice

Children will increasingly recognize unfairness (injustice), have language to describe unfairness, and understand that unfairness hurts.

Teachers will foster each child’s capacity to critically identify bias and will nurture each child’s empathy for the hurt bias causes.

Activism

Activism

Children will demonstrate a sense of empowerment and the skills to act, with others or alone, against prejudice and/or discriminatory actions.

Teachers will cultivate each child’s ability and confidence to stand up for oneself and for others in the face of bias.

Pedagogical Skills and Self-Efficacy

What teaching skills do I believe I can effectively enact to advance equity?

What skills do I need?

Pedagogical skills and self-efficacy

15 Minute Trainings

15 minute Trainings

A lot of great material at the website below. The most relevant for this work include:

  • Engaging Interactions and Environments
  • Novel words
  • Asking questions
  • Engaging children in conversations
  • Fostering children's thinking skills
  • Creating classroom rules
  • Ongoing Child Assessment
  • Any of these might be helpful

https://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/professional-development/article/15-minute-service-suites

It takes practice...

  • Consider using video to capture your work
  • Take notes
  • Reflect and plan to try again
  • Role play with colleagues
  • Email me for support!

Practice and Reflect

Which child behaviors, comments, and questions do I notice? how do I interpret them as opportunities to advance equity?

Child observations

  • Video
  • Carry a note pad in your pocket
  • Have clipboards around the room

Note Taking

Families, community & Administration

Am I collaborating with families?

What are the beliefs of families, communities, administrators and teachers? How does this impact my choices?

Teaching to Advance Social Justice

Classroom Actions and Activities

This work is never done at the end of an activity or the completion of a theme. These are just three ideas for actions you can take, but as you engage in this work know that all of the other pieces will play a role in the success of these activities.

Reflection Questions

Equity in the Environment

  • Where do Anti-bias Education goals fit into my curriculum plans for the day and week?
  • Who might be left out of this curriculum? How will I use the topic to include each child, connecting to diversity of social identities and individual needs?
  • What ideas, misconceptions, and stereotypes might children have about this topic? How can I learn what these are and provide accurate information and counter misinformation and stereotypes?
  • How can this topic support and strengthen children's innate sense of justice and their capacity to change unfair situations to fair ones?
  • What learning materials do I need to gather to incorporate and anti-bias perspective?

Do's

  • Complete the checklist for assessing the visual material environment at least once a year
  • Be thoughtful about your books:
  • Can all the children find themselves and their families in the books?
  • Are the book's content and images accurate and authentic? Do they depict current life?
  • Do the books show diversity within groups and community?

  • Tourist Curriculum

  • token materials

  • Misinforming/Misrepresenting

Don'ts

Responding in the moment

Responding in the moment

These conversations rely on previously established trusted relationships.

  • Listen carefully
  • Ask questions
  • Respond with simple, straightforward answers
  • Check to see what the child has understood and how they are feeling
  • Proceed with small steps

It's okay to not have the answer, but your silence is meaningful. Try:

  • This is really important, I need to think about how we can talk about it.
  • Let's think about who we can ask to help us talk about this topic.

Identities

Responding to children's negative self-identity

  • How does the environment support social identities?
  • Check your perception with staff and family
  • Take responsibility for what happens in your program
  • Make a plan with the family

Act on fear, discomfort and bias

Discomfort, bias, fear

  • Document the behavior
  • Think about what the child might be feeling and thinking
  • Develop a draft plan of action
  • Work with the family

Talking about current events

  • Make a safe space for all children.
  • Find out what the children know. Listen and name their feelings.
  • Identify and manage your own feelings.
  • Tell the truth.
  • Give the children something to do to make it better.
  • Talk with the families.

Current events

Equity-Based Shared REading

Use the modified lesson plan to prepare an equity-based shared reading experiences.

Shared Reading for social justice

In your group choose 1 and get started...

  • Begin working on your shared reading plan
  • Complete the checklist and plan for changes
  • Plan to respond to the topic of homelessness.
  • Or... think about any of the other content areas and make a plan to strengthen your skills and self-efficacy

Today...

REport back and let us know what you are going to be doing. I will see you at the professional development day in August to follow up.

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