Embracing Identities

 Wellbeing Objectives: 

• children feel safe, secure, and supported. 
• children become strong in their social and emotional wellbeing.  
• children develop knowledgeable and confident self-identities. 

Strategies: 

• educators build on culturally valued child-rearing practices and approaches to learning. 
• educators acknowledge each child’s uniqueness in positive ways. 

• educators promote children’s sense of belonging, connectedness, and wellbeing. 
• educators welcome children and families into the program space, sharing aspects of children’s cultural and spiritual lives. 
• educators mediate and assist children in negotiating their rights in relation to the rights of others. 
• educators acknowledge and understand that children construct meaning in different ways. 
• educators demonstrate a deep understanding of each child, their family, and community contexts in planning for children’s learning. 

• educators provide children with rich and diverse resources that reflect children’s social worlds. 
• educators talk with children in respectful ways about similarities and differences in people. 
• educators listen to and learn about children’s understandings of themselves.  

Personal & Social Responsibility Objectives: 

• children learn to interact in relation to others with care, empathy, and respect.  

• children develop a sense of belonging to groups and communities, and how they can actively participate in them. 
• Children respond to diversity with respect. 
• Children become aware of fairness. 

Strategies: 

• educators acknowledge children’s complex relationships and sensitively intervene in ways that promote consideration of alternative perspectives and social inclusion. 

• educators provide opportunities for children to investigate ideas, complex concepts and ethical issues that are relevant to their lives and their local communities. 
• educators model language that children can use to express ideas, negotiate roles, and collaborate to achieve goals. 
• educators ensure that children have the skills to participate in and contribute to group play and projects reflect on their own responses to diversity. 
• educators design and plan for environments that reflect diversity in culture, gender identity, and family structure, such as books and materials. 
• educators plan experiences and provide resources that broaden children’s perspectives and encourage appreciation of diversity. 

• educators encourage children to listen to others and to respect diverse perspectives. 
• educators demonstrate positive responses to diversity in their own behaviour and in conversations with children. 
• educators engage in interactions with children that promote respect for diversity and value distinctiveness. 
• educators explore the culture, heritage, backgrounds, and traditions of each child within the context of their community. 
• educators explore with children their ideas about diversity and provide opportunities for them to ask questions or share doubts about inconsistent messages they hear notice and listen carefully to children’s concerns and discuss diverse perspectives on issues of inclusion and exclusion, and fair and unfair behaviour. 

• educators analyze and discuss with children ways in which texts construct a limited range of identities and reinforce stereotypes. 
• educators point out and draw children’s attention to issues of fairness relevant to them in the early childhood program and broader community. 

Learning Outcomes Seminar 1: 

By the end of this seminar participants will be able to: 

1. Describe the four pillars of anti-bias education. 

1. Outline a working definition of the first pillar, identity. 

1. Discuss ways to identify and affirm children’s identities through the materials and social climate of the classroom. 

1. To propose action steps for integrating the first pillar into practice. 

Learning Outcomes Seminar 2: 

By the end of this seminar participants will be able to: 

1. Identify three ways that educators can create a classroom environment that supports positive identity development. 

1. Recognize characteristics of picture books that provide children with windows and mirrors for exploring identity and intersectionality. 

1. Consider how classroom materials can support ongoing inquiry into identities, relationships. diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

1. Recognize that diverse materials are not enough and recognize the critical role classroom discussion and inquiry play in anti-bias education. 

Learning Outcomes Seminar 3: 

By the end of this seminar participants will be able to: 

1. Propose ways to support children in forming peer relationships that value inclusion. 

1. Identify principles and lenses that can be incorporated to further anti-bias practice. 

1. Consider ideas for supporting peer relationships in play. 

1. Value the use of connecting rituals and routines in supporting children throughout the day. 

Exploring Identities with Young Children: Practical Considerations

Introductions.

Ron, Childology, NOLA Nature School, Young Children,

Presentation/Information.

Exploring Identities with Young Children: Practical Considerations.

If you were able to tune in to the webinars, you may remember the four-pillared framework that we took to our exploration of identity development: One that uses the four pillars of social justice framework as explained by Derman-Sparks and Edwards.

Pillar 1 – Identity.

“Teachers will nurture each child’s construction of knowledgeable, confident, individual personal and social identities.” (Derman-Sparks and Edwards, NAEYC). Children, in short, are encouraged to understand themselves as both individuals, as members of community. They are supported in exploring the aspects of these identities, what they mean for their lived experiences day-to-day. Again, in our framework, we consider identity a child’s sense of self, both internally and in relation to community. An identity consists of any and all of the features that define a person, and is a key component of the way a person understands and realties to the world, as well as influencing the way the world responds to them.

We used Bronfrenbrenner’s bio-ecological model (Bronfrenbrenner & Morris, 2006) to visualize this, and acknowledged that identities also exist across multiple categories—and that the confluence of any configuration of identities within a single person gives them a unique perspective on the world. This “intersectionality”—the simultaneous overlapping presence of multiple identities in a single human being—means that we experience similar things differently. (E.g. we all experience being children growing up in Halifax, yet given my SES my experience of childhood is both the same and different).

Children, we also know, are in tune with a variety of identities—yet in our Western context gender and race are two especially salient categories given the social and cultural significance that these take on within the overarching discourses of our lives.

Next we turned to diversity and justice, considering how to create environments for positive identity development that both gives children a lexicon for describing difference and diversity and that has terminology for equity,

Pillars 2 and 3 – Diversity and Justice.

Diversity. Of course, diversity is referring to the variety of experiences lived by members of our community and beyond; and particularly on giving children a vocabulary of “accurate language for human difference,” regardless of the composition of the classroom.

Justice. Justice refers to having language to describe unfairness in the framework, and for us with young children it includes that, but also refers to discussing equity and need without hesitation.

We do each of these in many ways, but we emphasized in particular having a library of picture books that reflects and gives children opportunities to engage with and discuss social identities and their roles/impacts in our lives; selecting materials that enable and invite children to see, embrace, and normalize difference, and emphasized that these have to occur within the context of ongoing conversations!

• Invitations and provocations.
• Books and discussions.
• Inquiries and project work, whatever that looks like in your context.
• These are part and parcel of one another, and while we separate them for the sake of discussion and planning, in reality, they are integrated (as is everything in early childhood)!

Pillar 4 – Action.

Enactment within children’s play and peer relationships.

Play is a means through which children process experiences and express their views about the society in which they live. It is, to use Rule’s analogy, a mirror into the minds of children and a mirror that reflects to adults what children are processing and internalizing about the society and community through which they move.

• Take pictures of play and de-construct them with children in group settings (Serriere, 2010).
• Use pedagogical documentation as a tool for discussion with colleagues and community about the themes, norms, and identities present in children’s play and discussion (Stacey, 2019).
• Take the children’s lead and listen first. This way, we understand the children’s understanding and can cater to their curiosities (Ramsey, 2015).
• Use children’s play and created artifacts as conversation pieces for families about equity, representation, and identity.
• Develop norms around conversation within your classroom.
• Invitations to speak: Be aware of children who speak less often, at a softer volume, or seem otherwise hesitant to share. Give these children space and an arena to share.

The active pursuit of connections with others—colleagues, mentors, and community organization efforts around social justice.

Takeaways.

Identity development is something that works best when it is incorporated into every aspect of the curriculum.

Identity explorations with young children are best supported when teachers:

Understand their own identities, and how these impact their lives teaching, and experiences.

Have a community of practice with which to connect around these explorations.

Are engaged in (or at least aware of) what is happening in the surrounding community.

Exploring identities is not something to be embarked upon with fear. To be human is to mess up—embrace the lifelong learning that is the work; embrace the changes that will happen—change is not scary, it just means that there are constantly new ways, more refined ways, to speak and think about a topic. And the deeper you go, the more you will realize what you do not know and/or what you need to learn more about.

Some Discussion Questions with Olha.

Questions from the Attendees.

Framework Principles & Practices utilized in the seminar: reflective practice, intentional teaching, relationships, learning environments, holistic approaches, valuing the cultural and social contexts of children, and inclusion, diversity & equity. 

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