In the month of November, we recommitted ourselves to our anti-bias curriculum and teaching for liberation. Four years ago, our staff
started a two year exploration into what it meant to create anti-bias
curriculum in our classrooms. Teachers examined our biases and our privilege.
We looked closely at systems and materials in our center and how they worked to
support or counter the biases of our dominant culture. It was a deep, emotional
collaboration and those of us here at that time will not soon forget what we
learned. There are certain practices, norms and materials at our center that support this kind of teaching, but more important are teacher attitudes, habits and knowledge, so we worked on those in teacher provocations.
We have had some staff turnover since our first investigation of anti-bias curriculum. Many of our newer
staff see the word “anti-bias” on our In many ways, teaching for liberation means questioning the things that we “know”.
An example; everybody “knows” it feels good to receive a
complement. Complements are a way that many adults greet young children and build a relationship. When we begin to see how we broadcast our own biases, and
learn how they affect the identities of children in our care, we want to
counter some messages in our work with children. After we learn more we see how we are reinforcing stereotyped messages about gender.
Suddenly, if we pay
attention, we hear our complements differently.
We notice that we may respond to even the smallest babies with complements
about their appearance when they think they are female babies and about their
actions if we think they are male babies. (A most telling example of this occurs when an adult accidentally misunderstands a child's gender, and makes the "wrong" kind of complement.) We see that we are telling a story to
a child about who they are when we
complement them for being pretty, having a “cool dress” or being strong or
funny. In fact, we’re colluding with most of the media that they’ll consume in
telling them this story.
Our anti-bias practice requires teachers to notice these kinds of actions, to
think about them, talk about them and try to build a new habit. Now we know that
we can greet a child without a complement at all and wait to see what we’d like
to say. We know that we are co-constructing children’s world with them, that
we have tremendous power and that we can counter the dominant “story” in our culture that
girls’ and women’s worth depends on our aesthetic value and that boys’ and
men’s worth depends on what they do. We know that we must work to counter
this stereotype and that it’s worth doing because it helps children grow up
with a sense of worthiness connected to how they are in the world, what they
think and what they do rather than how they look or behave.
At the end of the week, I’ll post about our provocations and describe how teachers defined anti-bias curriculum, we practice it
at our center, and how we reacted to some stories of teachers and parents dealing
with issues of difference and bias.
If you want to follow along, we listened to the firstchapter of an episode of This American Life about classroom discipline entitled "Is This Working?" And read “Holding Nyla” from the endlessly helpful text about doing education for liberation with young children, Rethinking Early Childhood Education, edited by Ann Pelo.
Where is your center on your anti-bias journey? What are you still working on?
Where is your center on your anti-bias journey? What are you still working on?
