This is a great thread! @Faith Rogow, thanks for the resource recommendations-- I had never heard of The Puzzle Place or Vivian Vasquez's work, will look up both. That's also a really important critique of the Three Little Pigs that I had never thought of before, thanks for sharing. @John Gunnarson and @Meg Thomas-- I like both of these concrete strategies you mentioned, the "Question of the Day" and the "Who am I thinking of?" game. As I think about trying them in my classroom with 3-5 year olds, I have a question pertaining to both of these-- when you're talking about specific children in your classroom, how do you negotiate bringing up their differences without putting kids on the spot, outing or embarrassing them, when the information you're drawing attention to positions them in the minority within the classroom? For example, Meg, as you are describing a child, have any of them reacted like "this is private information that I don't want you to be sharing about me"? We play a similar game, "bug under the rug," where children describe clues about the "bug" while a guesser is out of the room, and then they hide under a blanket and the guesser gets clues about who it is. We usually stick to superficial things like what they're wearing, and, hair, skin, and eye color, but I like the idea of bringing in more home culture information. John, does your "Question of the Day" game also cover social identities, or do you stick with less loaded territory like the examples you mentioned?
A few things I think about often-- following the "80/20" rule of thumb, where my teacher-initiated conversations, discussions, storytimes, songs, etc that address bias & stereotyping have roughly 80% positive/uplifting content, and only 20% digging into the negative. (I learned the 80/20 rule from Olivia Higgins at queerlyelementary.com but I think it's an older concept.) The reason is that too much focus on teasing, bullying, excluding, shame, etc, unintentionally reinforces those reactions with whatever the subject matter is--race, gender, ability, etc. This is why I wouldn't read a book like Jacob's New Dress, which focuses on the teasing and conflict that results when Jacob wears a dress to school (the authors originally wanted to write the book without any teasing, but their publishers wouldn't let them). Instead I use books like I'm Jay Let's Play and Unico Como Yo/One of A Kind Like Me to celebrate boys wearing dresses.
I also think often about a quote from Julie Olsen Edwards, one of the co-authors of Anti-bias Education-- she said something along the lines of, "If a day goes by and I haven't reinforced the key message, 'we all share things in common, and we all have differences, and aren't these differences wonderful?' then I have failed in my teaching that day." By which measure I am failing quite often... but which I aspire to.
Some strategies that have worked well in my classroom include many of the ones others have mentioned, including pointing out stereotypes when we come across them, asking questions and starting conversations about them. I've also had a lot of positive response from the kids to persona dolls. Storytelling is a big part of my program's curriculum, and staff have a lot of conversations about interrogating our story choices and introducing a diversity of characters. Another thing the kids enjoyed last year, we we sang a modified version of the sesame street song "We all Sing With the Same Voice" (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYXJlfcfFKU) which has a picture book version too (changed it to "We All Sing With Our OWN Voice" and added lots of categories-- skin color, what we like to wear, gender, languages we speak), and then over the course of a few months we re-wrote the song about our own classroom community, and then made it into a book.
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Encian Pastel
Richmond CA
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-12-2019 09:51 AM
From: Margaret Thomas
Subject: Helping children understand stereotypes
I'm very aware that children are taking in bias and stereotypes from a very young age. It seems important to help them understand stereotypes early- so that they can understand what they are facing. I also know that children are pretty conditioned not to talk about race and other "sensitive" topics so I can't always wait for teachable moments. It's hard to find the right moment though. Do you talk with young children about stereotypes? How and when do you bring them up?
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[Meg] [Thomas]
[Early childhood consultant
[St Paul ] [MN]
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