Open Discussion Forum

Each and Every Child Book Study Reflection

  • 1.  Each and Every Child Book Study Reflection

    Posted 08-31-2020 11:54 AM

    Each and Every Child: Teaching Preschool with an Equity Lens
    Reflections, Part 5 – Engaging Diverse Families
    08/25/2020

    As a group, these were our reflections on this segment of the book:

    1. Have you ever done/been with an organization that implements home visits? What are the benefits/downfalls of it?We discussed home visits. One group member described her personal experience with home visits as a tool to begin building relationships with the children and their families. This teacher chose to do home visits on her own time because the benefits were so important to her relationship building. She utilized many of the techniques indicated in this chapter. Another group member described being part of a "Parents Interacting With Infants" (PIWI) program as part of the Pyramid Model where home visits were done 12 times – one session every other week , also noting the benefits of building relationships. A third group member had experience with a home visiting program that shared developmental information with families. We discussed that there is evidence-based data to show that home visits are in fact a very effective tool to utilize in our work with young children. As described in the introduction to this section of the book, families know their children vest and we need to build relationships with families. Relationships are the foundation of our work.
    2. Chapter 18: Have any of you read Big Questions for Young Minds? The chapter is authored by one of the authors of that book. How can Bloom's taxonomy and high level questions help us with diverse families and children? There is a chapter in the book specific to supporting children's understanding of diversity. We talked about asking essential questions and developing higher order thinking in our work with young children. One group member was able to take an online course in Missouri about Questions in Early Childhood to help educators develop high level questioning. We talked about how making changes in the classroom to benefit one child can also create a positive impact for the other children in the classroom. We discussed how important it is to listen to children and develop experiences for them based on what we learn, but we need to learn to ask the right question at the right time.
    3. How do we overcome some of the challenges that we may encounter as we do this work? One of the challenges discussed that families have different values and beliefs and may not agree with some of the ways we incorporate inclusion and diversity in our programs. It is important to let our mission statements and our visions guide our work when this happens. While we agree that it is ideal to find people who speak the language of all enrolled children, it is certainly a challenge to find the resources to carry this out. This is not always a practical solution. Google Translate can be used, but is not always accurate. We discussed reaching out to local libraries to find books in various languages, particularly to help children who are dual language learners. We talked about finding ways to tie math into children's home cultures and wished there had been more information regarding varied family structures, but noted there is a lack of research at this point.
    4. In closing, we agreed that this is something to "work our way out" of – we need to be willing to be uncomfortable and be sensitive, but to always keep working at it. It is important to create authentic experiences and have families reflected in our classrooms. As ECE practitioners it is important for us to be advocates for all children.

     

    Additional Resources discussed:

    Town Square, Erikson Institute - https://www.erikson.edu/professional-development/town-square/

    Big Questions for Young Minds: Extending Children's Thinking - https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/books/big-questions-young-minds

    Todd Parr – The Family Book

    Loose Parts 3: Inspiring Culturally Sustainable Environments - https://www.redleafpress.org/Loose-Parts-3-Inspiring-Culturally-Sustainable-Environments-P1908.aspx

    Exchange Everyday – cohorts beginning to discuss From Teaching to Thinking: A Pedagogy for Reimaging Our Work with a focus on equity and social justice exchangepress.com/row

    White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism https://www.amazon.com/White-Fragility-People-About-Racism/dp/0807047414



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    Dawn Hays
    Stoddard WI
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