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Advancing Equity on Early Childhood Education: A Position Statement of the National Association for the Education of Young Children

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Advancing Equity on Early Childhood Education: A Position Statement of the National Association for the Education of Young Children

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Often in DEIJ work, teachers question their ethical responsibility to provide an equitable learning opportunity to all children, especially BIPOC children. The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) published a position statement to address this specifically, outlining the professional responsibility of the learning facilitators to advance equity. This document outlines the effective educational supports that learning facilitators must accept and support in their classrooms; i.e. embracing diversity and full inclusion from a strengths based perspective, uphold fairness and justice in their classroom and school communities, and actively work to eliminate structural inequities that perpetuate inequitable learning opportunities (NAEYC, 2019).

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The relationship between teachers’ views about the cultural values and critical pedagogy

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The relationship between teachers’ views about the cultural values and critical pedagogy

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Critical Pedagogy is a theoretical and practical perspective in looking at the purpose of education and how educational pedagogy represents a struggle over knowledge and values, and is a deliberate way educators influence how and what knowledge is given to the learners and is a distinct values statement. This journal article questions the traditional educational mentality and its purpose (Yilmaz, et al., 2016).

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Using Children's Literature to Advance Antiracist Early Childhood Teaching and Learning

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Using Children's Literature to Advance Antiracist Early Childhood Teaching and Learning

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This journal article discusses the need for Early Childhood Education (ECE) learning facilitators to be antiracist and what that means. The research covers how ECE professionals need to understand how racism works and is imposed on the lives of the children they serve and how through the experiences they are provided in their ECE classroom, the effects can be countered (Spencer, 2022). The utilization of children’s literature with topics specific to antiracism, inclusion and social justice issues, can be used to support antiracist pedagogy and begin to improve the self esteem and efficacy of both the children and their learning facilitators.

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This journal article discusses the beginnings of the work to address the need for DEIJ leadership in the educational setting and what the social justice preparation of educators looked like in the early 2000s. Implications for what DEIJ work looks like today are discussed in this journal article.

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The Culturally Responsive Teacher Educator

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The Culturally Responsive Teacher Educator

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This journal article highlights the challenges new BIPOC teachers face when entering the field and how it affects teachers who identify as activists for social justice and DEIJ work. The research data is then used to develop a conceptual framework of culturally responsive pedagogy which supports learning facilitators as change agents, who use empowering instructional practices, while learning about the learners and their cultural communities, while enacting sociopolitical consciousness, caring and having high expectations for the learners (Gist, 2014).

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Creating Classrooms for Social Justice| Edutopia

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Creating Classrooms for Social Justice| Edutopia

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This blog post discusses strategies for how learning facilitators can support their learners by providing ways to make a positive change in their world and the larger global community by building relationships, authentic conversations on real-world problems with multiple perspectives, and creating a safe classroom community for them and with them (Dell’Angelo, 2016).

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It is also important to note that many of the practices that demonstrate a social justice orientation are also reflective of best practices in teaching. Social justice is not an "add on" for classrooms. This is a both/and proposition. Teachers can both maintain high-quality content instruction and create a classroom with a social justice orientation. Also, a social justice orientation is appropriate for all classrooms. This isn't something that just gets done in diverse classrooms, or classrooms that lack diversity, or urban classrooms -- or any other special category of school. It is a way of teaching and being that supports high-level thinking and learning throughout our lives.

Connecting to Students' Lives

When making curricular decisions, consider, value, and build on the diverse prior learning experiences of your students. This can be as simple as knowing a little bit about every student's background, if they are coming from another school, or if they have an interest in a particular area. Acknowledging and showing that you value what students are already bringing to the classroom is an important step in creating a classroom for social justice.

Linking to Real-World Problems and Multiple Perspectives

Make what you are teaching relevant to what is going on in the world. The classroom walls aren't magical barriers to the realities outside of them. If there's something happening in the news that you can link to your content, do it. Choose something controversial, or ask your students if they have questions regarding anything they have been hearing about. Chances are that someone is going to mention teacher strikes, honeybee decline, trash pick-up, even the events in Gaza or Robin Williams' death. This is an opportunity to teach children high-level thinking skills:

Discerning fact from opinion

Figuring out your own and others' point of view

Interpreting all of this information to decide on your own "truth."

Of course, this is not an opportunity for a teacher to impose his or her beliefs on the students. It is important to choose topics about which you feel you can be pedagogically neutral as you support students' own journey of learning how to be critical thinkers and forming their own opinions.

Creating Classroom Community

Create opportunities for students' voices to be heard. They need to be taught how to participate in a discussion. As teachers, we can encourage both sharing one's own ideas and responding to the ideas of classmates. The teacher's role is to use questioning that can help students make connections between the big ideas that inform the lesson content.

Classrooms can also provide time for collaboration toward a common goal. Teach students to be "academic siblings." We all know that sometimes siblings get on each other's nerves, but ultimately you know that you can count on your siblings to have your back, be honest with you, and support you.

Also, teachers can take a critical look at the materials in the classroom. Do the books, stories, and other curricular materials present one specific narrative? If they do, revamp what you have to be sure that your materials include examples from diverse aspects of society, including ethnicity, religion, language, gender, ability, sexual orientation, and socio-economic status in a non-stereotypical manner.

Include Authentic Assessments

Authentic assessments are opportunities for students to write for real audiences, share knowledge with a wide audience, and engage in the kind of work that occurs outside the classroom. For instance, if you are having students learn how to write letters, be sure they actually get mailed to a real person. A few years ago, I saw a classroom where students wrote letters to a fictional zookeeper. They went into the teacher's homework pile. Although the letters were fine, I suggested that the students revise them and send them to an actual zookeeper. As they made these revisions, the students learned that a zoo has multiple zookeepers for different animals. They each decided which zookeeper they would send letters to. That led to researching the animals in that zookeeper's care. The letters were richer, more personal, and just plain better. And then, they got responses! Getting those responses taught the students that they could make things happen in their world -- that they could be agents of change.

There are many other ways that you can be an advocate for social justice in your classroom. I have suggested just a few. It's also important to note that you don't need to do all of them in order to have a social justice orientation. As you think about your classroom, try to find small ways to include the ideas outlined here within the practices that you know will work best for you and your students.

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Creating Classrooms for Social Justice | Edutopia

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It is also important to note that many of the practices that demonstrate a social justice orientation are also reflective of best practices in teaching. Social justice is not an "add on" for classrooms. This is a both/and proposition. Teachers can both maintain high-quality content instruction and create a classroom with a social justice orientation.

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P21 Partnership for 21st Century Learning

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P21 Partnership for 21st Century Learning

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Battelle for Kids

This resource provides a framework of education that promotes DEIJ topics in their 21st Century interdisciplinary themes into their subject matter, under global awareness and civic literacy. This subject area is weaved into all aspects of the learning curriculum and environment. Subject matter includes 21st Century skills to understand and address global issues, working collaboratively with others who are diverse cultures, religions and lifestyles in a spirit of mutual respect and understanding of other nations and cultures (Battelle for Kids, n.d.).

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This article discusses what social justice education is and how using it is required for actively countering the injustices we are seeing in today's social and political environment. When defining what equity and justice is in regards to education, it means that everyone has all the resources the individual needs to live a fulfilling and secure life while recognizing the history, culture and experiences of everyone, especially the oppressed and marginalized (Bell, 2023). This article details specific steps and requirements to attaining this justice and thoroughly describes what it is.

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Justice requires the resources needed for all people to lead secure and fulfilling lives, along with respect for the histories, cultures and experiences of diverse groups, especially those who have been historically marginalized and oppressed.

In Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, now in its fourth edition, my coauthors and I offer our goals for social justice: creating a society where everyone has fair access to the resources and opportunities to develop their full capacities, and everyone is welcome to participate democratically with others to mutually shape social policies and institutions that govern civic life.

The process for attaining social justice we view as necessarily inclusive, respectful of human diversity and affirming of the capacity of all people to join with others to create change for our collective well-being. Social justice requires engaging everyone in democratic and collaborative processes grounded on the premise that there is enough to meet the needs of all.

Social justice, then, works against greed, selfishness and hatred and toward generosity, mutuality and love.

Appreciation for diversity -differences such as race, ethnic heritage, class, age, gender, sexuality, ability, religion and nationality-is a central feature of social justice. Without recognizing and valuing diversity, we cannot effectively address issues of injustice.

Concrete knowledge of different groups' histories, experiences, ways of making meaning and values is important to the social justice goal of recognition and respect.

Understanding and eliminating oppression is an equal feature of social justice. Without addressing injustice in all its forms, we cannot truly value diversity. Oppression is created and kept alive through hierarchies that rank groups in ways that give power, social and economic advantages, and institutional and cultural validity to some groups over others.

Challenging hierarchy requires confronting the ideological frameworks, historical legacies, and institutional patterns and practices that unequally structure social relations.

Social justice education, therefore, provides tools to examine the structural features of oppression and our own socialization within unjust systems. It helps us develop awareness of injustice in our personal lives, communities, institutions and the broader society. Such an education enables us to develop empathy and commitment, as well as skills and tools for acting with others to interrupt and change oppressive patterns and behaviors in ourselves and the institutions and communities of which we are a part.

Understanding the dynamics of oppression is important for developing effective strategies to counteract it.

As noted above, one of the central features of oppression is sorting social groups into hierarchies by race, class, gender, sexuality, age, religion and other markers. A group's position in the hierarchy regulates access to resources, participation, social respect and self-actualization.

Like a computer operating system, categorization and hierarchy run invisibly in the background to make oppressive outcomes seem logical and inevitable.

Furthermore, the effects of oppression accumulate to lock in advantage for some and disadvantage for others across time and institutions. For example, sorting people into racial categories with those labeled white as dominant initially justified both taking land from Indigenous people and coercing labor from enslaved Africans at the nation's founding.

Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants who at first were not considered white were gradually incorporated into this racial hierarchy that positioned white people above other racial groups.

Advantage and disadvantage compound and become baked into social institutions. This can be seen in the compounding effects of segregating people by race and class. Persons who live in poor, rural or predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods today will likely attend under-resourced schools; have less access to opportunities for advancement, reliable transportation, good food and health care; and be exposed to more environmental toxins. In corollary fashion, persons who live in middle or upper-middle class neighborhoods will likely have access to well-resourced schools and opportunities along with a cleaner environment.

Accumulated advantage and disadvantage consolidate in institutional policies and practices to entrench privilege and disadvantage.

Oppressive conditions become normalized through the actions of people going about their daily lives and often can't be isolated to individual or institutional agents. For example, marginalization and exclusion of people with disabilities does not require overt discrimination against them-although this also happens.

Business as usual that does not consider ways to include people with disabilities is sufficient to prevent change.

Barriers to access go unnoticed by those who can climb stairs, reach elevator buttons and telephones, use furniture and tools that fit their bodies and functional needs, are able to speak and use all their senses, and generally move in a world that is designed to facilitate their passage. Without challenge to this status quo, it seems perfectly natural to those whose access is unaffected. That is until they discover these privileges are fleeting once they experience pregnancy, accident, illness, aging or future disability.

Dehumanization is another feature of oppression. Language and images that deny the full humanness of people from different groups play a critical role in justifying mistreatment, brutality and violence that would otherwise not be tolerated.

This is one reason why words, beliefs and symbols matter, not merely for the purpose of civility, but because of the potential they hold for leading down the path to atrocity.

For example, referring to Mexican and Central American people as "animals" or an "infestation" led to policies that separated children from their parents and put them in cages. And even though police brutality is excused through more "benign" terms as well, describing Black men as "superpredators" rationalized police brutality against them.

Remaining silent in the face of mistreatment and violence toward others is also dehumanizing and ultimately leads to the degradation of society as a whole. The dehumanization of systemic police violence and brutality against Black people was largely accepted by white society until shockingly confronted by the murder by police of George Floyd on video.

Oppression is not inevitable or natural. It is learned through socialization. We internalize social norms to make meaning of our experiences, as well as to fit in and survive. Through socialization, an unjust status quo comes to be generally accepted and replicated both by those who benefit and those who suffer from oppressive systems.

To varying degrees, for example, poor people and affluent people alike internalize the stereotype that people who are poor are responsible for their poverty, and that those who accumulate riches deserve their wealth. Assumptions that youth are irresponsible and incapable of serious commitments, or that elders are slow and less vital than middle-aged people in their "prime," are taken as true by people of all ages.

Pressure against rocking the boat keeps most people from challenging inequality and discrimination so that by simply going along with business as usual, we help to perpetuate injustice.

Oppression persists and sometimes shifts into new forms to endure and override challenges against it. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 aimed to overcome legal barriers at state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Section II was the enforcement mechanism to ensure the protection of this right.

In 2021, the Supreme Court weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act by eliminating Section II, and state laws are now making it much more difficult for Black and Brown people to vote (and many people of all races who are young, disabled or elderly) through restrictive voter ID requirements, purging registered voters from voting rolls, shutting early voting sites in Black and Indigenous communities, and removing drop off boxes for mail-in ballots, to name a few.

Social justice will always require equally persistent effort to maintain fair and just laws and practices.

Though the consequences of oppression fall unevenly on Black and Brown communities, there are consequences for everyone. Heather McGhee in her book The Sum of Us traces the legacies of racism and white supremacy through zero-sum policies that ultimately harmed white people themselves.

Physician Jonathan Metzl in his book Dying of Whiteness shows how the racial resentment that fueled white support of pro-gun laws, resistance to the Affordable Care Act, and cuts to schools and social services has resulted in increasing deaths by gun suicide, falling life expectancies, and rising school dropout rates for white people as well.

A goal of social justice education is to help us recognize the terrible social, political and moral costs of maintaining systems of oppression.

When millions of Americans are homeless and hungry, we all pay a social and moral price. The cost of enjoying plenty while others starve makes it ever more difficult to claim that our society is fair and that we are decent people.

Just as important, it also prevents us from developing a clear view of underlying structural problems in political and economic systems that ultimately make all of us vulnerable to a changing international economy that disregards national boundaries or allegiances.

The productive and creative contributions of people who are shut out of the system are lost to everyone.

Rising violence and division make it increasingly difficult for anyone to feel safe. Reduced social supports, limited affordable housing, and scarcities of food and potable water loom as a possible future for all who are not independently wealthy, particularly as we reach old age.

The current global pandemic and climate crisis highlight the inequalities and injustices in systems of health care, housing, labor and other areas, and reveal our linked fates in the face of challenges that cannot be overcome without addressing inequality.

Social justice requires a commitment toward equality and possibility, and a belief in the capacity of people to transform our world.

Oppression is never complete; it is always open to challenge, as is evident in past and ongoing movements for justice that have made inroads against it. Just as we are socialized into oppression, we can consciously unlearn its habits and proactively work with others to imagine, practice and enact more just and equitable possibilities for living together on this planet.

Since social injustice is based on historical, institutional and systemic patterns-and not simply a matter of individual bias or misunderstanding-education alone cannot dismantle it.

However, the consciousness, knowledge, skills and commitments developed through social justice education can lay a foundation for working effectively, even joyfully, with others in democratic, organized action directed at institutional and societal change aimed at creating a world better for us all.

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A renowned scholar and educator explains social justice education and highlights its role in actively countering injustice and helping to build an inclusive democracy for the benefit of all.

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This website provides many resources for learning facilitators of all age groups. There is a section on supporting learners to be activists and training coursework for the learning facilitator to complete. There are also podcasts to educate and inform learning facilitators on various DEIJ topics including the LGBTQ+ community, how to teach the hard history which includes slavery, and links to many other resources on DEIJ issues.

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Learning for Justice is a community education program of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) that centers civic and political action education for everyone.

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How can we prepare teachers to work with culturally diverse students and their families? What skills should educators develop to do this successfully? 

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How can we prepare teachers to work with culturally diverse students and their families? What skills should educators develop to do this successfully? 

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One of the hurdles to DEIJ work is the teachers’ lack of relationship building with the learners and their families. In this blog post, professors share their strategies and insights on specific strategies to build the skills needed to be better able to work with and communicate effectively with the learners’ families. The blog also highlights the responsibility of learning facilitators to acknowledge and positively frame the knowledge and learned experiences the lerners come to school with. The strategies provided are practical and useful starting points for professional development.

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One of the most important skills we need to develop in Pre-K-16 teachers is their ability to build on the knowledge that students bring into classrooms, particularly that knowledge which is shaped by their family, community, and cultural histories. My ethnographic research pertaining to this topic spans over 5 years. By studying multiple generations of Black families in the Northeastern Albemarle region of North Carolina, I search for family knowledge that can transfer into teacher education. I explore historical and contemporary family struggles and hopes regarding school desegregation. My research has uncovered the nuanced ways that families support their children's education at home and how families teach their children to balance struggle with hope. I refer to such home teaching strategies as "family pedagogy." What might teachers learn from the Black family pedagogy used by families to survive and "succeed" within and outside of school?

Family pedagogy is shaped by both spiritual faith narratives of hope and stories of struggle. Families maintain faith in a higher power to help them understand and navigate the hidden rules and norms of survival and success driven and accepted by school authorities. Families uphold a spiritual faith that learning to read and write is directly relevant to leading a holistic spiritual life. Families also tell stories of struggle and share hope-filled stories of how even in the face of adversity, members of their family were able to survive and succeed within the educational system that was not initially created to benefit Black families.

Teachers must come to understand the real lived experience of the families and children they teach. In my classes, I try to encourage teachers to think about how to set up plausible situations to give families a legitimate voice in their curriculum and unit planning. If they have not already done so, I encourage teachers to take the spiritual lives of families seriously as a key point of connection. Family voices can advise teachers on how to balance high stakes accountability testing with skills we also know children need to survive and thrive at school.

I now turn to naming and supporting the teaching skills that breed high educational performance by bridging the gaps that separate school and home. I call these types of teaching skills diversity capital. We already talk about the notion of teacher capital, which is the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to be an "effective" teacher. However, all too often this type of effectiveness is measured in a limited way and only highlights the skills teachers possess to help flagship students (students not from traditionally underserved communities) meet or exceed standards on proficiency tests.

Teacher diversity capital is intended to name the type of teaching enhancement that embraces emotion and drives teachers to seek new opportunities and ideas for building positive relationships with students and families from culturally diverse backgrounds. Diversity capital can in turn afford teachers the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed for a sustainable commitment to, validation of, and exchange with culturally diverse students and families. I argue that teachers need support, motivation, and experiences related to cultures other than their own in order to engage in effective cross-cultural teaching. The families of my study note that "good" teachers already implement diversity capital. Thus, the term diversity capital is essentially my attempt to name good praxis.

It is often difficult even for good teachers to go out into the community to do the home visits that can build rapport. I advocate three family-specific alternatives to connect teachers with the primary or secondary caregiver(s) of each student at least once during the school year in order to offer positive information regarding student progress.

1. Call each child's family with positive information.

2. Email each student's family during the school year with positive information.

3. Through email attachment, post office mail, or student delivery, send a positive message via audio or audio/visual medium regarding each student.

Finally, I also conduct critical classroom simulation exercises with general and special education preservice teachers to help them connect with the emotional-behavioral lives of their students. First, my preservice teachers do three focused observations of a child with heritage that is perceived as different from their own. I also encourage them to ask the classroom teacher respectful questions about the child's home life and family life. In class, we work in groups to develop lesson plans that would complement that child's learning interests without compromising other students' abilities to reach their highest potential. I then have teachers role-play and critique lessons from the child's and teachers' point of view. In all these ways, I work to find and transfer useful information from family pedagogy that can enhance teachers' development of knowledge, skills, and dispositions to work with culturally diverse students and their families.
Sherick Hughes
Assistant Professor
Department of Foundations of Education, College of Education
University of Toledo
2801 W. Bancroft Street
Toledo, OH 43606
Email:sherick.hughes@utoledo.edu Bonnie Rockafellow, Education Consultant for the Michigan Department of Education, writes:
One way to prepare teachers to work with culturally diverse students and their families is by developing teachers' communication skills.

To better understand the communication patterns and styles that emerge during parent-teacher conversations, I videotaped seven elementary school parent-teacher conferences in two Midwest school districts. The teachers were all experienced with over 15 years in the teaching profession. Of the seven families represented, six were Caucasian and one was African American. I conducted interviews with both teachers and parents prior to the conference. After the conference, I replayed the video and asked parents and teachers to tell me what they were thinking at particular points.

My analysis of the conference yielded two interesting findings. First, developing shared meaning between teachers and families is a complex process and requires both parties to recognize similarities and differences in perspectives. The more aligned the families and teachers were in their life values and experiences the more likely they were to develop shared meanings. For example, in one conference the mother had known the teacher as a family friend. This mother was able to take the lead in sharing information with the teacher. An example of a lack of shared meanings was evident when a teacher explained how one student was learning to read. The teacher referenced the skill of reading sight words while the mother was certain her child was sounding out words when they read together at home.

Second, in each conference a ritual was played out. Most often the teacher presented the information she had prepared and at the end of the timeframe the teacher would ask if the parents have any questions, and then close the conference. The result of the conference was most often a reporting of the school's information rather than an opportunity for teachers to meaningfully engage with families and listen to their suggestions and comments. Moreover, the conference language is often academic, directed by the teacher, with little opportunity for extensions or explanation from the parents. One teacher explained that her conferences took this structure because it was a type of ritual passed down over time. She said, "Everybody has been through school and expects it to be like it was when they were there."

Teacher preparation courses need to incorporate more interpersonal communication skill building into curricula so that teachers are better prepared to develop shared meaning with families. Instructors can show videotaped interactions between parents and teachers to preservice teachers and lead discussions about the communication styles of the participants. Watching a videotaped interaction without the audio provides the teacher candidates an opportunity to watch body language and begin to see when participants are engaged or distanced by what is being said. Moreover, analysis of the transcript can help teacher candidates recognize that the message sent is not always the message received.

To break the ritualistic cycle of the parent teacher conference, teacher preparation specialists can also provide teachers with new communication strategies. For example, clarification statements like, "Can you help me understand" or "What would you like me to know or do to address the issue?" provide an opportunity for the teacher to hear the parents' concerns and invite them into a more generative form of communication. Teacher candidates do not need to leave preparation programs with the idea that they must be in charge whenever they interact with parents.

Principals and school administrators can help practicing teachers by providing additional preparation time for conferences. In that time teachers can review student progress and complete family profiles. Family profiles can help teachers become more aware of the limitations of the knowledge they bring to the parent-teacher conference. Teachers write down what is known and what is assumed about students' parents or families, including parents' education level, parents' employment and work hours, siblings, family members in the home, language spoken in the home, and years in attendance at the current school. These profiles can serve as a tool for teachers during the parent-teacher conference. Administrators can also allot more time during conferences so that teachers have time to listen carefully to the information parents bring to the table.
Bonnie Rockafellow
Education Consultant
Michigan Department of Education
P.O. Box 30008
608 W. Allegan St.
Lansing, MI 48909
Email:rockafellowb@michigan.gov
Related Reading
Harvard Family Research Project. (2003). Questions & answers. FINE Forum, 7. Cambridge, MA: Author.
Eileen Kugler, speaker and trainer on building community support for diverse schools, writes:
It is important for teachers to seriously examine their own attitudes toward people who think and look different than they do. In the classroom, it's comfortable to call on the students whose opinions, speech, and attitude match the teacher's. But it's often the quiet students-feeling uncomfortable with a new culture and a new language-who need personal attention from the teacher to empower them to participate more fully.

Teachers must encourage students to express their own ideas, even if they are challenging to the teacher's own perspective. When I interviewed students from strong diverse schools for my book, Debunking the Middle-Class Myth: Why Diverse Schools Are Good for All Kids, they repeatedly emphasized that they were encouraged by their teachers to speak their minds, listen to others, and think critically in their classrooms.

Teachers need to analyze how they react to parents who don't act "right" in their view, moving beyond the myth that the only parents who care about their children are those who fit the traditional visible mold. While many immigrant parents don't feel comfortable at school, at home they are actively supporting their children's education-making sure homework is done, checking up on their friends, keeping tabs on their time after school, and helping them plan for the future. When you investigate beyond the surface, you find that these parents face similar parenting issues as their American-born peers.

Teachers also need to identify nonthreatening opportunities to welcome parents with diverse backgrounds to the school. At the end of a unit of study, teachers can invite parents into the classroom so the students can share their achievements with them. As opposed to the stereotype of not caring, parents frequently feel left out, just waiting to be asked to be involved.

Teachers must ask themselves tough, challenging questions about their expectations and how they respond based on them. Are classroom discussions dominated by students from mainstream American families who appear more engaged and have views closer to the teacher's? Are white, middle-class students chosen for select programs because their parents know how to advocate for them? Are students of color and those from lower-income backgrounds placed in low reading groups because their parents don't connect well with the teacher? Teachers need to move beyond stereotypes that may be grounded in their own limited frame of reference or myths about "good families."
Eileen Kugler
President
Kugler Communications
Washington, DC
Andrew Schneider-Muñoz from City Year writes: www.embracediverseschools.com
Teachers need to learn about the families and communities of the students they teach so that they can do a better job in the classroom.

For a little over a decade, I have conducted an ongoing field project on child-rearing practices in rural communities in Hawaii. Because I am not Hawaiian, I have found it important to show the communities I work with how serious and committed I am to knowing their culture and handling their cultural knowledge respectfully.

I would encourage teachers working with culturally diverse families to use ethnographic methods. Attending community gatherings and traditional events is one way to do this. Teachers might follow the ethnographic strategy of participant observation. In this way they are part of the action, alternating between being in the center of things and observing interactions at the periphery. It's important to notice who talks to whom in the community and who has the leadership for different issues in the family.

For example, in Hawaiian culture, the elders play a very important role in transmitting the cultural rituals of the community. This knowledge has translated into culturally-specific practice in the Hawaiian schools whereby the community selects an elder to come to the school every day, go into the classrooms, and give lessons to the children.

Even if a teacher can't become fully immersed in the community, he or she can listen carefully to the vocabulary of the community and the ways parents talk about schooling and the classroom. There is also an inescapable value to having an "every day" presence in the community, like buying groceries or going to church there. It's important to make a connection with families and communities and that the community views the teacher as a willing participant.
Ed Greene from Montclair State University writes:
Andrew Schneider-Muñoz
Vice President of Research and Development
City Year
Boston, Massachusetts
www.cityyear.org

Teacher preparation programs should institute lifelong learning principles that encourage students to examine their values, attitudes, standards of acceptable behavior, and the ways in which these things influence their beliefs about teaching and learning. Because we live in a dynamic climate of demographic change, there should also be time devoted to examining issues of language, race, class, gender, culture, values, and beliefs. Faculty should be (or become) knowledgeable about these issues and include assignments that help them facilitate dialogue that deconstruct stereotypes and myths about families. Without such opportunities, future classroom practitioners may perpetuate victim blaming and deficit model approaches in their classroom and program practices.

Equally important, we all need to identify and use the strengths of the children and families we serve. Parents and other family members can be resources whose perspectives, perceptions, and concerns may often help reveal strengths that, too often, are overlooked. Students in teacher preparation programs must also learn how to develop and use trust-building strategies, and, if possible, experience approaches respectful cross-cultural dialogue.
Ed Greene
Associate Professor
Department of Early Childhood and Elementary Education
School of Education and Human Services
Montclair State University
Upper Montclair, New Jersey
Carol S. Huntsinger from College of Lake County writes:
What is described here is not a one-semester class or a single lecture on culturally diverse families. The related content and learning processes require time, study, and planning. Ideally, the knowledge, skills, and experiences discussed here should be explicitly woven throughout the teacher preparation institution's program of study and field-based experiences. This is lifelong work that will, hopefully, increase the number of educators who are socially and culturally conscious, competent, and confident, as they serve children and families.
Carol S. Huntsinger
Professor of Psychology and Education
College of Lake County
Grayslake, Illinois Peter Bak-Fun Wong, Principal of the Josiah Quincy Upper School in Boston, Massachusetts, writes:
In my own research, I examine the parenting beliefs and practices of immigrant Chinese American families, as compared to European American families. In my classes we discuss cultural belief systems and view videotapes that compare different cultures. Often students haven't thought about what their beliefs are. When they talk about these issues they begin to define their own beliefs and practices, and to become aware of the perspectives of other class members. One assignment in my class involves an interview of a parent from another culture regarding child-rearing techniques. The students use an interview questionnaire I've developed and used in my research. I ask the students to conduct the interview, transcribe it, and then answer the questions themselves. It is interesting for them to compare their own beliefs with the beliefs of the parents interviewed. We reflect on and question our own practices and learn to appreciate those of others. This exercise enables us to be more culturally sensitive to parents and families.

I look at schools as if they are leather wine skin. If the skin is old, it cracks. It is not that the wine is bad, but rather that the leather skin must be reworked. We created the leather skin. The new leather skin must be more global. Our schools are now diverse and must be flexible to allow for our differences.

In Chinatown, the opportunity for education is crucial. Families give up everything to come over here. There is a lot of stress on these families and social economic pressure to succeed. In the community there is uncertainty and a fear of failure. Looking at the issues facing today's youth and their present realities we must educate and encourage everyone to love and respect other people, their cultures, others' points of views, and themselves.
Peter Bak-Fun Wong
Principal
Josiah Quincy Upper School
Boston, Massachusetts Diane Burts from Louisiana State University writes:
The four pavilions we follow in our school are critical to the Chinatown community because they are the essence of the combination of the Eastern and Western styles of education. The pavilions are for both students and families. The cultural pavilion concentrates on world cultures, race, and ethnicity, and acknowledges that school and family cannot exist without harmony in society. We have so many things in common. So, we talk about the commonalities first. Then, we talk about our diversity. A lot of people don't appreciate other cultures because they don't know or appreciate their own. We help to involve parents in the process by holding school meetings on Saturdays in different areas in the neighborhoods so that they can actually attend.
Diane Burts
Professor, School of Human Ecology
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana Martha Dever from Utah State University writes:
The trends initiated by NCATE or NAEYC demonstrate that we want students in preservice programs not only to know about families, but also to interact and work with families from diverse backgrounds. New state guidelines are discussing ways teachers can interface with families and work with less traditional ways of interaction. At LSU we teach classes specifically in family involvement in the graduate and undergraduate level and look at strategies for involving families from diverse backgrounds. Research shows community leaders are becoming more involved and teachers must be aware of how to link with other agencies and what resources are available that sometimes families are less likely to know about. Teachers need to work on more positive and open attitudes. Teachers need to have positive attitudes and beliefs that there are possibilities for collaboration. They must have the willingness to reach out. They must understand the possibilities and issues that exist. Students must learn the environment they teach in, especially if they are separated from it, to understand all the possibilities.

In recent decades, our national perspective on community and family involvement has evolved. Historically, family involvement was primarily mothers volunteering or accompanying classes on field trips, particularly in the early grades. Parents who did not participate were often considered parents who did not care. Now, we are acknowledging a broad variety of family value systems. For example, in some cultures, parents consider it to be intrusive to come to school and rude to challenge a homework assignment.
Martha Dever
Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education
Utah State University
Logan, Utah
Family diversity must be a central component in teacher education programs. Teachers need to understand family structures, embrace diverse family values, demonstrate tolerance, and be prepared to reach families of all types. The objective of teacher educators should be to emphasize the importance of the many ways to include parents in the learning process and promote learning at home.

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hfrp harvard family research project evaluation exchange family involvement school parent children

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early childhood education strategic partnership out-of-school complementary learning

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How can we prepare teachers to work with culturally diverse students and their families? What skills should educators develop to do this successfully?

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Sherick Hughes, Assistant Professor in the College of Education at the University of Toledo, writes: One of the most important skills we need to develop in Pre-K-16 teachers is their...