Linda's ECE World

Blog Week 2

ED 6853

        Having had an in home day care for several years in the 1980’s I have some experience with the topic of anti-bias education in the early childcare setting.  At the time I had a variety of children, a white middle class boy and a little Mexican girl who had two moms and was from a rather hard background.  My own two children and a brother and sister whose parents were divorced and went back and forth on a weekly basis.  Because I had a Montessori pre-school program incorporated into my daycare.  In the Montessori environment it is unusual to have lots of posters on the wall or dolls and dress up cloths to play with.  But that doesn’t mean that anti-bias education doesn’t happen.  Reading books aloud to the children is a wonderful way to introduce and incorporate ideas into a child’s schema.  My daughters frequent Good Will and my oldest daughter is always bringing me books that deal with anti-bias in their stories.  I love it.  One of my favorite stories is of a little girl who is African American who wants to play the role of Peter Pan in the school play.  Other children tell her she can’t be Peter Pan because she is a girl and she is Black.  As the story progresses her family supports her and she wins the part through her studying her lines and doing a great job in her acting.  But if she had believed the myth the anti-bias thinking had written for her she would have remained on the side lines.  Now in real life I am hearing of having a Black Odette in the ballet Swan Lake.  There is a lot of hullaballoo surrounding this decision.  I applaud it. As a former ballet dancer I have seen the mostly all white casting of the major roles. 

         Another way a Montessori education can address anti – bias is using the peace curriculum.  The philosophy is to promote inner peace and thus outer peacefulness as the child becomes able to control his or her impulses and develop the language to speak about how other’s perceptions may not be correct.  One of the most important aspects of anti-bias education is to educate ourselves.  Years ago when I started working in day care centers I ran across so many teachers or adult child care workers who were eager to label a child as bad or lazy or a hellion.  I couldn’t understand it, why did they think a child was bad when they knew nothing about them?  And they certainly weren’t willing to find out why a child would behave in such a way.  I began to investigate early childhood then, I didn’t pursue a career in ECE then but when I had my one home care program and then homeschooling my own children I tried to read and study everything I could on child development and understand behavior.  As I then progressed through my undergraduate degree and Montessori training and now my Master’s degree I began to be convinced that development and behavior are influenced by culture of the family and society in general.  But the most important component was the transformation within myself.  When Derman-Sparks and Olsen – Edwards put that word in the title of the text they made a point of highlighting the necessity of teachers and another adults working with young children to become self-aware and reflective.  The same thing happens in a good training program for Montessori guides.  Becoming aware of how I as an adult may have bias unintentional or not.  How to re frame my thoughts about society and culture in a positive light and discover how to relate to others especially families of young children regardless of the culture or back ground they come from.  In the future I want to incorporate cultural shelves from the families of the children who attend my program and encourage family events such as pot luck suppers.  I am looking forward to the community that can be built within the context of anti-bias education with in early childhood education.

Derman-Sparks, L. and Edwards Olsen, J. (2010) Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves.   Washington, D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children. (NAEYC)

Laureate Education, Inc. (2011). Strategies for working with diverse children: Welcome to an anti-bias learning community. Baltimore, MD: Author