Lately I have been struggling with teaching diversity to my little ones. I am not only taking a class on Leading Anti-Bias Early Childhood Programs, it is a personal goal of mine on my PDP for my teaching license, something that my evaluator wants to see more of in my classroom.
I have a diverse class, but I always do. I tend to focus on getting them to understand and appreciate the differences that they have by helping each other out in areas of need. For example, "-----, doesn't have the words yet to talk about how he wants that toy. How can we help him get what he wants without hurting/hitting his friends?" When half the class has developmental delays, topics like this tend to be the focus , not skin tone or hair color or the fact that her mom is white and her dad is black. Usually I wait for the topic to be brought up naturally by the children and address it then in a matter of fact way. I guess my feeling is if the general atmosphere in your class is one of a family and helping each other is it necessary to bring up skin tones and other racial indicators? A part of me want to protect their childhood innocence of love and trust as long as I can, without this topic. This is not to say that I don't have books, clothes, pictures,foods, dolls and other items that denote differences and culture, I'm just wondering what is appropriate, what's enough, what's developmentally appropriate? If the kids don't bring it up? Should I?
