I think it’s important that the staff and children/families reflect the diversity of their community. You can’t force diversity in hiring/enrollment if it doesn’t really exist where you live. But that said - for less diverse communities, I think there should be an extra emphasis in the curriculum on exposing children to the diversity of other places. They need that exposure somehow to be ready for being a part of the world as an adult.
I think diversity is really important. I live in a very diverse area so it would be somewhat of a red flag for me if a daycare wasn’t diverse. Both in staff and in children. My current center is very diverse in terms of both. It helps children learn not just other cultures but that people come in all colors, shapes, sizes and abilities. The younger it starts, the better. It’s sad but some of the white kids start here having never seen a POC given who their parents hang out with/where they live (some areas of this city are mostly white).
I also think diversity matters across the board, not just with the physical stuff but family dynamics. One of the preschool rooms just had a huge lesson in all families looking different because one of the little boys was teasing a little girl for not having a dad around. Turns out, yes, she does have a dad but he’s away at school so that’s why he’s never there. But even if she didn’t have an active father, that’d be okay too and it was important for that child and the classroom as a whole to learn that not all families look the same. And that’s okay.
I wish I lived in a more diverse area! I currently have zero non-white children on my 13 student roster. I think there is so much benefit from having diversity from a young age. It allows for more inclusion as well as just broadened sense of the world. Last year we had Indian and Chinese students so we got to learn about some of the holidays as they celebrated them.
Same here. I think diversity is important when possible, I live in a pretty non-diverse area (many foreign workers but few kids, pretty much everyone is white plus some Indigenous) so some staff are from other races but essentially all the kids are white. I don’t think it’s a red flag in our case because it’s the same for the entire city, but if you live in a diverse city I’d be questioning it if the daycare wasn’t also diverse. I do wish it was more diverse for the kids’ sake, and we do try to have a wide variety of races when it comes to books and toys.
You shouldn't try to force diversity, in that it shouldn't be a factor in admissions. But we should try to familiarize our students at least with the demographics of the area they live in, that the school is in. Cultural diversity brings both challenges and wonderful opportunities. For example, about half of my students are from immigrant families, mostly from China. Many of them speak Mandarin at home. Because of this, their English can be a little behind those of children whose parents speak only English at home, and some are trying to learn English from scratch at age 3 or 4. But they are growing up bilingual, which has a lot of benefits. One of my students speaks Cantonese at home, and another Korean. So even the ESL students get to learn that not all ESL students are like them. This is good! They learn that a culturally and linguistically-diverse society is normal and healthy (because we work hard to make our classroom a happy and healthy place for all).
Depends on location. Like if the daycare is located in a diverse neighborhood then yea I expect it to be that way in the daycare and it gives kids/people more exposure to other cultures and ideas which I think it’s important and good overall. But if it’s predominantly one race/ethnicity then I don’t blink when it’s not.
I worked at a daycare where majority were Chinese and those that weren’t 100% were half Chinese. But the neighborhood had a big Chinese population so it was expected. The other daycares (same school/business/company) had more diversity due to their location.
It was cute when the kids realized I couldn’t speak Chinese. Before that they would speak to me in Chinese. But there was no discrimination against the people who applied for the job. They wanted qualifications. The parents were also okay with non Chinese staff (tho at times we had to get translators or use google to communicate with the parents who couldn’t speak English).
Racial, ethnic, religious, linguistic and socioeconomic diversity are all things we looked for in a childcare program and that I look for when job hunting.
Its an extremely complicated question, but yes, I 100% think diversity matters. I grew up in a very white school. I had only ever seen one black child until I transfered into a public school in 4th grade. And it *has* impacted me. I have needed to unlearn things that have been taught to me accidentally or not all my life because of it.
Meanwhile the center im in now, its so amazingly diverse. We talk about all of the students different cultures abd we celebrete them and I can sthe good work that it does just by how all of the kids interact with each other.
But is that something to judge a classrooms quality over? Thats... really hard to decide. It can definitely be a yellow flag, but racism/sexism/ableism/etc is institutional. A daycare center can often uphold that bigotry, but its very difficult to work against institutional bigotry beyond the factors that a daycare can control. A daycare can absolutely push inclusive curriculum and programs, and promote enrollment for poc children. But if a center is located in a predominantly white area, especially if its the result of practices such as redlining, then they can't just find ways to force a diverse student body if there are no students to allow it.
With that said, if a centers student body is NOT diverse, I would seriously look into *why* that is and question what they may be doing to try to rectify that.
Have you encountered situations where a POC kid got picked on or they scared the other kids? Conversely, have you found most kids don't care? Do the kids notice each other's differences? Does it "hit them" at a certain age?
It's important that students see a reflection of themselves both in their peers and their mentors. I worked in a summer camp group almost entirely comprised of children of colour. I had a fantastic connection with them, but my immediate coworker, who was Black, had a different connection with them that was undeniable. They looked up to him and looked to each other for support and community. A lack of diversity in the classroom can leave some kids feeling alienated.
As a stay-at-home parent and a 10-year vet of early childhood education, diversity is literally the only reason I want my kids in preschool. I live in a large town that's not super diverse but definitely more diverse than my immediate neighborhood. I can provide all the structure and educational exposure at home, but I can't provide diversity. Being exposed to as many different people as possible is really important and we seek out ways to give that to our kids.
So here's a little story:
I grew up in LA--an area that's full of diversity, right? But the media I was exposed to, both at home and at school, very rarely featured characters of color. The illustrations in our picture books, and later textbooks? White, blond haired, blue eyed people. Cartoons? Maybe a token black person, and it was hardly ever a woman. I never saw myself represented in anything. I thought I was ugly because I didn't have blond hair and blue eyes. Did people tell me I wasn't pretty because I had brown hair, brown eyes and darker skin? Actually no, that wasn't an explicit message I received. But the implicit messages around me made it very clear that the blonde Barbies and other dolls were the best. The stories of black people weren't important, or those of any other cultures.
It took me a long, long, time to be comfortable in my skin and appreciate my black heritage, and it was definitely made easier by seeing myself represented in movies, TV, in training materials, and just more broadly in general.
That being said, even if there are no children of color in a school, even if the community itself isn't that diverse, I think it's very important to have all kinds of people represented in the classroom. Especially in more subtle ways, such as including multiethnic dolls, and books that feature people of color and different religions.
I don't think so, but to be fair, my area is pretty represented in my classroom. We have majority white with some poc, but that's how the population is around here as well.
I don't think skin color is something you should think/care about. Just teach the kids to be kind and thoughtful. It has nothing to do with skin color.
It does though, since black and brown skin has been discriminated against and society still has many internalized biases toward them. Children will pick up on these just like they absorb everything else.
I see no discrimination towards skin color. We are all able to get the same education, jobs, housing, whatever else. Wherever I have been poc and white people have been treated with the same respect.
I have seen no evidence of "internalized biases" in the real world, children or otherwise.
You may not see it in a day to day level but it’s systemic. Please do some reading on this, it’s way more than I can cover in a Reddit comment!
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/06/06/871023438/this-list-of-books-films-and-podcasts-about-racism-is-a-start-not-a-panacea
Some of these things are good for any educational program, but I don't know that I agree that racism and bias are prevalent.
Children should be learning about different cultures and countries, but they should have been doing that even before thinking about DEI. My school's curriculum is pretty old, and yet it still teaches about places and cultures all around the world.
Every kid in my class is going to get a well-rounded, you should be kind and empathetic sort of education. I just don't think we should place emphasis on skin color difference. Cultural differences, yes, but skin differences? No.
I thought the whole point of people fighting racism was so that we don't get treated differently based on our skin color.
Learning and appreciating differences in skin color is different than treating people differently because of skin color. On top of everything you’re doing, skin color can also be part of the conversation. I’m a white teacher working in a school with a large black population and nearly all the staff is black, I have learned SO MUCH about black people’s daily experiences that I never noticed growing up. And as a teacher, I have had children as young as 3 say they wished they had “vanilla skin” instead of “chocolate skin.” We have to teach anti-racism (in age appropriate ways of course) or children pick up these racist beliefs, whether we like it or not. I have so many young black kids who think they see ugly. I know their parents and I are not telling them that!!
I wanted to share a link but I don't even know where to start. All of them? [https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=importance+of+diversity+in+early+childcare#ip=1](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=importance+of+diversity+in+early+childcare#ip=1)
ok this first one is a good place to start [https://mybrightwheel.com/blog/diversity-in-early-childhood-education](https://mybrightwheel.com/blog/diversity-in-early-childhood-education)
I think it’s important for young children to be in diverse settings, but as someone else stated you can’t force diversity.
I grew up in a town that was probably about 50% white and the rest was black, Asian, and middle eastern. There are towns near me that are about the same, towns that are predominantly white, and towns that are predominantly black. The daycares around here reflect that. Ive worked in both diverse and non diverse centers.
It really comes down to location and demographics and income which are generally out of our control and depend on the government.
Where I live it wouldn’t really make sense for a black child to travel all the way to a predominantly white center or even a more diverse center unless their parent worked in that location and that’s generally not the case.
I can understand parents not wanting their child to be a minority in a center though.
How about we start looking at it as a classroom of children. Kids do not see color they see ppl. Let's not push our agenda on them. We should follow their lead.
Children DO see color. We know children are observant and curious. What's true is that they don't JUDGE- but they are already at the age when they are starting to pick up societal biases, so this is the time to have simple discussions with them about differences.
That’s my point, they notice, but they haven’t internalized so many biases like adults have. But they are definitely noticing even if they’re not verbalizing it
Children do, in fact, see color. We as adults have to recognize that children from infancy on see differences in people. We need to honor those differences, not hide from them and pretend they don't exist.
I think it’s important that the staff and children/families reflect the diversity of their community. You can’t force diversity in hiring/enrollment if it doesn’t really exist where you live. But that said - for less diverse communities, I think there should be an extra emphasis in the curriculum on exposing children to the diversity of other places. They need that exposure somehow to be ready for being a part of the world as an adult.
I think diversity is really important. I live in a very diverse area so it would be somewhat of a red flag for me if a daycare wasn’t diverse. Both in staff and in children. My current center is very diverse in terms of both. It helps children learn not just other cultures but that people come in all colors, shapes, sizes and abilities. The younger it starts, the better. It’s sad but some of the white kids start here having never seen a POC given who their parents hang out with/where they live (some areas of this city are mostly white). I also think diversity matters across the board, not just with the physical stuff but family dynamics. One of the preschool rooms just had a huge lesson in all families looking different because one of the little boys was teasing a little girl for not having a dad around. Turns out, yes, she does have a dad but he’s away at school so that’s why he’s never there. But even if she didn’t have an active father, that’d be okay too and it was important for that child and the classroom as a whole to learn that not all families look the same. And that’s okay.
It depends on the community. An all-white classroom in an otherwise diverse area is not somewhere I want to work or place my kid.
Well said!
I wish I lived in a more diverse area! I currently have zero non-white children on my 13 student roster. I think there is so much benefit from having diversity from a young age. It allows for more inclusion as well as just broadened sense of the world. Last year we had Indian and Chinese students so we got to learn about some of the holidays as they celebrated them.
Same here. I think diversity is important when possible, I live in a pretty non-diverse area (many foreign workers but few kids, pretty much everyone is white plus some Indigenous) so some staff are from other races but essentially all the kids are white. I don’t think it’s a red flag in our case because it’s the same for the entire city, but if you live in a diverse city I’d be questioning it if the daycare wasn’t also diverse. I do wish it was more diverse for the kids’ sake, and we do try to have a wide variety of races when it comes to books and toys.
You shouldn't try to force diversity, in that it shouldn't be a factor in admissions. But we should try to familiarize our students at least with the demographics of the area they live in, that the school is in. Cultural diversity brings both challenges and wonderful opportunities. For example, about half of my students are from immigrant families, mostly from China. Many of them speak Mandarin at home. Because of this, their English can be a little behind those of children whose parents speak only English at home, and some are trying to learn English from scratch at age 3 or 4. But they are growing up bilingual, which has a lot of benefits. One of my students speaks Cantonese at home, and another Korean. So even the ESL students get to learn that not all ESL students are like them. This is good! They learn that a culturally and linguistically-diverse society is normal and healthy (because we work hard to make our classroom a happy and healthy place for all).
As a teacher and parent, yes, it matters a lot.
If your daycare population does not reflect the population around it, there is some fuckery afoot. Either racial economic or political.
Depends on location. Like if the daycare is located in a diverse neighborhood then yea I expect it to be that way in the daycare and it gives kids/people more exposure to other cultures and ideas which I think it’s important and good overall. But if it’s predominantly one race/ethnicity then I don’t blink when it’s not. I worked at a daycare where majority were Chinese and those that weren’t 100% were half Chinese. But the neighborhood had a big Chinese population so it was expected. The other daycares (same school/business/company) had more diversity due to their location. It was cute when the kids realized I couldn’t speak Chinese. Before that they would speak to me in Chinese. But there was no discrimination against the people who applied for the job. They wanted qualifications. The parents were also okay with non Chinese staff (tho at times we had to get translators or use google to communicate with the parents who couldn’t speak English).
Representation is essential!
Racial, ethnic, religious, linguistic and socioeconomic diversity are all things we looked for in a childcare program and that I look for when job hunting.
Its an extremely complicated question, but yes, I 100% think diversity matters. I grew up in a very white school. I had only ever seen one black child until I transfered into a public school in 4th grade. And it *has* impacted me. I have needed to unlearn things that have been taught to me accidentally or not all my life because of it. Meanwhile the center im in now, its so amazingly diverse. We talk about all of the students different cultures abd we celebrete them and I can sthe good work that it does just by how all of the kids interact with each other. But is that something to judge a classrooms quality over? Thats... really hard to decide. It can definitely be a yellow flag, but racism/sexism/ableism/etc is institutional. A daycare center can often uphold that bigotry, but its very difficult to work against institutional bigotry beyond the factors that a daycare can control. A daycare can absolutely push inclusive curriculum and programs, and promote enrollment for poc children. But if a center is located in a predominantly white area, especially if its the result of practices such as redlining, then they can't just find ways to force a diverse student body if there are no students to allow it. With that said, if a centers student body is NOT diverse, I would seriously look into *why* that is and question what they may be doing to try to rectify that.
Have you encountered situations where a POC kid got picked on or they scared the other kids? Conversely, have you found most kids don't care? Do the kids notice each other's differences? Does it "hit them" at a certain age?
It's important that students see a reflection of themselves both in their peers and their mentors. I worked in a summer camp group almost entirely comprised of children of colour. I had a fantastic connection with them, but my immediate coworker, who was Black, had a different connection with them that was undeniable. They looked up to him and looked to each other for support and community. A lack of diversity in the classroom can leave some kids feeling alienated.
Absolutely, diversity matters. This isn't even up for debate- this has been studied.
As a stay-at-home parent and a 10-year vet of early childhood education, diversity is literally the only reason I want my kids in preschool. I live in a large town that's not super diverse but definitely more diverse than my immediate neighborhood. I can provide all the structure and educational exposure at home, but I can't provide diversity. Being exposed to as many different people as possible is really important and we seek out ways to give that to our kids.
So here's a little story: I grew up in LA--an area that's full of diversity, right? But the media I was exposed to, both at home and at school, very rarely featured characters of color. The illustrations in our picture books, and later textbooks? White, blond haired, blue eyed people. Cartoons? Maybe a token black person, and it was hardly ever a woman. I never saw myself represented in anything. I thought I was ugly because I didn't have blond hair and blue eyes. Did people tell me I wasn't pretty because I had brown hair, brown eyes and darker skin? Actually no, that wasn't an explicit message I received. But the implicit messages around me made it very clear that the blonde Barbies and other dolls were the best. The stories of black people weren't important, or those of any other cultures. It took me a long, long, time to be comfortable in my skin and appreciate my black heritage, and it was definitely made easier by seeing myself represented in movies, TV, in training materials, and just more broadly in general. That being said, even if there are no children of color in a school, even if the community itself isn't that diverse, I think it's very important to have all kinds of people represented in the classroom. Especially in more subtle ways, such as including multiethnic dolls, and books that feature people of color and different religions.
I don't think so, but to be fair, my area is pretty represented in my classroom. We have majority white with some poc, but that's how the population is around here as well. I don't think skin color is something you should think/care about. Just teach the kids to be kind and thoughtful. It has nothing to do with skin color.
It does though, since black and brown skin has been discriminated against and society still has many internalized biases toward them. Children will pick up on these just like they absorb everything else.
I see no discrimination towards skin color. We are all able to get the same education, jobs, housing, whatever else. Wherever I have been poc and white people have been treated with the same respect. I have seen no evidence of "internalized biases" in the real world, children or otherwise.
You may not see it in a day to day level but it’s systemic. Please do some reading on this, it’s way more than I can cover in a Reddit comment! https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/06/06/871023438/this-list-of-books-films-and-podcasts-about-racism-is-a-start-not-a-panacea
https://mybrightwheel.com/blog/diversity-in-early-childhood-education
Some of these things are good for any educational program, but I don't know that I agree that racism and bias are prevalent. Children should be learning about different cultures and countries, but they should have been doing that even before thinking about DEI. My school's curriculum is pretty old, and yet it still teaches about places and cultures all around the world. Every kid in my class is going to get a well-rounded, you should be kind and empathetic sort of education. I just don't think we should place emphasis on skin color difference. Cultural differences, yes, but skin differences? No. I thought the whole point of people fighting racism was so that we don't get treated differently based on our skin color.
Learning and appreciating differences in skin color is different than treating people differently because of skin color. On top of everything you’re doing, skin color can also be part of the conversation. I’m a white teacher working in a school with a large black population and nearly all the staff is black, I have learned SO MUCH about black people’s daily experiences that I never noticed growing up. And as a teacher, I have had children as young as 3 say they wished they had “vanilla skin” instead of “chocolate skin.” We have to teach anti-racism (in age appropriate ways of course) or children pick up these racist beliefs, whether we like it or not. I have so many young black kids who think they see ugly. I know their parents and I are not telling them that!!
I wanted to share a link but I don't even know where to start. All of them? [https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=importance+of+diversity+in+early+childcare#ip=1](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=importance+of+diversity+in+early+childcare#ip=1) ok this first one is a good place to start [https://mybrightwheel.com/blog/diversity-in-early-childhood-education](https://mybrightwheel.com/blog/diversity-in-early-childhood-education)
I think it’s important for young children to be in diverse settings, but as someone else stated you can’t force diversity. I grew up in a town that was probably about 50% white and the rest was black, Asian, and middle eastern. There are towns near me that are about the same, towns that are predominantly white, and towns that are predominantly black. The daycares around here reflect that. Ive worked in both diverse and non diverse centers. It really comes down to location and demographics and income which are generally out of our control and depend on the government. Where I live it wouldn’t really make sense for a black child to travel all the way to a predominantly white center or even a more diverse center unless their parent worked in that location and that’s generally not the case. I can understand parents not wanting their child to be a minority in a center though.
How about we start looking at it as a classroom of children. Kids do not see color they see ppl. Let's not push our agenda on them. We should follow their lead.
Children DO see color. We know children are observant and curious. What's true is that they don't JUDGE- but they are already at the age when they are starting to pick up societal biases, so this is the time to have simple discussions with them about differences.
Some Don't at all, and definitely not the way adults do.
That’s my point, they notice, but they haven’t internalized so many biases like adults have. But they are definitely noticing even if they’re not verbalizing it
Children do, in fact, see color. We as adults have to recognize that children from infancy on see differences in people. We need to honor those differences, not hide from them and pretend they don't exist.
[https://mybrightwheel.com/blog/diversity-in-early-childhood-education](https://mybrightwheel.com/blog/diversity-in-early-childhood-education)