OUR WAITLIST IS FULL!
By celebrating individual children’s interests, cultures, and skills, we seek to create an inclusive learning environment that celebrates difference.
We challenge children to become critical thinkers around topics like race, ability, gender, socioeconomic status, biological gender, ethnicity, language and communication, and other identity markers. We do this through books, discussions, puppets, and play in a developmentally appropriate way. According to Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves, by Louise Derman-Sparks and Julie Olsen Edwards, the four main goals of anti-bias work with young children are:
Identity : Each child will demonstrate self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities.
Diversity : Each child will express comfort and joy with human diversity; accurate language for human differences; and deep, caring human connections.
Justice : Each child will increasingly recognize behavior that brings no dignity to self or others, have language to describe the need for dignity, recognize hurt feelings and make positive action requests for dignity.
Action : Each child will demonstrate empowerment and the skills to act, with others or alone, with non-violent communication.
Our goal is to dive into these topics naturally based on interactions in children’s play, children’s questions, and conversations throughout the school day. Yet, we believe that these subjects are too important to always wait for the subject to emerge from the children. At these times, we very thoughtfully and gently introduce new ideas, activities, and discussion topics to share with the children in our care.
Public parks are a wonderful setting to do this work; children are encouraged to care for the land and people around them and become activists for the community and for a better world. We use principles of place-based education to guide the way that we engage with the park and the social and environmental justice associated with being in this space. Children become stewards for the community and, ultimately, for the people and planet around them.