Each and Every Child: Using an Equity Lens When Teaching in Preschool

by Susan Friedman (Editor), Alissa Mwenelupembe (Editor)

Overview

This robust collection of articles from Teaching Young Children offers practical guidance and tips for keeping equity at the forefront of the curriculum and classroom practices. A wide range of diverse voices from the early childhood education field provide insight on various aspects of advancing equity, from supporting family diversity to considering children’s language and culture when planning learning activities. This accessible, concrete guide on hot-button, timely issues helps classroom teachers determine what exactly being equitable means in their everyday context and interactions with children, their families, and colleagues.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938113628
Publisher:	The National Association for the Education of Young Children
Publication date:	05/26/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	821,955
File size:	68 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Susan Friedman is NAEYC's Senior Director of Publishing and Professional Learning. In this role she leads the content development work of NAEYC’s books and periodicals publishing, digital content, and professional learning teams. Early childhood educators rely on NAEYC’s content including books, and award winning periodicals Young Children, and Teaching Young Children, to stay up to date on research and best practices they can apply directly to their classrooms. In addition to her roles at NAEYC, she brings extensive prior experience in content programming, editorial oversight and production with many years of experience creating content on developmentally appropriate uses of media, play, and other topics for educators and families. Susan has presented at numerous educational conferences including the National Association for the Education of Young Children’s Professional Learning Institute and Annual Conference, SXSW EDU, and at the Early Childhood Cohort for the AASA (The School Superintendents Association. She began her career as a preschool teacher at City & Country School in New York City. Susan holds degrees from Vassar College and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Alissa Mwenelupembe has worked in the field of early childhood education for over 18 years as a teacher, coach, director and college instructor. She is currently working as the Director of Early Learning at St. Vincent Early Learning Center in Evansville, Indiana and also serves on the governing board of the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Alissa holds a BA from the University of Southern Indiana, a Masters Degree in Early Childhood Education from Ball State Universityand is currently pursuing a doctorate in Early Childhood Education, also at Ball State University. As a Black woman working in Early Childhood Education and navigating higher education spheres, Alissa is well versed in the issues of equity and diversity. Her research interests center around social emotional development of children of color, primarily those living in families and communities that are not a racial match. Alissa has presented both locally and nationally at early childhood conferences including the National Association for the Education of Young Children’s Professional Learning Institute and Annual Conference, the Maryland Head Start Association Conference, the Indiana Association for the Education of Young Children’s Annual Conference and more.

Table of Contents

Section 1: About this Volume
-Volume Intro, Alissa Mwenelupembe and Susan Friedman
- Key Messages from Position Statement, NAEYC

Section 2: Supporting Dual Language Learners
- Supporting Emergent Bilingual Children: A Checklist for Early Childhood Educators, Shelley Pasnik and Naomi Hupert
- Many Languages, One Classroom: Supporting Children in Superdiverse Settings, Carola Olivia-Olson, Linda M. Espinosa, Whit Hayslip, & Elizabeth S. Magruder
- More Strategies for Supporting Children in Superdiverse Settings, Carola Olivia-Olson, Linda M. Espinosa, Whit Hayslip, & Elizabeth S. Magruder

Section 3: Developing a Strengths-Based Approach When Teaching Black Boys
- What Every Teacher Needs to Know about Suspension and Expulsion in Preschool
- Black Boys Matter: Cultivating Their Identity, Agency, and Voice, Brian L. Wright
- Black Boys Matter: Strategies for a Culturally Responsive Classroom, Brian L. Wright

Section 4: Developing Empathy and Understanding, Supporting Behavior
- Developing Empathy to Build Warm, Inclusive Classrooms
- Valuing Diversity: Developing a Deeper Understanding of All Young Children and Their Behavior, Barbara Kaiser & Judy Sklar Rasminsky

Section 5: Engaging with Diverse Families
- Children's Books About Families, NAEYC
- Knock, Knock . . . Who's There? The Benefits of Home Visits in the Early Years, Jennifer K. Lampe
- Conversations with Children! Asking Questions to Support Their Understanding of Family Diversity, Janis Strasser
- Message in a Backpack™ Fun, Easy Ways to Play with Math at Home, Jessica Mercer Young & Kristen E. Reed
- When I Have a Mommy and a Momma: Including Children from Diverse Family Structures in the Classroom, Julia Luckenbill

Section 6: Identity, Fairness, and Activism
- Look, Listen, Learn. "What If I Say the Wrong Thing?" Talking about Identity with Young Children, Nadia Jaboneta, with Deb Curtis
- Ask Hello. Learning about Holidays and Fairness
-An Interview with Megan Madison, Susan Friedman
- Something Related to Gender, Jamie Solomon
- Fairness, Nadia Jaboneta

Section 7: Tuning into Each and Every Child
- Connecting Culture and Play: Practical Strategies for Educators, Kamini Kamdar
- Welcoming Refugee Children into Early Childhood Classrooms, Sadia Warsi
- Including All Children in Making and Tinkering!, Karen Nemeth & Pamela Brillante
- Advancing Equity: Playful Ways to Extend Math Learning at Home, Jessica Mercer Young & Kristen E. Reed
- Message in a Backpack™ Fun, Easy Ways to Play with Math at Home, Jessica Mercer Young, Kristen E. Reed
- Every Child Belongs: Welcoming a Child with a Disability, Pamela Brillante
- Now Read This! Books that Support Diversity, Conversations, and Play
-10 Tips to Support a Culturally Responsive STEAM Curriculum for Preschoolers, Anthony Broughton, Michicko McClary

Editorial Reviews

In its “Advancing Equity in Early Childhood Education” position statement, NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children), one of the major professional organizations of early childhood in the United States, advocates that “all children have the right to equitable learning opportunities that enable them to achieve their full potential as engaged learners and valued members of society” (NAEYC, 2019, p. 5). Notwithstanding that this statement makes perfect sense in theory, what is daunting and less clear is its practical counterpart. For preschool teachers, what would it look like and what would it take to translate these ideals into everyday lived practices? Susan Friedman and Alissa Mwenelupembe, in their edited book Each and Every Child: Teaching Preschool with an Equity Lens provide us with a great sense of hope by thoughtfully compiling a total of 24 powerful stories and voices of everyday early childhood educators implementing this important mission.

Organizationally, the book is structured in six parts, each including three to seven chapters written by over 50 experts from the field. Each part follows a similar structure wherein Friedman and Mwenelupembe first revisit the key recommendations from the aforementioned NAEYC position statement before offering a brief introduction, and then provide a list of thought-provoking yet practical reflection questions for readers to consider. This format would be appreciated by those who are newer to the field or to this particular topic since it offers bite-sized thinking steps. Also, although each chapter organization varies widely, the information is extremely accessible as they include multiple real-life examples, visuals, and recommendations. This is undoubtably a significant strength of this book that allows readers’ easier engagement with the uneasy topics. In addition, each chapter ending provides which NAEYC early learning program accreditation standards and topic areas are supported by the chapter’s ideas. This feature would be instrumental for early childhood programs who are interested in earning NAEYC accreditation. In an attempt to help readers follow through the book in order, each part of the book will be briefly reviewed in the following paragraphs.

Part One (Chapters One through Three) starts with the critical element of teachers’ self-reflection. In the first chapter, readers are reminded that all human beings are not immune to societal stereotypes and/or implicit biases, and thus teachers need to engage in continuous self-examination to reflect on or even challenge their personal beliefs. Another chapter cautions educators to rethink children’s challenging behaviors by articulating how human behaviors can be formed and interpreted differently from various cultural lenses. Taken altogether, this part serves as a strong anchor for the rest of the chapters. Part Two (Chapters Four through Ten) appears to be the core of this book. Friedman and Mwenelupembe preface this part by stating that “Equity is not a one-size-fit-all approach, and teaching with an equity lens is a complex undertaking” (p. 26). To bolster their stance, they showcase a wide variety of instructional approaches, including how to incorporate families’ culture into play centers, how to adapt materials and approaches to support refugee children, what books to present in the library area to have an inclusive classroom, and so forth. The most beneficial aspect of these ideas is that none of them require any expensive tools or environmental renovations; they are rather easily transferable to any early childhood classroom.

Part Three (Chapters Eleven through Thirteen) is perhaps one of the most unique addition of this book. Instead of broadly referencing race and gender bias, this book directly addresses the issues faced by young Black boys who have been reported to be unfairly and thus disproportionately suspended and expelled from early childhood programs than their White peers. The chapters emphasize the importance of reframing educators’ approach from deficit perspectives seeing Black boys as a problem to culturally responsive, assetbased perspectives tapping into the power of Black boys and men documented in American history. This is followed by Part Four (Chapters Fourteen through Sixteen) illustrating many benefits of being a bilingual child and outlining strategies teachers can use to welcome, support, and work with emergent bilingual children and their families. These chapters can be attractive to classroom teachers who have a large number of bilingual children as they offer ready-to-use tools such as a checklist and interview guide.

In the following Part Five (Chapters Seventeen through Twenty), Friedman and Mwenelupembe start by stating “To advance equity, a family must be recognized as the best experts about their child” (p. 104). While collaborating with families has been an embedded theme throughout the book, allotting a separate part to explicitly discuss diverse families indicates the strong support for this topic. In recognition of the growing diversity of family structures, the chapters share suggestions such as making home visits, inviting children to talk about their families, and offering play-based learning ideas at home. Finally, in Part Six (Chapters Twenty-One through Twenty- Four), Friedman and Mwenelupembe pose a critical and daunting question for readers: “How can you move from teaching with an equity lens in your classroom to advocating for equity on a larger scale?” They then immediately offer a relieving suggestion that, “There is no one way to start” (p. 128). This provocation followed by several educators’ examples enables readers to start thinking about their choices for becoming a small activist within their own context.

This edited book by Friedman and Mwenelupembe is filled with vivid real-life scenarios, and thus it is extremely applicable and beneficial to various stakeholders who are wondering how equity-based pedagogy can be enacted with preschool age children. In response to a possible rebuttal that preschoolers are too young to be exposed to issues of equity, race, etc., Friedman and Mwenelupembe make a strong case based on recent research findings that the negative impact of implicit bias begins in early years and that young children are extremely capable of making sense of these sensitive issues. It is certainly untrue and even dangerous to claim that this one book can answer all the questions and addresses all the complexities related to equity we know are still at play in our society. In fact, it should also be noted that by virtue of the edited book attempting to share a large number of exemplars from many authors, there are some moments when readers are left with an unfinished cognitive train of thought, wanting to know more details and/or foundational research behind the suggested strategies. Nonetheless, especially considering its reader-friendly nature of writing and formatting, this book can serve as an accessible and rich resource for all early childhood educators whether they are wanting to learn a teaching strategy to address a specific issue, looking for some inspirational ideas, or even needing philosophical support from like-minded professionals.

From the long-lasting under-appreciation of teaching preschoolers to the recent pandemic-induced challenges impacting young children and their families, the field of early childhood education is used to challenging many societal misconceptions and advocating for under-voiced individuals. Now more than ever, early childhood professionals should be committed to providing equitable learning opportunities to all children, and this book can hopefully bring about more dialogue among fellow early childhood professionals.

Reference NAEYC (2019). Advancing equity in early childhood education: A position statement of the National Association of the Education for Young Children. https://www.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/globally-shared/downloads/PDFs/resources/positionstatements/ naeycadvancingequitypositionstatement.pdf

https://www.tcrecord.org ID Number: 23569 - Sophia Han