Starting Small: Teaching Tolerance in Preschool and the Early Grades [Video and Book]
Sara Bullard, Jim Carnes, Marie Hofer, Nancy Polk, Rosa Hernandez Sheets
This book profiles seven classrooms in which teachers are helping young children build inclusive, equitable, caring communities across differences that too often divide. Their approaches are varied, yet they share three crucial habits: reflecting continually on their own assumptions,goals and behavior; talking with their peers about how these factors conflict as well as coincide; and practicing social skills as diligently as mental or physical ones.The book has seven chapters each centered on an in-depth classroom narrative. Topics addressed include the following: family diversity, practical and ethnic awareness, fairness, nurturing justice, building friendship skills, discovering diversity, facing prejudice, heroes, responding to special needs, encouraging self-discipline, and coping with loss. Two kinds of sidebars supplement the main stories. "Reflections" is research-based essays addressing specific themes or developmental aspects of teaching tolerance, such as racial awareness, gender equity, or friendship. "Applications" offers practical ideas for incorporating these concepts into classroom activities. Annotated resource lists focusing on diversity education in early childhood settings are provided.
Sara Bullard, Jim Carnes, Marie Hofer, Nancy Polk, Rosa Hernandez Sheets. Starting Small: Teaching Tolerance in Preschool and the Early Grades [Video and Book] (1997). Southern Poverty Law Center: Montgomery, Al.
Language: English
Reading Level: Average
Formats Available: Printed Material, Videotape
(Starting Small is available free, one per early childhood center, elementary school, or teacher training institution upon written request of director, principal, or department chair; individuals should contact the producer)
Southern Poverty Law Center
Teaching Tolerance Project
400 Washington Avenue
Montgomery, Al
36104
Phone: (334) 264-0286
Fax: (334) 264-3121
URL: http://www.splcenter.org/
Languages Available: English
Intended User Audience:
This set is intended for all professionals involved in Early Childhood Education Programs.
The audience could be of any discipline and at any level of experience, as well as from any cultural and linguistic group.
The set is intended for use in any Early Childhood Program or in any teacher preparation setting.
Product Development:
This material was developed in 7 classrooms nationwide, preschool - 3rd grade.
The professionals involved in the development were educational psychologists, multicultural education specialists, and classroom teachers.
Those involved in the development were African American, Latino, European American, and Asian American.
The donor community of the Southern Poverty Law Center entirely funded the project.
Product Evaluation:
Since there is no prescribed method of using the videotape and book, this was not field-tested. However, the set was developed with the input of many in the education field.
Product Dissemination:
As of 1998, over 33,000 sets have been distributed (free of charge) nationwide. An additional 20,000 books were distributed by National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Review #1
About the reviewer:
The reviewer has a master's degree from San Jose State University in
therapeutic recreation with a minor in special education. She also completed
post-master's coursework at the University of Oregon. For the
last five years she has been the Cross-Cultural Special Education
Supervisor for the State of Washington, where she helps
develop processes to serve culturally and linguistically diverse and
migrant children. Her focus has been on identification strategies for
exceptional needs and appropriate program development. She currently
works in the area of education reform and special populations
(accommodations, alternate assessments, etc). The reviewer, a Mexican
American, has researched and worked with Asian Americans, European
Americans, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders.
Audience:
This material is appropriate for all professionals involved in preschool and early childhood programs. It is very appropriate for parents, child care center staff, paraprofessionals and administrators. It may even be useful to community organizations and middle to upper grade teachers. The materials are not written for a specific geographic region. In fact, the materials profile seven classrooms across the U.S.
The materials are broad in scope and speak to diversity, equity, gender awareness, inclusion, and conflict resolution for preschool and early childhood staff. In general, the entire set of materials is very inclusive in nature and applicable to any staff who work with children and families or for any staff in-service and teacher education program.
Strengths of the Material:
The materials are very responsive to and reflect culturally and linguistically diverse children and their families in a positive way.
They also very ably reflect recommended practice. Each profile speaks to different aspects of culture, equity, disability, and conflict resolution. There are a number of strengths to the material --- the first is that the seven classroom profiles are real, authentic, and believable. The video very much adds to this authenticity.
The second strong point is that after each profile there are reflections on specific themes from that profile and applications of those themes. However generic in nature they are, they provide a hands-on "how to" for the reader.
The materials are inclusive of recommended practice. In each reflection there are several instances of research to "back up" the definition, recommended practice, and statement given about young children. It is a valuable and nice addition to have that research.
The material addresses social skills that are developmentally appropriate, as well as clearly defining those skills and providing some methods of teaching them. The profiles are an effective method of doing this.
The materials are generic in nature and do not necessarily provide a "step-by-step process" for teaching tolerance. The applications sections, however, would be very effective for fostering interactions with other children and adults that would also be enjoyable and fun. The profiles provide several very vivid descriptions of such instances.
The entire set of materials is complete with great examples of interventions with children and responsive adults (from higher education, parents, the community at large, adults with disabilities) interacting on a very positive level to teach tolerance. All of these social interactions balance self reliance, sensitivity of a community (Shawnee, Ohio), heroes and heroines, democracy, and social skills (in Denver grace and courtesy are taught) in a very positive manner. With specific regard to inclusion, the materials provides excellent examples of inclusive settings and interactions. Simply stated, " children in such settings learn that a truly inclusive community is based not on special accommodations but on mutual adaptation."
The material does not specifically speak to fiscal resources or supervision and accountability issues for all staff across all programs. The message, though, is inherent throughout the materials. Inclusion is a community and schoolwide issue. We are all accountable.
As stated earlier with regard to issues of cultural and linguistic diversity, the materials are generic in nature. There is no "checklist" for full inclusion or a list of strategies to support students with different abilities and backgrounds. The profiles provide singular situations with examples that are applicable across many settings. The examples are inclusive in nature but not an exhaustive list (this reviewer does not believe that was the purpose of the materials and therefore not an omission or weakness of the material).
In the seven profiles there are acknowledgements of differences and similarities between the values, beliefs, and practices common to some preschool and early childhood programs and those suggested in the book. In most instances the focus is "prevention." The materials present a vision for communities. That vision is that early childhood programs can impact children's ideas about expectations, equity, cooperation, inclusion, democracy and citizenship -- for a lifetime. The book is suggesting that if preschool and early childhood programs focus on these themes more, children will grow up to be adults who create communities that exercise these characteristics.
"Kids can't practice what they haven't been taught. We can't expect that it is being taught at home…. Or that all of them know how to interact appropriately." In some instances in the seven profiles, the classroom values and beliefs are not being taught at home. If they are addressed at home they may even be in conflict with what is being taught at school (i.e., not hitting in response to conflict).
The presentation of the material is very effective and clear. The profiles are easy to read, interesting, and informative. They are relatively free of educational jargon, yet at the same time they very ably define issues of tolerance (equity, ethnicity, prejudice, and conflict resolution. There are no pictures or graphics in the 197 pages of text. The video is a nice enhancement to the text. The "Bookshelf" section of the book is a very nice further resources section to have.
These are exceptional materials for in-service or pre-service training. They include content pertaining to communication development in culturally and linguistically diverse populations, varied cultures and ability groups, and classroom intervention practices (conflict resolution, peace table). The video is especially nice for promoting staff discussion and individual staff reflection of strategies for fostering and nurturing respect for differences.
This material is very inclusive to close caption video.
In this reviewer's opinion there are no instances where the material is not responsive to or reflective of culturally and linguistically diverse children and their families. The material is very generic in nature. They were not intended to provide specific cross-cultural strategies for specific ethnic populations. Rather, they provide a comprehensive "big picture" that "children can learn to care about every other person's feelings, beliefs and values…." In this context, the material is generically very responsive to and reflects issues of cultural and linguistic diversity as a whole.
The publications are very comprehensive in their coverage of recommended practice with regard to the issues of tolerance (gender, equity, disability, conflict resolution, and democracy). This reviewer found no omissions.
This reviewer did not find any instances where values, beliefs and practices common to preschool and early childhood programs conflict or invalidate recommended practice. In fact, the materials promote teaching children these values and beliefs at a very early age -- with the expectation (and research to back it up!) that young children do understand and can respond positively to issues of tolerance -- if taught to do so.
The presentation of the material is great. Each profile is followed by reflections and applications. Applications are classroom-based and very hands-on for teachers. The applications cover the range of classroom environments, curricula, and activities. The materials are user-friendly, clear, and easy to read and to view.
Limitations of the Material:
This reviewer takes issue with one stereotype or generalization printed in the book: "The phrase 'homogeneous' schools suggests a range of images, from privilege, comfort and familiarity on the one hand to blandness, rigidity, and parochialism on the other. Frequently, however, the description carries a pointed implication-- all-White and middle class. By contrast, 'segregated' conjures a more static vision, one associated with negative factors such as poverty, discrimination and marginality."
This reviewer takes issue with this very stereotypic statement and would suggest that its very presence promotes specifically that type of thinking. Not all "homogeneous" schools are all-white or middle class. Nor do all segregated schools conjure up the image of inner city all-black or all-Hispanic students, at least not in this reviewer's mind.
It is not enough of an issue to devalue the entire set of materials -which are in fact exemplary. It is only one instance of stereotypic thinking, which this reviewer felt strongly about.
This material does not speak to federal or state laws. It was not the intended focus of the material.
Adaptations:
This reviewer recommends no adaptations. The materials are quite inclusive in nature and speak well (given their purpose) to culturally and linguistically diverse issues, families, equity, and expectations for children in preschool and early childhood programs.
Generalizability:
The materials would be very useful for any audience that deals with children or even young adults. Some audiences may need some adaptations for age appropriateness, but the general content (tolerance) is applicable and relevant for any audience. Once again, the materials are fairly free of jargon and may be useful for parent groups and training. Certainly the "Bookshelf" section of the book is useful for any audience. The "Bookshelf" is a good compilation(by topic area) of resources for further information.
Recommendations:
This reviewer highly recommends these materials. They are inviting, easy to read, and positive in nature.
Producer's Response:
Not available at this time.
Review #2
About the reviewer:
This reviewer's work experience has taken the form of special projects
performed through grants and contracts developed from successful
proposals. In the decade of the 1970s, he traveled extensively
throughout the United States as an applied anthropologist adapting
ethnographic research methods to three large-scale national
evaluations: Head Start, Follow Through, and Teacher Corps.
Since 1981 he has lived in his hometown in the Southwest, where
his work has focused on developing effective adult learning
strategies, including print and video materials, for use in
Native American early childhood settings. He has a BA and MA from
the University of California at Santa Barbara. He has served as an
administrator, teacher, and grants specialist in a community college
serving large numbers of Native Americans. Furthermore, he has
extensive experience as a private consultant in education.
Audience:
This set of materials is intended for all professionals involved in early childhood education programs. It could be used in any early childhood program or in any teacher preparation setting. The audience could be of any discipline and any level of experience, as well as from any cultural and linguistic group.
Strengths of the Material:
Respect for Cultural and Linguistic Diversity. This review covers a 250-page book and a one-hour video boxed as a single set titled Starting Small: Teaching Tolerance in Preschool and the Early Grades. This material is produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The first compliment for this work is that it effectively combines words, pictures and sounds, showing respect for diverse learning styles.
Each chapter also has in its title a phrase that relates to something specific that happens in that place. For example, Chapter 1 is titled 'Everybody's Story: Seattle, Washington', and we are introduced to a teacher with a name (Debra Goldsbury) who says, "I think children have amazing respect for each other's stories." (page 4) It is a refreshing departure from much traditional education writing intended for teacher training, in which a sense of a specific place occupied by an individual person with a unique story is usually overshadowed by the obligatory conceptual framework; a framework which in our times ironically proclaims the primacy of individualization.
The book and video are in fact built around stories of real people in real places doing real work. If we were reviewing materials about the teaching of literature, the focus on stories would not be as remarkable. Some scientists and philosophers say that the fundamental structures of human cognition are rooted in story-making. But in the profession of education, stories are usually treated as something adults do to children to foster literacy, not as here in the material under review, where stories are given the lead in adult-to-adult communication.
The story-making approach used in this book and video deserves high compliments, for specific stories are used to illuminate relevant abstractions that are tied into each chapter with sidebars having titles like: 'Reflection 1: Racial and Ethnic Awareness' and 'Application 1: Affirming Identity'. The authoring team uses the in-depth classroom narrative as the base for each chapter, then turns to reflections on related research literature, then to bulleted lists of practical suggestions for application in reader's classrooms.
The conversations which teachers themselves use face-to-face to teach one another are presented in the form of stories. How different people carry out their daily lives is the subject matter of these classrooms, which one teacher describes as 'anthropology for three-year-olds'. The anthropologist Joan Halifax said in her book The Fruitful Darkness: "Story telling is the most ancient form of education. It is about the remembering, making, and sharing of images that bind together time, nature, and a people. Stories, like the sacred plants, are medicine and food from the earth."
Stories can function like another fundamental human skill: conversation. The book and video embody a conversational mode of communication that heightens their effectiveness, for we can learn about the subtleties of high-wire acts like teaching tolerance from talking with one another, from sharing each other's stories.
Another high compliment for this material: It compares favorably to what this reviewer believes is one of the truly classic books that addresses a similar combination of topics: We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change by Myles Horton and Paulo Freire. (Edited by Brenda Bell, J. Gaventa & J. Peters, Temple University Press, 1990) The work of Myles Horton and the Highlander Research and Education Center intersects with the work of the Southern Poverty Law Center in important ways, as both have played leading roles in the civil rights movement in the American South. The work of Paulo Freire in Brazil has become a central inspiration for anyone who sees linkage between the reformation of adult learning and social justice. Starting Small provides another voice to this crucial conversation-in-process.
Congruence Between Recommended Practice and Cultural and Linguistic Practice.
This use of three quite different levels of diction as well as the incorporation of video is respectful to diverse learning styles, for this multi-faceted approach honors readers who like short lists, as it honors those who like references to the research literature, as it honors those who learn from their own observations in videos and written descriptions of classroom events.
The information is itself congruent with NAEYC's recommended practice for working with children and families from diverse ethnic groups, and it is refreshing to see this wise counsel presented as communication experts recommend. This is a good example of the media matching the message, something we see too little of in our profession.
This effective approach to communication is in keeping with the intended audience, which could be anyone who reads Standard English at a beginning college level, or who can learn from a video produced in the manner of a public television documentary. The stories are drawn from people and places from across the nation, with a perspective that honors diversity itself rather than providing an in-depth portrait of any specific ethnic group.
Since most of us use many different approaches to teach ourselves, as Howard Gardner, among others, has shown, the final 50 pages of the book provides a richly annotated list of good books organized around topics like 'families', 'gender equity', 'getting along', etc. Here our diversity is honored by a truly useful orientation to relevant existing resources, including such useful details as publishers' addresses and phone numbers.
Starting Small is a first rate piece of work. It is a profound gift to our profession. To help explain this high praise, this reviewer will turn to another powerful book in American intellectual history. E.F. Schumaker in 1973 wrote about foreign aid for Third World economic development in the book Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. (This book relates as well to Paulo Friere's central interests.) Let's look at how Schumaker's words might be adapted to a review of a book designed to aid development of tolerance among First World children -- for promoting education as if people mattered -- as discussed in the 1998 book and video that, incidentally, has a resonant title, Starting Small:
"If we have learnt anything from the last ten or twenty years of development effort, it is that the problem presents an enormous intellectual challenge. The aid-givers -- rich, educated, town-based -- know how to do things in their own way; but do they know how to assist self-help among two million villagers -- among two thousand million villagers -- poor, uneducated, country-based?...
On the whole, they do not know, but there are many experienced people who do know, each of them in their own limited field of experience. In other words, the necessary knowledge, by and large, exists; but it does not exist in an organized, readily accessible form. It is scattered, unsystematic, unorganized, and no doubt also incomplete.
The best aid to give is intellectual aid, the gift of knowledge." (Pages 196-7)
The book and video Starting Small offer a most effective form of intellectual aid. It is a gift of knowledge, for it puts into an organized, accessible form the thinking and actions of people who know things about teaching tolerance in preschool settings across America because they do it everyday.
Empathetic teachers like those profiled in this book do live in towns and do have a kind of formal education, but they are not usually rich in influence among the aid-givers in our profession -- those academics and policy makers who give so much advice in the mainstream writing that gets published for early childhood educators.
When kind, caring teachers are given voice, as they are in this book and video, the potential of our profession is seen to be rich -- rich in the practical application of the wisdom embodied in our constitutional heritage. We are all gifted by the presence of their words and images. The Teaching Tolerance Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center deserves our thanks for bringing us this work -- this intellectual aid. We need it greatly.
Limitations of the Material:
To emphasize an image from the quote from Small is Beautiful, the millions of Third World villagers Schumaker is concerned with are most definitely not the focus for the intellectual aid in Starting Small. This material is aimed at supporting tolerance among the members of the human race who live in affluent America, where the richness of the school settings seen in the video reminds us that resources available for the poor in this nation are beyond imagination in much of the undeveloped world.
These are stories about working toward tolerance in the midst of great wealth, and important stories about tolerance across the gulf of real inequities across the planet are not addressed here. Unless, of course, there is something in the American quest for equity that taps something fundamental to human nature, as our Constitution asserts.
To apply the concepts of the American Constitution to the care and education of our young children seems so difficult to achieve, even in the midst of the enormous affluence Americans have enjoyed in the last half of the twentieth century? And what would it look like to apply these principles to children from the real diversity of our planet, in the absence of the kind of wealth we command for social services like Head Start and public schools?
It may seem that these comments are addressing a limitation of our planet as much as a limitation of the work under review. At one level of analysis this is true. At another level this work embodies a kind of bias that other works in our field do, even as it rises above them. This work, like so much educational writing and video, does take for granted the embedded wealth of our American situation. We most often don't even seem to recognize that we speak of tolerance and diversity within such a small range of the planetary experience.
Nevertheless, we in America need this kind of book and video because even in our rich classrooms we have for the most part professed caring and constitutional issues more than we have practiced them. Since we have here the gift of a well-produced video, we can indicate a limitation of this material that also is reflected in the research literature of national evaluations of American schooling.
The large scale observation studies of classroom interactions the reviewer is familiar with have vividly documented a major limitation of American school settings, when a constitutional perspective is held as the measure. In these studies, as in this video, the vast majority of classroom interactions can be summarized as many short bursts of "adult initiates -- child responds." (See for example the Classroom Observation findings from the national evaluations of Head Start and Follow Through conducted by Stanford Research Institute (SRI) or the findings from the similar studies of American education conducted under the leadership of John Goodlad at UCLA.)
In a school setting that truly honored constitutional principles, we might expect many sustained episodes containing the back and forth of "child initiates -- child responds," as in peer teaching or lightly supervised play in interest centers or outdoors, and even sustained positive episodes of "child initiates -- adult responds," showing that children can create important roles for themselves in classrooms beyond those involved in obeying adult commandments.
An unremitting stream -- hour after hour, day after day, year after year -- of child responses to adult directives, no matter how well intentioned, cannot adequately prepare an adult person for acting with the maturity called for in the American Constitution. In this video if you just count the instances of "teacher initiates," and compare it to instances of "child initiates," you would find the majority of documented interactions place the teacher as initiator.
The large proportion of "circle time" interactions shows this pattern of "teacher initiates -- child responds" most clearly, (even though some have labeled this pattern part of the "hidden curriculum"). All of us would agree that young children need strong adult leadership -- it is appropriate to this stage of development. But is a large proportion of "circle time" in a video the best way of showing this adult power in action? The reviewer is someone who has been part of a team shooting unrehearsed video in early childhood classrooms, and editing it to near-broadcast quality, so has appreciation for the difficulty as well as for the choices made in the process.
The choice to show so much teacher-initiated circle time in the final edit of this video suggests that the there is something taken for granted here. Despite the inspiring language in the book about fairness, what we see in the video, for the most part, is children listening as adults express themselves. This pattern is understandable, for it is easiest to get good sound and picture from the predictable interactions of adult-controlled circle time. This ease for the video production team illustrates a profound point for classrooms themselves -- extensive use of circle time can appear to be an easy way to control the situation as an adult leader. What appears easy for video production purposes can appear easy for teaching purposes as well.
What is more difficult as videographer and as teacher is to honor the mutual giving and taking and the sharing and blending of respectful initiation and response from all parties in a setting. Such mutuality can be viewed as the essential core of constitutional democracy in our complex modern world. This respectful shifting of power from one to another among the parties is almost entirely missing from the large scale classroom observation studies of children and adults interacting in American schools, and from the video clips we see in Starting Small. These studies and the video segments show classrooms with most of the interaction directed by adults in a "power over" mode, and very little "power with" being expressed among children themselves or among adults and children.
Adaptations:
Of course, as facilitators of adult learning, we recognize that these are very young children in highly institutionalized settings and that we are viewing an edited video presentation, in which specific segments may have been chosen because the videographers found it easier to obtain good focus and good sound by filming adult-led classroom events.
But it might be worth reminding ourselves, as we did in the discussion above about diversity in a world-wide context, of what can be nearly invisible because it so permeates our experience. In video presentations of tolerant, democratic classrooms we might expect more examples of positive "child to child" interactions and more examples of children taking the lead with adults, instead of such a large proportion of traditional "adult initiates -- child responds" events.
Fortunately for the facilitator of adult learners, the text of the book "Starting Small" does provide eloquent stories that demonstrate in detail how competent teachers address these kinds of issues -- the writing expresses an exemplary understanding of mutuality among children themselves and among the teachers who interact with them. What needs to be adapted here is the video. For if you just experience the visual images, you might not realize there is much in "Starting Small" beyond teacher-controlled "circle time" events.
The adult learner can be encouraged to read about ways of conducting adult- child interactions that move beyond "circle time" in many other early childhood publications; an especially thoughtful exploration of these issues is in the Teacher's College book by Elizabeth Jones and Gretchen Reynolds with the inspired title, The Play ís the Thing: Teachers' Roles in Children's Play. Another book edited by Elizabeth Jones resonates with "Starting Small" as an example of using the stories of practitioners themselves to encourage adult learning of complex behaviors. This book is published by NAEYC and titled Growing Teachers: Partnerships in Staff Development.
Unfortunately the opportunities to view something other than adult-dominated school activities in commercially available videos is much more limited. For example, one widely-distributed video, which borders on absurdity, intends to show developmentally appropriate activities in action. You see, however, adults on a stage with some of these adults pretending (ineptly) to be children in classrooms.
The professionally produced naturalistic video "Starting Small" is an admirable step in the right direction showing, unrehearsed, real children and real adults in real school settings. Ironically, small scale studies of effective developmentally appropriate practice usually report more mutual give and take than we see here especially as children can learn in the context of playing together and as adults can teach as they master a more varied repertory of roles for themselves in children's play than simply presiding over "circle time."
Those of us who have extended opportunities to visit classrooms with a constitutional framework in mind can attest that the large scale classroom observation studies confirm much of what we see with our own eyes. We can encourage other adult learners to focus their own powers of observation on such details as who initiates and who responds and to think about what the observed patterns suggest about developing tolerance in appropriate ways among children who will grow into adults in an ethnically diverse democracy.
Generalizability:
Most of what we read in the book "Starting Small" is a refreshing antithesis to the dominant pattern described above as "limitations." And what is most remarkable is how simple and direct are the practices of these empathetic teachers. The book tells powerful stories about developmentally appropriate practices in action, and it is not sophisticated beyond any hope of replication.
The video shows these stories enacted in their elegant simplicity, but with perhaps too much emphasis on "circle time," with one adult monopolizing the attention of many children, as noted above. The facilitator of adult learning who uses these materials might want to help viewers see for themselves the hierarchical bias embedded in the video clips and to compare what they see to what they read.
This is an interesting exercise for adult learners: to imagine what visual images and sounds would illustrate the written words. Here we have the marvelous, if too infrequent, opportunity to make this comparison, first in the imagination, and then with highly professional video stories. This is a gift of the first order for the facilitator of adult learning.
Perhaps such a profoundly useful book and video could only come from a publisher outside the educational establishment, such as here with the Southern Poverty Law Center, where concepts such as justice, fairness, prejudice and civil rights are not just mission-statement rhetoric, but the reality of daily life. This fruitful cooperative venture of educators and attorneys might suggest a model for the preparation of other useful educational materials that deal with cultural and linguistic diversity.
For example, this reviewer's major field of anthropology has a long intellectual history that sheds important light on such controversies as race and IQ. It draws from such varied disciplines as genetics, paleontology, linguistics, archeology as well as the study of culture and society. (See for example Loring Brace, Evolution in an Anthropological View: Collected Essays, in press.) Adult learners can be challenged to adapt information from other endeavors to strengthening early childhood education, as we see accomplished so well here in the Teaching Tolerance Project.
Recommendations:
What we read and see in "Starting Small" is democracy in action. We discover in the context of what early classroom experiences can teach children and, also importantly, the adults around them, about such constitutional issues as fairness, justice, tolerance and mutual accountability.
"Starting Small" provides a vision of what a tolerant, compassionate world might look like in an American context. We see a kind of modest utopia in action, and the point is made repeatedly that the Early Childhood classroom can and should be a special, protected refuge. It is a hopeful vision rooted in developmentally appropriate interactions among caring adults and the natural graces of very young children. It shows what can happen when you start small. It is a good start -- a much-needed start -- and this reviewer highly recommends it for use with any adult learners in early childhood education.
Producer's Response:
Not available at this time.
Wu-ying Hsieh - Ph.D. student in early childhood special education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign:
The early childhood classroom experience serves as a young child's first social participation in their community, a community that may be very diverse in terms of culture and linguistic backgrounds. It is important to "start small" so children have a chance to establish their ideas about equity, cooperation, and citizenship for a lifetime. Because of the increasing diversity of children in classrooms, it is very important for teachers to teach children to tolerate and understand differences. The hands-on classroom activities suggested in Starting Small are based on real stories that help teachers to convert the abstract concepts to action and guide them in their instructional efforts. Teachers are encouraged to examine their own assumptions as well through this material and adapt the activities as necessary based on the backgrounds of their students. As a result, through Starting Small children have a chance to cultivate their acceptance of differences and potentially learn to interact more successfully with their diverse peers.
One concern relates to additional training and support for teachers, not all of whom may have a strong educational or personal background related to diversity issues, or even have experience in thinking through the issues Starting Small presents. Without additional support, some teachers may struggle to implement the activities successfully. Starting Small helps us strive toward an ideal goal of acceptance and tolerance of diversity, but it may need to be supplemented with additional approaches and administrative support in many cases.
The material is useful beyond teaching tolerance to children, as teachers can use it with paraprofessional staff and parents as well. Different groups can adapt the activities depending upon their unique culture, values, and beliefs.
I would use this curriculum in my classroom. Our society is becoming more diverse with regard to cultural and linguistic backgrounds of children and families. Teaching children to accept and tolerate differences at an early age will sow the seeds of improved relations in the future. This material is a well-organized, positive, and creative effort to teach tolerance in preschool and the primary grades.
Amanda Quesenberry - Technical assistance provider, QIC-D Region V:
The authors combined their expertise in law and their background in working with people in poverty to develop a curriculum that will help children be more respectful and tolerant of others. This curriculum can help children recognize and celebrate the similarities and differences that we all possess. By showing a broad range of children in various locations across the country, the authors demonstrate that the materials can and should be used with children of diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
This curriculum is meant to help us as a society be proactive rather than reactive when teaching children about tolerance and how to think about equity, inclusion, gender awareness, conflict resolution, cooperation, democracy, and citizenship. One limitation to consider is that the authors listed no specific adaptations to be used with children with disabilities or with children who do not speak English. However, I feel that the materials could be used with children of all ages and could be adapted by the teachers to be used with children with different levels of functioning or linguistic backgrounds. To find a variety of ways to present the information to all children, teachers could get together to discuss ways to adapt the materials in order to make them appropriate for all children in the classroom, including translating elements of the activities as necessary for children who are not fluent in English.
I would definitely use this curriculum in my classroom. I agree with the authors that if teachers used these materials appropriately, a classroom could gain a sense of community and harmony. One hopes that the children would feel safe in a classroom that used "Starting Small" and would learn valuable lessons about respecting others and about tolerance that they could carry with them forever. I would recommend that other teachers use the curriculum for these same reasons. Those who teach young children have the unique opportunity to teach children important lessons about how to treat others and why people are alike and different. What we tell children at this age may affect them for the rest of their lives. We need to make sure, then, that we use high-quality materials such as these to help children start learning these important life skills when they are young.
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