Montrose Messenger
Week of September 21, 2020
As we move to sending weekly newsletters for the 2020-2021, my goals will include giving you information that is useful, timely and relevant. This week, the focus will be anti-bias education. As we move through many books, conversations and themes, we will incorporate conversations and ideas that not only promote an anti-bias environment, but hopefully spark an interest in social justice and action in our young learners.
The ideas for specific anti-bias education content and activities come from three major sources. One is from children’s questions, interests, or interactions with each other. Teacher-initiated activities are a second source of anti-bias activities. A third source is significant events that occur in the children’s communities and the larger world.
Over the course of the year, we will continue to enjoy cultural celebrations, cultural calendars and special celebrations while we aim to empower class experiences to be inclusive and integrate diversity into the very fabric of what we do. Please take the journey with us.
Mrs. Samuels
The Four Core Goals of Anti Bias Education
Four Core Goals provide a framework for the practice of anti-bias education with children. Grounded in what we know about how children construct identity and attitudes, the goals help create a safe, supportive learning community for every child. They support children’s development of a confident sense of identity without needing to feel superior to others; an ease with human diversity; a sense of fairness and justice; the skills of empowerment; and the ability to stand up for themselves or for others.
Teachers and staff have and will continue to receive high-quality professional development in anti-bias education.
Goal 1: Identity
- Teachers will nurture each child’s construction of knowledgeable, confident, individual personal and social identities
- Children will demonstrate self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities.
Goal 2: Diversity
- Teachers will promote each child’s comfortable, empathetic interaction with people from diverse backgrounds.
- Children will express comfort and joy with human diversity, use accurate language for human differences, and form deep, caring connections across all dimensions of human diversity.
Goal 3: Justice
- Teachers will foster each child’s capacity to critically identify bias and will nurture each child’s empathy for the hurt bias causes.
- Children will increasingly recognize unfairness (injustice), have language to describe unfairness, and understand that unfairness hurts.
Goal 4: Activism
- Teachers will cultivate each child’s ability and confidence to stand up for oneself and for others in the face of bias.
- Children will demonstrate a sense of empowerment and the skills to act, with others or alone, against prejudice and/or discriminatory actions.
Last Stop on Market Street
Montrose Early Childhood Center
Website: somsd.k12.nj.us/montrose
Location: 356 Clark Street, South Orange, NJ, USA
Phone: (973) 378-2086