culturally relevant and anti bias early learning environments 1

Early childhood education professionals may undertake significant efforts to design and provide culturally relevant and anti-bias environments, but still fall short in fostering environments in which children are fully inclusive of others and free of prejudice. Educators and early childhood leaders need to understand and be respectful in creating and maintaining culturally relevant and anti-bias early learning environments.

Imagine you are an early childhood educator or an early childhood administrator who has received the four surveys below from families. After you read through the surveys, select one family that you want to use for this discussion.

• Survey child #1

Write a transcript responding to common questions that a family such as you selected would tend to bring up at a parent-teacher conference, based on the survey data and your experience as an educator or an administrator.

Examples are shown below. Provide five questions, which may be selected from the list below, derived from your experience, or a combination of both. Each response should include a fact from the survey.

• What resources are available to help my child learn language?
• What support and resources can you share to help support obstacles children might be facing?
• How can I support my child’s learning in the classroom?
• How can I help support my child at home?
• How will you be sure to include all children in the learning despite their differences?
• What role do families play in the early childhood environment?
• What are some of the activities that you will use to help children learn respect?
• How do you deal with bias in the classroom?
• Do you have any suggestions that could help families with education, literacy, or mentoring?
• Can you suggest online resources for family learning?

After you choose five questions, develop and deliver your responses to each in the following format:

• Provide a question asked by the parent on the top line of each section.
• Provide and comment on your response to each question, including the following components:
  • Summarize your response to the family’s question.
  • Explain and defend your response, providing evidence and support from the course textbook.
  • Provide an example illustrating how your response would play out in an early learning environment.
• Cite at least one website for each question that could serve as a resource for you as an educator or that you could share with parents.