Who Am I?
Forward: Sarah Satgunam, Administrative Director
Introduction: Shela Sinelien, BOPN co-founder & Wellesley Site Director
Post: Christina Raichle, BOPN lead preschool teacher and nature lover, passionate about instilling kindness, fairness, and justice in the early childhood classroom
We're bridging Black History Month and Women's History Month with a special note from BOPN Co-Founder Shela Sinelien. To illuminate this month’s post, Shela offers background on racial awareness and identity in child development, as well as a few of her own experiences teaching and directing.
“For there is always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.”
Note from Administrative Director Sarah Satgunam, MSW, LICSW, Parent of BOPN Alums
Sarah lends her dynamic experience in social work, research, and education administration to expand and diversify "the Network."
As BOPN’s Administrative Director, someone trained as a social worker at a program that emphasizes an urban mission, a mother of biracial children, and also a White, U.S.-born woman, reading my colleague Shela Sinelien’s contributions (posted below) stirred deep respect and admiration, and also a sense of humility in imagining through her eyes the context she walks into everyday - a program located in perhaps one of the most privileged, well-resourced areas in the state - a program where the vast majority of children, families, and teachers are White or White-presenting. Personally knowing many of our Wellesley site families, I have witnessed firsthand their eagerness to be allies to African American and Black communities, and to teach their children to do the same. I am immensely grateful that our children get to see Shela in a position of leadership every day. When I explained to my daughter, “Mommy works at BOPN,” her response was, “yeah, but you’re not the boss - not like Ms. Shela.”
Ms. Shela is indeed “the boss” and a boss.
Note from BOPN Co-Founder and Director of Education Shela Sinelien
Shela Sinelien brings over a decade of experience in the field and holds a Masters Degree in Early Childhood Education. Her love of nature is rooted in her childhood in the countryside of Haiti, playing and learning on the farm and in the forest with her four sisters. Shela is committed to grounding BOPN curriculum in anti-racist, anti-bias teaching principles.
A vital part of Early Childhood is celebrating our differences and integrating diversity and inclusion.
As educators and parents we may often ask whether our children are aware or capable of understanding race and diversity. We also often wonder whether we should talk about or acknowledge these differences. It is necessary to acknowledge differences because children notice them - we don't have to pretend they don't exist.
The melting pot of early childhood allows children to come into contact with myriad facets of personal and familial identity: culture, religion, language, gender, national origin, and physical ability, to name a few.
When it comes to bias and stereotyping, children are more aware than we might think during their formative years.
The questions I often ask myself as an educator, person of color, parent, and also the co-founder of BOPN, include: “How do we add diversity, inclusion, and equity to our programs? What can we provide to our children? How can we provide teachers with the resources to build a classroom environment that encourages learning, discussion, questioning, and celebrating one another's differences? How can we provide resources to families to be able to answer their children’s questions when they arise?”
To be able to talk to our children about our differences, we must first take a step back and ask ourselves questions. We must be willing to step out of our comfort zones, to tolerate discomfort in order to dig deeper and be ready to teach or answer questions we ourselves might find challenging.
The first difficult questions we must ask ourselves include: What implicit biases do I possess? Is my child exposed to diverse leaders (e.g., teachers, coaches, health care providers)? If not, how can I change that? How diverse are the characters and storylines in the media our family consumes (e.g., books, shows, videos, games, etc.)? Do we use the media as an opportunity to talk about diversity and inclusion?
On a personal note, I remember when I started directing our Wellesley site, the children were fascinated by my skin tone and my curly black hair. One child in the toddler class would always tell me, “Shela, I love your skin, and you are beautiful. Your skin is different; see my skin, it’s peach” (compare and contrast).
In that moment, I had the opportunity to answer the child’s questions, at his level of understanding, and also to share my knowledge and praise him for noticing and cherishing our differences.
Another day, a preschool child brought me a “Black Lives Matter” poster that he made for me to put in the office. This gesture gave us the opportunity to talk about what Black Lives Matter means for better understanding. One of my favorite, innocent quotes from another of the children is: “it’s another Shela” when they saw another woman of color visiting our program. It was another opportunity to help them understand diversity and the importance of celebrating our differences.
To dig deeper and provide resources to teachers and families, Victor L. Bradley Jr., will lead BOPN teacher training sessions on Anti-Racist/Anti-Bias education (ABE). We will also focus on diversity and inclusion and how teachers can incorporate them into their classes in an outdoor setting.
These trainings will provide teachers the opportunity to learn and gravitate towards creating a class wherein each child’s differences are valued and celebrated. In April, we will provide an introductory training for families in the spring on ABE principles. The training will include a rationale for teaching this curriculum to young children. We will look at the four core goals of ABE: “Identity, Diversity, Justice, and Activism.”
We will continue to ask ourselves the question “Who Am I?” and move towards the goals of involving our young scholars through reading books, storytelling, artifacts, art projects, and most importantly, for us as teacher and parents to answer their hard questions.
Reflection on Fostering Equity in the Classroom by Preschool Teacher Christina Raichle
Who am I? A question we will continuously ask ourselves as we navigate this world.
We acknowledge that identity is defined through a wide spectrum of lenses, including, but not limited to, culture, language, racial/ethnic identity, physical, developmental, and emotional ability, age, religious beliefs, economic class, and family structure, as well as access to food, shelter and healthcare.
Working under the leadership of our director Shela Sinelien has helped our teaching team to create an inclusive learning environment where children and families feel safe, respected, and loved. This is a core component of our teaching philosophy. Our team is committed to recognizing and appreciating the contributions of each child and family in our school community within their own unique contexts.
To guide this important effort, we rely on the four core goals of Anti-Bias Education (ABE) for young children, as stated in Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves by Louise Derman-Sparks and Julie Olsen Edwards (2020):
· Goal 1: Children will demonstrate self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities.
· Goal 2: 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: Children will increasingly recognize unfairness (injustice), have language to describe unfairness, and understand that unfairness hurts.
· Goal 4: Children will demonstrate a sense of empowerment and the skills to act, with others or alone, against prejudice and/or discriminatory actions.
When I ask the students in my outdoor classroom who they are, the first response I receive is always the child’s name. Of course, the first thing we want and are encouraged to explore is our name. The way it curves, bends, and defines part of our identity is a force like no other. The power of our name is one we hold close to our hearts, as it’s something that will always be ours, and ours alone.
The preschoolers and pre-kindergartners in my class at BOPN started the early stages of developing their sense of self, starting with their names and expanding to self-portraits. Crafting self-portraits fostered self-awareness for the preschool class. Looking into small mirrors, children’s perception of their own physical appearance- hair color, skin tone, and nose shape-burgeoned. The kids began to joyfully experiment with their own emotions, discovering the ways their faces could change to reflect smiles and frowns, happiness and sadness. Children pondered, “what are the unique characteristics of myself that make me so special?” As they curiously peer into the mirror, we asked them to notice the shapes and colors they observed and noticed on their faces.
It can be a strange experience to look, really look, at oneself in the mirror. To then express what you see makes this encounter even more poignant. One student looked into the mirror and said, “I have blue eyes like the sky, and a triangle nose!” Another said, “I have brown eyes like the river and brown hair like the wood.”
If they wanted, the class members replicated the colors and shapes on their faces with various materials provided to them, or even collected the materials they found in nature. By using investigative eyes, the forest grew eyes, ears, noses, and long limbs just like us. On one of our many adventures, some friends picked up acorn caps for eyes and leaves for their mouths.
Self portraiture is the most introspective of art forms. The children gazed into the mirror with the intention of recreating what they saw, and thus fostered their own emotional awareness as they learned to recognize gesture and body language. As the little ones began coloring their portraits, much of the class showed progression of fine motor skills, signifying their entrance into the prewriting stage by holding the marker between their thumbs and index fingers, rather than with the pointer finger pointing towards the tip.
Yet, perhaps the most important lesson the children took away from this project can be summed up by our old friend Winnie the Pooh. This enterprise, reflecting on the uniqueness of each child and family, helped each kid to realize: "The things that make me different are the things that make me."
We will continue to ask a variation of this question in the months to come as we encourage our pupils to develop a better understanding of self as we guide them to define and explore diversity, fairness, and justice throughout the school year.
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"Extension of these grants is critical to keeping child care programs open, ensuring access for children, and supporting socially vulnerable communities. Moreover, the extension of this program is a critical step toward a future in which Massachusetts' early education and care providers are afforded the public resources they need – and in which children and families have the equal access they deserve."
-Neighborhood Villages
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