ChildCare Conversations with Kate and Carrie

Episode 122: Practical Diversity

October 18, 2022 Carrie Casey and Kate Woodward Young
ChildCare Conversations with Kate and Carrie
Episode 122: Practical Diversity
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, Kate and Carrie discuss the importance of promoting diversity in your childcare center. They also identify the difference between promoting diversity and Cultural appropriation in your center.

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Welcome back Carrie and I are so glad that you are here to join us today and we've got a couple of topics that we feel are pretty timely. We are actually recording this on indigenous peoples day and you know that everything that is around that specific holiday gets all kinds of people depending on where you are in the country, kind of in some discussions about You know, cultural we just creation, huh? 


Cultural appropriation that was the one I was like you and I just talked about this the other day and we had the opportunity to work with directors across the country. And recently, we were working with a program that we really felt that the program was not matching. It might have been matching the population that attended that school, but not necessarily of the community that it was located. 


So, Carrie, talk to me a little bit about when you hear, or you see somebody talk about how they've got diversity in their program. What are some of the ways that immediately pop in your head? 


You're like, oh well, I bet they don't have I mean, I think when we're looking at diversity in the program, partially we're looking at. Do you have a diversity of clientele or does everybody look exactly the same? Are they white Anglo-Saxon Protestants or black Baptists? You know, do you have a monoculture in your program of clientele? And then we look at the Staffing. Is there some diversity? Are there men? Why are there women there? Different races. Ethnicities. Language of origin. You know, is there some variety there and age? Yeah, and are they visible? visible disabilities of any kind including, you know, the very simple one right of glasses or well, I don't think you can see with my hair down but hearing aids or you know any of those kinds of things are those, are they there? Do you have clientele and staff and children that have some diversity? What most of the assessors if you're looking to get your Center accredited through any of the millions of different accreditations what they're looking for? Is a little different. 


They don't care about the actual people in the building, they care about the representation in your media and the Number of puzzles that I was given over the years as, you know, from Grants to increase diversity, in my Center is mind-boggling. I own more than one of most of the puzzles that, you know, the two vendors that I used had that were diverse puzzles because I would say, I would need to include increases in the diversity in my program. They’re like great. Here's another copy of Martin Luther. Luther King puzzle. Aren't you happy? You know, like Yep, that's great. What else can we do? And they're like, would you like some harem pants for dress up? And I was like, no, I do not want harem pants. A dress-up that's cultural appropriation that is not diversity, or at least that's my understanding because 


You know, I try to make sure that if I'm having clothes from a different culture, I talk to people I know in that culture and ask them to help me pick out clothes that are actually representative of that culture as opposed to harem pants and Jasmine bikini tops. 


Right? So let's talk about some others. So, we so you mentioned puzzles. I'd like to talk a little bit about all the other bits and pieces of the curriculum. So, most centers, most rooms also have a reading space. So what should people be looking for, in the book area? And not just during you know Hispanic, Cultural Awareness Month, like what are some books that are types of books? Or what do they need to look at when they're looking for? 


I mean, children's books, so I think one of the problems we have is that so many of the books are animal focused and we don't know the ethnicity of the animals but a lot of them have very western-centric names or you know, English language focused names. So I think making sure that there are books about Alessandro and Maria and Lola, her and Lola and Adeeb and Nagisa and, you know, true and, you know, just names from around the world, they shouldn't all be Names that we think of, as American names, there should be names that are reflective of the cultures that are in your community at the very least and I would like it even better if it was, you know, the cultures of the world, the very least the cultures in your community. 


If your sister, if your town only really has like one or two different ethnicities. Okay, I guess you can get by with that, but presumably, they're going to eventually have access to a television And they're going to see people from other places in the world who have different kinds of names like Kareem or you know, Li can be. I don't know my name. My brain is not coming up with all kinds of different names today but, it is but they're all female and I was trying to do a gender mix. It was like a Greem, Mina. All of them that are coming to me right now are girl names. So sus yet, what we already did to a whole bunch of Hispanic. So I was trying to go. 


Okay, well, I was going to the boys, okay? So we need to be looking for books that and The names, the names are diverse. And if there are pictures of humans the humans have a variety of looks to them you know curly hair straight hair, different amounts of melanin in the skin, a balance of boys and girls and there need to be some differently. Abled people in the books, there need to be, you know, kids who are using crutches because a lot of kids use crutches not just kids, who Have, you know, a long-term mobility issue. Kids, who break a leg use crutches? So I for wheelchairs, you know, I think those things should be in the books. 


Absolutely. So that's so since you touched on it, I'd like to make sure that we include that in spell that out. A lot of times when you are looking at accreditation, they are looking at the diversity is not just names, it's not just countries, it's not just skin tones but it does include, you know, some differently-abled blind wheelchair, you know, some sort of crutch or a cane or something else that identifies. The person in the picture or in the puzzle or the stuffed doll or any of those. 


Yeah there are now dolls that have Cochlear implants that's really cool. Yep. Yep. They do. So these are all things that make a really good opportunity for a child care center to work with training professionals. Because again just because you have the materials of Not comfortable yourself, bringing this content into the classroom, it might mean that you need to do some personal online training and might mean that your program needs to do some sort of an enrichment. Yes, we seem to have, we recognize at least six months a year, some different ethnicity in the United States. So we have Hispanic, we have Asian Pacific, we have American. 


Yeah, but I seem to think of one point in time. I figured it out, I think we have five or six months a year that are labeled as an awareness month for some sort of culture. Not just holidays, not just health issues. So these are great places to start with the kids in your program and your staff, if your kids are staff, aren't familiar, if you have staff and you're in a community with diversity, this is a great opportunity for the staff to teach the difference between, maybe the animated version of a culture, or of a holiday or something along those lines to perhaps, 


How does that culture actually do it? Now where the staff may be missing and this is one of the things that carry that, I know what you do a really, really great job at which is helping people understand what it is that you're actually teaching related to perhaps a special holiday. 


Yeah you can special down the calendar and you don't really want to do what I call tourist multiculturalism which is you know, oh it's Cinco de Mayo or do you see sister September? And so we're all going to put on ponchos and sombreros and Shake our Maracas. Okay? I know lots of people from Mexico and none of them wear those clothes on a day-to-day basis like that and there are probably parts of Mexico that do. But those aren't the ones where my friends are, so making sure that it's authentic is why I don't like the harem pants because I don't know. People from North Africa, who wear harem pants, you know. So it's, how do we investigate the culture? Like this, it's a hard thing. How do we investigate and incorporate the culture without feeling like we're tourists and were fetishizing the other and going you know, this is such a new and different and sexy thing which is what has happened to Lot of Native American culture and you know, it's Halloween coming up and so they're going to be people dressing up as a sexy Indian and it's going to make me want to throw up every time I see it or you know guys who have put feathers in their hair or whatever and that's not that's the cultural appropriation stuff that's not appreciating the other culture and reflecting it. 

Just they're just people, just put them in the books. Just put them on the pictures like we don't need to, I don't know. I don't know how to explain my thought process here but it's just we can eat enchiladas in months that are not, you know, Hispanic culture awareness month, or whatever, the title of the month is like you can eat enchiladas just because enchiladas are tasty. 


Tacos every Tuesday. It's okay. But so with that, one of the things we do have to remember is that not only us as directors as staff as owners chances are, we weren't well educated in this diversity, either. Even if we lived in communities that are incredibly diverse, even if we had friends who come from a variety of backgrounds, I mean, I have friends from Jamaica that I grew up with. And, you know what? I can tell you very little About their culture because I never asked, not that I didn't, I wasn't curious. It just wasn't something. We did 30 years ago, you know, we just you know, if I happened to be there and somebody was fixing a meal that was definitely not the type of food I was used to I ate it but I never asked why I never asked what was in it. I just did it because they put it in me and so I think that we do have to give ourselves some Race. 


But we have to remember that we are Educators and lifelong learning is really, really important. And so we need to continue to figure out how to get ourselves out of our own comfort zone and that is where I think giving your staff the opportunity to train other staff, provide meals to other staff. And even especially on months, that it's not that month, you know? It's like, you know, if you have Hispanic staff, especially We find out because that's a pretty broad label. So find out family. 


Are they from? Are they from Peru? Are they from Colombia, Spain? Yeah, yeah, Portugal. Yeah, well, okay, yeah. So you need to find out, you know, where they're from and then incorporate them in other months, you know, we don't need them to be taught during staff training, just in October. If you have staff, who Close friends or close relatives, again of other ethnicities that are representative, especially in your community. 


We happen to be at some programs recently that, you know, like I said, the school itself was pretty, The clientele was pretty monochromatic. Yeah, but just pretty diverse. Yeah, the staff were diverse but the community itself has had even more Cultures then even were represented by the staff and a lot of different cultures that weren't represented by the staff and so you know, we need to be aware. I know that this is not the only program in that community that has this problem. 


So, yeah, and we've talked about books and we've talked a little bit about food and we've talked about, you know, the human beings but there's also, you know, other representation on the Walls, the art is, is their art on the walls other than what the kids create and if so, is it diverse is the music diverse are there pictures of firefighters and all the firefighters are buff. Men are there? No buff, women who are firefighters in your town. I just because one of the classrooms I saw in the past couple of weeks was doing a unit on fire, fire safety and So I didn't see any women firefighters. And I had a friend who was one of the first women firefighters in that town and so I was like, there should be some women, it's even more interesting. 

As you know, we are for those of you who don't know Carrie and I are in Austin, Texas. But, like in Arizona and Phoenix, Arizona, they have lots of female firefighters and female firefighters who compete internationally in Fitness games. And we have the Austin fire department that had a female chief, that female Chief is now at West Palm Beach Florida. So I mean, you're going to find that diversity wherever you want to, but you have to intentionally go looking for it now especially when we're doing career days. So again, careers is a great example of other places. You can include that diversity without it having to be. Hi. This is this panicle Hispanic Cultural awareness month. 


Well, we need to recognize and do that more during our curriculum development. So if you are a director who is responsible for the curriculum of your staff and buying the curriculum materials, it is more than buying the black baby dolls. It does more than buying the different skin tone crayons. There's a lot more that may go into making those curriculum modules of Any subject, even the subjects with mammals? Even the subjects of farming? Yes, it may mean that you have to go specifically looking for the African-American female farmer. 


But she's out there, you know, we have to go out and actually look for and find The Asian actress, not the Asian, who's at the computer. So we need to also make sure that we're thinking through the stereotypes. Because again, what's easy for us to find what we need mediately, think of may not be Exactly what we should be doing or the best thing we could do for our staff. 


All right, so Carrie, what are some things that you think out of all of what we've talked about, from the disabilities to the skin tones, to the cultural appreciation appropriation to having real photos and understanding what is on bald and Community? What would be something that a director might miss? That might be easy to do especially if they're thinking they want to get a credit. Haitian. I mean I would hate for them to be putting the stuff on the wall entirely to check to check off a check box. 


Oh good. I mean, to me, it starts with the staff education, it starts with the staff education and empowering the staff. And saying, I give you free rein to increase this. This is the minimum level, you can go above that. So let them know where the floor is and that there is no ceiling and say, you know, audit your books--. Look at your books, how many books do you have where the main character is Asian? Or the main character is black? Or the main character is Hispanic or the main character is from another continent, you know, or even just a different country because It's interesting to kids to read a story about somebody named Seamus and then to learn that Sheamus is a, you know, an Irish name and a Scottish name. What is Seamus like, where is Seamus from, you know, Have stories about different things. So that's where I would start, is with the training for your staff and then say I would like you to do an audit and bring me a shopping list and we'll do what we can. What can we print out? What do we have to buy? What can we make? And help them to realize that, you know, this is a big deal and I think anybody who says o representation doesn't, has not been on social media around the time that the new Little Mermaid was released because the number of videos of young black children, young African-American children just literally falling down in tears because this was an iconic princess and she's being clerk portrayed by a black woman. I mean, it is amazing. 


But again, we want the staff to have this feeling of, I want the kids in our school to not think that men can only be chefs and women can only be nurses, women can be chefs and men can be nurses and we want to help them understand that and women can be doctors. I mean, I think of the number of women who I grew up with, who were always told to be a nurse. The only ones who were ever told to be a doctor, were the ones who came from Asian descent Asian families. 


Yeah so, you know, this is their opportunity to make a difference in how those kids see themselves and see the members of their Community as active participants. Not statues that you go see in a museum. I mean we've definitely gotten on her soapbox and gone longer than we normally do. But you can tell, this is something that is important to us. We work really hard to try to raise our kids and the kids at our centers in a more open way so that they have more cultural context for different cultures. And we have seen incredible benefit from that, from both our personal kids, and the kids that we help to support, at our centers and We want you to be able to do the same. It is incredibly powerful when kids see their neighbor represented in the artwork, in the books at your Center. So, and the music. Good Lord, the music we could go on a whole other tangent about music. We're not going to, but I will write it down and we will come back to it. We'll do it another week. 


In the meantime, I want you guys to go check out if you guys don't know Carrie and I are both authors and We actually have a book called Lola in the hurricane and as you can probably guess Lola is not an Anglo little white girl who grew up in Texas and we would love for you to go check out that book. It's currently on sale on Amazon and there's an audiobook and so if you are looking for an easy way, especially right now during Hurricane Season regardless of where you are, is whether you're a coastal program or not it's a great program to, start to introduce kids to how to be prepared. And so, with that. Thanks for joining us. Carrie and I are so glad that you have joined us today. Yeah, so you know, it's one of those days and with that, we will see you guys next week.