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Archive for the ‘Diversity equity and inclusion’ Category

A new survey asks families about child care

Posted in Boston, Child care, Cost and affordability, Diversity equity and inclusion, Early educators, Family engagement, Massachusetts Cities and Towns on September 8, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Photo: nappy from Pexels

There’s a new child care survey for Massachusetts parents.

So please ask the parents in your programs to fill it out. It should take less than five minutes.

“Help us to identify what is most important to you as a parent/guardian of 0-5 year old child(ren),” the survey says. “We will use this information to guide expansion of child care supports.”

As we’ve blogged (here and here), gathering data from families is a crucial step in developing successful child care policies.

The survey is the result of a partnership between the Boston Public School’s Department of Early Childhood; the City of Boston’s Economic Mobility Lab — a team of social entrepreneurs who work in the Mayor’s Office of Policy to “advance the upward economic mobility of Bostonians;” and the Boston Opportunity Agenda, which is part of StriveTogether, “a national network of local communities striving to achieve racial equity and economic mobility.” (more…)

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Leading the Way: Marcela Simpson

Posted in COVID-19, Diversity equity and inclusion, Early educators, Family child care, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation on May 14, 2021| 1 Comment »

Photo courtesy of Marcela Simpson

All Marcela Simpson wanted was a part-time job to carry her through to graduation. She was living in her native country of Honduras and majoring in business administration at UNITEC, the Central American Technological University.

Simpson applied for a position at a school called La Estancia, a renown bilingual school where she met the school’s director, Ana Aviles, who assigned Simpson to be a lead teacher in a preschool classroom.

“That’s where it all started. I learned that I loved children,” explains Simpson.

Because her grandfather insisted, Simpson completed her Business Administration degree and came to the United States to get her master’s degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where she studied with George Forman, coauthor of The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach to Early Childhood Education.

Simpson went on to work at the Winston Prouty Center for Child and Family Development in Vermont, an early education program that provides inclusive classes for both typically developing children and for children with special needs and rights. In this position, she worked with teachers, assistant teachers, and paraprofessionals providing them with educational resources and sharing opportunities for professional development.

“Based on this experience, I felt the need to learn more about adult learning,” Simpson recalls, “and that guided me to a whole different place.” She contacted the local Resource and Referral Agency in Western Massachusetts and they connected her to provide professional development and coaching opportunities. She also joined the Institute for Professional Education, where she learned more about adult learning theories and principles.

(more…)

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Reaching out to immigrant parents

Posted in Child care, COVID-19, Demographics, Diversity equity and inclusion, English language learners, Family engagement, Massachusetts Cities and Towns on April 6, 2021| 1 Comment »

Screenshot: MIRA Coalition report

How well is Massachusetts reaching out to the nearly 481,000 immigrant parents who live in the state? The MIRA Coalition did a study to find out.

“The barriers faced by immigrant parents have been particularly evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, as families have struggled to maintain access to state-sponsored early childhood programs, K-12 schools, community-based organizations and various social services,” MIRA says in a new report summarizing its findings.

“As remote learning requirements have forced parents to provide supplemental instruction and monitoring for online learning, parents who are limited-English proficient (LEP) have lower levels of education or digital literacy, have faced disproportionate challenges.”

The research focused on families in the cities of Lawrence, Brockton, Everett, Springfield, and Worcester. And researchers interviewed 80 service providers and policy experts.

Among the findings: (more…)

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A statement from Strategies for Children: Our work continues

Posted in COVID-19, Developmentally appropriate practice, Diversity equity and inclusion, Federal, MA governor, MA Legislature, MA state budget, NAEYC, National, Pre-kindergarten, Strategies for Children on January 12, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Alyssa Haywoode for Strategies for Children

“We recommit ourselves to achieving racial equity in early childhood and school-age programs through advocacy, action, and policy change. Together we will stand up, speak out, and work to dismantle the historical systems of racism and inequity.”

These are the last two lines in our Collective Statement on Racial Justice that over thirty organizations signed on to in June 2020.

As we reflect on the horrific events this week – a violent assault on our democracy – we must redouble our efforts to work for the change we want to see in local communities, in Massachusetts, and across our country.

NAEYC has resources on trauma, stress, and violence for early childhood educators working to support children in many different settings along with the guidance in NAEYC’s Advancing Equity in Early Childhood Education position statement to support your conversations with them, as well as families and colleagues. If you need more resources or would like to sign your organization on to our Collective Statement, email us.

Despite the trauma of this week, democracy continues. (more…)

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Leading the Way: Sarah Mills — from preschool teacher to legislative aide

Posted in Child care, Cost and affordability, COVID-19, Diversity equity and inclusion, Early educators, Family engagement, Infants and toddlers, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation on January 8, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Sarah Mills

How do you go from being a preschool teacher to working as a legislative aide in the Massachusetts State House?

For Sarah Mills, it’s all about loving the work of interacting with young children.

In elementary and middle school, Mills enjoyed helping out with infants and toddlers who were enrolled in her public school’s preschool program.

As a Syracuse University college student, Mills got a work-study job at her campus’ early education center.

And when she came to Boston to attend graduate school at Simmons University, she needed to work full-time, so she found a job at KinderCare in downtown Boston where she spent half her time working with infants and half her time working in the afterschool program.

“When I was younger, I just loved kids; they were so much fun to hang out with,” Mills recalls. “It’s really exciting being with kids who are ages zero to five because you get to watch them go through so many significant milestones, whether it’s their first steps or their first words. Being with kids at this age is truly joyful.”

“Another wonderful thing is that you get to know the families. I had a lot of families with first-time babies, and so I had the responsibility of helping to educate them and helping them to feel comfortable, because it’s scary to drop your child off for the first time with people you’ve just met. And I was working before the paid family leave law. So I saw parents who had no choice but to bring children who were six weeks or 12 weeks old to our program.” (more…)

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Early childhood workforce challenges before — and after — the pandemic

Posted in Child care, COVID-19, Dept. of Early Education and Care, Diversity equity and inclusion, Early educators, Federal, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation, Research on December 10, 2020| Leave a Comment »

A few months before the pandemic hit, the University of Massachusetts Boston conducted a survey of the early education and care workforce.

The survey results are a pre-pandemic snapshot of a shaky situation that policymakers can use to understand the toll that the pandemic has taken on providers.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that early care and education is a key piece of infrastructure for the economy,” Anne Douglass, the executive director of UMass Boston’s Institute for Early Education Leadership and Innovation, says in a blog post. “Parents need early care and education options that are high quality and affordable because when child care isn’t available, parents can’t work.”

The institute released a report on the survey results along with UMass Boston’s Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy and its Center for Social Policy. The survey was commissioned by the Department of Early Education and Care.

One important lesson from the survey, Douglass says, is that “returning to pre-pandemic ways of doing business is not an option.” (more…)

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In quotes: Ibram Kendi on antiracism and early childhood

Posted in Diversity equity and inclusion, Quotes on November 20, 2020| Leave a Comment »

“I think it’s important for us to teach that little black girl that there’s nothing wrong with her because of the color of her skin, because of the texture of her hair. And I think it’s also important for us to teach that little white boy, that there’s nothing right about him because of the color of his skin, or even because of the texture of his hair, that there’s nothing superior about him.

“I also think it’s important for us to deliberately teach our children — especially if you’re in a community where, let’s say, the resource-rich side of town is predominantly white, and the resource-poor side of town is predominantly black — for us to talk to our kids about that and say, you know, those black folks do not have less, because they are less; those white folks don’t have more, because they are more. And then the student, even if they’re five years old, they’re like, Okay, so then, what’s the reason? And that’s when we can talk about rules and unfair rules.”

— Boston University Professor Ibram Kendi, discussing antiracism and early childhood policy with the Alliance for Early Success, November 18, 2020

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Paving a national path of equity

Posted in Developmentally appropriate practice, Diversity equity and inclusion, Early educators, National on October 15, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Caroline Silber for Strategies for Children

Early educators can be on the front lines of promoting social equity.

To show how, the Foundation for Child Development has gathered resources on equity and justice from a number of national organizations.

“Creating a coherent and equitable system that works for young children, their families, and the educators who serve them requires the ECE field to be explicit about the realities of poverty, racism, discrimination, and prejudice,” the foundation says.

The foundation hopes to “foster a shared understanding” of how to move forward.

Among the resources is a report from Arizona State University’s Center for Child and Family Success, which notes:

“The United States is at a crossroads. We can spend the next several years trying to get back to the broken, ineffective status quo in our learning systems, where children were falling—or being pushed—through the cracks at astonishing rates. Or, we can choose to address the core, structural inequities that have held generations of children, especially Black, Latinx, and Native American children, back. For the sake of our country, we hope policymakers respond to the multiple crises facing our nation, with the latter. The policy agenda presented here can help us get there.” (more…)