Individual Differences/Diversity

Preschool

What We Saw: The teacher turns on some pow-wow music and puts a coffee can drum on the table for a child. She shows him how to pound on it with a mallet. The other children come to stand by the table and watch. The teacher finds a toy drum in the cupboard and puts it out for another child to play. Two boys struggle over one drum, and the teacher says, "why don't you both play it", and helps them pound together. The teacher models drumming that the children would have experienced at recent community gatherings.

What It Means: When using an emergent model, curriculum planning flows out of the interests and contexts of the children, the parents, the teacher, and the community. This approach fosters respect for individual differences. When planning an anti-bias curriculum consider the following:
1. What are you most interested in? Comfortable with? Knowledgeable about?
2. Who are your children: their background, developmental levels, interests, needs? 3. 3. What would parents be most interested in? Comfortable with? What would they find most uncomfortable?
4. What are current issues in your community directly affecting your children's lives? What resources are available in your community to help you plan?

Preschool

What We Saw: The teachers had made a card for each child in the class with their name printed on it and their name spelled out in Braille using fabric paint. There were also homemade Braille-like cards of letters, shapes and common objects such a star and an airplane. A teacher was playing a game with a child where they took turns closing their eyes and running their fingers over the Braille. The teacher said to the child "I'm reading with my fingertips because I can't see, so I have to go slowly." The child watched the teacher guess the object and was anxious for her turn. When it was the child's turn the teacher said, "Remember, you can't see, you have to read with your hands". The child concentrated intensely and exclaimed, "It's a circle!" The teacher said, "Yes, it is a circle".

What It Means: Children learn by doing and experiencing. In this case, the teachers were helping children understand and be sensitive to individual differences. Making and using the Braille-type cards was part of a larger learning experience involving resource people visiting the classroom who spoke sign language and learning to sing songs with sign language instead of with words. The teachers emphasized that everyone has special talents and different ways of doing things and this should be respected. Providing children with activities that they can actively be involved with really enhances learning.

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