Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/developing-programs-with-windows-and-mirrors/5012516/
A few years ago, I met Emily Style at a training offered by the SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity) Project. She offered a metaphor for thinking about curriculum that has stayed with me. Style suggested that we see our curriculum task as providing both windows and mirrors in order "to reflect and reveal most accurately both a multicultural world and the student herself or himself."When I apply this concept to the early childhood field, I think about the environment for the adult learners as well as the children. If we want them to provide this for children, our caregivers and teachers need classroom and in-service settings where there is a mirror reflecting their realities, who they are and how they see the world. Likewise, they need us to offer windows, a way of seeing and respecting the lives of others.
So much of what we do in the name of embracing diversity tends to have a superficial quality to it. Our task goes way beyond learning about other cultures and getting along together. In our interactions, structures, and policies, we must steadily work to overcome ingrained patterns of power, white privilege, and what Luisa Teish calls "the ism brothers." And ...