Belonging: Including Children of Gay and Lesbian Parents - and All Children - in Your Program

What's In This Kit?
This training kit is designed to start a conversation about creating a sense of belonging for all children and their families enrolled in your program. It contains:

• Expected training outcomes
• Preparation instructions
• Training strategies and tips
• Implementation steps
• Follow-up activities for teachers
• Follow-up activities for administrators/directors
• A learning assessment
• A training evaluation/further needs assessment
• A resource list
• The article “Belonging: Including Children of Gay and Lesbian Parents - and All Children - in Your Program” by Aimee Gelnaw
• A training certificate to award to teachers for attendance and participation
• A certificate for the trainer and other presenters

Who's the Target Audience?
The target audience for this kit is beginning, intermediate, and advanced teachers working with children from age birth to 8. Teachers will explore specific strategies for welcoming all families to their classrooms.

Teacher Skill Level

beginning intermediate advanced

Children's Age Level

infants toddlers preschoolers school-agers birth to 8

Kit Timeline:
Preparation time for this kit is estimated at 1.5 to 3.5 hours. Implementation time is 1.5 hours for Practice Makes Perfect and Welcome Letter and 2.0 hours for Understanding the Message in our Materials.

Training Outcomes:

1. Teachers will grasp the importance of representing, including, and involving all families in the social and cultural community of the program.
2. Teachers will recognize the significance of the attachment-separation-individuation process on the development of young children.
3. Teachers will understand that children take almost all of their early social and cultural cues from their parents and other significant adults in the experiential environment.
4. Teachers will understand the importance of including all families in the social and cultural community.
5. Teachers will make a list of ways to include all families in program activities.
6. Teachers will become aware of both deliberate and inadvertent messages about belonging in the program’s written material, environment, and teaching and educational practices.

These training outcomes address the following:

• A4a, B7h, C1c, C3a-b, and C4a-b of the Accreditation Criteria and Procedures of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, (NAEYC, 1998).
• 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 of NAEYC Standards for Early Childhood Professional Preparation, Initial Licensure Level (NAEYC, 2003).
• 1304.40(a)(4-5) of Head Start Performance Standards (Federal Register, Nov. 5, 1996, Volume 61, Number 215).

Note: Downloadable PDFs are only available for download in pdf format. Directions for downloading follow immediately after purchase.