Authentic Curiosity Builds Relationships

01/23/2018

Authentic Curiosity Builds Relationships

Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.
Doris Kearns Goodwin, biographer and journalist

In the November/December edition of Exchange magazine, Lori Ryan and Rebecca Kantor write a response to research summarized by Alison Gerlach and Diana Elliot, offering suggestions to help early childhood professionals work successfully with families from diverse communities. Ryan and Kantor explain:

"In our view, the most important approach that is foundational to all others is having a disposition of an ‘open learner’ with an authentic curiosity about the families and children in our classroom or caseload. Families can sense if we as professionals truly want to know who they are, and what they bring to the educational partnership (including their unique characteristics, strengths and challenges) or if we have come to ‘fix’ them, make them fit our western, middle class ways of being, which then implicitly communicates their ways as inferior."

LAUP - Lifting Up Quality in Early Learning.

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For more information about Exchange's magazine, books, and other products pertaining to ECE, go to www.ccie.com.