“Our House Is Burning.... Can I Come Back to School With the Kids?” Social-Emotional Learning in an Antibias School Community

• In Event: Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: Reframing the Emotional Life of Children and Adults in Early Childhood Spaces

Abstract

Objective/Framework: What is the relationship between anti-bias education and social-emotional learning in early childhood education? Through the deep examination of events surrounding one family in a close-knit school community, our paper seeks to show how social-emotional learning occurs in a school-wide anti-bias education context. In so doing, we aim to advocate for anti-bias education as a way to create a school culture in which all members of the school community, including children, teachers and families can be supported in their social and emotional growth.
Anti-bias and multicultural education have long been understood as being beneficial for children from diverse backgrounds. But the emotional life of members within communities that strive to put inclusion and respect for differences at the core of their work has been less examined. In other words, evaluating the success of anti-bias and multicultural education programs has primarily been concerned with traditional measures of school success, such as narrowing the achievement gap, or school retention rates, rather than focusing on the emotional benefits of these programs.

Method/Data Source: In our paper, we recount the experience of Cooper, a kindergartener, and his family as they survived a fire in their home, and how the school became an integral part of their process of recovery. We describe how anti-bias education provided a way for Cooper and the class community to heal from the emotional trauma and loss from the fire. This account demonstrates how a school can feel, learn, and act as a community, and explores the different social-emotional learning experiences that touched multiple groups within the school (one child and his family, the class, the teacher, and other families).
Data for this project came from multiple sources, including interviews with the kindergarten teacher and her written reflections, interviews with Cooper’s parents, student work, email correspondences, and classroom documentation. The analysis and writing process were iterative and involved member checks. To capture the complexity of the emotional work undertaken by the various members, this chapter includes multiple voices, perspectives, and forms of expression, including poetry, prose, and children’s art.

Significance: Our work contributes to the literature on social-emotional learning by demonstrating the potential of a school-wide anti-bias commitment in supporting its members’ emotional learning. On a day-to-day basis, anti-bias curriculum provides a set of provocations that can elicit emotions, a set of vocabulary through which members are able to articulate their responses, and a set of principles that guide how members of the community can relate to one another despite deep differences. In situations of challenge or even crisis, the anti-bias culture and stance of a school sends the message to its members that they will be accepted and supported through any challenge. The story recounted in our paper provides a vivid example of how this process may unfold.

Author

• Caryn C. Park, University of Washington