Fostering "Ordinary Notes of Care" in First Grade: Thinking With the Wake in Early Childhood

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Conversations in Early Childhood Classrooms

Abstract

In this paper, the author thinks with theory, specifically the theory of the wake (Sharpe, 2016) to explore the processes of how race and racism were learned and discussed in a first-grade classroom. Sharpe’s (2016) “ordinary notes of care” are engaged with data from a first-grade classroom in order to (re)imagine and (re)think the role of care during the teaching and learning of topics of race and racism in early childhood classrooms. New questions and possibilities are provided to provoke new thinking about how to think otherwise about care—as an approach for young children to talk through the racism and antiblackness present in their lives.

Author

• Oona Fontanella-Nothom, California State University, Los Angeles