#Blacklivesmatter in First Grade

• In Event: 54.060 - The Role of Agency and Control in Early Educational Equity

Abstract

Over the past two decades, early childhood education has changed dramatically. Once immune from the consequences of high-stakes testing in the higher elementary and secondary grades, early childhood grades preK-3 are now pressured to have young students spend long amounts of time sitting, listening, repeating and completing assignments with right and wrong answers (Saavedra & Marx, 2016). There is little time for creative thinking or connecting content to children’s lived experiences, worries, relationships or communities. This lack of connection is especially dangerous for the now-majority of students who are not White and whose stories are often told from those outside their own community (Pérez, Medellin & Rideaux, 2016; Leonardo, 2009).

This paper draws upon examples from film, audio recordings and reflection field notes taken as part of a one year qualitative inquiry into how I prompted racial discussions with my class. Examples were collected to find out how agency influenced the kinds of racial conversations that were possible with such child-control over time and space. My first grade classroom was located at a “middle-class” private school with few restrictions on curriculum or teaching approaches. The class was racially diverse and included children from African-American, Hispanic, Asian-American and White communities. There was a range of abilities in my classroom with several students on the Autism spectrum and some with learning and behavioral difficulties. Regardless, all students were offered the opportunities to use their agency in their learning. Project based learning (PBL) was the primary pedagogical tool. Many of the racial inquiries became long projects because the students were used to PBL as a learning device.

The focus of this paper is how children used their agency to put forward agendas of social justice inquiry and followed the principles of movements like #Blacklivesmatter to privilege the perspectives of people of color. We focused often, because of the children’s interests, on racial discrimination with children making many connections between historical movements and current racial tension and mistreatment of immigrants and African-American communities. For example, in morning meeting during a unit on the Underground Railroad, a student raised her hand to talk about something she heard on the radio that morning. The radio program was discussing Trayvon Martin, and my student (age 7) made parallels between racial inequalities now versus those faced by Harriet Tubman.

Young children in my classroom used their agency to talk about racial issues with the help of prompts, environmental qualities and a range of invitations. These prompts included social media, personal stories, open classroom concept, daily conversations about empathy and emotions, direct naming of racial groups in history as well as privileging the stories and expertise of historical and current people of color. As an inclusion classroom, children often needed individualized attention for certain concepts. White children needed certain information or insight from students of color. White children struggled to understand others’ perspectives sometimes. This paper is meant to share these findings and video examples of racial inquiry directed by students in which the experiences of people of color were active and privileged.

Author

• John Wright, Vanderbilt University - Peabody College