Cops, Robbers, and Jail Reimagined: African American Head Start Teachers' Perspectives on Dramatic Play

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 76
  In Roundtable Session: Children's Agency and Story

Abstract

This paper investigates teachers approaches in four Head Start communities as they discuss a dramatic play scenario involving police and jail with three and four-year-old children. Dramatic play involving “cops and robbers” was given poignant meaning by teachers in a working-class neighborhood of Washington DC, where the entirety of the teachers and children in the class are African American. Using a comparative lens and illuminated by critical race theory and culturally responsive approaches, I describe the perspectives of teachers in this community who chose to not shy away from the racial injustice and structural inequities that working-class African American children are confronted with every day. Contrasting perspectives from three other sites in the United States are included for comparison.

Author

• Allison Sterling Henward, Penn State University