Home / Educators / Professional Development (3 - 5 YEARS) / Honoring Diversity
- Introduction
- Foster a Sense of Self
- Celebrate Differences in Others
- Teach About Fairness
- Try It
- Wrap Up
- Standards
- cultural diversity: the different beliefs, religions, languages, family heritage, socio-economic background, and ethnicities in a group
- ethnicity: a societal grouping based on place of origin of a person and his or her ancestors
- linguistic diversity: the many different home languages spoken in a group
- race: a societal grouping based on physical and biological characteristics that people share
Try It
It’s time to practice what you’ve learned. In this activity, you’ll apply the strategies and techniques you’ve learned to your program’s learning environment.
What Would You Do?
Download and print What Would You Do? (PDF). Think about how you would handle unfair, hurtful, and unaccepting comments in your program. Consider these scenarios:
- You are reading aloud a book about children of a different culture. As you discuss the book, a child says, “They don’t have nice clothes like we do.” Another says, “That’s a funny-looking house.”
- How will you answer the comments?
- How might a pre-reading discussion better prepare children for this cultural experience?
- A boy says, “No girls in the block corner. Girls can’t build big towers.”
- What will you say to the boy?
- What will you say to the girls?
- What might you discuss at circle time following this incident?
- How will you solve the problem?
- In one of the learning centers, a child comments, “Her hair is ugly. It’s not pretty like mine.”
- What would you say to the child?
- What would you say to the recipient of the comment?
- What might you discuss at Circle Time following this incident?