Promoting Diversity in the Early Childhood Classroom

Starting at a very young age, children need to understand that all people are different and our differences make us unique.  To help children understand cultural differences, classroom teachers can do several things:
 

• Start by creating a classroom community.  Teachers need to find a way to establish a daily gathering time so that all of the children can greet one another.  This can take place during circle time by allowing the children to take time to say hello to each child in attendance.  Family style meals also help to create community by allowing children to have daily conversations. 
• Utilize books, posters, and classroom materials.  The classroom books need to show a variety of cultures demonstrating different races, religions, cultures, and ability levels.  The teacher should display posters throughout the classroom that show a variety of children and families.  The classroom materials (for example, the baby dolls in the dramatic play area) should match the cultural diversity of the classroom.
• Teachers should avoid teaching a two to three week unit on multiculturalism.  Instead, it is important to talk about cultural differences throughout the entire school year. 
• Instead of celebrating just one type of holiday, early childhood classrooms should celebrate holidays from a variety of cultural backgrounds.
• Even the early childhood classroom can begin to incorporate geography into the curriculum.   Many classrooms begin by doing activities about land, air, and water.  Classrooms can then progress to talking about maps.  Maps can be as simple as diagrams of the classroom or neighborhood and expand to the whole world.  Once the children begin to understand the concept of the larger world, then teachers can introduce topics like animals that live all around the world and different habitats throughout the world.
• It is important to supply the art area with different skin tones of paint, markers and construction paper so that students can create a wide variety of faces in their pictures and paintings.

 
Whichever of these suggestions the classroom uses, it is important to remember that the underlying classroom theme is to be kind to one another despite our differences.  It is essential to respect one another’s differences, and it is just as crucial to appreciate the ways that we are all the same.