Families and friends came, celebrated, and learned about different cultures. Children saw their families and peers celebrating each other. The child who teased Afi attended, and he shared his cultural traditions as well. The experience didn’ t end there though: The next day, I facilitated a classroom conversation about the importance of valuing everyone’ s different family traditions, and I could see that there was more acceptance— not just of Afi’ s food, but of Afi himself.
It isn’ t easy to navigate conflict with children, but it’ s important to make sure we see our differences as strengths. This event continues, with more and more families participating, and I work to connect it with our program’ s activities. It shows the community and our school’ s commitment to inclusivity, global awareness, and justice.
Building Trusting Relationships to Foster Activism
I( June) have been working with children for more than 30 years. I am the supervisor at the Carlin Springs Elementary School extended day program. Our community has a large population of immigrant families who speak a home language other than English, such as Spanish,
Amharic, Arabic, and Bengali. I work to build relationships with children and families and to give them confidence to act on their own behalf( anti-bias education’ s fourth goal, activism).
I greet students by their names each day, making sure that I pronounce them correctly and with the utmost respect. I recognize a family’ s loss or difficult moments by giving them a card of condolence and connecting them to county resources. I work in collaboration with our community coordinator to give fresh vegetables and fruit to families who need it. These actions allow me to gain families’ confidence and trust and to learn more about them. In this way, I can more effectively help children build relationships and find their own voices.
For me, activism means teaching the children strategies for speaking up for themselves and others and speaking out when something is unfair. But cultivating children’ s confidence to do this takes time. Gabriel, for example, was a 5-year-old who had difficulties with social relationships. He struggled to speak up and express what he wanted. Instead of asking questions(“ Can I play this game with you?”;“ Can I have a turn?”), he would cry loudly. His classmates sometimes avoided playing with him because they anticipated his reactions to disappointment.
Helping Gabriel learn to advocate for himself required the entire learning community to work together. We began by embedding social and emotional learning into the classroom to help facilitate interactions and make room for a range of emotions. We role-played ways that Gabriel could ask for the things he wanted and needed and express himself when he felt something was unfair.
Fall 2026 Educating Young Children 47