Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/want-to-reach-all-of-your-young-students-how-to-make-your-early-childhood-classroom-more-inclusive/5025339/
Most educators can agree: there has been a significant increase in the number of students experiencing anxiety in the classroom, even in early childhood settings. Although there are many reasons for this, creating a more inclusive classroom community is an effective approach we can all embrace.
One of us (Viji) teaches in higher education settings while the other (Kumar) teaches in K-12, primarily elementary settings. We both ended up in education as fierce advocates of inclusive teaching in our respective settings. In one of Kumar’s recent morning meetings he had his young students think about this axiom: Meet people where they are, not where you want them to be. With a little guidance, his students were able to unpack what this advice meant and why it was so important. In a few fictional scenarios, he introduced them to some imaginary students who had joined the class.
Each of the imaginary students had some characteristic that made it quite difficult to understand and work with them. One appeared to be a bully. Another appeared to have a distracting repetitive behavior trait. Another held an ideology about climate change that differed strongly from the general sense of the group of kids in the room. ...