Education Commons^™

The Radical Refuge: Reconceptualizing Teacher Quality Liberated From The Historical Commodification Of Latina And Black Women In Early Childhood Education, Vanessa Rodriguez

Occasional Paper Series

This article highlights the need to redefine 'quality' in early childhood education (ECE) and challenges systems that devalue Latina and Black women educators. It advocates for recognizing teachers' inherent value and creating a supportive framework that promotes their well-being. The "Radical Refuge" program is introduced as a means of addressing systemic traumas through identity development and healing. Activities like Education Journey Mapping shed light on how traditional measures of quality negatively affect teachers' self-worth. The article emphasizes the importance of teachers' personal experiences and their ability to foster relationships with students. It concludes with hope for a reimagined concept of …

“Pour Into The Teachers”: Learning From Immigrant Women Of Color Through Conversations On “Quality” In Urban Early Education And Care, Seung Eun Mcdevitt, Louella Sween

Occasional Paper Series

In this paper, we share our conversations with an education director of an early childhood education and care center, situated in a low-income immigrant community in New York City. We highlight an expanded definition of quality that she has demonstrated as a leader of the center. In doing so, we offer possible alternative ways of creating quality and equitable ECEC practices with and for immigrant children, families, and teachers, and detail the challenges that come with resisting the status quo.

“I Want To Say The Right Thing”: Developing Translingual Literacy Practices Through Early Care Educator And University Researcher Partnerships, Angie Zapata Phd, Mary Adu-Gyamfi, Phd, Adrianna González Ybarra

Occasional Paper Series

An early care educator (ECE) and university collaborative model of teacher learning offers a distinct departure from common top-down models of professional development. Implementing a Social Design-Based Experiment, ECE and university partners collaborate to explore translingual picturebooks to address curricular inequities in their school settings. Featuring the experience of one white, middle-class ECE (Tamara) in a Midwest rural suburban school, we identify three critical components of this ECE and university researcher collaborative inquiry model: role of ECE as mentors and supporters, picturebooks as tools, and role of university partners as facilitators. Tamara’s experience highlights the critical components of the model, …

Redefining Quality To Center The Capabilities Of Young Children, Soyoung Park, Sunmin Lee, Nnenna Odim, Jennifer K. Adair

Occasional Paper Series

In this article, we offer a justice-centered approach to measuring and documenting instructional quality that counters traditional teacher evaluations models commonly used in states' Quality Rating Improvement Systems (QRIS). We tell the story of two early care and education practitioners - one teacher and one school leader - who participated in a professional development that focused on learning to observe young children in agentic contexts and finding more ways for young children to showcase, demonstrate, strengthen, or contribute their capabilities. Through these stories, we show how focusing on children's capabilities served to counter the reductionist, hierarchical, and dehumanizing approaches of …

Stories From Three Native Hawaiian Alaka‘I About The Education Of Young Children, Charis-Ann F. Sole, M. Nalani Mattox-Primacio, Shin Ae Han

Occasional Paper Series

The stories of three alaka‘i wahine (Native Hawaiian women leaders) who are involved with cultural and linguistic early education environments that promote family and child interaction are featured here. Through interviews and interactions their stories and work are highlighted for stakeholders to glean from lessons they have learned. This work is framed through the lens of (re)imagining educational systems for Native Hawaiian children to experience education that is congruent with their heritage, their family, and their cultural ways of being. Contextualizing the experiences and wisdom of these island leaders’ voices, this weaving of stories highlights the significance of native ideas …

Learning Stories As Assessment For Liberation, Helen Frazier

Occasional Paper Series

This paper illustrates the transformative power of learning stories as an alternative approach to in early childhood assessment. The author uses examples from her own classroom to demonstrate the use of formative assessment to foster attachment, pluralism and creativity.

Paths Forward To Salary Parity For New York: National Models For Equity In Early Childhood Education Compensation, Lily Rosenthal, Emily Sharrock

Bank Street Education Center

Pay parity for early childhood educators is critical to reducing turnover, improving job quality, and achieving an equitable child care system. This publication explores compensation reform nationwide and offers ideas for local and state financing options to better support the early childhood workforce and New York families.

Singing In Dark Times: Improvisational Singing With Children Amidst Ecological Crisis, Stephanie Schuurman-Olson

Occasional Paper Series

Through this research-creation project -- which is represented by a process-driven ten-minute video -- the author asks what ways of knowing emerge when children and adults, more-than-human, and inhuman engage in improvised singing together in an urban park? This project recognizes our current "dark times" within ecological collapse and operates from a space that hopes to build relationality with sonic ecologies through listening-and-singing experiences, while centering the voices of children and other singers within the ecologies we sing in-and-with.

Painting Our Treescapes: A Visual, Gretel Olson, Ingrid Olson, Stephanie Schuurman-Olson

Occasional Paper Series

Two children (ages 6 and 9) represent an afternoon spent in their urban, wintery treescape through visual art, photo documentation, and written narrative. The first piece, "My Imaginary Forest", considers the seasons, animals, and issues of artistic representation of nature. The second piece describes the relationship between a favourite tree and a child, and considers others -- both present and future -- who also occupy "Our Knotty Tree". All of the words, visual art, and photo selection are those of the children.

Making Kin With Trees: Three Educators And Children Entangled With Treescapes, Stephanie Jones, Lindsey Lush, Sarah Whitaker

Occasional Paper Series

In this article, three educators from one small U.S. city draw on Donna Haraway’s feminist, posthumanist idea of making kin to explore their personal relations with trees and their work as educators to support children’s entanglements with trees. Working in three very different contexts with children: a working-class neighborhood, a public school kindergarten, and a forest kindergarten, the three authors illuminate the “magical” emergences of making kin with trees that fundamentally shifts what becomes possible to do and be. Their writing contributes to the fields of critical childhood geographies, feminist posthumanist pedagogies in early childhood education, and writing in affect …

A Snapshot Of Ece Apprenticeship Programs, Emily Sharrock, Annie Schaeffing, Lily Rosenthal, Thelma Wong

Bank Street Education Center

This publication offers a closer look at the key features of existing apprenticeship programs across the United States—such as the diversity and range of approaches to credentials, partnership models, funding, and how programs deliver quality mentoring and/or coaching support—to reimagine how program quality can be strengthened to deepen learning for participants.

“Your Body Is For You”: Possibilities For Size Acceptance, Criticality, And Social-Emotional Wellness In Upper Elementary English Language Arts Education, Veronica B. Walton

Graduate Student Independent Studies

This Integrated Master’s Project explores how body image literature can be used in upper elementary classrooms (grades 3 to 5) to support critical literacy and psychosocial development, and vice-versa. Using the approaches Health at Every Size® (HAES), affect theory, and critical literacy, I propose a new analytical framework for thinking about weight stigma and children’s self-image through the lens of literature. There is a growing presence of fiction and nonfiction books that address weight stigma and center children’s experiences of their bodies, and incorporating these books into literacy/English Language Arts (ELA) curricula can help educators shape their classrooms into spaces …

We’Re Not Migrating Yet: Engaging Children’S Geographies And Learning With Lands And Waters, Anna Lees, Megan Bang

Occasional Paper Series

Considering the places, the geographies, of children’s learning, of human learning, is fundamental to seriously considering not only the “whats” or the content of learning but perhaps more importantly the “whys” and the “hows” of learning and the overall goals of education. The whys and hows of education construct what is deemed relevant and irrelevant as well as what is rendered invisible to the “here and now” to children’s lives (Apple, 2004; Iorio & Parnell, 2015; Nxumalo et al., 2011; Tesar, 2015). We argue in our work that issues of place, and relevancy to the “here and now”, is always …

Technical Report: Listening To Teachers Study, Mark K. Nagasawa

Straus Center for Young Children & Families

This is the summary report for the second year of the Listening to Teachers Study which asks how early childhood educators in New York City (NYC) have been faring through the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The study’s purpose has been to seek deeper understandings of what NYC’s early care and education (ECE) workforce has experienced during the Pandemic to inform decision-making about the city's future ECE systems by raising issues for reflection and action-oriented discussion.

The study has followed a multistage, exploratory-mixed methods design, incorporating: 1) ongoing consultation with ECE stakeholders to incorporate questions of interest to them – and their …

A Framework For Coaching In Early Childhood Settings: Drawing On Bank Street College Of Education’S Developmental-Interaction Approach (Dia), Virginia Casper, Milenis Gonzalez, Tarima Levine, Emily Sharrock, Annie Schaeffing

Bank Street Education Center

Coaching helps teachers activate and better articulate their previous knowledge, skills, values, and belief systems, along with new concepts, to construct and continually refine an approach that is meaningful in their everyday work. This framework captures some commonalities of a positive coaching stance across contexts while allowing enough flexibility to make use of these ideas in ways that will serve that setting and teachers best.

Who's There For The Directors?, Mark K. Nagasawa

Straus Center for Young Children & Families

This third report from the Listening to Teachers study’s second year focuses on a subsample of early childhood program leaders (n=113) in NYC. Among the key findings in this report:

• Support from supervisors lowered the odds of survey participants reporting potential burnout.
• However, the odds of program leaders reporting potential burnout were 1.7 times higher than for other respondents.
• The odds of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) respondents being in leadership roles were significantly less than their white colleagues.

While this study's self-selected sample makes these findings ungeneralizable, they do raise the critically important question, What is …

Forgotten Frontline Workers, One Year Later, Mark K. Nagasawa

Straus Center for Young Children & Families

This is the second in a series of reports discussing findings from a June 2021 survey sent to New York Aspire Registry members who work in NYC (n=663). It also follows up on Forgotten Frontline Workers, a report issued last year which focused on family child care (FCC) professionals’ experiences earlier in the pandemic. The results discussed in this report come from a self-selected sample (n=97), and cannot be used to draw conclusions about all FCC professionals in NYC; however, their value comes from recognizing each of these participants’ humanity and the important policy-relevant issues …

Progressive Virtual Learning For Our Youngest Learners, Erica B. Held

Graduate Student Independent Studies

This study addresses how teachers build a progressive curriculum online for our youngest learners. Our youngest learners learn through play and the author sought to gather data in order to understand how teachers approached this age group in an online space. To conduct the research, ten observations were made of a pre-k class and a first grade class. Throuobservation and recording, four main themes were identified that progessive educators were using to create progressive curricula: Building Community, Progressive Pedagogy, Student Voice and the Home-School Connection. To build community the teachers observed had students bring objects from home, offered consistent morning …

Career Pathways And Wage Ladders: A Key Opportunity For Improving Quality, Courtney Parkerson, Annie Schaeffing, Emily Sharrock

Bank Street Education Center

To leverage the possible opportunity the Build Back Better Act presents, this policy brief closely examines the potential of career pathways and wage ladders to serve as the foundation for transformative change for the early care and education workforce.

“Nadie Nos Han Preguntado…” (Nobody Has Asked Us...), Mark Nagasawa

Straus Center for Young Children & Families

This is the latest in a series of reports from the Listening to Teachers Study, which seeks understanding of how New York City's early childhood educators are faring during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study is to use data gathered through surveys (May 2020, n=3355; June 2021, n=663) and in-depth interviews (spring 2022) to prompt reflection and discussion about what a more equitable post-pandemic ECE system could look like.

This report focuses on describing the June 2021 sample and preliminary findings:

1. As in 2020, emotional/mental health support was the most frequently requested need, but professional …

Moving Into A New Realm Of Education And Parenting, Katherine Rodriguez-Agüero

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Fighting For Justice In Education: How Schools Can Lead The Change Towards A More Equitable World, Tara Kirton

Occasional Paper Series

“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine the world anew. This one is no different” (Roy, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic has had tremendous implications for every aspect of life. School, work, celebrations and everyday social interactions have all felt the repercussions of the pandemic. While the shutdown called for an immediate pivot from our everyday ways of being, it has also provided opportunities for stillness and deep reflection. This moment of pause has provided an opportunity to think, speak and act differently. As a parent my hope is that educators will lead the change.

Raising A Coconspirator: A Letter To My Daughter, Abby C. Emerson

Occasional Paper Series

In this letter to her daughter, the author utilizes a journey map to anticipate some of the decisions and actions she will have to make and take in order to raise her as an antiracist co-conspirator. As a white parent to a white child, the author explores necessary moves towards racial literacy, rethinking obedience, and revisiting concepts of independence. She explores the way in which her parenting must be envisioned differently given this current COVID moment amidst the movement for Black lives.

Remember, Reclaim, Restore: A Post-Pandemic Pedagogy Of Indigenous Love In Early Childhood Education, Trisha L. Moquino, Katie M. Kitchens

Occasional Paper Series

This article discusses Early Childhood education, it’s settler colonial roots, the harm it has caused for Indigenous children and people and the possibilities for a better Indigenous Early Childhood education pre and post COVID-19. Reclaiming the education of our Indigenous children in Early childhood through the centering of Indigenous languages, cultures, knowledge systems, etc. is paramount to a loving and just pathway forward for Indigenous children. For all of us.

An Invitation To Imagine Education Otherwise, Grasilel Esperanza Diaz

Occasional Paper Series

This article presents an invitation to imagine education otherwise, what education could be if we took a restorative justice approach and make immediate changes. It focuses on the changes needed to make this vision a reality. Covid-19 has exposed many of the inequalities that exist in education and how these inequalities have negative effects on the neediest students. You are invited to imagine schools as sites of justice and freedom, to think of teaching that is centered on children, caring, and building relationships with families.

Re-Storying Ourselves As Early Childhood Teachers Amidst Covid: Toward Needed Transformations, Julie Orelien-Hernandez, Patricia Pion, Rafaella Soares-Bailey

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Taking Flight: Giving Up The Things That Weigh Me Down, Karina Malik

Occasional Paper Series

From the perspective of a Latinx, dual-language, special education, public school teacher, I explore and detail what an equitable and just education could look like in our future. I begin by envisioning a future that:

• Values collaboration in teaching and learning

• Allows for spaces of ongoing teacher learning where we teachers decide where we want to grow and how we want to learn.

• Invests in our growth and development as educators.

• Consists of a solid understanding that there is more expertise across communities than in any one person.

I continue by explaining that in order for this to be a …

Telling Tales For Justice And Equity: Storytelling As Public Nepantla Pedagogy, Ayesha Rabadi-Raol

Occasional Paper Series

As the COVID-19 pandemic led to schools moving to online platforms, I launched Tell-a-Tale, a livestreamed, biweekly read-aloud program for children. I designed and implemented each episode to include diverse children’s literature, followed by an artistic response, and finally a discussion about issues of equity and justice. Applying public pedagogy as a theoretical construct, I used this platform to create a space of “public intellectualism and social activism” (Sandlin, O’Malley, Burdick, 2011, p. 338). In this paper I will describe how I used “the pandemic as a portal” (Roy, 2020) to make space for historically marginalized stories and voices take …

Establishing Early Care & Education As A Public Good, Brandy Jones Lawrence, Emily Sharrock

Bank Street Education Center

This brief outlines a set of guiding principles including tactical policy and advocacy actions needed to move us toward investing in early childhood education as a public good to support all children, families, and society as a whole.

The Name Curriculum: Exploring Names, Naming, And Identity, Isabel Taswell

Graduate Student Independent Studies

The act of naming, or using and respecting one’s name, is a humanizing act: it is foundational to one’s sense of identity and belonging. Conversely, the act of ‘de-naming,’ or changing, forgetting, or erasing one’s name, is an act of dehumanization: it denies one’s sense of identity and belonging. The Name Curriculum provides an opportunity for third grade students to explore the role of names and naming as they relate to one’s sense of self and community. It draws on the role of developmental psychology, the urgency of historical context, and the power of children’s literature. Specifically, it explores how …