Eliot-Pearson Children's School: Building an Inclusive Community and Pursuing Social Justice

The fountain, a hole in an elevated rock through which water flows when a button is pressed, is positioned over a large sand area. Several kindergartners are building dams below the fountain. It is a warm day and the children driftbetween roles: pressing the button, directing the water from the fountain toward the dams, building the dams, and pushing water from one pool to another. During this play, one boy notices that another, who is not fluent in English, is wearing his boots. "Hey, those are my boots!" he exclaims as he looks intently at the boy wearing them. Then, after a brief pause, he says, "You know where my cubby is." He goes back to working on his dam.

Interactions like the one in the opening vignette are common at Eliot-Pearson Children's School, where our focus is anti-bias education and, most important, kindness. Current studies of child development from across the spectrum of theory and research (Gopnick 2016; LeVine & LeVine 2016) hold that young children are extremely complex learners who develop their knowledge, skills, and beliefs from their entire physical and social context. More than from any specific parenting strategy or teaching style, children form their minds and morals through acting on the world and absorbing a myriad of beliefs and ideas from the settings in which they play and learn.

At Eliot-Pearson, we (the whole school community) have established an intentional and overt process through which children learn compassion toward others, reverence for and interest in the natural world, and generosity toward those who look or act differently than themselves. This approach is built in to schoolwide processes and in to each of the classrooms.

Eliot-Pearson is defined by its diversity. Children, staff, and families are seen as sharing an inclusive community with an emphasis on actively and continually assuring that all members of the community fully participate regardless of developmental ability, cultural background, skin color, gender expression or identification, language, or economic status. Particular attention is given to those who, in the broader society, may experience bias and exclusion. Anti-bias values are not simply assumed; they are pronounced on a daily basis in the interactions between members of the community and in the curriculum.

We keep the four goals of anti-bias...