Exploring the 2023 Publication by WestEd for the California Department of Social Services (CDSS): Infant/Toddler Caregiving: A Guide to Social-Emotional Growth and Socialization, Third Edition, Part 1
Resisting the Margins: Advancing an Imperative to Attend to Race and Culture and the Social-Emotional Growth and Learning of Infants and Toddlers
Presenter: Eva Marie Shivers
Elizabeth Crocker:
Welcome everyone. I’m so glad you chose to join us today, and we’re looking forward to being with all of you. It’s my honor to introduce Dr. Eva Marie Shivers, founder and director of Indigo Cultural Center, committed to socially and racially just communities that promote strong, nurturing families and optimal child development. Today she’s sharing from her chapter, from the new social-emotional guide, third edition for PITC, “Resisting the Margins: Advancing Race and Culture in Social-Emotional Growth and Learning of Infants and Toddlers.” So, we welcome her today, and we’re so excited to hear from her about this new chapter, and the publication will be available online and in print this summer. So, we’re excited that you’ll have this resource. And we’re so grateful to her for bringing this to PITC. She is a gift for all of us. So welcome Dr. Shivers.
Dr. Eva Marie Shivers:
Oh, thank you so much, Elizabeth. Good evening, everyone. I’m really happy to be with you today. So, yeah, I’m going to preview the chapter, and there’s a lot there. And I will say this, writing this chapter, I wrote it with my friend and colleague, and I have a slide with her name on it in a little while. It was a difficult chapter to write, but it was also very much a labor of love. And what Flora and I tried to fold in were, gosh, we both have a lot of experience working with teachers, working with directors, all the different aspects of the world of early care and education. We thought very expansively about what to include, and also, we really wanted to push, we wanted to push the boundaries. We wanted to present a chapter that was aspirational. I don’t think our field is here yet, but I think all of us together, if we keep healing together and talking together and coming together and loving on each other and working past differences, I do believe that we can get there.
So, I’m gonna go ahead and share my screen, and I’ll share a little bit more with you about who I am in just a while, because I think it’s also really important as you hear me talk about this chapter, I wanna just get you excited about it. I’m not gonna review every single thing that’s in the chapter, ’cause I know you all will have a chance to read it later. I just wanna get you excited about it. And probably more importantly, I want to set the stage so maybe that you don’t feel afraid to implement some of the things that are in this chapter. I know that in this current climate that we’re in, talking about race and culture can be really tricky and can feel very divisive sometimes. And some parents really don’t appreciate when we’re doing anti-bias education with children. So more than anything, I want to encourage you by offering a different approach to doing this sort of work.
So, with that, I’m going to share my screen. Okay, let’s see here. Here we go. And then I also need to… Did I just mute myself? No. I need to go to slideshow. There we go, yes. Play it from the start. Here we go. All right. So, we thought very, very carefully about this title, also. “Resisting the Margins.” Resisting the margins. A lot of times this work is very marginalized, and I’m really happy that it has been included in this latest issue of the “Social-Emotional Learning Handbook” because this is not a topic that should only be kind of an add-on or a bullet at the end of a long list. We wanna get to the point where we’re not in the margins talking about culture and race, but we wanna make it central and really integrated into everything that we do with young children.
So, let’s see here. Okay, so I’d like to share with you our stance, or my stance for today. And I take this very, very, very, very seriously. I do a lot of training and a lot of facilitation around issues of race in the field of early care and education. And I also do a fair amount of work with professionals and practitioners who are in the field of infant and early childhood mental health. So, I know that mental health consultation is now becoming bigger and bigger there in California. I don’t know if any of you have worked with a mental health consultant or if any of you are mental health consultants, but that’s also another group of professionals in our field that we work very closely with.
And so, in my work as a facilitator, I understand that we all come to this particular topic from very different places. We all have different backgrounds. We all have different experiences with oppression. We all have different experiences with privilege. We all have different experiences being able to say the words, and that is all okay. Tonight, I’m inviting you to come with your full self just as you are. I know we’re not gonna have a lot of discussion tonight. Mostly I’m gonna be asking you for reflection, and we can pause for questions as they come up. But really, I have no expectations about where you are on this topic. There’s a whole, you know, I’m a developmental psychologist, and like development, we are all at different places in this continuum of development when we think about learning about race and culture, talking about race and culture.
So, I welcome you in just as you are. No expectations to be extra woke or, you know… And I would also say this, this is also something I’d like to also model a stance that I hope we can practice with one another, I also want to invite you to disagree with some of the things that I share with you. That is okay, that is okay. All I ask is that you pay attention to what’s happening inside of you as I share these things. I don’t even like to call this work that I’m doing tonight a training, because a lot of times training just kind of implies we’re here with our brains, with our heads, taking it all in here. And the truth is, with this topic in particular, we feel it in our bodies. We feel it in our bodies. All of us have different experiences. And you know, I could give you a checklist of the things to do, and that’s not gonna heal what’s happening in society. We need to heal, first and foremost for ourselves, within ourselves, then with each other in relationships, right? Then in our organizations and the community and the world.
So, we talk in our organization at Indigo Cultural Center, we talk about transforming racial equity from the inside out. It’s not a linear thing, but it is to say, we really do have to attend to what’s inside of us. So, from that stance and in that spirit, I welcome you to just come as you are and take it in exactly where you are. It’s all very good. So, here’s the title again, and this is where I get to tell you about my dear friend Flora. Flora is, she’s a professor in human development, and she’s in a small town in Texas called Nacogdoches, and she’s at the Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches. And most of her students are practitioners or teachers, mostly in Head Start. And Flora and I also have a lot of experience working with home-based childcare providers, family childcare providers, family friend and neighbor providers, licensed exempt providers, you name it. So, we’ve both worked with a whole continuum of childcare, and we love it all.
And we’re both very, very passionate about anti-bias education and about culture and about healing. So, that’s a little bit about Flora. If you were to meet her, you would know why I’m smiling so broadly and brightly. She is a shining star, and she is one of the most beautiful and gentlest spirit I’ve ever met. So, she was my partner in conceptualizing this chapter and in the writing of it. And so, for our time together, I’m not gonna… it’s a lot of content here. It’s jam-packed, and like I said, you’re gonna be able to read that yourself. But I am gonna go through, there are five main sections. So, I’m gonna kind of highlight the main themes in each of those sections. And then, we’re gonna do something a little bit different.
I’m not sure how this is gonna work, but at Indigo Cultural Center, we’ve developed a framework for transforming ourselves in relation to racial equity. And so, what I’m going to do is I’m gonna share a part of the chapter, a section of the chapter, and then I’m gonna highlight the part of our Indigo framework that I think aligns with some of the content and some of the concepts in that chapter. And so that way you’re gonna get a little bit of both, our framework for transformation, which is the how, and then pieces of the chapter, which is the what. So, we’re gonna do a little bit of both.
And then before we leave each other today, I’d like to talk to you a little bit about, and ask you to consider how might you prepare to share this content with your communities. And if you’re a trainer or a coach or a consultant, your communities might be, how are you going to share this with teachers and providers? If you are a provider and a teacher, how will you share this content with your classrooms, with your coworkers, with families in your care? And then finally, some considerations about where do we go from here, just collectively, altogether. And so, yeah, we kind of got a little bit creative. We wanted to share with you what was driving this chapter’s content. And that was also the thinking of integrating the different sections with some of the framework that we have here at Indigo.
So, before we go into our first chapter, I’d like to share with you some of what I understand in this equity work. And I don’t like to make a lot of assumptions, and I’m gonna try to make very clear and explicit some of the beliefs that I carry as I share this work with you. So, the first one is, yes, I understand, I talked about this right at the very beginning. I know that we all come in with different levels of the knowledge of the content that I’m covering today. And that’s okay. There’s no expectation for me that you already kind of know some really basic things. We’re all at different, and some of you are already very well-versed in these topics and very passionate about it, some of you or maybe many of you are advocates. Elizabeth shared with me that many of you are part of the PITC family. And as a substitute faculty member, I know the content that you receive when you come to PITC. And I know that PITC is one of the few organizations in our country that has always centered culture and race and community. And it’s one of the reasons why I love being connected to this world of PITC.
And I also know that we internalize this information in different ways. If we had a longer time together, like let’s say we were together for three hours and we were having more discussion, I would understand that not everybody processes information by raising their hand and talking out loud. There are some of us who have to process internally. There are some of us who process by writing. There are some of us who process through our bodies. And that’s all good. Yeah. And so, I know that a lot of times with these Zoom calls, if we were having a discussion, the modality is always sharing orally, but I know that that’s not always the way we take in information and make it real for us.
You know, for those of you who are familiar with PITC, you know that definitions matter. You know that the language we use, it matters. There’s a beautiful book called “My Grandmother’s Hands.” I don’t know if some of you have seen this by Resmaa Menakem, and he talks a lot about definitions. And he said, “Definitions ground us.” When we are coming together to talk about work that is related to race, that’s related to trauma, that’s related to healing, we ground ourselves in definitions. And so, we will be covering a couple of definitions tonight. And in the chapter, there are definitions as well. And then finally, look, you’re an expert in your own experience, your own body, your own needs. And in order for us to really transform what’s happening in our society, we have to go to the roots of it. We have to understand that it’s not just, oh, why is that certain group of people, you know, how come they don’t do better? Why don’t they take better care of their children? There are stereotypes and biases that we have about different groups.
When people look at folks who are struggling with poverty… You know, I grew up in a lot of poverty, and so I understand these dynamics on a very, very personal level. And this is not about our merit or our worthiness. There are things that have happened in our history, in our systems, that absolutely predict why certain groups are always at the bottom of those child wellbeing lists and why other groups are at the top, you know? And so, we have to understand the roots of trauma and injustice in order for true transformation. And again, that’s why I don’t think just like a training that gives you a checklist or here’s what to do. We have great resources already. We have had them for decades. It’s how do we apply these resources, that is the trick, that’s the portal we have to go through, is understanding how we ourselves have to transform in order to transform what’s happening in our classrooms and our communities and in the world.
Okay. So here’s where I get to share a little bit more about Indigo. I shared with you already that we’ve developed a framework over the years, and I do a lot of work, I like to call it more kind of transformative work with groups. And we have these four different levels. And throughout my time with you this evening you’re gonna hear a little bit about those four levels. But I’m gonna share with you a little bit about myself. I’m gonna do something that’s called, I’m gonna locate myself in this conversation. And as I share, I’d like for you to bring up for yourself if you were introducing yourself to me, or we were introducing ourselves to one another if we had enough time, I wonder what things you would share as you are locating yourselves. So, I do this because I want you to know that for all of us, what we share, what we believe in is absolutely influenced by where we come from, right, and our values and where we’re going.
And I wanna be transparent about that. So, I’m gonna share with you a little bit about my identity. I identify as African American. I’m cisgendered woman. Technically I am biracial. My mother is German, my father is African American, but my primary identity is African American. And I’ll tell you why I think that happens to be. I was born in Germany, German was my first language. We moved here to this country when I was two years old. And so, my mother was the only one from her family who moved to the United States. The rest of her family is in Germany or Switzerland. And so, I didn’t know that part of my family, right? And so, I grew up in Tempe, Arizona.
I was born in the 70’s. I was born in 1970. 1970, which is three years after the famous US Supreme Court case, Virginia versus Loving, it’s where a couple, an interracial couple, a white man and a Black woman wanted to be together. They wanted to be married, and it was against the law. And that Supreme Court case was finally decided in favor, saying, “You know, interracial marriages are no longer illegal.” They were actually put in jail for being together. And so, finally in 1967 it was legal! It was legal for a Black person to be married to a white person. That happened in 1967, okay? I’m 53 years old, it just doesn’t seem that long ago. And I think to many of us, we think about it now as like, “That is ridiculous!” But, you know, these were the laws in our country.
And so, I was born three years after that case. I had a white mom and I had a Black dad. And you know how long it takes for societal attitudes to shift. Well, we were quite something, quite a spectacle in our community in the 70’s, and people didn’t really know what to make of us. We were the first Black family to integrate our neighborhood. You know, I had racialized experiences at a very young age that were not positive. And so, race for me has always been a very salient feature of my development. I don’t think one day that goes by that I don’t in some way or form think about race. It has shaped me in very profound ways. What else? I am the mother of a beautiful, dark-skinned boy. His name is Elijah. And we adopted him from foster care when he was nine months old. And he is also a big reason why I do what I do and why I say what I say and what I believe what I believe. I worry about the world that he’s growing into.
As a matter of fact, in two days he’s gonna be 12 years old. And I know that birthdays are a time for celebration, but I have to be honest, the older he gets, the more scared I get for him. You know, he’s in a protected bubble right now with his family. And, you know, we’re very protective of him. He’s on the spectrum and has ADHD and dyslexia and all these amazing neuro divergent qualities which make me fall in love with him more and more every day. I learn so much about him and the world, looking at the world through his eyes. We homeschool him. But I get really scared about the world that he’s going into. And the more he becomes independent and has to interact with people and forces outside of the home, I really get scared for him. I really do. I worry about his future a lot. So, he’s a big reason why I do what I do.
What else do I wanna share? I would like to also share that I’m a dancer. I used to dance professionally for a very long time. And so, you’ll hear me talk a lot about the body and how a lot of the work that we have to do lives in our body. So, we talk a lot about embodied mindfulness and embodied healing, and we talk about trauma and how it lives in the body. And I think my experience as a dancer absolutely shapes how I see our relationship to our body. And if I was in front of you right now, today, if we were all together in a room, I’d be moving around and using my body as a way to express, in addition to my words, I use my body a lot. And then finally, I’ll share that my spiritual life, my spiritual identity also really shapes what I bring to you today.
So, I’m gonna pause there for now, but that’s just a little bit about me. And so, you know that what I share with you comes from those pieces of me. And just like everything you share with people comes from you, and it’s why it’s important that we pause sometimes to understand who we are, where do we come from, why are we here, where are we going? Those are really key pieces in our healing journey. Okay, we’re gonna dig into the chapter. The first section is all about framing, and why is it that we’re, why do we have this chapter? Why are we gonna present the things that we do? And so, here are some of the key themes that are in this very first section.
So, we talk, why does it even matter? Why do we have to talk about culture and race when we think about children’s social and emotional development? There are definitions in that section. And then we introduce a framework called “The Transformative Social and Emotional Learning Framework.” And this framework has been updated recently to have a more critical lens about race. And so, Flora and I thought it was a really good match for what we were trying to do with this chapter. And then finally, we thought it was important to talk a little bit about the systemic nature of race and why it’s important for us to understand those structural and social factors that determine wellbeing for whole groups of people.
And so, again, we wanted to frame and ground the chapter in this way, again, to take it from what’s wrong with this child? Why are they acting this way? Why can’t that family get it together? Where we back up, when we understand how societal and systemic factors impact development. Then we say, “Ah, okay.” And we start to then shift the way we view challenging behavior. It starts to shift the way we view interactions with families that we don’t quite get. So we thought that that part was important. So, that’s the first part of this particular chapter, it’s just the framing and the context.
And now what I’d like to share with you some strategies in our framework that we believe are really important. And one is, we are all in this together. You know, when we think about exploring our culture and exploring who we are as professionals and as human beings, and how we’re all interconnected and finding a place for all of us. You know, these are issues that are not just for Black and brown children to be exploring. It is really important. And, you know, in 2020, after the killing and the murder of George Floyd, we saw this big reckoning in the country. Well, the reckoning wasn’t necessarily reckoning among Black and brown people. We’ve been fighting for race and talking about race for a very, very, very, very long time. Very long time. The reckoning that happened was, we had our white friends and colleagues and family members become allies. They joined us. That was the big reckoning. We were in it together.
And so, in this era now, there were many of us who understand, all of us benefit when we work towards liberation and towards justice, you know, for the groups of people who are most subjugated in our society. You know, my liberation is tied up with your liberation, right? You know, there’s so many famous authors and leaders who have said some version of this in many, many different languages. I’m trying to recall the words of another teacher and mentor that I have about love. Oh, no, no, truth. She says, “My truth co-arises with your truth.” So I need you. Like, you know, when we’re talking to one another and trying to overcome our differences, it is important that we both bring our truths to one another. My awareness of what I believe and what is true for me is not in isolation. I have to understand your truth too.
Our truths all are, you know, I have this image here of the knot because that’s how we are. Whether we realize it or not, this separation that we have, this divide that we have, that is an illusion, that is not the truth. And so, when we slow down enough from grind culture, when we give ourselves time to breathe and time to rest, and my gosh, when was the last time you daydreamed, right? We can’t find that large vision for our society when we don’t have time to explore what is our truth. What do I believe? So, you know, we are all in this. It’s a long way of saying we are all in this together. And yeah, some of the definitions that I’d like to bring up here, because definitions do ground us.
This chapter really is an extension of culturally responsive care and anti-bias education. So in our field, we’ve seen this whole continuum go from multicultural care to culturally responsive care, and then we have anti-bias and anti-racism education. So, there’s this whole continuum, and where we landed with…chapters really understanding, we need both that cultural responsive care and anti-bias together. So, we present both of those in the chapter. And I’ll give you just a quick definition of culturally responsive care. I know many of you understand what this is already, but I would like to share my definition so we can be grounded in that together. And I’m gonna read it, I have my notes here.
So, when we talk about culturally-responsive care, this really involves implementing, and of course we’re talking about early care and education settings, this is implementing practices, routines, patterns of social interactions, all those things that represent and support the home cultures and the values of the children who attend our childcare programs or in our home-based childcare. And we believe that when we provide care in this way, that is consistent and responsive to what children receive at home, that we believe that that supports children’s positive developmental outcomes, right?
And, for Flora and I, our research and our work and our experiences working with a lot of teachers and providers, we also like to uplift practices. I don’t think we talk enough about practices in our field. That we talk a lot about practices. For example, some practices might be to what extent does your program emphasize individual needs versus the needs of the collective, right? And these practices show up in routines in the way that we set up activities, in the way we encourage peer interactions. Those are all practices, and those practices are driven by our values, right? And then with anti-bias education, many of you are familiar with Louise Derman-Sparks and many others who have worked to develop anti-bias education.
Well, we know that anti-bias education is really an approach to teaching and learning. And it’s designed to increase our understanding of differences, increase our understanding of oppression, right, and we want to value and actively challenge bias stereotyping in all forms of communication. So anti-bias education. So culturally responsive care, I kind of like to think of, kind of like as a container. You know, this is like, “Oh, we’re holding the values of the home, we have consistency with what children are experiencing at home.” And I like to think about anti-bias in terms of arrows of truth. Arrows, here come the arrows. Here come the arrows. Here’s where we actively understand that bias is learned. We don’t come into this world having the biases that we do, we’ve learned. An anti-bias education, I think, the shorthand definition is to unlearn, help children to unlearn those biases and to learn how to speak up and act up against those kind of injustices.
And so we think, in this chapter, both of those elements, both of those dynamics, are really important in our work and absolutely contribute to children’s social and emotional developmental outcomes. Okay, now, connecting the dots. I loved this part. This is where we talk about children’s cognitive development. So how are they, well, I’ve got more here, yeah. So how are they developing identity, right? How does that identity development happen for really young children? A colleague of mine, we did a survey in Arizona. We sent it out through the conference that happens every year, not the NAEYC conference but the local chapter here in Arizona, and we sent it out to all those members of AzAEYC, and we basically asked them like, “Oh, do children see culture? Do children see race? At what age do we think it’s important to start talking to children about culture and race?”
And overwhelmingly, I think like 75% of teachers and caregivers for infants and toddlers were like, “Huh? No. Why would we ever do that?” You know, and I think we even had some open-ended comments like, “Why would we?” What did they say? “Why would we corrupt children and teach them about such awful things?” You know, so, there are a lot of, and I shouldn’t be laughing ’cause it’s actually, it’s not funny. I think a lot of people do believe that, you know, children and infants and toddlers, you know, they’re not aware that these biases develop at such an early age and identity develops at such an early age. And so, this chapter, this is the part that, the first two bullets is the part that Flora is really good at. So, she wrote those sections and does a really good job of really laying out at what ages what happens for children in their identity development.
And then how do we, as caregivers, support their identity development? What are the things that we can do, and how do we arrange our environment, and what are the kinds of interactions we can have, again, continuity between home and school, how do we support that development? And then, you know, there’s not as much research, but a little bit of research coming out that makes connections between cultures, the developing brain, and social and emotional learning. And that part, I actually learned a lot when I wrote that section. And so, that’s what we really understand that we are hardwired as cultural beings, and our connections with each other, through relationships, it is all, that is the vehicle for us to understand our culture, our developing brain.
So, you know, as you read that section, I’m hoping that there will be some new information in there for you. And so now, turning back to our Indigo framework, this slide here is our strategy for understanding ourselves and sharing our identities with one another. And so, here are the four central questions that we ask in almost every single setting we are in. This is how we begin to situate ourselves in a conversation. So, if we were to pause right now and if you were to, like, close your eyes and to tap into, “Who am I?” You know, like what features of your identity are important to you? Where did you come from? And you know, for me, when I think about this question, I think a lot about my ancestors, and mostly, my great grandparents on my father’s side, and the things that they did in their lives were really amazing, and I know that they’re a big reason why I do what I do. You know, why am I here?
And you could answer this question in terms of, you know, why are you in this profession, or why am I here on this Earth, or why am I here tonight even. You can answer these questions on so many levels. And then where am I going? Where am I going? What is my vision for this world? What are my hopes and dreams for the children in my care? You know, where are we going collectively as a field? Where are we headed? When we pause long enough in our training sessions, in our staff meetings, just with one another, when we pause long enough to ground ourselves in these four essential questions, the rest of the conversation has a very different feel to it. And even when we disagree with each other, when we’ve, number one, grounded ourselves and reminded ourselves of this kind of information, and then when we share it with one another, you can understand how conversations open up in a very, very, very different way.
Okay. Part two of the chapter, this is where we talk about what are the developmental processes of cultural and racial socialization. And here we talk a lot about how do children learn? How do we socialize children about race and culture? And you’ve probably heard this before, but I’m gonna say it, saying nothing about race and culture is a form of socialization. So, no matter what we do, even if we never say a peep about it, children are learning by our silence. They learn by our silence, and of course they learn when we intentionally talk about it as well. So, we talk about how do we socialize children, how do children start to notice difference, oh, how do young children develop bias and prejudice and preference, and we share some research, interesting research even there about infants and how in our brains we’re hardwired to notice difference.
And they’ve done these studies where they flash pictures of different people in front of infants and, you know, they’ve got the infants with the kind of tracking the activity in their brain. It doesn’t hurt them. It’s just like little things on their heads, on their scalp. And they found that, they’ll show pictures of adults who look like people in their family, and then they’ll show a picture of somebody who’s different than their family, and like a different part of the brain lights up. We are hardwired to notice difference. There’s a protective mechanism about noticing difference. And then how does that difference then turn into bias and prejudice? These are things that children learn, you know? And then, you know, there’s a…
You know, we talk about explicit socialization and implicit, where we don’t say anything, and just by our actions, by the way we treat some children differently than others, that’s implicit socialization. That’s what, children pick up on that. And so, what I’d like to share here is a little bit about another level of our framework, and this is at the institutional level or the systemic level. And here are the strategies we use when we explore this part of our framework. We believe that it’s really, really, really, really, really, really important for us to know our history. And I don’t mean, you know, American history 101, kind of mainstream history that…
You know, I’m 53, so I, you know, my history was very, my history lessons, they were very limited. We didn’t learn a whole lot about, you know, about history other than kind of mainstream, you know, white dominant society history. Many of us have to go back and relearn our history. And the attack on history that’s happening right now, I don’t know if you all are paying attention to what’s happening around the country, there’s legislation, there’s legislation out there. States are banning the teaching of racialized history in this country. Like, we’re banning the teaching of history. I, yeah, it is… I feel sometimes that… I don’t know, I cannot believe that this is where we are in this country, that this is actually happening.
But, you know, I’m gonna, this is another plug. It is so important for us to know our history. And not just kind of broadly the history of this country, but the history even of our communities, of the community you live in, and in the community you work in. If you’re fortunate enough to work in the community where you live, you might know something more about that history. But, you know, for those of us who don’t live in the communities where we’re working, what are the patterns of migration that have happened over time? What are the political forces that have shaped the way neighborhoods are, and the resources that are in those neighborhoods? So, even localized history is just really important. You know, systems thinking.
When I say system, I mean things like how does housing affect our family’s outcomes? How does employment, how does access to green spaces, and parks, and healthy food? This is our system, these are systems. So, we need to also understand the systems that are influencing ultimately our lives and the lives of the children and families we’re caring for. You know, I’m a researcher, and so yeah, I like numbers, and I think of research as this portal. Research and data shows us kind of where we stand as a society. It’s not the full picture. It’s not the full picture, but it sure does demonstrate inequities in a very dramatic way. So, we like to use numbers to hold ourselves accountable.
We will know that we are making change when we start to see not this big gap let’s say in achievement scores, right? Or we talk a lot about the preschool-to-prison pipeline, and how boys of color, and particularly African American boys, and increasingly Latino boys, are on this pathway, this pipeline, and it starts very early. And so, when we talk about data to hold ourselves accountable, yeah, numbers speak, numbers speak and numbers matter.
You know, and then when we’re thinking about it for our lives, ’cause sometimes those systemic things seem so far out of our control, let’s bring it down and let’s consider system with a small “S”, what about our system? What about our preschools, our childcare centers, our programs, our home-based settings, our little system, what does equity look like in our system? And if we want to make change, what are some things that we can pull on that are within our grasp that will lead to change? And so, I’d like to share a framework with you from World Trust, and this is an organization that’s in San Francisco. I love their resources. If you are a trainer, they have really great resources if you wanna do workshops around race. And this is their framework. And I’ll let you take it in, and then I’ll talk you through it a little bit.
In the background, you always have history, yes, always, and culture and identity, and on one side, we have all the internal forces that we all carry with us all the time. Things like bias, privilege, internalized oppression, right, and then we have the external manifestation, like how are we with one another? What about our institutions and our organizations? And my favorite part is the middle. This is the biggest thing to remember always, the middle. It’s all of this is driven by power and economics. All of this is driven by power and economics. If you wanna look at inequity, all you have to do is follow the breadcrumbs, and it will always lead you back to power and money. This is what drives our system. And in this country, and I think increasingly as capitalism is exported throughout the globe, this is what drives so much of our system, unfortunately.
So, I’m gonna kind of a little bit more quickly go through this content. So, then the next section is about home and community, like just the context of all of these relationships that the young children have. And this is the section where we talk about the connection between attachment, attachment relationships, and culture. And then another section where we really link and connect the dots between attachment, culture, and trauma.
And it’s something that we don’t think about a lot, but, you know, for probably forever and ever, something that is, we say number one concern for most caregivers is challenging behavior. And when we understand behavior through the lens of attachment, through the lens of culture, through the lens of trauma, that helps us understand children in a different way, and then in turn it can lead to how we interact and changing our practices. And it’s very rare when you actually see the three of those things combined. And so, I’m very proud of that section, and I hope that when you read the chapter you spend enough time really digging into that piece of it.
And not just in terms of the children in your care, but I’d like for you to consider this section for yourself as well because understanding our own history in regards to attachment, culture, and trauma can help explain our own relationship patterns too, which in turn absolutely impact how we are with children. And just to plug for mental health consultation, this is also the work of mental health consultants. They help teachers and caregivers, help them connect those dots. It’s a big part of their work. In our framework here at Indigo, we have a lot of, you know, again, we believe in definitions and frameworks. We are part of the healing justice movement. And if we had more time, I would share with you a little bit more about what that means. But just to summarize very quickly, our approach to justice is really not so much.
We used to talk a lot about calling people out, you know, and shaming people into being on board with social justice. Our approach really is rooted in love, and compassion, and connection. And so, those are the organizing principles for much of the work that we do. And when we’re talking about trauma and culture, and attachment, you can see how a healing justice approach really aligns well with understanding those dynamics. In part four, we talk a lot about the impact of culture on children, on infant and toddlers’ development. You know, and I love this part too, and I’m gonna highlight here.
You know, we talk a lot, oh, what did I do? We talk, we describe, wellbeing, this is probably the number one thing that is left out of most of our training and professional development initiatives with caregivers and childcare providers, we don’t talk enough about your wellbeing. Our wellbeing. This is so crucial. If we want to support children’s social and emotional development, we have to tune inward. And especially after COVID, there’s so much talk now about trauma and mental health, and I think we’re now understanding burnout in a very different way. And so, I see more and more people bringing wellbeing, you know, caregivers’ wellbeing to the center. And so, I wanna uplift that more than anything else.
Also, we describe the partnerships that families have with their childcare providers, and I know PITC, historically, has always done an amazing job in highlighting that. Talk about culture and routines, and here I’d like to call in Janet Gonzalez-Mena. I know she talks a lot about routines. I have a good friend, Holly Tonia, and this is kind of like her… Her passion is talking about childcare routines, especially in family childcare. And then here, this is where we also cover the domains of anti-bias education. And I’m just gonna go through this very quickly, I’m not gonna spend a lot of time here, but I’d like to just introduce you. When we talk about wellbeing, this really aligns well with our framework that it is at the individual and internal level. So, we talk a lot about acting from the center and embodied mindfulness.
Yes, these are all things that play into our wellbeing and understanding who we are. There’s something we say in infant mental health is how we are, right? How we are is as important as what we do. How we are, right, so we center ourselves here, embodied healing. And here’s a quote that we love to talk a lot about. “Love and justice are not two. Without inner change, there can be no outer change. And without collective change, no change matters.” And so here, we’re highlighting just the importance of inner change, attending to our wellbeing. And I’m gonna skip this one for now, but if we, if you ever encounter me another time, we will dig into this. Why is it important to focus on the inner work of social justice? This is our main thesis in the world.
It’s like, yes, you know, social racial equity from the inside out, it’s so important for us to understand who we are and how we walk through this world. Part five of our chapter is what can caregivers do to support infants and families? And here we have a list of strategies. It’s literally a bulleted list of strategies and things that teachers and caregivers can do to support families. And here, we call up our framework that talks a lot about interpersonal relationships, and yes, relationship-based healing and healing through the telling of stories and hearing stories, this is such a wonderful strategy to understand families and their culture as a way to understand what the children are bringing into your settings.
Elizabeth:
And then in your last five minutes, someone put a very thoughtful idea into chat to address…
Dr. Eva Marie Shivers:
Yes.
Elizabeth:
…which is that teachers are really overwhelmed right now, and we need to support them and help them stay centered in their mental, how important mental health is.
Dr. Eva Marie Shivers:
That’s right. Yeah, that’s right, that’s right. Yeah, thank you for underlining that. I agree wholeheartedly. I think if there’s one thing that we can do to promote culture and race and children’s social and emotional learning, it is the caregivers, it’s all of you. It’s your wellbeing and your emotional wellbeing and feeling supported, it is the number one thing. I’m going to just see, I’m gonna very quickly see, yeah, what I’d like to share with you. You know, as we kind of move into the rest of our evenings, I would like for you to pause and just to call to mind, you know, what were some of the key moments for you, any new information, emotional, things that brought up emotions for you? And were there ideas here that you wish that we had more time and we could explore more? Pay attention to the things that excited you, pay attention to the things that confused you or that worried you, that’s where your learning is.
When you make it personal to you, that’s where the growth is. And then of course, always, what are the immediate thoughts about practical application to the work that you do every day? You know, insert yourself into what I shared. And I love this quote by James Baldwin, and I’m gonna leave you with this. “If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you do not see.” So, when we talk about race, we don’t wanna come and say, you know, color, well, people used to say colorblind, and now we’re changing the language to say, I had it written on a post-it, we’re now were using the term color evasive. We don’t wanna be color evasive. We don’t want to pretend that race doesn’t matter, that culture doesn’t matter. It used to be seen as a very benevolent thing.
Like right after segregation, right after segregation ended, “Oh, I don’t see color.” That was seen as very benevolent. Today, in this day and age, no. No, I want you to see me. I want you to know something about my history. I want you to know something about where I come from, and my struggles, and who I am, and what I bring. And so, if I love you, if I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you do not see. So, this has a lot to do with, if you are going to use the content from this chapter, how will you prepare yourself to implement some of the ideas here? I keep going this way ’cause chapter’s literally right here next to me. How will you prepare yourself? How will, you know, if you’re a trainer or an instructor, how will you prepare the groups that you’re working with? How will you prepare to use this material?
And when you come to others and share it with others from this place of love and compassion, a whole new energy opens up and people receive you in a different way. So, I think I’ll stop there. Elizabeth, I don’t know if we have time for any questions or comments. Please do reach out to me. The time went by very quickly and I did, you know, there were a couple of slides I didn’t get through, but definitely email me if you have resources you’d like to share with me or you’d like to hear more about something that I shared, please do reach out to me. And I think I’ll end there. Thank you so much for tuning in and for bringing yourselves and just being present to this. I know it’s kind of a heavy topic for a Thursday evening, so I’m grateful for you all being here tonight.
Elizabeth:
And I wanna thank you, Dr. Shivers, because you bring us some hope. Sometimes, you have to think about hard things to find hope. Hope doesn’t come easily; it comes with work. So, we wanna thank you for that. We thank you for the chapter. And what she’s done is she’s highlighted for you an invitation to read it when it’s available. We’ll post it on PITC.org. People are asking how to get resources from today. While Keiko’s posted them into chat, they are also available on PITC.org under the webinar section, so please go visit there. And so, we thank Dr. Shivers.
Dr. Eva Marie Shivers:
Goodnight, everybody. Thank you, bye.
Elizabeth:
Goodnight.