You Belong Here!

In the Gold Room, the teachers are very intentional about how they welcome new families and children to their room, in hopes that their classroom community can build bonds that are strong, kind, thoughtful, and full of love. They focused their first couple of weeks of school on the idea of belonging, which is a core value at Preschool of the Arts.

“If you want people to thrive and be at their best. It’s simple. Create the conditions for belonging.” – Carin Taylor

Welcoming the new Gold Room students and ensuring that they felt like they belonged was our top priority to start the new year. To help that process we made a Welcome board with their photos both in the hallway and in the classroom. Seeing photos of themselves, photos of their families, and their names all around the classroom gives a sense of ownership to the children, like the Gold Room is their classroom.

From a quick visit at drop off, a quick book, some building or glueing, to larger events like celebrations, we want families to feel welcome in our classroom. The grown-ups in the Gold Room belong, too.

We talked about the idea of belonging with the children, saying that belonging is when others help you or do things for you that make you feel safe, heard, and respected.

Teacher: What do you like in the Gold Room?
Student: I like the kitchen.
Student: The blocks.
Student: I like everything!

As we continue to get to know each other during the first weeks of school we chose to introduce provocations and discussions inviting the children to examine their physical traits, their similarities, and their differences. We used the book We Are All Alike, We Are All Different, written by the Cheltenham Elementary kindergarteners, to inspire our work, and to begin our conversation about personal identity.

We know that children notice differences such as skin tone, at an early age, we used several different skin tone materials in the classroom and encouraged them to compare to their own skin. 

Student: I am trying all the colors.  None really match my arm. My arm is peach.

“The belief that children are “colorblind” when it comes to race has been overwhelmingly disproven by research, but also by life, if we care to notice.” – Madeleine Rogin from Embrace Race.

For one provocation, loose parts were set out with ovals and mirrors. On the first day most of the children would pile as many pieces as possible on the ovals or next to them.  As we started talking about our faces in morning meeting, we noticed that the work the children did changed. The children started to make faces – two eyes, a nose, and a mouth.  Some children added hair, ears, cheeks, and a chin. 

Student: This nose is upside down.
Student: My guy only has one eye. I am going to make him sneaky.

On another day, we introduced felt facial pieces, along with some emotion cards. During morning meeting, we used a rhyme with the emotion faces. “Smiley face, smiley face, what do you see? I see another smiley face looking at me.” The children were encouraged to look in the mirror and make the face of the emotion being shown. 

After examining our faces in the mirrors, we used the chalkboard in our classroom to chart  eye color and then hair color. We noticed that there were quite a few of us with brown eyes. We talked about how our hair might be long or short, curly or straight. At first, one child said he had green eyes and he placed his picture under green. Later he decided to switch his picture to brown. We wondered if he wanted his eyes to be like his mama’s. 

Together, we made a collaborative mural, with all of our similarities and differences represented. Students used skin-tone mark making materials to create the backdrop.

Student: The light brown is like my mommy’s hair.
Student: I like working with the dark black color paint stick. It really sees on the paper.

After we finished making the backdrop for our collage we found pictures of people, faces, hair, eyes, noses, mouths and glued them on top as the second layer. Next, we added words of affirmation. When we finished, each one of us glued ourselves to the collage. 

We make a point to talk about all types of growth in our classroom – physical, cognitive, social, emotional, and language development. Growth isn’t only about size, but also about developing skills like thinking, playing, feeling, communicating, and forming relationships.   We are excited to see many types of growth this year in the Gold Room!

Reflections by Vickie Crooks and Laura Cantrell, Gold Room Co-Teachers