If you are interested to learn more about racial equity and intersectional justice for children, families and the early childhood workforce, we recommend the following resources:
Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice
Black Lives Matter at School succinctly generalizes lessons from successful challenges to institutional racism that have been won through the Black Lives Matter at School movement. The book includes essays, interviews, poems, resolutions, and more from educators, students and parents around the country who have been building Black Lives Matter at School on the ground. Two chapters are focused on early childhood.
Responsive Early Education for Young Children and Families Experiencing Homelessness
Responsive Early Education for Young Children and Families Experiencing Homelessness is a resource for early childhood teachers, administrators, and program staff. This book describes a topic that is too often invisible in our society, young children and their families experiencing homelessness. Concrete research-based strategies are discussed along with authentic vignettes created from interviews with children and families experiencing homelessness across California in addition to the diverse professionals who serve them.
Culturally Responsive Self-Care Practices for Early Childhood Educators
The first self-care book designed specifically for the early childhood field, Culturally Responsive Self-Care Practices for Early Childhood Educators recognizes that self-care is not one size fits all. The authors present culturally responsive strategies drawn from diverse early childhood staff working in a range of roles across communities and contexts. By tying the importance of educator self-care to goals of social justice and equity, this book advocates for increased awareness of the importance of self-care on both an individual and institutional level.
Trauma-Informed Practices for Early Childhood Educators: Relationship-Based Approaches that Support Healing and Build Resilience in Young Children
This book guides child care providers and early educators working with infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and early elementary aged children to understand trauma as well as its impact on young children’s brains, behavior, learning, and development. The authors introduce a range of trauma-informed strategies that readers can use in their early childhood programs to create strength-based environments that support children’s health, healing, and resiliency. Supervisors and coaches will learn a range of powerful trauma-informed practices that they can use to support workforce development and enhance their quality improvement initiatives.
Radically Listening to Transgender and Gender Expansive Young Children: Creating Epistemic Justice through Critical Reflection and Resistant Imaginations
This book is for early childhood educators committed to learning about gender [in]justice as a foundation for creating gender affirming early learning environments for all children including those who are transgender and gender expansive (TGE). Woven throughout the book are the lived experiences and counter-stories of TGE children and adults that privilege their voices and highlight their right to contribute equally to societal understandings of gender and to access all the tools a given society has available at the time to help them name and understand their own experiences.
Supporting Gender Diversity in Early Childhood Classrooms: A Practical Guide.
The book is based on some of the most progressive, modern understandings of gender and intersectionality, as well as research on child development, gender health, trauma informed practices and the science of adult learning. By including the voices and lived experiences of gender-expansive children, transgender adults, early childhood educators and parents and family members of trans and gender-expansive children, it contextualizes what it means to rethink early learning programs with a commitment to gender justice and gender equality for all children.
