Betty Brown – Diversity

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We address the diversity issue with all the interactions that we do in the center. We want families to understand that we are looking for a diverse population, and not just with the typical ethnic and racial diversity. [01:38:00] We're also looking with family dynamics, and I mentioned families that might be grand parents raising children, or adopted children, or foster children, or single-parent families, or perhaps families with two moms or two dads. We're looking as all of that as part of diversity. Also economic diversity, we want families that have lower income, to families that have higher income. We're looking to capture children with special needs; we also want to have children with special needs in the center. So we're looking at diversity on all possible levels. With that, sometimes there can be issues. Because while families embrace the idea of diversity, sometimes it gets what we call a little messy, when you have a child perhaps with some behavioral issues, and the child acting up in the class, some families might not appreciate that a child having a hard time. What we do is we share with all the parents in the classroom, not information about that particular child, but the way we deal with certain behaviors or the plan that's in place, that this is how we have the routine in the class; this is how we have scheduled the classroom to meet all the children's needs. We let the teachers know that we are meeting all the children's needs, but some children need different things. Not everyone needs the same thing. So we're making individual plans, and just letting families know that we are looking at all the children and what their needs are. Hopefully, through the lines of communications that we keep open, parents will begin to understand that there's a value to the diversity that we have at the center, and we are meeting everyone's needs. It may not look the same for every child, because every child does have a different set of needs. So approach the diversity in that way, rather than directly talking about perhaps what the value of diversity is. We don't want to convince parents, we want to show them. And that's the approach that we take, [01:40:00] just by having a diverse population. You might walk into the classroom and not see a huge an amount of diversity on the surface, but when you look at the individual children, there is a great amount of diversity. And that's something we're always looking for. Jacky: Why? Betty: We live in a very divers society and children need to understand, and they need to see that there are similarities between people there are differences between people, and those similarities and differences are what makes such a unique society. It makes everyone unique. We want them to have strategies of for dealing with the real world and unless you learn certain strategies or learn that just because someone has a different way of doing something, doesn't mean it's the wrong way or it's not appropriate. But you sit down and you play with this friend everyday, you're perhaps not noticing that that this friend is using a wheel chair, or that this friend is a different color than you, or that this friend speaks a different language. It's your friend, and unless you have the early exposure it's difficult to get that later on. So that's why we're looking at the value of it. We're hoping these children carry lessons with them as the years progress.

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