Passionate About Children

Building an Inclusive Environment in Early Childhood Classrooms As an early childhood educator, you have a unique opportunity to create a safe and welcoming learning environment for children. All children, regardless of family background, race and ethnicity, gender, and cognitive and physical ability deserve to feel they belong and that their teachers care about them. To promote these feelings of belonging and support the relationships you have with children in your care, it is important that you embed practices that support inclusion in your classroom environment and your teaching practices.                                        Young children playfully hugging on a playground. Research has established many long-standing benefits to promoting inclusion in early childhood. How young children are treated has a dramatic impact on how they view themselves and the world a...

Almost half of all infants and toddlers and nearly two thirds of preschool-age children in the United States participate in ECE (Digest of Education Statistics, 2016; ZERO TO THREE, 2017); ECE, or “nonparental care that occurs outside of the child’s home,” includes home-, center-, and school-based settings, Head Start and Early Head Start programs, and prekindergarten programs (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2019, p. 19). Given the estimates of early trauma exposure noted here, it is certain that most, if not all, ECE programs routinely work with traumatized children. High-quality, comprehensive ECE programs with a strong focus on family engagement (e.g., Head Start/Early Head Start; High Scope Perry Preschool Project; Abecedarian Project) can provide critical support to traumatized children and their families, especially those living in poverty. Evidence that demonstrates the benefits of ECE include: (1) promoting young children’s social–emotional developme...

In early childhood education classrooms, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are essential for creating a safe and welcoming learning environment for all children. These principles ensure that every child feels valued, respected, and supported in their unique growth and development journey. DEI education encompasses a spectrum of educational methods aimed at addressing different aspects of diversity, equity, and inclusion, fostering a nurturing and inclusive learning environment. By embedding practices that support inclusion in the classroom environment and teaching practices, educators can promote feelings of belonging and support the relationships they have with children in their care. An inclusive environment not only benefits children but also their families and the educators themselves.