The Latino Family Literacy Project helps parents to establish a family reading routine, and to build strong Spanish and English skills.

An anti-bias preschool curriculum is one that seeks to acknowledge and challenge prejudices in education and works to remove them from the teaching and learning environment. Schools using an anti-bias curriculum are acknowledging that many Western societies, though growingly diverse, continue to function with inherent inequity and racial cultural bias, and that this naturally carries over into education, which is intrinsically a sociocultural institution. Louise Derman-Sparks and Julie Olsen Edwards, authors of Anti-bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves, write that “Inequity of resources in society, and the biases we use to justify that inequity, have an enormous impact on children’s lives. The dynamics of advantage and disadvantage, deeply rooted in our history, continue to shape the degree of access children have to education, medical care, security . . .”

Their work, at the forefront of anti-bias education, seeks to reduce cultural bias and misinformation in classrooms and to help children and the adults who work with them in schools to respect each other and to respect people in general.

Anti-bias education encourages educators to examine their own biases and cultural identities so that they may have strong self-awareness and also be aware of negative messages they may inadvertently be sending to students. This process allows teachers and other staff to model having a positive cultural self-image for students and encourages adults to begin to counteract their own biases in the classroom. Children can notice differences between people early on and will notice how adults treat others, so actively teaching them to respect all people is a powerful and important choice. One of the central ways that teachers put anti-bias curriculum to work in early childhood education settings is by exploring and honoring each person’s identity and fostering acceptance of diversity in the classroom and community.

Ellen Wolpert, long term preschool director and author of Redefining the Norm: Early Childhood Anti-Bias Strategies, shares this description of the anti-bias curriculum at work with young children:

“Children make comparisons among themselves, looking at the ways they are both similar and different. They learn that different is OK. This creates the foundation for respecting and valuing differences beyond their own families and communities.”

Children who share stereotypes and biases can be engaged in conversation about the bias and presented with visual and narrative examples that contradict the bias. The site, Teaching for Change, which focuses on social justice in education, shares a wealth of anti-bias articles with activity recommendations and professional development activities covering identity development, anti-bias curriculum, language development, and family resources.

The focus in an anti-bias program is on encouraging everyone in the educational community, young and old, to learn about and explore cultural identities and to get to know one another and the world around them with an open mind. Dr. Francis Aboud, who studied prejudice amongst youth, found that “after age 9, racial attitudes tend to stay constant unless the child experiences a life-changing event.” This trend underscores the importance of the implementation of preschool anti-bias curriculum and the promotion of tolerance.

Lectura Books is one of the leading publishers of multicultural and bilingual books, focusing on publishing for Parent Involvement with Latino parents and kids.

The post How an Anti-bias Curriculum Benefits the School Community appeared first on The Latino Family Literacy Project.

For Latinos and other Hispanic immigrants, the concerns over incarceration, addiction, and economy are also exacerbated by another component that threatens the well-being of the family infrastructure – deportation. Immigration status has lead to a rise in the number of grandparents over the age of 55 who are left caring for their grandchildren due to their biological parents being sent out of the country. But these situations present the added potential obstacle of raising grandchildren without any tangible legal rights. Many grandparents are also undocumented, and they don’t attempt any sort of legal recourse toward custody because they are afraid it will put them in the cross-hairs of the federal government. So these relationships can be tenuous at best, putting at-risk children in more peril of being separated from their families in times of domestic crisis.

Family is the most important thing in our lives, especially to children who are too young to comprehend anything other than being with the people they love and with whom they’ve forged a bond. A stable home is the foundation for success in school. For children living with grandparents, they are already facing an uphill climb, not because their grandparents don’t love them, but because so many of these households have endured hardship to place the grandparents in these roles.

The Latino Family Literacy Project is not only a great program for parents but also for grandparents who are custodial parents.

The post Growing Family Trend: Grandparents Raising Children appeared first on The Latino Family Literacy Project.

A March 2016 report from the Child Trends Hispanic Institute has found that students of Hispanic descent scored higher on national reading proficiency tests than their non-Hispanic peers in Miami-Dade county in Florida. Across the country, reading scores of fourth and eighth graders were consistently higher by half a grade all the way up to four grade levels over a ten year span from 2005-2015 in children of Cuban, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, and Mexican descent. Although the Institute could not provide definitive data pointing to the reasons why these test scores were higher among certain districts in areas as disparate as Montana and Florida, one of the factors considered was the successful acculturation of these students.

In the case of the 2016 report outlining how Hispanic children outperformed their white counterparts in reading proficiency, acculturation may have played a large role because it allowed for them to approach the language in the same manner as those of us who were born here. These children, perhaps through their parents or the influence of their peers, have learned to adapt to our culture and thus found easier entry into their reading, not by looking at the written word through the prism of a foreign born citizen, but as a child born within these borders. Studies have shown a connection between second language proficiency and successful acculturation, fostered by a positive view of the new culture and confident interaction with other individuals within that culture group.

For fourth and eighth grade students, we may be able to conclude that assimilation without some form of acculturation is certainly possible, though it might prove an obstacle to the successful evolution of their reading skills. This is not to suggest that they should lose their own identity, but embracing the one in which they live as readily as their own might have positive effects on their education.

Lectura Books has exceptional bilingual children’s books that will encourage Spanish and English speaking parents to read to their children. The bold illustrations will foster many multicultural experiences that the whole family can enjoy.

Acculturation and Assimilation

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