Children's Institute
Making Oregon the best place to be a kid.
Donate Today!
Children's Institute
Making Oregon the best place to be a kid.
Anti-Bias Education in Action

Anti-Bias Education in Action

by | Apr 12, 2021 | News, Podcast, Teacher Voice

In this episode of The Early Link Podcast, host Rafael Otto speaks with professor John Nimmo about the film he co-produced, Reflecting On Anti-Bias Education in Action: The Early Years. They are joined by one of the teachers featured in the film, Veronica Reynoso, who shares her insight on the value of anti-bias education. 

Guests:

John Nimmo, EdD is Associate Professor, Early Childhood Education, in the College of Education at Portland State University. John is a co-producer of an international video documentary on children’s rights and also a 2021 film on anti-bias early education. He holds a doctorate from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and was previously an early childhood and elementary teacher in his first home of Australia and in the United States.

Veronica Reynoso is an Early Childhood Educator and Mentor Teacher at Epiphany Early Learning Preschool in Seattle, Washington.  Life experience and her experiences at Epiphany Early Learning helped shape her strong commitment to anti-bias and anti-racist education with young children. She is featured in the film, Reflecting On Anti-Bias Education in Action: The Early Years.

Summary:

John talks with Rafael and Veronica about the origins of the film and its intended audience. He also discusses why its important to have anti-bias education for young children even if it means  having hard conversations about disability, race, or gender. Additionally, as one of the teachers in the film, Veronica reflects on her experience, and shares her insight on how to incorporate anti-bias education in the classroom.  

Transcript

Rafael Otto: [00:00:06] Welcome to the Early Link Podcast. I’m your host, Rafael Otto. As usual, you can catch us on the airwaves on 99.1 FM and Portland on Sundays at 4:30 PM. Or subscribe and listen, wherever you find your podcasts. Today, I’m speaking with John Nimmo, associate professor of Early Childhood Education at Portland State University, and one of the producers of a new short film called Reflecting on Anti-Bias Education in Action: The Early Years. I’m also speaking with Veronica Reynoso, who is a teacher featured in the film. She currently teaches preschool in Seattle, Washington. Veronica and John, great to have you on the podcast today.

Thanks for joining me.

John Nimmo: [00:00:42] Very excited, Rafael, to be here to share our film.

Veronica Reynoso: [00:00:46] Yeah, excited to share more about anti-bias education. Thanks for having us.

Rafael Otto: [00:00:50] Absolutely. So the film is a… it’s a short piece. It’s a 50-minute film. It just released last week, April 1st. John, my sources tell me that the last anti-biased education film was produced in 1989. Is that right?

John Nimmo: [00:01:05] Yep. Either 1989 or 1988 but about then. Our colleague, Louise Derman-Sparks, who’s pretty well known internationally for the anti-bias education approach, was the creator of that film. And, uh, you know, it was about 30 minutes. You can still find it on the web and it’s sort of indicative of the time of video and sort of the colors getting washed out…

Rafael Otto: [00:01:27] A grainy old video on YouTube somewhere?

John Nimmo: [00:01:29] Uh, yeah, somewhere there, but it had an incredible impact at that time. Really what it was doing was introducing this idea, this approach of anti-bias, (what it was called curriculum then, now education) to the world. It was exactly the same time that they released the first book Anti-Bias Curriculum, which is one of the biggest sellers that NAEYC has.

I think we’re talking about a million copies. They just recently released a… sort of the third version of that book. So it really had the job of introducing this idea to the world and as an alternative to the idea of multiculturalism, which had become a little bit washed out and meaningless as a term at that time.

Rafael Otto: [00:02:09] Talk about the impact from that film. How did it inspire you to make the one that you just released last week?

John Nimmo: [00:02:15] Well, my colleague and I, Debbie LeeKeenan, had been doing a lot of workshops working together over the years. And of course we were constantly asked, “What does this look like in practice?” Because people want to see, not just hear. And she had talked a little bit about wanting another film because we had both used this film, but it was of course getting pretty old and dated. There are maybe one or two other films, again, pretty dated, maybe 20 years or more ago that existed. But otherwise there really wasn’t anything other than the more generic professional development films, which were mostly talking heads – you know, experts talking over images of children – but no real action from the classroom.

So it really came out of a need for teachers to be able to get some sense of what does this really look like in the classroom? So that film had an impact on us of sort of introducing us to the ideas, but really a lot of the scenes in it were, um.. some of them were real and some of them were staged. Again, probably more talking heads than we would have liked because it was more of a training film, but we wanted something that was more provocative and would engage people in conversation rather than the typical, training/professional development film.

Rafael Otto: [00:03:33] Yeah, that’s something that I appreciated about the film. It was…  we’re really seeing what it’s like in the classroom, hearing the kids participate, hearing what it’s like for teachers who are working with children. A very hands-on, practical tool it seems like to me.

Veronica, what was it like to be in the film and participate in the filming process?

Veronica Reynoso: [00:03:52] It was a incredible opportunity to really showcase something that I feel strongly about like, I think everybody should be teaching anti-bias, anti-racist education in their classrooms because these are ideas and theories that children are building from the very beginning, even before they enter my classroom.

So being a part of it was an honor. Especially because I saw the 1989 version in college and I remember sitting in my classroom and even then, which that was 2009, I remember sort of raising my eyebrow and being like, “Hmm. Some of these ideas feel a little outdated right now..” So it was really great to be a part of this project that I had seen in college and to show that this work is continuing, that it’s ever evolving. And I hope that there continues to be more work around it. And that there’s another one in a year, two years, three years because children and each generation that comes, like I tell the children in the classroom everyday, you are teachers too.

You’re teaching me the same way that I am here to teach you. So yeah, it was really exciting to be a part of the project.

For the full transcript, please download the pdf below.

 

Download Full Transcript

Empowering Community Members in Yoncalla Gets Results

Empowering Community Members in Yoncalla Gets Results

by | Apr 5, 2021 | Podcast, Early Works, Educators and Workforce

On this episode of The Early Link Podcast, host Rafael Otto talks with Brian Berry, the superintendent at the Yoncalla School District, about how the district is empowering community members to become local educators, and shares the ways in which this strategy is paying off. 

Guest:

Brian Berry has been the Superintendent of Yoncalla School District for almost four years and an educator in the district for over 20. He started as a special education teacher at Yoncalla high school and eventually took over as high school principal in 2003. Eight years later, he was offered the position of district superintendent. 

Summary:

Brian discusses the “grow your own” strategy that the Yoncalla school district has adopted in order to help community members with an interest in education become local teachers. He shares a few stories about parents who have become  instructional assistants and, through utilizing district resources and trainings,  have moved on with the goal of getting their bachelor’s degree so they can continue to teach in their community. Finally, Brian lays out the benefits of the “grow your own” strategy and describes how this strategy meets the needs of the district, the students, and the Yoncalla community.

Transcript

Rafael Otto: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Early Link Podcast. I’m your host, Rafael Otto. As usual, you can catch us on the air on 99.1 FM in Portland on Sundays at 4:30 PM or subscribe and listen wherever you find your podcasts. Today, I’m speaking with Brian Berry, the superintendent at the Yoncalla school district. Yoncalla is part of our Early Works Initiative, a partnership that includes Children’s Institute and the Ford Family Foundation, and many other partners.

We’ll hear some of the things that the district is doing to support local talent in Yoncalla and help community members teach in the district. A grow-your-own strategy that is getting results. Brian, welcome to the podcast.

Brian Berry: [00:00:40] Thank you very much!

Rafael Otto: [00:00:41] I know it’s your spring break. I appreciate you taking some time when you’re supposed to have a little bit of downtime.

Give us an overview of the Yoncalla school district, if you can. What does someone who’s not familiar with Yoncalla need to know?

Brian Berry: [00:00:56] Well Yoncalla is a small rural community in Douglas County, actually Northern Douglas County. We have approximately 300 students and that’s preschool through 12th grade. A farming community, a very conservative community. They have rural conservative values, and it’s an absolutely awesome place to work.

Rafael Otto: [00:01:19] You’ve been in the district for quite a while, but you started as superintendent four years ago, yes?

Brian Berry: [00:01:25] Yes. I actually started teaching there in ‘96, then principal at the high school/middle schools since 2003. And then, yeah, this is my fourth year as superintendent.

Rafael Otto: [00:01:36] Tell me what that shift was like, moving from principal role over to the superintendent role?

Brian Berry: [00:01:43] Wow. That was quite the learning curve for me actually. At the time, I was in my own little building at the high school and my job was to make sure that kids graduated, really. So we would do anything legal to make sure kids got to graduation and really to set them up for any post-secondary opportunities that they were interested in.

I was in that position for a long time. Loved working with the kids at the high school and the middle school levels, and just really used to working with the parents and the community. And I believe I’ve earned their trust through all that hard work. You know, you’re always part of football games, volleyball games, basketball games, so the parents get to know you really, really well. And then our superintendent decided to retire, Jan Zarate, and she had been there for a few years and she asked me if I wanted to step in because she thought I was the person to lead the work forward. I was very apprehensive because I was very comfortable at the high school.

But then I thought to myself, you know what? I think I can learn, and I think I can grow and become an even better person and teacher moving forward. So I took on the challenge and it has been an incredible ride learning about preschool, working with Children’s Institute, Portland State University,  Family Foundation, and just helping me move forward and growing as a person and moving the community forward.

For the full transcript, please download the pdf below.

 

Download Full Transcript

Teaching & Learning During COVID-19

Teaching & Learning During COVID-19

by | Mar 30, 2021 | Podcast, Educators and Workforce, Teacher Voice, COVID-19

On this episode of The Early Link Podcast, host Rafael Otto speaks with podcaster and educator Evelyn Lauer about the struggles of teaching during a global pandemic.

Guest:

Evelyn Lauer has taught high school English in the Chicago area for 20 years. She is the host of Beyond the Bell, a weekly podcast in which she interviews other educators about teaching during the pandemic. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Texas State University and an MAT in secondary English education from the University of Iowa.

Summary:

Evelyn describes some of the difficulties of teaching virtually and explains why hybrid is actually the hardest form of teaching. She also shares stories she’s heard from educators about the blurred lines between work and home and what life has been like for teachers who are also parents. Finally, she discusses the social emotional impact of distance learning on kids and how our education system will be dealing with the effects of the pandemic for years to come.

Transcript

Rafael Otto: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Early Link Podcast. I’m your host, Rafael Otto. As usual, you can catch us on the airwaves on 99.1 FM in Portland on Sundays at 4:30 PM or subscribe and listen wherever you find your podcasts. Today. I’m speaking with Evelyn Lauer, who is based in Chicago and is a writer, high school English teacher, and most recently host of the podcast called Beyond the Bell.

Just last October, she set out to talk with teachers about the struggles of teaching during a global pandemic and has heard lots of great stories about how education has been flipped on its head for better or worse. Evelyn, welcome to the podcast.

Evelyn Lauer: [00:00:34] Thank you so much for having me. It’s so nice being on the other side of this.

Rafael Otto: [00:00:39] Yeah, it’s great to be talking with a fellow interviewer. Well, I’m hoping you can share some stories about what you’ve been learning from teachers as you’ve been talking with people all over the country. And if at first, could you just tell me about your podcast and why you got started?

Evelyn Lauer: [00:00:57] Sure. So, as you mentioned, it’s called Beyond the Bell and I guess my kind of idea what the title was… we’re really, especially from the spring and fall, we were all, most of us teaching in nontraditional settings. So not really in a traditional classroom. Most of us were teaching via Zoom or Google Meets or Microsoft Teams or something like that.

And that’s so different than what most educators are used to. And one of the standards of school is the idea of the “bell,” and we’re now “beyond the bell.” It’s like everything that’s happening outside of the traditional classroom. So that was kind of the idea for it. But really I wanted to focus on how teachers are teaching during the pandemic and the effects of that, because like everything else during all of this, our lives have had to change so much and no one ever expected that you could actually teach from home.

Many of us have been doing that for so long that now we’re transitioning back into the classroom and trying to do both at the same time. And so it’s just the idea of like, how did the pandemic affect education and teaching and to see, teachers’ stories about their experiences and to sort of document that was my idea.

Rafael Otto: [00:02:17] And we’ve just passed the one-year mark for when things shut down. So, tell me, what are some of the stories that stand out when you’re talking to teachers about what this transition has been like and what they’ve had to go through to make the classrooms really come alive for their students?

Evelyn Lauer: [00:02:33] Yeah. I mean, most of the educators that I’ve talked with are secondary school educators. And I think that at the secondary level, our experiences with teaching during COVID have been perhaps different than some elementary school teachers. At the high school level, we’re dealing with an extreme lack of engagement from the perspective of… the students turn their cameras off.

So most of the day when we’re teaching on Zoom, like I teach via Zoom, students’ cameras are turned off. And so the number one thing that I’ve heard over and over again, with all of the teachers that I’ve spoken with on the podcast, is this idea of engagement. So what does engagement look like when you can’t see students’ faces. Everyone feels a real loss about that, for sure.

But also it has made us really kind of think about: even when students are in our classroom, they’re physically present, how engaged are they really? And how do you measure engagement? Because we have all had students who are physically there but really aren’t there. And so having to find new ways to engage students using different technology or  the use of the chat. So, maybe they’re engaged in writing in a chat box, but not engaged by unmuting themselves or showing their faces on camera. So I would say the engagement piece is probably the number one thing that I hear educators talk about. And then versus like, when I have spoken with primary school or middle school teachers, the engagement piece seems to be higher. Meaning that they’re more accustomed to seeing their students’ faces. And the students seem to sort of want to share their whole days, maybe overshare, like sharing what they had for lunch, can I go to the bathroom, and all that kind of management that’s probably happening. So it seems like there’s extremes based on the age of the students that teachers teach.

For the full transcript, please download the pdf below.

 

Download Full Transcript

Dr. Walter Gilliam on Preschool Expulsion and Bias

Dr. Walter Gilliam on Preschool Expulsion and Bias

by | Mar 11, 2021 | Podcast, National Research, Parents and Families, Preschool, Equity

Dr. Walter Gilliam joins us in Portland for a discussion on preschool suspension, expulsion, and implicit bias. He is professor of child psychiatry and psychology at the Yale University Child Study Center, and the director of The Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy. He coauthored the book A Vision for Universal Preschool Education, and his groundbreaking study from 2005 called “Prekindergarteners Left Behind” examined expulsion rates, and reasons for expulsion, in state preschool programs across the country. His scholarly writing addresses early childhood care and education programs, school readiness, and developmental assessment of young children, and he is frequently consulted by decision-makers in the U.S. and other countries on issues related to early care and education.

Learn more about implicit bias, preschool expulsion, and what is being done about the issue at the state level: What We Talk About When We Talk About Preschool

Transcript

Rafael Otto: [00:00:00] This is the Early Link Podcast. I’m Rafael Otto. Dr. Walter Gilliam joins us for discussion on preschool suspension, expulsion, and implicit bias. He is professor of child psychiatry and psychology at the Yale University Child Study Center and the director of the Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy.

He co-authored the book, A Vision for Universal Preschool Education and his groundbreaking study from 2005 called “Pre-Kindergarteners Left Behind” examined expulsion rates and reasons for expulsion in state preschool programs across the country. His scholarly writing addresses early childhood care and education programs, school readiness, and developmental assessment of young children.

And he is frequently consulted by decision makers in the US and other countries on issues related to early care and education. Walter, welcome to The Early Link Podcast.

Dr. Walter Gilliam: [00:00:50] Hi Rafael, it’s great to be here.

Rafael Otto: [00:00:52] Excellent. Excellent. One of the first questions I wanted to ask you was how you first became interested in studying preschool suspension, expulsion. I know there’s some background to that and I would love it if you could share a story or two.

Dr. Walter Gilliam: [00:01:05] Well, that’s a great question. Um… there is a backstory to it. This was back in 2002. I was at Yale then as a faculty member and doing research but also supervising child psychiatrists and child psychologists and pediatricians who are learning how to work with young children. And so I was on the other side of one of those two-way mirrors – you know what I’m talking about… actions on the one side, and then I’m on the other side and I’m watching, and then I can give them feedback on how well they’re working with the young child, and then sign off for billing purposes.

I couldn’t help but notice that many of the children who are being referred to our clinic for an evaluation were being sent to us because they’d been kicked out of a preschool program or expelled from a childcare program or they were told that if they didn’t come to a place like Yale and get an evaluation that they will be expelled from the program.

And I couldn’t help but notice just how many children this was true for. And I didn’t know if this was a Connecticut phenomenon or this was just something that was happening around the New Haven, Connecticut area. So I decided to take a look at the research on it and found absolutely nothing.

And it just so happened that at that same time I was planning a nationwide survey of preschool teachers, preschool teachers around the nation, all working in state-funded preschool programs and thought, “Well, let’s just weave in some additional questions.” So we threw some additional questions into the survey.

It was a survey that was taking place over the phone. It was about an hour long. We just had a few questions on the expulsion but the findings were just so staggering to so many people that it literally became the study.

Rafael Otto: [00:02:38] And that became “Pre-Kindergartners Left Behind.” Right?

Dr. Walter Gilliam: [00:02:42] Yeah, absolutely. Well, at the time we had No Child Left Behind legislation, which was the hot topic. So it was a bit of a play on the title. In terms of the fact that we are leaving kids behind and we leave them behind before they even get there. For many people when they think of school they think of school as beginning in kindergarten, but not anymore. We have preschool programs for children four years old or three and four years old and you know the concern here for us with phenomena like this, of children being expelled from preschool programs, is this notion of the fact that for many of our kids they can experience a failure before they even get to what most people would consider school.

Rafael Otto: [00:03:16] Talk a little bit more about that study because you found some fairly significant things related to the expulsion rates for preschool as it exceeded the expulsion rate for kids in the K-12 system.

Dr. Walter Gilliam: [00:03:26] By a long shot.

Rafael Otto: [00:03:27] Right, what did those numbers look like?

Dr. Walter Gilliam: [00:03:29] Well, when we got the rates back we found that 10% of the preschool teachers… Now bear in mind these are state funded preschool programs; this is not your typical childcare programs. These are your better resourced early care and education programs that are part of state systems, usually run out of state Departments of Education and are funded through state Departments of Education. So they have actually more resources to them than most of your regular child care programs. And in these programs, the teachers were telling us – 10% of them – that they had expelled at least one child in the past 12 months. Now, expelled meant permanent. Permanently, totally, kicked out of the program. 10% of the teachers said that they had done this and we knew how many children had been expelled and we knew how many children were in their classrooms, and so with some simple division we were able to figure out what the rate was. But then when we had the rate it was kind of hard to figure out how to communicate that. The rate was 6.7 expulsions per thousand children enrolled. So at 6.7 is that a lot, is that a little or is that like baby bear and it’s just right? You know like, what do you do with that? So we thought, “Well, you need to have something to compare it to.”

So we thought K-12 expulsion rate would be the best thing to compare it to. But we couldn’t find anything published on the K-12 expulsion rate except that the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights had conducted surveys on expulsion and suspension in K-12. But, they never analyzed the data. Instead, it existed as 16,000 databases. One for every school district in America on the US Department of Education’s website. So we downloaded all 16,000 and wrote our own formulas to figure out what the rates were state by state and nationally. And then when we compared the rate we found that preschoolers, three and four year old children, were being expelled at a rate more than three times that of grades K through 12 combined in the United States. And when you look at it state by state, all but three states have an expulsion rate in preschool that outpaces the expulsion rate K-12. That’s a lot of kids being expelled.

Rafael Otto: [00:05:24] You also found that boys were much more likely to be expelled than girls?

Dr. Walter Gilliam: [00:05:29] About four times as likely.

Rafael Otto: [00:05:31] Four-year-olds more likely to be expelled than three-year-olds and that African-American children more likely to be expelled and expelled more often than White, Latino, and Asian kids…

Dr. Walter Gilliam: [00:05:42] About twice as likely.

Rafael Otto: [00:05:44] Tell me how those findings came out and what else should we know about that study?

Dr. Walter Gilliam: [00:05:49] In the original study, we were curious about things like what kind of programs are the ones doing the most expulsion and then also what types of children were the most likely to be expelled. And like you said, we found that in mixed age groups where you have three- or four-year-old children together, the older child is more likely to be expelled. We found that boys were expelled at about four times the rate of girls, and Black children were expelled about twice the rate of every other demographic of children.

And so when you think about it, there’s really three expulsion risk factors. You have “big,”
the bigger children, “the boys,” and “the Black children” – big, black, and boy. And the more of those that existed within a single child, the greater the likelihood that that child might be expelled from the program. But that just tells us about which children were most at risk. And then there’s other factors too that have to do with what types of programs were more likely to be the ones doing the expulsion. When we did the pilot study for this, we piloted it in child care programs in Massachusetts and we found that one teacher reported expelling six children out of a class of 16 in the course of 12 months. It’s almost half the class. It’s amazing, isn’t it?

Rafael Otto: [00:06:56] It’s incredible.

Dr. Walter Gilliam: [00:06:57] The rate’s much, much, much higher than what a lot of people would have thought and certainly even more so for our Black children and for our boys. We didn’t know what to do and how to understand the finding about four-year-olds more likely than three-year-olds. CBecause I could’ve made a guess either way on that. I could have guessed, well maybe the bigger child. I could have guessed, well maybe the younger child who might be more socially immature in the classroom. And so what we did was we pulled together a group of preschool teachers similar to the ones in the national study and we said: “In a national study this is what teachers like you said, why do you think they would say this?” And the teachers thought about it in this focus group and they came back and they said, “Well you know it’s one thing If you have a child who’s this big you know and they held their hand about waist high… and they said it’s another thing If you have a child who’s this big and they held it a little bit higher.”

 And so we asked the logical follow-up question of why does height matter. Like how does height factor into who you’re going to expel or not expel? And they said, “Well if the child is smaller, then the child might be smaller than the other children, but if the child is bigger then the child might be bigger than some of the other kids in the classroom and then maybe someone will get hurt.” And that was an important clue to us that it makes a lot of sense because the teacher is not just concerned about the singular child. The teachers has to be concerned about all the children in the classroom. But if you listen really closely to what the teacher’s saying, what the teacher’s saying is this: it’s not the behavior of the child. You can have two children equally aggressive, but the bigger child’s going to be the one to be expelled. So it’s not really the behavior of the child. It’s what we make out of that behavior. It’s what we assume might happen as a result of that behavior. And that’s when it became clear to us that preschool expulsion isn’t really a child outcome. Preschool expulsion is not a child behavior. It’s an adult decision that may be based in part on the child’s behavior but there could be other factors, too, that could come into play having to do with how that teacher views that child.

For the complete transcript, please download the pdf below.

 

Download Full Transcript

Culturally Specific Advocacy

Culturally Specific Advocacy

by | Mar 10, 2021 | Podcast, Oregon Policy, Equity

In this episode of The Early Link Podcast, host Rafael Otto talks with Pooja Bhatt and Anthony Castaneda about the value of culturally specific early childhood advocacy and how their organizations are approaching this important work. 

Guests: 

Pooja Bhatt is the cofounder and managing partner at SeeChange, a consultancy focused on people-centered change. She also works as a facilitator for the Early Childhood Equity Collaborative and is a participant in Oregon’s Early Childhood Coalition.

Anthony Castaneda is the policy manager at Latino Network and is a participant in Oregon’s Early Childhood Coalition.

Summary:

Pooja and Anthony provide background on the Early Childhood Equity Collaborative and how the five culturally specific organizations involved are approaching advocacy. They also discuss the passing of the Early Childhood Equity Fund in 2019 and what that fund is helping accomplish in Oregon. Finally, Pooja and Anthony share some of the advocacy challenges for their organizations, describe describe what makes partnerships and coalitions successful, and share the impact that culturally specific advocacy can have for families. 

Recommended Resources:

Our episode on Coalition Building and Advocacy

Our episode on the Student Success Act

Transcript

Rafael’s Daughter: [00:00:00] Welcome everyone. This is the Early Link Podcast. Thanks for listening!

Rafael: Big thanks to our special guest opening the show today. That’s my daughter and she’s in third grade. I’m your host, Rafael Otto. As usual, you can catch us on the airwaves on 99.1 FM in Portland on Sundays at 4:30 PM or subscribe and listen wherever you find your podcasts.

Today, I’m talking with Pooja Bhatt, who is the co-founder and managing director at SeeChange, a consultancy focused on people-centered change, and Anthony Castaneda, the policy manager at Latino Network. We’ll be talking about early childhood advocacy and what that looks like from the perspective of a number of organizations in Portland.

Pooja works as a facilitator for The Early Childhood Equity Collaborative, which we’ll learn more about, and which Latino Network is a part of. Both Pooja and Anthony are participants in Oregon’s Early Childhood Coalition. Welcome, and thank you to both of you for joining me today. It’s great to have you.

Pooja Bhatt: [00:00:58] Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Anthony Castaneda: [00:00:59] Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Rafael: [00:01:02] Pooja, I thought we could start with you, and if you could just give us a bit of background about the collaborative that you work with and how the organizations involved are approaching advocacy.

Pooja Bhatt: [00:01:13] Sure. Great question. So, the Early Childhood Equity Collaborative actually came together in 2018, because at that time there was no systematic public support for culturally specific services in the early learning field, at a time when our state’s population of zero to five-year-olds is the most racially and ethnically diverse it’s ever been.

So on one hand, we’re growing in the diversity of our young children and families, and at the same time, we’re actually investing a lot more in early childhood. But at that time in 2018, there wasn’t a systematic support and acknowledgment of the need for culturally specific services throughout the state. So the reason that this collaborative came together was really to help advocate at the state level for legislation and investments to invest in culturally specific services.

So the Collaborative partnered with culturally specific organizations, philanthropy, and community-based organizations throughout the state to really build awareness about the need for these services, these culturally specific services, and mobilize advocacy for communities of color and immigrant and refugee communities. And the real purpose is really to shift power dynamics in our state, where communities of color are actually being able to self-determine policy and budget priorities. So that’s the real power of this collaborative, is that a lot of times you see foundations investing in direct services, which is of course very important, and at the same time there hasn’t been historic investment in the ability of culturally specific organizations to advocate on their own behalf, on their own communities’ behalf, for statewide legislation and investments in culturally specific services. So the partners around the table are Latino Network, who really helped to begin convening this conversation, with KairosPDX, Black Parent Initiative, NAYA, and IRCO. So they were the original five culturally specific partners, but many more partners, other culturally specific organizations around the state, have been engaged in the past. We’ve had the support, generous support, of our foundation partners and our fiscal agent of Social Venture Partners, and my role is really the contract facilitator for the group.

Rafael: [00:03:25] Anthony, I know Latino Network is part of the Collaborative. Can you give us just a background overview of what Latino Network does and its role in the community?

Anthony Castaneda: [00:03:33] Sure. Latino Network is a culturally specific organization serving children, youth, families in the Tri-County area: Multnomah, Clackamas, and Washington counties. We provide services to thousands of Latinos in the areas of education, mentorship, leadership development, and family stability. And one of the reasons why organizations like Latino Network exist is to address those needs in the community that are currently not filled by the systems in place. So we see families falling through the cracks and we see some of those needs of students not being met, which is why we see a lot of these disparities, which is the reason why we worked so hard to connect with these families.

Rafael: [00:04:20] So, can you talk about the experience of participating in the Collaborative and what that has been like?

Anthony Castaneda: [00:04:27] The experience has been overwhelmingly positive. I think the Collaborative provides a space for our organizations to connect on shared goals and interests. it provides a space for information sharing as well as strengthening ties between our organizations. I think one of the early experiences has been learning about the other services provided in the area by our partner organizations.

We can share expertise, share resources with one another, and really connect these families to other services that may be needed.

Rafael: [00:04:59] Talk about, and maybe you both can talk about this a little bit, but the approach to advocacy as… as you’re representing direct service organizations that have close ties to the community and families. What does that mean for advocacy and how has that shifted or changed because of the Collaborative? Anthony, did you want to start with that?

Anthony Castaneda: [00:05:17] Sure. I think one of the strengths has been bringing parents from different backgrounds and perspectives together and really leading with that parent voice and really elevating the needs of those children or the youth that we’re working with.

Rafael: [00:05:31] Pooja, do you have comments on that?

Pooja Bhatt: [00:05:32] Yeah. I mean, I think that that exactly is the power of the Collaborative, of bringing together parents from diverse communities and really showing the richness of Oregon’s community. We often say that Oregon is very white, right? That we’re known as one of the whitest big cities in the country. But what that does is that it makes invisible the communities of color that are here. And so I think that one of the great things about the Equity Collaborative is that it really elevates the power of being present and being seen and we are here and we do have policy priorities that we want to engage partners across the spectrum to uplift.

So I think that the way that this collaborative has really connected parents from diverse communities with the organizations that they are most connected to – with other partners, dominant culture partners, school districts, as well as policymakers and funders – has been really powerful.

For the full transcript, please download the pdf below.

 

Download Full Transcript