My commitment to P.R.I.D.E. began by listening to my students. Before deciding to focus on early childhood education, I was teaching in higher education. My students were mostly college Freshman in English composition courses. The curriculum asked students to make thoughtful written arguments about ongoing social justice issues. Although many of them had never before had such classroom discussions, most students energetically participated in conversations about economic and environmental justice. However, when the topic of readings and conversation turned to racial inequality, students went quiet. Their discomfort and anxiety resounded in muffled coughs and furtive glances at cell phones held on their laps. 

Encountering the silence and discomfort of my students, I began to reflect on my own educational experiences. As a white, non-binary person attending public school in the suburbs of Philadelphia in the 1990’s, my early education classrooms were not safe places for asking questions or having thoughtful conversations about much of anything, especially questions related to identity. I was taught multiculturalism as color blindness alongside a bewildering encounter with the horrors of enslavement and the triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement without ever learning about myself and my peers, our similarities and differences and how we might work together to build something different. Silence was not comfortable, but at the time it felt safer than being myself or acknowledging the differences and interrelationships of different people. I followed the silence around me.  

Beginning to work in preschool classrooms made the silence of my college students and my own early education echo more profoundly in my thoughts. In my preschool classroom, students notice and ask questions about the different skin tones, hair textures, hair styles, clothing, music, food, and languages of their peers, teachers, families, and communities. They also repeat the negative racial connotations that resound in the world around them, making remarks such as “brown is ugly” when selecting different colored blocks from a bin. Although such remarks can be difficult to hear, I realize that very young children make such comments as part of their efforts to learn. Preschoolers seek to understand themselves and others. Therefore, when comments such as “brown is ugly” arise, I am no longer silent. As the poet, activist, and educator Audre Lorde instructs, “Your silence will not protect you” (“The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” 1977). I see these moments as opportunities for myself and other educators to interrupt the silence that perpetuates negative racial stereotypes and to support young children of all backgrounds, especially young Black children who are disproportionately harmed by racism in the education system. By listening to students and engaging them in thoughtful conversations about racial identity, I hope that children will build self-knowledge and love as a foundation for a lifetime of learning, personal growth, and relationship building. 

One of the main takeaways I have gained from the P.R.I.D.E. program is the belief that all students must feel safe to express themselves, including asking what some white educators may have been taught to understand as uncomfortable or taboo questions about race or racism. Students must not fear disappointing or angering adults or peers by asking questions or expressing themselves. Instead, teachers should create intentional spaces in which children can ask and learn about their own identities and histories as well as those of their peers. Teachers should create norms for conversation that provide the language, knowledge, and social skills necessary for children to practice entering into respectful dialogue with one another. By doing so, teachers can help model for children how to take pride in themselves while learning about and with others.