My little girl is the only brown girl in her class? -Diversity In The Classroom

Today, I thought of sharing my ideas on diversity in the classroom. There is a reason why I am sharing my experience on this. Here is the backstory.

My daughter’s kinder photo album arrived last month. It was so well put together and worth every penny we spent.

Looking at those photos, it struck me that my girl is the only brown skinned girl among her light skinned friends. The photo was perfect, showing that every kid was having such a great time. My girl looked happy as happy can be and why not? She LOVES her kinder.

However, she has had her fair share of curiosity about “being” and “belonging” at the beginning of the kinder year. Let me share with you how I helped her process those concepts.

One day, she came back from kinder telling that she loves golden hair.(blonde). No wonder she felt that way, there’s so many in her class with such lovely blond hair. While I agreed with her that blond hair is lovely, I reminded her black hair looks amazing too.

I believe confidence and acceptance go hand in hand and that was her very step lesson to accept who she is and learn to be proud of herself.

Later, when she seemed to notice that all her friends have lighter skin, again I had to step in. We had a great time chatting about how skin color can vary from country to country and region to region.

We read the book “The Barefoot Book of Children” written by Tessa Strickland which mainly talks about interconnected and uniqueness of all people. The book is written in such a simple language with mesmerizing illustrations that my daughter couldn’t get enough of that book.

We talked about diversity and how everyone is different and special in their own way. It helped my girl be more confident about herself and be more empathetic towards others.
She is still very young and has a long long way to go. Everyday I let her feel that she is enough and she is amazing no matter what. These tiny steps will definitely make her confident and empathetic.

6 Easy tips to teach diversity in the classroom

• Introduce her to toys that teach her diversity from very young age.
  Ex: Dolls come in all different shades and teach her that all of them are cute and pretty and we as adults need not bother to comment on their skin colour, hair colour at all giving it unnecessary importance. Beauty can come in so many different colours and shapes.
• Take examples from natural world and show how different coloured flowers bloom and give a different scent and about how unique natural world is.
• Redirect intolerant behaviour – If your child uses language to belittle someone different, you can talk to them about it and remind them that everyone is unique in their own way.
• For an older kid, we can take examples from successful people from different ethnicities and show that how they look or where they look has nothing to do with their success.
• Have multicultural experiences- Sign up for community work as a family where you get to meet people from different cultures. Do not differentiate people based on their religious belief, race, age, disabilities and sexual orientation. You will be their role model.
• Avoid stereotyping and discuss with kids about it if the kids do it.
  The common stereotypes about being skinny, fat, tall, dark etc need to be dumped. Instead more politically correct expressions like everyone has their own beauty, beauty comes in different shapes, uniqueness makes the world more beautiful can help your kids look at the world in a broader way.

A list of books to help your child learn diversity in the classroom

• It’s ok to be different by Sharon Purtill- It’s a literary title gold award winning book which gives the message – “you should always be kind to those who are different from you, because to them YOU are different too”
• All are welcome by Penfold Alexandra -A bright and uplifting celebration of cultural diversity and belonging.
• Welcome to our world by Moira Butterfield – This will help your child find our about children living all around the world.
• Acceptance is my superpower by Alicia Ortego – Help children honour, celebrate and see the beauty in our differences.

“We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race.” – Kofi Annan

Let us know the books you recommend about diversity in the classroom. Share with our community.