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YWCA of Bristol
YW Children’s Center/
Anti-Bias Curriculum
Racial Justice
The YWCA
Children’s Center, opened in 1987, is the first and only
full-service child care facility based on a sliding scale fee,
serving children from 6 weeks to pre-school age in the Bristol
community. The program is especially helpful to low income and
single parent families. The Wellmont Child Development Center,
opened in 1999, began with the YWCA of Bristol’s partnership to
develop and operate the child care facility on the Campus of
Wellmont Bristol Regional Medical Center. It was developed primarily
for the health care workers in the Wellmont facilities with
additional openings offered to other parents in need of child care
in the community.
The YW
Children’s Center and the Wellmont Child Development Center are
Three Star Quality Agencies. The Star System is a rating
procedure developed by the State of Tennessee Department of Human
Services Licensing Agency to provide parents with knowledge in
determining a quality child care facility. A compilation of
components in seven separate areas (one area being Promoting
Acceptance of Diversity) is rigorously reviewed yearly to accumulate
the three star rating. A Three Star Rating is the highest rating
available to licensed child care agencies.
The YW
Children’s Center and WCDC both are intended to have a direct impact
on racial justice. Both programs use the
“Anti-Bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children”
curriculums in the classrooms. This curriculum was developed in
1989 and is still the most widely used anti-biased curriculum to
date.
Anti-bias
curriculum embraces an educational philosophy as well as specific
techniques and content. It is value based:
Differences are good; oppressive ideas and
behaviors are not. It sets up a creative tension between
respecting differences and not accepting unfair beliefs and acts. It
asks teachers and children to confront troublesome issues rather
than covering them up. An anti-bias perspective is integral to all
aspects of daily classroom life.
This program is
a meaningful and mission focused program as stated in the
introduction of the Anti-Bias Curriculum: “Children are aware very
young that color, language, gender, and physical ability differences
are connected with privilege and power. They learn by observing the
differences and similarities among people and by absorbing the
spoken and unspoken messages about those differences.
Racism, sexism, and handicappism
have a profound influence on their developing sense of self and
others.” The YW Children’s Center and the WCDC’S classroom
activities, environment and teachers reflect this in the childcare
services provided.
Yearly
evaluations at both facilities include:
Classroom
materials and lesson plans/ activities must reflect people of
different races, cultures, ages, abilities, and gender in
non-stereotyping/ non-traditional roles and are visible throughout
the room and implemented in lesson plans/ activities. Examples would
be paints, play-dough, and crayons in multicultural colors, books,
pictures and music that reflect different cultures, dolls of
different races, ethnic cooking lessons, and ethnic eating utensils
provided, and handicap awareness pictures and projects. In 2004 the
facility received 6 out of 7 points on the Three Star Rating in this
area. The next evaluation is scheduled for March 9, 2005. Parents
are also evaluated yearly to determine their feeling on
multicultural opportunities in the curriculum experiences of their
child.
This program has
operated with this curriculum since 1989 and has been a tool for
teachers to foster knowledge and pride to their cultural identity,
to foster curiosity and empathetic awareness and teaches how to
overcome inappropriate responses to cultural differences of others.
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