In affinity, we discover kinship. Our shared pursuits transfer us towards each other and provides us alternatives for connection, deep empathy and shared experiences. Our worldviews collide, and we’re not alone; we’re in a neighborhood.
One of many first instances I felt like I used to be in neighborhood was in my highschool jazz band as a teen. I auditioned to be part of the Ravinia Scholars, becoming a member of a gaggle of teenage musicians from excessive colleges throughout Chicago. We every had been assigned a mentor who performed our respective devices and we had been welcomed as artists and musicians. Whereas my different friends listened to Tyga and Usher, we linked over a love of jazz requirements and got here collectively to hearken to the masterful solos of Sonny Rollins, Artwork Blakey and McCoy Tyner. I felt like I used to be proper the place I used to be meant to be. My mentor was the late Willie Pickens, and he by no means let me overlook how particular this neighborhood was.
I imagine that is an expertise each baby deserves—to be seen, heard and affirmed of their full identification. That is why, as a Black early childhood educator and counselor, I discover it vital to offer these identical protected areas to younger youngsters.
At our college, we outline affinity teams as: A peer community the place people come collectively as a result of they’ve a side of their identification in frequent. Our identity-based affinity teams start in kindergarten and live on in first grade, second grade, and past — our earliest group started in Nursery 4.
In talking about their experiences with affinity teams, creator Monita Okay. Bell outlines:
“College students want to have the ability to be themselves in school—and that’s the place affinity teams are available. A bunch of scholars who share an identification relate to one another in methods they will’t with friends who can’t or don’t perceive their expertise. It’s about security and, in some circumstances, about basic problems with injustice.”
Faculties are locations the place people don’t all the time really feel included. After we suppose extra particularly concerning the expertise of scholars of shade inside predominantly white colleges, this exclusion turns into extra prevalent. College students of shade are in a continuing state of proving that their experiences are actual and that they matter, and consistently being in a state of proving will be traumatic and anxiety-provoking. This type of stress can contribute to emotions of loneliness and being “unseen” in school.
Affinity teams have the ability to mitigate these results and to create a robust basis of identification and neighborhood that positively fight the unfair experiences lots of our kids will encounter.
Affinity Teams Foster a Sturdy Basis for Identification
Typically, we expect that the early childhood years are too early to debate race, ethnicity, gender, neurodiversity and different facets of identification. However systemic oppression can negatively have an effect on baby improvement, particularly racism. Kids discover variations at a really younger age and can make their inferences if we don’t talk about the nuances and aspects of identification. When colleges ignore the chance to create areas the place shared identifiers are centered, finally, harm is completed.
In early childhood schooling, it’s as much as the adults in a younger baby’s life to offer this expertise. The inspiration of their improvement occurs within the earliest years of their lives. They’re formed and molded by the adults round them. However what occurs when the adults of their lives don’t talk about or uplift all facets of identification?
Affinity teams have the ability to strengthen the voices of our college students and assist them suppose critically concerning the world, their experiences and their education. By practising their essential considering abilities and studying to belief themselves, they will develop instruments that assist them fight the results of internalized racial stress or bias.
Our academic techniques are constructed on antiquated techniques that unfairly and incorrectly place whiteness and heterosexuality because the norm. To fight this, we should talk about identification and affirm the identities of our most underrepresented populations.
Constructing a Basis for Connection
Over the previous 5 years, our affinity teams have expanded inside our EC atmosphere, and we’ve got outlined concrete objectives:
- Affirmation: How am I/are we enriched socially and emotionally by way of this group?
- Dignity: How is my/our human worth celebrated?
- Visibility: How am I/are we seen as priceless neighborhood members?
Figuring out how highly effective affinity teams will be within the EC atmosphere, with the assist of my college, my colleagues and I made a decision to implement these teams for our college students. Every of our 5 affinity teams is centered on particular identities and experiences, together with:
- Blackspace (Black college students),
- Latinidad (Latinx college students),
- Desi Mangos (South Asian college students),
- Infinity (college students exploring LGBTQIA+ identification) and
- Nice Minds (college students who’re studying about their studying kinds)
From specializing in pleasure and gratitude to centering the function of neighborhood, every affinity group is purposeful in aligning our themes and actions. This extends our neighborhood and creates alternatives for our college students to start to debate and perceive intersectionality.
As an affinity group lead facilitator, I run my group each week with two of my different good colleagues. Collectively, we create an organized and goal-oriented curriculum centered on affirming Blackness.
Throughout Hispanic Heritage Month, our colleagues got here collectively to assist two of our affinity teams. They canceled fitness center lessons, modified classroom schedules and most of our 700 college students joined us within the fitness center for a neighborhood celebration of identification, tradition and affinity.
After this celebration, our colleague remarked, “The youngsters seemed so completely happy parading round with their flags, and I spoke with many college students all through the day about how a lot pleasure and delight it gave them. I additionally spoke with children who aren’t in Latinidad or Blackspace who discovered from the video, and we had been capable of share and join in pleasure for that studying collectively.”
Not solely did our collaboration affirm the identification of our kids inside our affinity teams, however their friends had been capable of finding connection of their shared experiences and bear witness to the affirmation of identification.
Affinity Teams Join Us All
Whereas I’ve had the expertise of feeling supported as an affinity group chief, this was not all the time the case. Even now, I come throughout colleagues who fear about saying the fallacious factor, speaking about an affinity group that none of their college students are taking part in, or coping with the challenges that we’d obtain from caregivers or mother and father. All of those issues are legitimate, and I welcome the chance to discover them additional—in discussing issues that convey us discomfort, we will assist one another as a neighborhood.
The pushback we obtain doesn’t suggest we shouldn’t be doing this vital work. If something, it’s proof of why we must be doing it. There’s a domino-like impact of positivity when we’ve got identity-based affinity teams within the early childhood setting. It begins with our college students, extends to the affinity group leaders and continues to have constructive results that ripple all through our school-wide neighborhood.
There’s energy in beginning early. It turns into part of the material of your day by day work. Discussing identification turns into the norm, and kids observe go well with; they don’t draw back from conversations about variations; as a substitute, they have fun newfound similarities and data. We’re not simply educating them how one can maintain a pencil, play with the traces and curves of letters, and construct buildings utilizing shapes. We’re creating studying environments the place the ability of affinity areas is revered, the place youngsters can thrive of their full identification — the place identification is valued as a day by day objective and a part of our curriculum.
