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 group.
One of many first instances I felt like I used to be in group was in my highschool jazz band as an adolescent. I auditioned to be part of the Ravinia Students, becoming a member of a gaggle of teenage musicians from excessive faculties 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 related 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 neglect how particular this group was.
I consider that is an expertise each youngster deserves—to be seen, heard and affirmed of their full identification. This is the reason, as a Black early childhood educator and counselor, I discover it crucial 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 facet 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, writer Monita Ok. Bell outlines:
“College students want to have the ability to be themselves at college—and that’s the place affinity teams are available in. A gaggle 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 instances, about elementary problems with injustice.”
Colleges are locations the place people don’t at all times really feel included. Once we suppose extra particularly concerning the expertise of scholars of shade inside predominantly white faculties, 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 always being in a state of proving could be tense and anxiety-provoking. This sort of stress can contribute to emotions of loneliness and being “unseen” at college.
Affinity teams have the facility to mitigate these results and to create a powerful basis of identification and group that positively fight the unfair experiences lots of our youngsters will encounter.
Affinity Teams Foster a Robust Basis for Identification
Usually, we predict that the early childhood years are too early to debate race, ethnicity, gender, neurodiversity and different elements of identification. However systemic oppression can negatively have an effect on youngster improvement, particularly racism. Youngsters 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 faculties ignore the chance to create areas the place shared identifiers are centered, finally, hurt is completed.
In early childhood training, it’s as much as the adults in a younger youngster’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 elements of identification?
Affinity teams have the facility to strengthen the voices of our college students and assist them suppose critically concerning the world, their experiences and their training. By practising their important considering expertise and studying to belief themselves, they will develop instruments that assist them fight the consequences of internalized racial stress or bias.
Our academic programs are constructed on antiquated programs 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 surroundings, and we now have outlined concrete targets:
- 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 helpful group members?
Understanding how highly effective affinity teams could be within the EC surroundings, with the help of my faculty, 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 group, every affinity group is purposeful in aligning our themes and actions. This extends our group 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 sensible colleagues. Collectively, we create an organized and goal-oriented curriculum centered on affirming Blackness.
Throughout Hispanic Heritage Month, our colleagues got here collectively to help two of our affinity teams. They canceled gymnasium lessons, modified classroom schedules and most of our 700 college students joined us within the gymnasium for a group celebration of identification, tradition and affinity.
After this celebration, our colleague remarked, “The kids seemed so glad parading round with their flags, and I spoke with many college students all through the day about how a lot pleasure and pleasure it gave them. I additionally spoke with youngsters 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 youngsters 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 at all times the case. Even now, I come throughout colleagues who fear about saying the flawed factor, speaking about an affinity group that none of their college students are taking part in, or coping with the challenges that we would obtain from caregivers or mother and father. All of those considerations are legitimate, and I welcome the chance to discover them additional—in discussing issues that carry us discomfort, we will help one another as a group.
The pushback we obtain does not imply we shouldn’t be doing this vital work. If something, it’s proof of why we ought to be doing it. There’s a domino-like impact of positivity when we now have 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 group.
There’s energy in starting early. It turns into part of the material of your every day work. Discussing identification turns into the norm, and kids comply with swimsuit; they don’t shrink back from conversations about variations; as a substitute, they have a good time newfound similarities and information. We aren’t simply instructing them learn how to maintain a pencil, play with the traces and curves of letters, and construct constructions utilizing shapes. We’re creating studying environments the place the facility of affinity areas is revered, the place youngsters can thrive of their full identification — the place identification is valued as a every day aim and a part of our curriculum.