At tiney we celebrate diversity, promote inclusion, and challenge racism and all forms of prejudice. We want every child in a tiney home nursery to grow up to do the same.
We have created a new guide for educators to reinforce this commitment, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020, a year when the Black Lives Matter campaign travelled around the world and the deep and widespread damage of racism became more visible than ever.
The tiney guide to becoming an inclusive, anti-racist practitioner is co-written by Laura Henry-Allain MBE, acclaimed Early Years expert and creator of the Jojo and Gran Gran characters, and Matt Lloyd-Rose, tiney's Head of Education. We created it because, although there are many resources out there for educators of older children, we struggled to find empowering equivalents for Early Educators.
As such, we want to offer this guide to the Early Years sector as a whole, in the UK and beyond. Although it was written for our community of registered tiney childminders, it is relevant for Early Educators of all kinds.
The guide covers the following areas:
- Starting with ourselves
- Knowing the children we work with
- Creating an inclusive, anti-racist learning environment
- Talking about diversity, inclusion and anti-racism with young children
- Celebrating difference (working with babies and toddlers)
- Building empathy (working with 3-5 year olds)
- Working with families
- Resources and further reading
It is a reflective tool and does not try to give educators all the answers. We have made it with care and invaluable feedback from colleagues in the sector, but we would welcome comments if you have ideas for how we can improve and develop it further.
In the Early Years, we have the privilege of working with children while they’re learning how the world works. We need to make the most of this opportunity to introduce them to other lives and perspectives, to help them to develop openness, empathy, and curiosity, and grow up to become inclusive, anti-racist adults.
We hope this guide helps you to do that. Feel free to share it and use it as widely as you want and of course if you have any feedback, we'd love to hear it.
