Lower School teachers Carol Wolf and Raji Malik presented at the National Association for the Education of Young Children National Conference in Nashville on November 22. Their presentation was titled “Curiosity and Diversity: How to Have Difficult Conversations with Young Children.”

Their workshop had a crowd of more than 220 people and examined how teachers’ assumptions about young children can influence teachers’ attitudes towards discussing challenging topics (e.g. race, religion, gender, cultural differences). In the workshop, they used mindfulness exercises, reflection and discussion to gain a clearer understanding of the group’s assumptions for the purpose of transforming into more courageous agents of change. Carol and Raji used examples of difficult conversations from their classrooms to “model communication that empowers children to trust themselves to speak freely about topics that are particularly charged for adults.”