DIVERSITY, EQUITY & INCLUSION at CHP
"What we've found is that although CHP has always espoused diversity, equity, and inclusion to be top priorities in our classroom and community, the reality is, in many ways, we have fallen short of that goal.
In the coming weeks, months, and years we will be working together as a community to make CHP a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive place to work and play."
This May, we are launching our annual Enrichment Month Campaign, which will be devoted exclusively to supporting CHP's work in this critical area.
Each week of the next four, we will highlight one prong of our initiative, and we will ask for your support. Please give what you can, and please feel free to share this campaign with friends and family far and wide.
During Week One, we focus on Professional Development funds for our exceptional teaching staff. Each member of CHP's talented staff has shown enthusiasm for and dedication to our new initiative, but learning is lifelong and there are many workshops, classes, and conferences centered on DEI work that will enhance our teachers' abilities to tackle this work.
Weeks Two, Three, and Four will focus on building classroom supplies, partnering with relevant consultants and professional groups, and building community.
If one week is of particular interest, we welcome your support. If you can give each week, we thank you in advance.
At the culmination of our 21 Days of Equity Challenge, we look forward to sharing more information about our DEI Initiative with you. Please join us in supporting this important work!
Week Four: Building Community
This week, we provide a teacher wishlist of classroom supplies sourced exclusively from Black-owned businesses and/or Black artists and authors. Families are encouraged to review the wishlist and order items for CHP's classroom that will help ensure our school reflects and supports the diversity of Brooklyn and beyond.
DEI Coordinator and Narcorns Teacher, Kelsey, shares why diverse materials are so important:
"From a very early age, children begin to explore the world around them through pretend play. They start adopting roles of characters they have observed and one way of them doing this is through doll play. When children have access to dolls with a variety of different skin tones, it provides them with the opportunity to play the character of someone who may look differently than them. This is creating the foundation for children to develop the important skill of empathy."
Click HERE and help us stock our classroom with resources purchased exclusively from Black-owned businesses.
Week Three: Support CHP's Strategic Initiatives
CHP has served the Brooklyn community for almost 50 years and we have always strived to be an inclusive and welcoming community. For example, our first come, first served admissions policy was designed to welcome and include any child, without interview or admissions screen, to our program. As we begin to reevaluate our program's policies as part of our commitment to creating an anti-racist, inclusive, and diverse community, we are looking to the experts to review our policies to ensure that our intent matches our results.
Week Three of Enrichment Month is dedicated to gathering funding to support our strategic initiatives. Help us enhance our own expertise as we partner with consultants and institutions to strategically examine our program to ensure we continue to serve the diverse community of Brooklyn that has been our home.
Donations of any size are welcome and will go directly and exclusively to support this work.
Please see following section to donate.
Week Two: Diversity and Representation Matter in Early Education Classrooms
During Week Two of CHP's Enrichment Month, we are asking you to please help create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment for our children and staff by purchasing classroom supplies and books via the school's Amazon Wish List.
"Children bring their own set of culturally based expectations, skills, talents, abilities, and values with them into the classroom. And they begin to develop their self-concept (at least in part) from how others see them. To form positive self-concepts, children must honor and respect their own families and cultures and have others honor and respect these key facets of their identities too. If the classroom doesn't reflect and validate their families and cultures, children may feel invisible, unimportant, incompetent, and ashamed of who they are."
~ NAEYC, Teaching Young Children, Vol. 13. No. 2.
The materials requested are both an immediate and long term realization of our commitment to creating and promoting a safe, inclusive, equitable, and just environment for all members of our growing and expanding community. Diversity and representation matter in early education classrooms, and your generous donations from this wishlist will help us honor this knowledge.
Thank you in advance for your generosity and partnership in this important endeavor.
Please click HERE to see CHP's Wish List.
