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 occasions 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 have been assigned a mentor who performed our respective devices and we have 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 overlook how particular this group was.
I imagine that is an expertise each youngster deserves—to be seen, heard and affirmed of their full identification. Because of this, as a Black early childhood educator and counselor, I discover it crucial to offer these similar protected areas to younger kids.
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 at college—and that’s the place affinity teams are available. A bunch of scholars who share an identification relate to one another in methods they’ll’t with friends who can’t or don’t perceive their expertise. It’s about security and, in some circumstances, about elementary problems with injustice.”
Colleges are locations the place people don’t at all times really feel included. After we assume extra particularly concerning the expertise of scholars of coloration inside predominantly white faculties, this exclusion turns into extra prevalent. College students of coloration are in a relentless state of proving that their experiences are actual and that they matter, and consistently being in a state of proving may be aggravating and anxiety-provoking. This type of stress can contribute to emotions of loneliness and being “unseen” at college.
Affinity teams have the ability to mitigate these results and to create a robust 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
Typically, we predict that the early childhood years are too early to debate race, ethnicity, gender, neurodiversity and different features of identification. However systemic oppression can negatively have an effect on youngster growth, particularly racism. Youngsters discover variations at a really younger age and can make their inferences if we don’t focus on 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 schooling, it’s as much as the adults in a younger youngster’s life to offer this expertise. The inspiration of their growth 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 focus on or uplift all features of identification?
Affinity teams have the ability to strengthen the voices of our college students and assist them assume critically concerning the world, their experiences and their schooling. By working towards their essential pondering abilities and studying to belief themselves, they’ll develop instruments that assist them fight the results of internalized racial stress or bias.
Our instructional techniques are constructed on antiquated techniques that unfairly and incorrectly place whiteness and heterosexuality because the norm. To fight this, we should discuss 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 setting, and we’ve outlined concrete targets:
- Affirmation: How am I/are we enriched socially and emotionally by means of this group?
- Dignity: How is my/our human worth celebrated?
- Visibility: How am I/are we seen as worthwhile group members?
Understanding how highly effective affinity teams may be within the EC setting, with the help 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 types)
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 courses, 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 youngsters seemed so joyful 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 realized from the video, and we have been in a position to 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 have 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 incorrect 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 dad and mom. All of those considerations are legitimate, and I welcome the chance to discover them additional—in discussing issues that convey us discomfort, we will help one another as a group.
The pushback we obtain does not imply we shouldn’t be doing this necessary work. If something, it’s proof of why we ought to be doing it. There’s a domino-like impact of positivity when we’ve 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 optimistic results that ripple all through our school-wide group.
There may be energy in starting early. It turns into part of the material of your every day work. Discussing identification turns into the norm, and youngsters observe swimsuit; they don’t shrink back from conversations about variations; as an alternative, they rejoice newfound similarities and data. We aren’t simply instructing them the best way to maintain a pencil, play with the strains 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 kids can thrive of their full identification — the place identification is valued as a every day purpose and a part of our curriculum.
