Early Childhood Intensive

Bringing Cultural Consciousness Through Stories and Circles 

Can implicit messages be as effective and powerful as explicit ones?

Reflections on SCC Summer 2021 Professional Development Workshop

by Holly Koteen-Soule

For those of us who carry responsibility for building inclusive and caring communities in our early childhood classrooms and with the families in our Waldorf Schools, the current social questions loom large. Out of our understanding of child development, we know that young children learn through imitation and modeling and thus, our continuing inner work with our own unconscious biases and assumptions is essential. We also need to be prepared to respond appropriately to specific situations that arise in our classrooms which call for explicit statements that support differences of all kinds and invoke a gesture of inclusion.

This past summer, Sound Circle offered an online workshop for early childhood educators where we explored creating stories and circles that could bring important themes and healing gestures to the children in our classes. Leslie Wetzonis Woolverton joined SCC faculty members Holly Koteen-Soule and Somer Serpe to facilitate the workshop. As a whole group, we participated in exercises designed to bring us a greater awareness of our own unconscious biases and the need for all of us, and especially the children, to be affirmed and supported in our identity development. We also worked in small groups creating stories to illustrate one or another of several suggested themes. Towards the end of the week, the stories that lent themselves to movement became the beginnings of movement circles. Other stories offered themselves as likely puppet plays.

Through the week we explored healing gestures that we as teachers can model for our children and illustrate in our stories and circles, for example:

•  We can recognize and work through antipathy or discomfort with things and people that are different from us.

•  We can stop labeling and shunning or shaming others because of labels.

•  We can listen to one another.

•  We can move past an “us and them” orientation.

•  We can solve problems by collaborating with others.

•  We can know that there is a way for everyone to get a share, even if we feel fearful tha there isn’t enough.

•  We can go beyond avoiding hurt or conflict by redeeming it, making it better.

•  A healthy community has a breathing, permeable boundary.

•  We live by grace, love, forgiveness and humility.

Some of the themes that we explored were:

• Appreciating skin color differences

• Recognizing different kinds of families

• Undoing male and female cultural stereotypes

• Normalizing developmental or ability differences

• Celebrating multi-language families

• The importance of an inclusive community in which everyone feels a sense of belonging

There was a great enthusiasm among the workshop participants for the creating of new material that supports the reawakening of cultural consciousness that speaks, not didactically, but in a heartfelt way, to young children and their families.

Participant Reflections

"I feel like I can now actively help change the narrative of our society, whereas before, I was somewhat intimidated."

"Holly's MLK Jr circle was really lovely as it gave such an elegant picture of what I'd like to bring to the children in my group. Taking something that is somewhat abstract and making it physical with song and movement is just so wonderful."

"I loved the facilitators! Kind, warm, insightful. I loved the collaboration of all."

"This is the third Waldorf program I've taken this summer, and was far and away the most beneficial. I felt much more connected to facilitators and other participants, and was much more comfortable asking questions. I also just really enjoyed this experience: it was a pleasure."