Addressing Holidays in the Classroom with an Anti-Bias Lens

Early Childhood Working Group November 2023 Meeting

By Makai Kellogg and Sara Beshawred

On Saturday, November 18th, the Anti-Bias Early Childhood Working Group met at the Teaching for Change office. The group focused on addressing holidays in the classroom with an anti-bias lens. We started with story fortunes from the book Celebrate!: An Anti-Bias Guide to Including Holidays in the Early Childhood Classroom by Julie Bisson.

The session was grounded by these reflective questions from Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves (p.49)

Whose culture and history have shaped the messages of the holiday and the ways it is celebrated?
Are certain groups of people invisible, misrepresented, or disrespected in that holiday narrative and material?
Can I find ways to teach about a holiday that eliminates explicit and implicit bias while respecting the holiday's core meaning?

Sharing how we feel about holidays as adults, especially as parents, sparked a long discussion that included:

Gifts: what to do if family gift-giving practices do not always align with your values. For example, how to deal with grandparents or extended family members wanting to give multiple/lavish gifts that overshadow or lessen the meaning of the holiday and may promote entitlement.
The difference between learning about holidays in the classroom versus celebrating them versus acknowledging a holiday, and how families can support by coming in and sharing how their family celebrates, etc. Examples include:

Ways to intentionally get to know families, their culture, and their feelings around holidays by using surveys at the beginning of the school year to create space for families to share their traditions (not just in winter, but all year long)
Having families send in a photo of themselves celebrating a holiday or come in to share about a family tradition
Creating or refining your school’s policies on holidays

Thinking about our school settings and conversations about colleagues' dedication to certain “traditions” just because they've been done for so long has been a roadblock for many of us. We shared ways space was created or not for staff to consider if certain traditions are even meaningful to the students. This led to a discussion on how holiday policies have shifted or how specific holidays, such as Halloween, aren’t given as much time during the school day or have been intentionally woven into the curriculum.