Early Risers

If you thought experiments about race were a thing of the past, Sylvia Perry has news for you. In her social psychology lab at Northwestern University, she’s trying to figure out where racial bias comes from. She is finding that talking about race with children decreases prejudice. She tells Dianne how her career was shaped by her own upbringing as a Black girl in the rural South, and she offers guidance for caregivers on ...

What was it like to work at Sesame Workshop back in the day? How about Nickelodeon? As a proud Chinese American, Courtney Wong Chin was thrilled to help the companies find ways to talk about race and culture. In this episode, Chin pulls back the curtain on content creation at Noggin and Sesame Workshop. She talks about the challenge of finding language and images that are culturally specific but not confusing, and the impo...

Nicol Russell is vice president for implementation research for Teaching Strategies, a professional development company for early childhood educators. She has taught young children, managed a childcare center, and worked in state government, consistently striving to promote self-esteem and a positive cultural identity in both children and educators.

Nicol Russell started hearing about race when she was a little girl. H...

Wouldn’t it be great to play games for a living? That’s a big part of John Sessler’s job for PBS Kids. He tells Early Risers host Dianne Haulcy the work is fun, but not simple. PBS Kids content is required to meet learning goals while also expanding what children know about race and culture. PBS Kids starts with diverse teams of content creators and ends with children as active and curious consumers of media.

Guest: Jo...

Media companies like Cartoon Network consult Dr. Kira Banks to help ensure they portray diverse families accurately and respectfully. When Michael Brown was killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, Dr. Banks and her family had just moved to nearby St. Louis. The psychology professor was teaching her two young sons to be proud of their African American heritage. After the crisis, she doubled down on her commitment to change ...

What if you COULD tell a book by its cover? What if the pictures and design were as important as the words? That’s the idea behind Megan Dowd Lambert’s “Whole Book Approach” to reading. As a mother to five children of color and two white children, Dowd Lambert promotes reading “with a race-conscious lens.” As a professional storyteller, she explains why it’s important to read with children, and not just to them.

Episod...

“Racial identity” refers to a person’s understanding of different racial identities, one’s preferences for a particular racial identity and how identities are ranked in their family, their society and in their own mind. Toni Sturdivant has spent her career developing a library of books and a collection of teaching ideas for the early childhood classroom that will help young children establish a positive racial identity. In...

One of the hardest parts of teaching is managing the classroom to promote learning, keep order and inspire students. Many approaches to classroom management are punitive and reproachful. Reddy describes a different approach that–at its core– celebrates students and gives them opportunities to practice their identities.

Guest: Shawn Prakash Reddy was an elementary school teacher in Chicago public schools for nearly ten ...

Structural racism is different than interpersonal racism. It is the set of policies and practices that put BIPOC communities at a disadvantage from the earliest stages of life. So how can we work in our early childhood communities to identify structural racism and make change so that young people - BIPOC and white - are no longer harmed by structural racism? Jen Neitzel shares examples from her work in communities across t...

Theressa Lenear was practicing anti-bias education long before it was widely known as an approach to early learning. As a young Black teacher in Alaska, she tapped into her intuition to guide her practices with young children. She created a classroom-wide deep respect for her students’ cultures. She shares her perspectives on how to support BIPOC children in underserved communities.

Guest: Theressa Lenear is an early c...

Many programs that offer innovation in education ask teachers to adopt a new curriculum or implement a new procedure in their classroom. But when it comes to anti-bias work, Veronica Reynoso says there is no new curriculum. Instead, you need to be in community with children and disrupt the biases and stereotypes they pick up from the world. She explains how she does this and how the children respond.

Guest: Veronica Re...

If we adults want to work with young children on issues related to race and racism, we first need to work with ourselves. Marie Lister describes the learning communities she facilitates with teachers to help them become aware of, and address, their own biases. She discusses how the work adults do in these communal learning spaces can benefit young children immeasurably for years to come.

Episode Resources: Marie coache...

In this episode, Dianne is joined by Dr. Richard Lee, a distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Asian American Studies program at the University of Minnesota. Together, they explore some of the parenting stories featured in season four of Early Risers. Dianne and Dr. Lee also share valuable insights to help parents discuss race and racism with the young children in their lives.

Early Risers Season 4 E...

In this episode of Early Risers, we delve into the parenting journey of Ayan Omar, a Somali American mother living in St. Cloud, Minnesota with her husband and two young daughters. As an interracial and interfaith couple, Ayan and her husband have faced unique challenges in raising their children. In this conversation with host Dianne, Ayan shares her experiences navigating conversations about race and racism with her daug...

Cecilia Amadou is a Ghanaian mother raising her son in the Fargo-Moorhead area of Minnesota. In this episode of Early Risers, Cecilia shares her experiences navigating parenthood and conversations about race and racism in a community that is over 90% white. As Black parents with roots in Africa, Cecilia and her husband offer a unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities of raising a child in a predominantly whit...

In this episode of Early Risers, host Dianne speaks with Acacia Ward, a young Black and biracial single mother of three living in Rochester, Minnesota. Acacia shares her experiences growing up in a predominantly white community and how she's navigating conversations about race and identity with her children. As a mother of a son with a Sudanese father, Acacia offers insights on how she and her co-parent are helping the...

In this episode of Early Risers, Dianne speaks with Kai and James Miller, a married couple raising their two daughters in Rochester, Minnesota. Kai and James share their experiences as Black parents in a growing city that's becoming more racially diverse.

Despite the demographic changes, the Millers have struggled with feeling isolated while working to ensure their daughters see positive representations of themsel...

In this episode of Early Risers, Dianne speaks with Ellen Guettler, a white parent raising her two boys in Minneapolis. Ellen shares her journey of practicing anti-racist parenting in community with other white parents. Growing up, Ellen attended integrated public schools in St. Paul during the 1990s.  She remembers feeling tensions around race and racism but never had the opportunity to talk about these issues with adults...

Dr. Ibram X. Kendi is an award-winning historian who is known for his best-selling books on antiracism. But a few years ago, he also started writing books for very young children, including a new book “Magnolia Flower,” which he adapted from a short story written by Zora Neale Hurston. In this special episode of Early Risers, Dr. Kendi reflects on his personal journey as a parent and children’s book author, including how c...