Segregation by Experience

Book excerpt: "Early childhood can be a time of immense discovery, and educators have an opportunity to harness their students' fascination toward learning. And some teachers do, engaging with their students' ideas in ways that make learning collaborative. In Segregation by Experience, the authors set out to study how Latinx children exercise agency in their classrooms-children who don't often have access to these kinds of learning environments. The authors filmed a classroom in which an elementary school teacher, Ms. Bailey, made her students active participants. But when the authors showed videos of these black and brown children wandering around the classroom, being consulted for their ideas, observing and participating by their own initiative, reading snuggled up, shouting out ideas and stories without raising their hands, and influencing what they learned about, the response was surprising. Teachers admired Ms. Bailey but didn't think her practices would work with their black and brown students. Parents of color-many of them immigrants-liked many of the practices, but worried that they would endanger or compromise their children. Young children thought they were terrible, telling the authors that learning was about being quiet, still, and compliant. The children in the film were behaving badly. Segregation by Experience asks us to consider which children's unique voices are encouraged-and which are being disciplined through educational experience"--