Persona Dolls �How a Persona Doll Teaches Diversity & Inclusion
During our morning gathering, we introduced our friends to a new friend, Makayla. This “new friend” embraces some of the background and experiences of the children within our bubble as well as some of the differences that are not represented by the children. The children were able to ask Makayla questions. They asked, “Who does she live with?, How old is she? What’s her mom’s name?, and Why does she have dark skin?”
Create empathy, promote inclusion, and challenge stereotypes. Persona dolls empower students, and aim to “create opportunities for children’s voices to be heard and their experiences to be valued.
May 2021 Highlights BUBBLE 5
Makayla
Letter to the Families
Dear Bubble 5 Families,
�As you know, here at the Early Childhood Education Center, we work towards promoting social justice and anti-bias. We do this by promoting NAEYC’s four goals of an anti-bias education:
Identity: Children will demonstrate self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities
Diversity: Children will express comfort and joy with human diversity, use accurate language for human differences, and form deep, caring connections across all dimensions of human diversity.
Justice: Children will increasingly recognize unfairness (injustice), have language to describe unfairness, and understand that unfairness hurts.
Activism: Children will demonstrate a sense of empowerment and the skills to act, with others or alone, against prejudice and/or discriminatory actions.
�On Friday (2/19) we will be introducing a persona doll to our classroom. A persona doll is a doll that becomes a new “friend” in the classroom. As taken from the persona doll website (https://personadoll.uk).
� “Persona Dolls and their stories provide educators with a way to engage children and encourage them to talk about ideas, experiences and feelings in a safe space.
The Dolls can be used to highlight cultural, ethnic, religious and linguistic differences, Special Education Needs and hidden disabilities. They can be used to discuss issues – for example gender, family structure, economic exclusion – that are characteristics of our modern society, and to celebrate our shared positive life events too.”
We will be introducing a persona doll named Makayla who embraces some of the background and experiences of the children in our classroom as well as some differences that may not be seen. While we will start by introducing her, she will periodically visit our classroom with stories/scenarios that children can help solve. These scenarios may be representative of things that we may see in the classroom (e.g. discussions about managing conflict, expressing feelings, etc.) or they may introduce diversity and promote advocating for one another. We will share with you, via the Learning Genie, when Makayla visits our classroom and what was discussed. Our hope is that these discussions can be carried into the home as well.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions.
Bubble 5 Teachers,
Ms. Donna & Ms. Marissa
Discussion on Skin Tones
The discussion about Makayla and her skin tone, led us to explore further the vast array of skin tones we all have. We read Shades of People and talked about melanin, which all of us have in our bodies, and how it determines the color of our skin. The more melanin our bodies have, the darker our skin. The less, the lighter our skin. One of the children said, “I don’t have a lot of melanin because my skin is light.”
We extended our conversation by using paint to mix our own skin colors (we used a combination of the primary colors and white). The children mixed and sampled against their hand. We asked, “does it match?” If they answered no, we questioned what color they thought they needed more of to get it there.
Book: Shades of People
by Shelly Rotner
Shades of Us
After reading the book The Color of Us, by Karen Katz, we discussed how we could give a name to our own skin tones. It was important to point out that each of our skin colors are unique and special. Using the book as reference as well as some paint samples the children were able to compare their skin colors and determine what they thought would be a good name.
Self-Portraits
Using their individual skin tone paints, each child was able to create a self portrait. First we painted a premade template. We then glued on the clothing of their choice- a dress, shorts, pants, shirts, and skirts. Lastly, we added hair, exploring hair types/color/texture, and facial features. We created a display for children to revisit. After the display was up for awhile, we transferred (taped) the portraits to unit blocks and they reside in our block area for children to engage with.
Makayla Visits
Makayla continues to make occasional visits to our classroom. When Makayla is not here, the children do recall her visits and will ask for reminders about her such as the name of her school or members of her family. When we made the transition to the new classroom, the children expressed concern that Makayla would not know where to find us now, so we made sure to “message” her mom so she would know we moved to a new classroom.
As Makayla is a bilingual speaker as well, speaking both Spanish and English, we also discussed how special it is to speak different languages. And when we do hear our friends speaking another language, we can ask them, “What are you saying?” Speaking different languages may sound different and that is okay.
“I don’t like it when you speak Spanish,” said a friend to
Ms. Donna.
When Ms. Donna asked this friend, “Why not,” she seemed frustrated because she could not understand what Ms. Donna was saying.
A Piñata for our Garden
Discussions as we hit the piñata:
“Hey hey, last time it was my birthday, I had a piñata.” Cami
“It has candy inside.” Joshua
“When I was little I always had a piñata for my birthday.” Ms. Donna
Our friends kept asking when Makayla would visit, and so we invited her for our special Earth Day activity. We have been discussing how we can beautify our outdoors, and our friends gave us some great responses. “Adding plants, flowers, grass, sunflowers, etc.”
So, Makayla brought us a Piñata filled with garden seeds.
Seeds from piñata
Being Kind Is…
As we continue our discussions of inclusivity, diversity and acceptance, we include books that talk about differences and how they make us all special. Whether it’s the color of our skin, our hair texture, or the languages we speak, we are all unique in our special way. We asked our friends how we can be kind to all our friends after reading the book Elmer, and these are a few responses they gave us:
Book: Elmer by David McKee
Our students love Makayla
and treat her as another
friend in Bubble 5.
This Persona Doll is encouraging inclusion and participation as well as the celebration of diversity.
What is Justice?
“What can we do to make Makayla’s friend feel better ?”
Ethan: “Music.”
Joshua: “Help build her a house.”
Cami: “Make a new toy or cake.”
Emma: “Make a house.”
Oli: “A computer.”
Clark: “Give her some animals.”
Ella: “A bed for her room.”
Ms. Donna: “ Donate children’s books.”
These are the many KIND
ways our friends thought of
when helping a stranger and
her family.
As we continue to discuss what kindness is and how we can be kind towards others, Makayla came by for a visit to share about “her friend” at school who recently became homeless. She and her family are living in a shelter and her friend has been feeling sad.
With the NAEYC goal of Justice, we want to foster each child’s capacity to identify bias and nurture their empathy for the hurt biases can cause. The goal is to build on a child’s innate capacity for empathy and fairness, as well as their cognitive skills for thinking critically about what is happening around them
Makayla’s “teacher” Ms. Rachel sent us this video of her reading a story about homelessness.
Makayla is
helping us teach
our Bubble that
we are
stronger together
by having
these open conversations through an
anti-bias curriculum.