This goal means supporting children to feel strong and proud of who they are without needing to feel superior to anyone else. At Acorn, children learn accurate, respectful language to describe who they and others are. We support children to develop and be comfortable within their home culture and within the school culture. We are committed to nurturing each child’s individual, personal identity, while also nurturing children’s social (or group) identities. A strong sense of both individual and group identities is the foundation for the three other core anti-bias goals.

This goal means guiding children to be able to think about and have words for how people are the same and how they are different. It includes helping children feel and behave respectfully, warmly, and confidently with people who are different from themselves. It includes encouraging children to learn both about how they are different from other children and about how they are similar. These are never either/or realities because people are simultaneously the same and different from one another. This goal is the heart of learning how to treat all people caringly and fairly.

This goal is about building children’s innate, budding capacities for empathy and fairness, as well as their cognitive skills for thinking critically about what is happening around them. It is about building a sense of safety, the sense that everyone can and will be treated fairly. Learning experiences include opportunities for children to understand and practice skills for identifying unfair and untrue images (stereotypes), comments (teasing, name-calling), and behaviors (isolation, discrimination) directed at themselves or at others. This includes issues of gender, race, ethnicity, language, disability, economic class, age, body shape, and more. These are early lessons in critical thinking for children, figuring out what they see and hear and testing it against the notions of kindness and fairness.

This goal is about cultivating each child’s ability and confidence to stand up against hurtful, unfair or biased behavior against themselves, other people, and/or any other living thing. This goal strengthens children’s development in seeing other perspectives, positive interactions with others, and cooperative conflict-resolution.