Teaching for Love and Justice: Learning about Race and Racism Alongside Young Children

Build a more just and loving early childhood program. Based on the latest research on race and early education, Teaching for Love and Justice: Learning About Race and Racism Alongside of Young Children lays out a roadmap for educators who are striving to integrate anti-racist teaching into their programs. The book explores the critical role that early childhood educators play in supporting children’s healthy racial identity development and in addressing issues of racial justice. Drawing on interviews with twenty-seven early childhood teachers based in New York City and working in a variety of settings, including Head Start Programs, independent preschools, and public schools, the book offers vignettes from the teachers’ classrooms as well as their perspectives on the joys, challenges, and necessity in addressing these topics. Their insights provide readers with a framework and strategies for doing this vital and complex work well.

Kirsten Cole, PhD is a teacher, researcher, and public school parent based in Brooklyn, NY. Her research interests include anti-racist/anti-bias education, the study of teachers’ lives, and the relationships between families and teachers, and she has published multiple articles and book chapters based on her research. Cole received her doctorate in Urban Education from the City University of New York (CUNY) in 2013. She has the pleasure to teach and learn from her students and colleagues as a professor of early childhood education at CUNY’s Borough of Manhattan Community College. Cole and her colleagues have been awarded grants from BMCC’s President’s Fund for Excellence and CUNY’s Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies Initiative to support their work on BMCC’s Anti-Racist Pedagogy Project.