Podcast: A New Kind of Diversity in Pre-K Classrooms

Pre-K classrooms across the country are teaching more children from diverse backgrounds than ever before. Many teachers who have spent their entire careers teaching classrooms of children with English-speaking parents may now be in charge of a class with some children who speak only Spanish and some only Mandarin and with few who have parents who speak fluent English.

This demographic shift is unprecedented and fascinating in its own right. The adaptations that teachers and policymakers are beginning to make in order to teach their new classrooms are wrenching but important. Just yesterday, the Urban Institute held a roundtable on the topic for researchers and policymakers, and last fall Early Ed Watch attended a symposium on research on dual-language learning hosted by the National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education, based at the University of Virginia, in partnership with the National Center for Latino Child & Family Research.

For this week’s podcast, Linda Espinosa joined us to discuss how demographics are changing among America’s kids and what strategies she recommends for teaching children from multiple, diverse backgrounds. For years, Linda has worked with young Hispanic/Latino children and low-income families in California, and she has written extensively on how to provide effective educational services for low-income, minority families. Linda is a professor of early childhood education at the University of Missouri, Columbia and has served as the co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers University. She is the author of the book, Getting it RIGHT for young children from diverse backgrounds: Applying research to improve practice.

Early Ed Watch podcast – June 29, 2010

A New Kind of Diversity in Pre-K Classrooms

With our guest Linda Espinosa, Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Missouri, Columbia.