117: Socialization and Pandemic Pods

One of the questions I see asked most often in parenting forums these days is some variation on:   "I’m worried about my child’s socialization now that it looks like daycares, preschools and schools have been closed for several months and will likely remain closed for several more months. Can someone please tell me if I really do need to worry about what the complete lack of socialization with other children will do to my [only] child?”   So we'll take a look at that, and then we'll go on to take a look at the other kinds of socialization that happen in school that you may not have even realized happens until we dig into the research on it.   I also let you know about a new Pandemic Pods 'in a box' course.  A lot of parents are thinking of forming what are being called Pandemic Pods - a small group of children who are working together either in some kind of parent care exchange or with a hired teacher/tutor.   As I'm sure you can imagine, there are a host of ways to set up these pods in a way that exacerbate existing inequalities that pervade the public school system.  And there are also ways to set them up that might actually help us to begin to overcome some of these issues.  Listen in to learn how!   Click here to learn more about the Pandemic Pods 'in a box' course   Jump to highlights 00:03 Introduction: the question of socialization during school closures 03:30 What a "pandemic pod" is, and the social justice questions it raises 09:38 Three types of stress, and why missing school isn't automatically harmful 12:46 What do we actually mean by "socialization"? 15:52 How White cultural norms around time and schedules show up in preschool 23:03 Show and tell, and the assumptions baked into it 30:08 Privileging written knowledge over oral storytelling, and the Tulsa Race Massacre 32:52 How achievement gaps get framed as a deficit in families 36:00 A reading rewards program that reinforced segregation and shame 39:10 Where classroom management practices actually came from 49:15 Dr. James Banks's five kinds of knowledge, and which ones shape schools 54:19 Whose definition of "parent involvement" schools use   References Banks, J.A. (1993). The canon debate: Knowledge construction, and multicultural education. Educational Researcher 22(5), 4-14. Banks, J.A. (2002). Race, knowledge construction, and education in the USA: Lessons from history. Race Ethnicity and Education 5(1), 7-27. Blum, S.D. (2017). Unseen WEIRD assumptions: The so-called language cap discourse and ideologies of language, childhood, and learning. International Multilingual Reearch Journal 11(1), 23-38. Brown, S., Souto-Manning, M., & Laman, T.T. (2010). Seeing the strange in the familiar: Unpacking racialized practices in early childhood settings. Race Ethnicity and Education 13(4), 513-532. Casey, Z.A., Lozenski, B.D., & McManimon, S.K. (2013). From neoliberal policy to neoliberal pedagogy: Racializing and historicizing classroom management. Journal of Pedagogy 4(1), 36-58. Engel, S. (2011). Children’s need to know: Curiosity in schools. Harvard Educational Review 81(4), 625-645. Hollingworth, L. (2009). Complicated conversations: Exploring race and ideology in an elementary classroom. Urban Education 44(1), 30-58. Hoover-Dempsey, K.V., Bassler, O.C., & Brissie, J.S. (1992). Explorations in parent-school relations. The Journal of Educational Research 85(5), 287-294. Illinois Early Learning Project (2018). Strategies for developmentally appropriate ‘show and tell’ in early childhood classrooms.  Author. Retrieved from https://illinoisearlylearning.org/blogs/growing/showtell/ Leggo, C. (1998). Living un/grammatically in a grammatical world: The pedagogic world of teachers and students. Interchange 29(2), 169-184. Pretti-Frontczak, K. (2020). A lesson in humility: Diving into anti-racist early education practices and policies (Episode 43). Pre-K Teach & Play. Retrieved from: https://prekteachandplay.com/podcast43/ Saavedra, C.M. (2011). De-academizing early childhood research: Wanderings of a Chicana/Latina feminist researcher. Journal of Latinos and Education 10(4), 286-298. Sensoy, O., & DiAngelo, R. (2017). “We are all for diversity, but…”: How faculty hiring committees reproduce Whiteness and practical suggestions for how they can change. Harvard Educational Review 87(4), 557-580 Tulsa Historical Society and Museum (2020). 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Author. Retrieved from: https://www.tulsahistory.org/exhibit/1921-tulsa-race-massacre/ Viruru, R. (2001). Colonized through language: The case of early childhood education. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 2(1), 31-47. Wladich, A. (2014, January 6). The importance of ‘show and tell.’ Scholastic, Inc. Retrieved from https://edublog.scholastic.com/post/importance-show-and-tell#:~:text=Show%20and%20tell%20sets%20the,an%20adult%20in%20my%20job.