As we mentor early childhood teachers seeking to live out their ethical commitments to children, we find that teachers settle in comfortably to Anti-Bias Goal #1, “to nurture each child’s construction of knowledgeable and confident personal and social identities” (Derman-Sparks, Edwards & Goins, 2020, p. 15). In contrast, many teachers neglect to consider not only who they are in the world, but also how these social identities shape their role as teachers and their relationships with children and families. Not surprisingly, this dynamic is especially evident for White teachers, but it also happens to those with other dominant identities by gender, social class, language, and so on. When teachers do share their dominant identities in the classroom, it is often cloaked in the unconscious assumption that everyone in their community shares a similar history and background.

In this article, we (Debbie and John) turn to our experiences making the film “Reflecting on Anti-bias Education in Action: The Early Years” (LeeKeenan, Nimmo & McKinney, 2021). This documentary features anti-bias strategies in the classroom and the voices of teachers committed to equity in their daily practice. Eight teachers at three sites in Seattle and San Francisco were invited into conversations with us—individually, as partner teachers, and as a team. Representing diversity across race, gender expression, ethnicity, age, sexuality, social class, and language, we use their words here as the heart of what we have to share. We created a space in which the teachers could be themselves, take risks and share their humanity in authentic ways, exemplifying the parallel anti-bias goal for teachers to “increase [their] awareness and understanding of [their] own individual and social identity in its many facets”(Derman-Sparks, Edwards & Goins, 2020, p.19).