Each child should have a voice in their classroom.

This was the message from visiting education expert Dr Felicia DeHaney. She was in Bermuda as the keynote speaker at the conference Celebrating Our Children’s Brilliance: Cultivating Resilience and the Importance of Culture in Child Development and Early Childhood Education, held at the Bermuda College. The conference was organised by Higher Achievers Reliable Tutoring and Testing (HARTT) Services. Heritage Productions and the Capstone Institute also collaborated.

Dr DeHaney is the Director of Educator and Learning for the W K Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan. The mission statement of the Kellogg Foundation is to support children, families, and communities as they strengthen and create conditions that propel vulnerable children to achieve success as individuals and as contributors to the larger community and society.

“Children don’t come to us independently, they come with their families,” Dr DeHaney said. “It is really important that we understand each child’s individual cultural context.”

She said this is done so that the child has opportunities to express their culture within the classroom, and also through developing authentic relationships with the parents.

“You have to be able to understand what the child brings to the classroom,” she said. “You don’t generalise culture and say there is just one Bermudian culture or one American culture. I am not going to say it is easy, but it is a must. It is a core concept of why schools become quality schools.”

She felt home visitation was crucial for the educator to understand the child.

“You don’t want to make assumptions that if parents don’t come to every event at school, they are not involved with their child’s education,” she said. “In a classroom that embraces the culture of its children, you will see pictures of the children and their families. Children will see themselves, and less of those premade pictures that children often have to colour. There will be some form of parent/teacher communication. There will be assignments that encourage the children to involve their family and community.”

Dr DeHaney said she started her career as a teacher in an elementary school classroom.

“I was fortunate in that the school in which I taught allowed teachers to embrace the natural genius in our children,” she said. “We were able to bring families in as part of the school. Culture is so dynamic, and we were able to recognise everyone’s culture. I always say I don’t know why I left the classroom. I learned so much from my students. I learned patience and resiliencies, and to be imaginative.”

After teaching in the classroom, she worked in school reform, and then in teacher education and professional development.

“From there I did some national work around advocacy and education,” she said. “Then, I was Assistant Superintendent for Early Childhood Education Office of the State Superintendent of Education in the District of Columbia. I was also the President and CEO of the National Black Child Development Institute, an national organisation that does advocacy for children around the world. I joined the Kellogg Foundation four months ago.

During her speech, Dr DeHaney also talked about the importance of early childhood education.

“The Minister of Education and Business Development (Grant Gibbons) was in attendance,” she said. “That was exciting. He said that Bermuda does a lot of development screening at age two and they may expand that to ages three and four. During the conference we talked a lot about how children who experience high quality early education programmes at age three or four, are likely to do well later in life and are less likely to drop out of school.”

She said children and their families felt better and did better in school when they knew their government cared and was invested in their education.

For more information about the Kellogg Foundation see Wkkf.org.