Creating a Caring Community

Caring refers to a set of prosocial skills and behaviors like being helpful, respectful, kind, thoughtful, understanding, and comforting. It also includes more complex behaviors such as cooperation, generosity, and empathy. Children need prosocial skills to fully take part in the many daily group activities in early learning environments.

A caring community of learners refers to learning environments where children and educators engage in warm, positive relationships, treat each other with respect, and learn from and with each other. These environments include center-based classrooms, family child care settings, socialization spaces, and homes.

Caring behavior is like a drop of water that ripples out as education staff establish positive relationships with every child in their care. In a caring, equitable community of learners, educators intentionally make it a priority to:

Design a caring environment
Respond to individual needs
Organize awareness activities
Promote and encourage a sense of community

Check out this 15-minute In-service Suite and find tips, tools, and worksheets to extend your learning.

Creating a Caring Community

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Caring Community

Narrator: Welcome to this short presentation on creating a caring community. Learn about the importance of a caring community for young children and how to use practices that create a sense of belonging for everyone in the program. Quality teaching and learning practices incorporate the experiences, languages, perspectives, and cultural backgrounds of children and their families. By doing this, learning becomes more meaningful and interesting for children. The Framework for Effective Practice describes effective everyday practices that lead to school readiness for all children.

There are six parts to the Framework for Effective Practice: a strong siding, emphasizing equitable experiences for all children, a foundation of engaging interactions and environments, the supporting pillars of research-based curricula and effective teaching practices as well as ongoing assessment, highly individualized teaching practices that ensure every child makes progress toward school readiness, and, at the center, parent and family partnership and engagement.

Creating a caring community is an essential part of the foundation. This presentation on how to create a caring community is one in a series of suites designed to help adults connect and build strong relationships with children and create an atmosphere of caring and belonging that permeates the program.

[Video begins]

Teacher: We're ready. Good morning, boys and girls.

Children: Good morning!

Boy: Sabah al-khair!

Teacher: Now let's try saying it in Arabic.

Children: Sabah al-khair.

Teacher: Sabah al-khair.

[Video ends]

Narrator: What does it mean to create a caring community? Think about words such as "respectful," "affirming," "kind," "thoughtful," and "understanding." A learning environment that exudes a sense of caring is one where the children and the adults value and respect each other, think about each other, and help each other. Caring behaviors in children develop over time and through many thoughtful interactions.

Educators model respect and caring. And they encourage children to care by helping them learn to share and cooperate and show empathy towards each other. Kindness can create a ripple effect in the learning environment. As educators demonstrate respect and kindness with children and families and other adults, the children feel more value and secure.

Why is it so important to create a caring learning community? Research tells us that children who are taught caring behaviors when they are young continue to show caring behaviors as they grow older. Positive social behaviors also predict children's performance in academic and social areas. And children who show higher levels of caring behaviors tend to be more ready for school than those who do not. Let's look at some of the ways that educators help children learn to be kinder and more respectful.

Teacher: We want to respect Amy's space. Let's slide over a little more. She's building something, and we don't want to keep knocking it down.

Teacher: Or you could ask Silvan to move his hand.

Child: Move your hand.

Teacher: Here, Silvan. Let's move our hand. Maz wants to put it down. Thank you for using your words, Maz.

Teacher: Si tu tienes oportuno, puedes anutar tu nombre y podemos contaro través el tiempo. Gracias por ayudante.

Narrator: Educators are purposeful in designing welcoming learning environments that reflect and affirm children's culture, language, and individual identities. They nurture a sense of belonging for all children and families. They display family pictures and children's artwork, use children's languages and integrate familiar books, stories, music, and objects that celebrate and sustain children's diverse social identities.

Teacher: Help.

Narrator: Educators build on the strengths, abilities, and interests of children to make each child feel valued and confident. They are aware of and responsive to the individual needs of children to help children feel supported and secure. Educators help children learn how their own actions affect others. They model and teach children about fairness and respect for differences. And educators acknowledge children's developing attempts at caring, kindness, and being fair. Educators let children know that their kind actions are valued.

Teacher: Where did you learn to write it in rainbow?

Oriel: He did.

Teacher: Thanks for teaching Oriel about the rainbow. I know you like to do that each day.

Narrator: It takes time and planning to create a caring learning community. Caring learning communities make wonderful and joyful places for children to thrive and learn the many things they need to know to be ready for school. We hope you have new ideas to expand on the ways you already support the social and emotional well-being of all children and can continue to build an atmosphere of caring, belonging, and fairness in your program. For more information and more ideas on creating a caring community, see our 15-minute in-service suite videos, tips and tools on the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center, or ECLKC.

[Video ends]

Why is the practice important?

Caring communities help both educators and children by providing them with equitable, supportive, and welcoming learning environments.

Caring creates a ripple effect. The children begin to feel safe and secure knowing adults have their best interests at heart, and the ripple continues. This sense of security allows the children to look beyond their own immediate needs to the needs of others. Children who are taught and encouraged to show caring behaviors early on are more likely to continue these behaviors in later years. Prosocial behaviors also predict children’s strengths in other developmental areas, such as academic and social and emotional skills.

Sustaining Children’s Cultural, Ethnic, and Language Identities

Educators view all children as valued members of the learning community. They know that learning caring behaviors may be influenced by various caregiving practices and values like, for example, a family environment that emphasizes interdependence rather than independence.

Here are some ways educators can sustain children’s cultural, ethnic, and language identities:

Work closely with families and community members to learn about children’s cultural and language experiences and create meaningful learning activities that affirm children’s familial and cultural backgrounds.
Design environments that reflect and celebrate children’s diverse cultures and languages.
Teach children pride in their cultural, linguistic, and individual identities.
Show children ways to help a peer feel fully included in their learning community.
Plan activities where children share and learn about each other’s cultural and language backgrounds and experiences.

Practices for Children with Disabilities or Suspected Delays

In a caring and equitable community, educators model appreciation for children’s diverse abilities. They display pictures and use books that portray people with disabilities in positive ways. They support the success of all children and offer individualized support when children experience difficulties in social situations.

Educators provide varying levels and types of support, depending on a child’s learning needs. Here are some effective practices and examples:

Modify the physical environment to ensure access and participation of every child.
- Arrange the physical environment so that a child using a wheelchair or walker can independently move around.
- Post a visual of classroom rules to help a child with a language delay better understand expected social behavior.
Increase learning opportunities.
- To provide more support for a child who struggles to participate in social interactions with peers, educators can invite a more socially competent peer to model a social behavior or directly invite the child to join in an activity.
- Educators can use an activity matrix to plan when and how to do this teaching practice during daily activities and routines.
- Provide intensive instruction to teach a child who struggles with social interactions important skills, like asking a peer to play, offering to help a peer who is struggling with a task, or consoling a peer in distress.

Infants – Early On

Children at an early stage of developing caring behaviors are ready to learn how to:

Show interest in other children by smiling, touching, reaching, or making sounds directed to the child.
Engage in simple back-and-forth interactions with another child by vocalizing, imitating each other’s sounds, using gestures, or sharing or exchanging a toy or object.
Vocalize, gesture, or cry to seek adult help, or offer a toy or object to comfort another child who is crying or upset.
Interact with children who have diverse physical, language, and ability characteristics.

Toddlers – Emerging Skills

Children at an emerging stage of developing caring behaviors are ready to learn how to:

Actively move near other children to play or engage in simple conversations.
Show a preference for a playmate, such as greeting friends by name or seeking a friend to play with and moving toward them.
Use words or actions to comfort another child who is hurt or crying.
Engage in conversations about biases and injustices. Adults can support when they see instances of unfair behavior, such as when a child grabs another child’s toy, or when a group of children reject a peer who does not yet speak English.

Preschoolers – Increasing Mastery

Children who are increasing their proficiency in caring behaviors are ready to learn how to:

Use a variety of skills to enter social situations with other children, such as suggesting something to do together, joining an existing activity, or sharing a toy.
Play cooperatively with other children by communicating with each other and working toward a common goal.
Recognize biases and injustices and speak up or offer support when another child is being treated unfairly.
Describe their own cultural, language, and ability identities and how they are similar and different from those of other children.

Practices in Action

This playlist features examples of practices that facilitate creating a caring community in early childhood learning environments. As you watch these short videos, think about what you already do to foster a caring community and what additional practices you can implement.