About this Event
Workshop Description:
This panel brings together four authors of the forthcoming book, which explores the stories of AANHPI early childhood educators, higher education faculty, and policymakers. Drawing from themes in a forthcoming book, this interactive panel workshop invites participants to explore how identity, culture, and lived experience shape teaching, caregiving, and learning environments. Together, we will examine how educators can create culturally responsive spaces that offer both mirrors, where AANHPI children and families see their experiences, histories, and identities reflected, and windows that deepen understanding, empathy, and connection across communities.
Panelists will engage participants in conversations about representation, belonging, bias, and the diversity within AANHPI communities, while also exploring how systems, stereotypes, and power influence identity development. Participants will be encouraged to reflect on their own identity journeys and consider how those experiences inform their relationships, expectations, and practices with children and families
Blending personal reflection with practical strategies, this workshop will offer tools for building more equitable and inclusive environments through curriculum, storytelling, relationships, and reflective practice. Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of intersectional identity formation and concrete ideas for fostering spaces where all children feel seen, valued, and connected.
can be purchased directly from NAEYC in October 2026.
Learning Objectives:
Participants will...
- Examine how complex and intersectional identity formation—including race, culture, language, family history, and lived experience—shapes one’s sense of belonging, learning, and development.
- Reflect on personal identity journeys, biases, and experiences to better understand how they influence relationships, expectations, and practices with children and families.
- Identify strategies for creating culturally responsive learning environments that provide meaningful “mirrors and windows” through representation, curriculum, storytelling, and daily interactions that affirm AANHPI children and build connections across all communities.
Panelists:
Debbie LeeKeenan, MEd, is co- director of Anti-Bias Leaders ECE, lecturer, author and filmmaker. She has been in the field for over 50 years, a former preschool, special education, and public school teacher. She was director of the Eliot-Pearson Children’s School at Tufts University, a member of the early childhood faculty at Tufts University, Lesley University, and the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She is the lead editor for the upcoming book, No Single Story: Amplifying the Voices of Asian American and Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander Early Educators.
Jamie Cho, PhD is a consultant, teacher educator, and scholar in the field of early childhood education, currently teaching at North Seattle College and University of Washington in Bothell. She is the Governing Board Vice President-Elect of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).
Clare Juico, BAS is a family child care provider, project manager for EarlyEdU, and a co-organizer of Filipino Story Time-Seattle. Born in the Philippines and based in Seattle, Washington, she is a proud North Seattle College and Eastern Washington University alumna.
Jordan A. Taitingfong, MEd, is an educator passionate about inclusive early childhood and joyful, accessible learning. Her work focuses on disability and race, centering lived experience, addressing disparities, and uplifting identity and belonging. She is a doctoral student at the University of Washington and a Learning Training Specialist at the Haring Center.
Event Details:
This hybrid event will be held in-person at Hilltop Children's Center with an option to attend virtually via Zoom. Please indicate in your registration form if you plan to attend in-person or virtually.
2 hours STARS Training Credit available to all Washington State early learning professionals who attend the live event (in-person or virtually).
Can't make the live event? We will provide a link to the recording afterwards to all who register!
In-Person Attendees:
Free parking is available on Nickerson Street and in our 4 Nickerson parking lot. Bus #31 and #32 drop off right in front of our building (Cremona & Nickerson St. stop).
If you have any trouble finding our location, call our front desk at: 206-283-3100, Ext. 1
Virtual Attendees:
Participants who select the virtual option when they register will receive the Zoom link at least 48 hours before the event.
For any other questions about this event, please reach out to our team at: [email protected]
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Hilltop Children's Center, 4 Nickerson St, Seattle, United States
USD 0.00 to USD 49.87
