Evaluation

Since its inception, Young Hearts Open Minds™ has been committed to ongoing program evaluation, securing both quantitative and qualitative feedback from program participants to understand the range of experiences individuals had in going through the program, the kinds of impact the program had on their teaching, and participants’ suggestions about how to improve the program. Data collection has been wide ranging and has included participant surveys, participant focus groups, one-on-one interviews with site directors, and direct feedback from the program’s trainers (called Facilitator/Coaches).

To date, the program has been implemented in 20 different sites—childcare centers and preschools—in three different states: Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Iowa.

Program Evaluation Key Findings

The Young Hearts Open Minds program has been very well received by participants in terms of its importance, overall quality, and the impact it has made on the sites’ teaching practices.

Impact has been determined by measuring the change in participant confidence—from the beginning of the program to the end of the program—along three different dimensions:

Having the skills and abilities to teach in a way that will help prevent the development of bias, race bias, and racism in children.

Ability to successfully address issues related to bias, race bias, and racism in the classroom.

Ability to successfully address issues related to bias, race bias, and racism with parents.

Participants were asked to rate their confidence in each area on a 10-point scale, where 1 = Not at all confident and 10 = Very confident. The table below presents the average rating scores for both the beginning of the program, the end of the program and the change—the impact—that occurred.

Impact of the Young Hearts Open Minds Program: Three Dimensions of Participant Confidence
Confidence In:	At the Beginning of the Program	At the End of the Program	Change: Program Impact
Having the skills and ability to teach in a way that will help prevent the development of bias, race bias, and racism in children	5.67 (N = 107)	7.72 (N = 79)	+2.05
Ability to successfully address issues of bias, race bias, and racism in the classroom	6.20 (N = 105)	7.91 (N = 81)	+1.71
Ability to successfully address issues of bias, race bias, and racism with parents	5.28 (N = 107)	7.16 (N = 80)	+1.88

2. Both teachers and site directors of the participating sites highly valued the Young Hearts Open Minds program and identified several contributions the program made to the teaching practices at their sites, as well as the site’s overall culture, chief among them:

Increased awareness among the teaching staff of the importance of addressing race- and race bias-related issues in their classrooms.

Increased and more focused conversations among teachers around these issues.

Increased awareness of the staff’s own personal biases and related personal growth as a result of this increased understanding and awareness of their own biases.

Deepened commitment to providing an anti-bias education.

Strengthening of the professional community among teachers.

3. The core program content was well received in terms of the areas it covered and the quality of information it contained, in particular:

Concrete examples of how to bring up sensitive topics in the classroom.

What to say and do in specific situations as these sensitive topics come up.

How to use visual aids and other teaching materials that appropriately explore differences between people.

4. Feedback gathered through the program evaluation process has yielded several specific suggestions regarding how to improve the Young Hearts Open Minds program, including

The addition of more concrete examples of how bias and race bias might manifest themselves in the classroom and how those situations can best be addressed.

The addition of more content related how to further engage parents in the program.

The tightening up of certain portions of the program that seemed redundant to participants.

In Their Own Words

Presented below are several verbatim comments from program participants—teachers and site directors, as well as program trainers (Facilitator/Coaches). Taken together, they represent the voices of those who took part in the program.

Teachers

“One thing that I think really changed our view was the fact that our classroom should look like that at all times. Now we’re like, ‘Okay, someone should enter the classroom and they should see the world reflected in that classroom at all times.’”

“It broadened my thinking—for example, to be more aware of differences between children and what diversity really means.”

“One of my pivotal moments was the information not to be colorblind because people are different. To be excited about the differences and explain to the kids why it’s amazing to be different than each other. Like we all have different skin colors—just celebrate it and not put it to the side. Enjoy the differences in people.”

“We were ready to dig in. How do we do this, how does this look in the classroom? If it doesn’t come up naturally in the classroom, how do we bring it up? The most beneficial parts of the program happened when we were all together discussing this with each other and the facilitator.”

“Something we’ve noticed in our classroom is when we are reading books we deliberately point things out about the characters. ‘This book takes place in Mexico’ and then saying more about that country. Like, ‘That country is south of us. They speak Spanish there. Let’s look on a map.’ We’ve seen a few kids since then say things like, ‘Their skin is brown!’ and we say, ‘Yes! It sure is.”

“I did have one parent who wrote a letter to us and … just thanked us for everything we’ve been teaching. Their child comes home and talks about so many things. This little girl went home and shared [some conversations that had occurred in the classroom]. The parent was like, ‘This is so great to hear what you’re teaching her.’ So it was great to hear that kids were going home and talking about [these topics] with their parents.”

Site Directors

“My staff related to her [the Facilitator/Coach] and she just had a way of drawing them in and really being able to draw on the content and keep them on task with what we were talking about. But she also took the time to listen to where they were coming from and really be able to absorb that and really help them learn from their own experiences.”

“When we talked about this program we connected it to our mission and what we already believe and how it fits with what our values are. [The program] isn’t that different than what [we] already stand for. I’ve always made a point of talking about our values of inclusion and diversity.”

Facilitator/Coaches

“A teacher said, ‘Definitely I would not have known to really pick these words [which helped a child in a particular situation] … if we hadn’t been going through this [program] and really talking about this.’ So [the teacher] was really proud. I mean, they didn’t think they did it right but we were all like, ‘Kudos to you. I don’t think I could have done it better myself.’ So we had this big, enlightening thing.”

“[Regarding a specific story shared among teachers], it was really wonderful to see them [the teachers] taking care of each other … and problem-solving together. As we move into our last weeks together, I’m trying to create more space for them to share and lean on one another since I won’t be here soon and it seems to be working. I think that a lot of my teachers are feeling empowered and the center director says there is a lot of buzz around the school.”