ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to demonstrate a classroom teacher's willingness to discuss racism with young students. It offers examples of using counter-stories as a pedagogical resource in an early childhood setting. The chapter explores how counter-stories supported many child-driven conversations about race and racism in Jessica's classroom. These examples are meant to operationalize critical race theoretical frameworks in the early educational lives of children at school and to demonstrate how one teacher specifically utilized counter-stories to prompt and sustain conversations about race, power, and inequity with young children. Although social justice has become an all-embracing term, it serves as an overarching aim to address issues of equity, power, and fairness. The chapter utilizes Picower's six elements of social justice education in elementary classrooms as part of our social studies program. However, the ways in which teachers design learning experiences about controversial and sensitive topic, such as race, is not always straightforward and can lead to unexpected consequences.
