Cynthia Ballenger is an Early Childhood Specialist currently on staff at the Cheche Konnen Center, A National Science
Foundation-funded center for science education reform and linguistic minority students.
Summary
What happens when a teacher does not share a cultural background with her students? In this thoroughly engaging
account, one North American teacher describes her three years teaching Haitian children in an inner-city preschool.
Using classroom research, Cynthia Ballenger explores how teachers who listen closely to children from other cultures
can understand the approaches to literature that these children bring with them to school. Practitioners will identify
with Ballenger, who struggles to find the academic strengths of children whose parents do not read bedtime stories
nor prepare them for school in ways that are familiar to her. Focusing on three areas crucial to early childhood
education (classroom behavior, concepts of print, and storybook reading), this book will challenge many widely
held assumptions and cultural perspectives about the education of young children.