Alissa Mwenelupembe on Stories of Resistance in Early Care and Education — Member Spotlight

On April 21 2023, Dr. Barbara Cooper was forced to resign as Secretary of the Alabama Department of Early Childhood Education. This occurred after a pre-K educator resource book “National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) Developmentally Appropriate Practice Book, 4th Edition” was banned due to “woke concepts”.

Dr. Cooper is a strong leader, advocate, and member of the NAEYC Governing Board. NAEYC has issued a statement of support for Dr. Cooper and a petition for individuals and organizations to sign in support of DAP. Read the letter and sign the petition here.

In this member spotlight for the Early Childhood Leaders of Color Collaborative, we speak with Alissa Mwenelupembe, MA. Alissa, who is the Managing Director of Early Learning at NAEYC, works closely with the NAEYC Staff who published the most recent edition of “Developmentally Appropriate Practice | NAEYC”, and recently authored “Stories of Resistance: Learning from Black Women in Early Care and Education”.

She speaks on supporting Dr. Cooper and DAP, shares stories from her latest publication, and offers insight into why she chose to participate in the Early Childhood Leaders of Color Collaborative. Listen and read the interview below.

My name is Alissa Mwenelupembe.

I am the managing director of early learning at the National Association for the Education of Young Children. I started in the early childhood profession, much like many did. I was 18 years old, it was summer, I was getting ready to go to college and I needed a job. One of the things my mom said was that “Well, you like kids, go work at the daycare down the street.” It was close to my house. I didn’t have a car. I could walk or easily get a ride. And so, I started working in a classroom with two-year-olds at 18.

I spent my summers working at that early learning center. I worked with two-year-olds, I worked with one-year-olds and eventually moved to work with the afterschool program. From there, I realized this was something that I actually was interested in and I wanted to do.

I looked at the director of that center who I really saw as a mentor and thought, “I think I want to do what she does.” And so I just continued to work through the path of moving to what looked like leadership to me at various stages. So started right alongside children, working with seven two-year-olds every day, moving up to working as an office manager of an early learning program, and then as a director, and then continuing my trajectory where I was working as a coach and a mentor to other early learning leaders, creating content for my state, and now working at our national association.

Question: What does your work look like today?

Answer: I just became Managing Director in January. When I came to NAEYC in December 2020, I was overseeing our early learning program accreditation. Now my role has extended to not only overseeing our early learning program accreditation, which accredits around 6,000 early learning programs across the US and on military bases overseas. I also oversee our publications, NAEYC publishes books and journals. We have two journals, one called Young Children, which is our peer-reviewed research journal, and another called Teaching Young Children, which is a practitioner-focused, accessible resource for early educators. We also have blogs and other content that we produce, and then also our professional development department where we oversee the creation of training resources for early educators.

Q: Excellent. And you have a very equity-forward approach to your work and it’s an interesting time to be doing that work. Before we jumped on, we were just talking about some of the recent news. So, can you tell me a little bit about some of the resistance we’re facing to really centering equity in early childhood education and how you think about that work as in your role at NAEYC?

A: Yeah, it’s been a hard week. One of our colleagues, our governing board member at NAEYC, Dr. Barbara Cooper, NAEYC, has faced some backlash in the state of Alabama where she was forced to resign from her position as a secretary of Early Childhood Education, primarily because of a NAEYC resource called Developmentally Appropriate Practices, DAP.

One of the intentional efforts that we have done at NAEYC in the past, I’d say five years, is bringing in equity focus to our work. Our latest edition of DAP, the one that’s called into question, our fourth edition, really centers equity as the central theme to how we can educate young children that if we don’t acknowledge children and family identities, what they bring to the early learning space, how we support their individuality, whether that is about race or culture or gender or gender identity, family structure, all those things matter. And so that’s something that we have central to the work that we do at NAEYC.

In 2019, I was on the governing board of our association actually before I came on staff; we published a position statement called Advancing Equity in Early Childhood Education, which then prompted additional changes to our content that everything points back to that position statement where advancing equity is a primary goal of our organization. And so, we’re continuing to grapple with the realities of what it means to be an organization that centers equity, but also knowing that many educators, many folks that are in our early learning space are dealing with realities every day in their context that are in complete opposition to that goal. And so as a national organization that has affiliates across the United States, we have 51 affiliates that are found in most states, even Puerto Rico, we have to be responsive to what those folks are dealing with as well.

And so, it’s this like tension between what we believe about young children and what the research tells us about how young children learn and grow and develop and what their families need to support that. And also, that there are politics at play here that are bigger than just the work that we do in the early learning space. And how we can best support educators who are on the front lines doing this work every day and that believe that young children and their identities matter and are important, and also the educator identities matter and are important. It would be hard for me to ignore the fact that I’m a black woman working in a context where oftentimes my identity isn’t seen or recognized as being valuable to the work that we do. And I know our educators are facing that every day as well.

Q: I’m curious if you have any thoughts for folks that are encountering some of that resistance in different states across our nation, and if you have any ideas for, as they navigate those barriers, but still want to make sure that center what they know is best for our kids and still leading with that intention. Any thoughts for them as they navigate that space?

A: One thing that we’re trying to do right now is to build a movement. If you visit our website, naeyc.org, you’ll see there’s a place where you can sign on in support of the DAP. I mean, our goal is to get hundreds of thousands of signatures saying that we’re in this together. This is not about one State or one community. This is about all of us, with the goal of supporting all children across the country, across the world, that we are in this together, and that we are unified in the — we don’t always use the word fight because we’re early learning professionals, but this is a fight. We have to stand up for what we believe in. And in order to do that, we need as many voices as possible. So I think right now it is lifting your voice.

We’ve got a statement that can be shared. You can find it on our website, sharing that with your network, signing on in support of developmentally appropriate practices and in support of Dr. Cooper.

That’s the other piece of this is there is a human being, a Black woman who lost her job standing up for what’s right. We want to support her and we want to support everybody doing the same thing every day in their own community.

Q: I would love to turn to your recent publication and celebrate you a little bit with your recent publication. So tell us a little bit about your recent publication, introduce it to us and tell us about its origins as well.

A: It’s a great connection point because we’re talking about Black women standing up for what they believe in my book which is called Stories of Resistance Learning from Black Women in Early Care and Education is a collection of stories of black women who are doing just that. They have found the path to find a seat at the table even when they weren’t given or invited into that seat. Been so proud to elevate the stories of the women in the book and what their experience has been navigating a field that hasn’t always been friendly to people that look like me. So, being able to share real-life stories of what that experience looks like. I have two goals for this book. One is to start a conversation. We talk a lot about seats at the table. That was kind of the prompt of this book.

Right now there are people that are sitting in those seats. I hope that this book can help some of those people who have held those seats for a long time to think about how they might move aside and make some room for someone else who maybe brings a new perspective, that brings new information that can help us to really shape our profession and our work going forward. But also, there are women who are coming into this space, much like I was at 18 years old, coming into a body of work that was new to me, but I saw that I had some aspirations there, to be able to see examples of what it could look like. If we don’t provide young women of color some opportunities to see themselves in positions that are making a difference and leading change, then they don’t know that that’s possible for them. I really hope that people who have held the power for a while can take a look and say, maybe I need to bring some new folks to the table. But then also the people who are waiting in the wings can see that this is possible to hang in there, to show up even when you’re not invited sometimes, to raise your voice even when it feels scary because it’s valued. And there are others that look like them, that share their experiences that have been able to navigate those challenges.

Q: That’s a beautiful purpose. You have some beautiful intentions behind the book. You just talked a little bit about some of why you chose to focus on stories. I’m really curious to hear maybe from the perspective of your 18-year-old self, what are some of the stories that are in this text here that jump out to you or that may have resonated with you then?

A: So I’ve been really proud of the voices that I was able to bring together because they’re really diverse. I think that is the other part. There’s not one story. Maybe we might share some things about ourselves. Maybe we share a skin tone, maybe we share where we’re from. But we all have these unique experiences and there’s not one story about being a black woman in early education, being any person of color in a space. There’s many stories there. So there are 12 stories in the book, 12 unique stories coming from different age groups. I have my favorite, I mean, I love them all. I can’t say I have a favorite, but Threse Lanier is our elder of the group, and I believe she just celebrated her 75th birthday. And so, hearing her describe her experience of teaching Headstart in the sixties and talking about anti-biased education in the sixties and seventies in Alaska, nonetheless, where she tells the story of when her family, when her mother gave birth to her in Alaska, it was in the newspaper that a colored baby was born in their town in Alaska, that they were the only black people in their entire area, that it was a news story.

And so to hear that perspective of like where we’ve come from, to folks that Megan Green is a little younger than me, and so her kind of talking about her identities as a black woman, but also gender and her sexuality and how those things are all intertwined in her experience of being an educator, of being an advocate, of being now going through and getting a doctorate degree and teaching. I think there’s a really interesting gamut of stories. I have people that are still in classrooms leading from the classroom. I have Jerletha McDonald who is a businesswoman of all businesswomen who has taken her experiences running a family childcare, to like being a family childcare mogul where she just like embodies what it means to be an entrepreneur and to be bold in spaces. I think the stories are both about personal journeys and also about our professional journeys.

And I think that’s what makes the story so special to me. You can see everyone’s humanity too. That we are all individuals, and we all have struggled, but also we’ve taken these things that have felt really hard and challenging and just built something that’s really beautiful out of that struggle. And so, I’m actually simultaneously to the book, I’m writing a dissertation that uses some of these stories. My dissertation is about the experiences of black women in early childhood leadership. And so as I’m looking at the stories from the book and looking at them through a research perspective, the themes that have really risen up for me, they’re not about the challenges. They’re about resilience and they’re about overcoming adversity. And so I see this as a celebration of triumph over adversity as opposed to, oh, here are all the bad things that have happened to us over our lives. And I hope that people can feel that as they read the stories. And there are questions that go along with each story, the reflection questions of like, this isn’t about feeling sorry for us. This is about harnessing us. We’ve got a lot to be able to offer to this profession and to the world in general if people could really see the strengths.

Q: Let’s talk a little bit more about this community. You’re a member of the Early Childhood Leaders of Color Collaborative, so I would love to just hear why you decided to participate in the collaborative.

A: Yeah, the overarching reason why I’ve decided to participate is to have a community. This work is really hard and especially when you are fighting against some of the things that are happening in real-time. People are trying to silence our voices. And so, to be able to have a space to come to with people who are similar but different that’s one of the things that I’ve really appreciated is the broad sense of different ideas, different experiences, different areas of expertise, and bringing all that together, where if I’m like, I really don’t know a lot about fundraising, that’s something I’d like to learn about, there are groups that have expertise in that and I can go to. So I think it’s about being able to know that there are others out there that are doing the same thing as you that you can lean on, but also people that are doing things that are very different that you can learn from.

And so, I really appreciate the diversity of the group, the ability to check in when I can in, and also feel like — life is busy, work is busy. It doesn’t feel like it’s a burden. It feels like this is something that I have to tap into when I need it. I’ve actually shared with two of my colleagues because I have really appreciated the engagement and support and so I reached out to two of my colleagues on the executive team at NAEYC who are also women of color to say, “Hey, you all need to get involved with this group. This is something that I think will be really beneficial to you.” So I just would encourage if there are folks that maybe you’re seeing this that haven’t engaged, it’s really worth your time and you’re going to gain a lot from it.

Q: All right. So we’re wrapping up here. I would love to just hear about some of the goals that you have as a leader in early childhood in the coming year to 18 months. You mentioned your dissertation, but just curious about what other ways folks might be able to follow you in the work that you’re doing and support the work that you’re doing.

A: Yeah, so first thing become Dr. Mwenelupembe, which should happen this summer. Other than that, I mean we are really trying to figure out how to elevate the importance of early education, trying to build a movement around why developmentally appropriate practices are important, why we need to come together as a community to be able to stand up to some of the criticism and pushback that we get. For many years now, the early childhood community has been fighting against some push down from the K12 space, things that don’t feel right for what we know about how very young children develop. And I think this is just another moment for us to come together to really think about not only what is right in regards to the curriculum for young children, but what’s right in how we support their development as the future of our world. There’s going to be a day where these three and four-year-old children are taking care of us. And so, how do we make sure that we’re doing what we need to do right now to be able to set us up for a better existence in the future?

I think we’re also really working towards making sure that what we’re putting out as NAEYC, what content we’re putting out into the world feels right for individuals. It feels right for communities. It’s more widely adopted as the way we do things. Really setting us up. We actually know a lot about early learning programs. We know a lot about educators and we want to share that. I look forward to continuing to grow the work that I’m doing to bring more voices to the table and just to continue to elevate early childhood education as a profession, as a meaningful contribution to the larger education space, and get to a place where our early educators are valued and trusted and compensated for the work that they do in ways that they just aren’t right now.

Q: How might folks be able to connect and partner with you?

A: Yeah, look me up on LinkedIn. That’s been a goal of mine for the past few months, is to be more active on LinkedIn. So you can find me there, Alissa Mwenelupembe, and I’d love to connect and talk about our shared goals and how we might be able to support each other.

Q: Thank you so much for your time. This has been a real pleasure. Any closing thoughts for our community?

A: Keep fighting the good fight. That’s all I can say this week is, we have got a long road ahead of us and the only way that we’re going to be able to sustain ourselves is to support each other. So find your community, keep connecting, and reach out to each other. We’ve got a lot of hard work ahead of us, but I feel like we can do this. We just really need to lean on each other right now to be able to fight against some pretty strong forces that are out there telling us that what our experiences are, what we’re saying, aren’t valid or true, and we know that’s not true, so we just need to stick together.

The Early Childhood Leaders of Color (EC LOC) Collaborative is a national, self-organized network for leaders of color in early childhood. To create a new reality for EC LOC, the Collaborative is designed to…

• Create a restorative, healing space for leaders to be and learn in community with one another;
• To grow and strengthen their organizations through peer learning and partnerships; and
• To take collective action on behalf of the communities they serve.

Learn more at https://www.promisestudio.org/ecloc.