Diversity is more than skin color, language and family differences. To 3- and 4-year-olds, it can be as simple as wearing glasses, knowing how to tie shoes, eat with chopsticks or simply having a different point of view.

To help preschoolers develop different points of view and better understand diversity, the Cornell Early Childhood Center (ECC), a laboratory preschool at Cornell University, has matched a $5,000 Artist in the School Community grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts to bring a teaching artist into four pre-kindergarten (pre-K) classrooms -- two at Cornell's lab school and two in Ithaca elementary schools.

"The artistic goal of this project is to develop the child's awareness and appreciation of diversity through the use of literature, creative dramatics and the imagination," says Elizabeth Stilwell, the Jack and Diane Baillet Meakum Director of the Early Childhood Center. "Through the art form of drama, children explore the issue of diversity by listening to specially chosen books, discussing the thoughts and feelings from a book and then dramatically portraying the characters to experience different perspectives and points of view."

Jane Sprague of the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County and a teaching artist with a specialty in dramatics visits each classroom 10 times over a six- to eight-week period to work with the children; in addition she consults with the teachers to train them in how to transform stories into dramatic expression and creative thinking and to allow the children to participate as writers, directors, actors, audience members and technicians. Sprague recently has finished her residency at the Cornell lab school and will start working in the pre-K classrooms at the Caroline and Enfield elementary schools in coming weeks.

"Very young children can begin to think about diversity issues, which are very meaningful to them," says Stilwell. "Although it can be very hard for them to take on the perspective of a character who, for example, is excluded from playing with others or who excludes others, and identify the emotions involved, these issues are very important to work on."Stilwell notes that the Ithaca City School District (ICSD) student population is diverse: One-third of the students are eligible for free and reduced lunches; about one-third are of a minority race or culture; and about 55 languages are spoken in the schools. In addition, many students are from single-parent households, families with adopted children and families with same-sex parents.

"This rich diversity is the reason we focus this project on giving young children the opportunity to gain understanding and appreciation of differences and to develop values that promote tolerance," says Stilwell. "Our goal is not only to use this experience as an opportunity to support anti-bias thinking in young children, but also to foster children's enjoyment, curiosity and empathetic awareness of cultural, racial and physical similarities and differences."

Stilwell hopes that the program, which is a pilot project, will become an integral part of the pre-K curriculum for classrooms throughout the district.

The project is a collaborative effort between the ECC and ICSD through New York state's Universal Pre-K Program.