by Louise Boyd Cadwell
PROLOGUE
The book recounts the author’s internship in Reggio Emilia (RE) preschools, and how she integrated these principles in her American school. Throughout the description of her journey, she weaves in an explanation of the Reggio philosophies.
I’m not generally a big fan of books that mix ideas and concepts with storytelling. I find that they don’t delve deeply into ideas and and the story distracts from what the book’s lessons are. Without a clear roadmap, this book comes up short in teaching me, as a parent, how to “bring Reggio Emilia home.”
This book sets out to explain what Reggio is and how one teacher founded a school based on its principles.It is not an opinion piece on how to raise children. Therefore, I’m not going to opine on the specific ideas of Reggio. Either you agree with the approach, or you don’t.
OVERVIEW
According to RE, children learn in extraordinary ways, so we must provide them with rich experiences and materials, to grow and learn with them.
There is a big focus on language and using many types of art media to discover and express ideas. According to the pedagogy, we need to nurture and support children’s fundamental need to develop strong bonds with nature. We must help them find places to make their own and we must find time together to “dig in the soil, race with the wind, or gaze at the stars.” We need to share each other’s sense of wonder.
The distinguishing features of the Reggio Emilia schools include the atelier (studio or workshop) and atelierista (studio teacher), the importance of the pedagogical team and the commitment to research, experimentation, communication, and documentation.
THE FUNDAMENTALS
- The child as protagonist. Children are curious, imaginative capable and very much interested in learning. They are constantly engaging with their environment.
- The child as collaborator. Education has to focus on the child in relation to other children, family, teachers and the community, not on each child in isolation. There is an emphasis on working in small groups.
- The child as communicator. Intellectual development is fostered through a focus on symbolic representation, including words, movement, drawing, painting, building, sculpture, shadow play, collage, dramatic play and music. Children can use many materials to discover and communicate what they understand, question, feel and imagine. Essentially, they make their own thinking visible through these natural “languages.”
- The environment as a third teacher. The learning space is designed to encourage interaction, communication and relationships. Every bit of space has an identity and a purpose,and is valued and cared for by children and adults.
- The teacher as partner, nurturer and guide. Teachers facilitate the children’s exploration.They listen and observe the children closely; they ask questions to discover the children’s ideas and theories and provide occasions for discovery and learning.
- The documentation as communication. Teachers document the children’s learning process. Transcriptions of the children’s words and speech, photographs of their work, and representations of their thinking in many media are compiled. This makes parents aware of their children’s experience, it allows teachers to better understand children, evaluate their own work and exchange ideas with other educators. It also shows children that their work is valued.
APPLYING THE FUNDAMENTALS
Experiencing Materials
Educators have a deep understanding of the power of different materials to shape a child’s experience. An extensive variety of materials (paint, clay, etc.) is available to children in the preschools of Reggio Emilia. The materials are present to help children notice the beauty, diversity and complexity of the natural world.
Teachers also devote a lot of time to preparing and presenting materials and to thoughtful reflection on how and what the children make. For example, in a typical Reggio Emelia school, you will find many shades of tempera paint. Markers and pens in many colors, soft and hard pencils, pastel crayons and colored inks are arranged and accessible on open shelves. Glass jars hold big brushes, little brushes, flat and round brushes. Other such resources include:
- Paper of all colors, sizes and transparencies
- Clay, wood, cardboard, wire, small bits of mirrors, colored glass, wire with small wire cutters and shells
- Natural materials like leaves, seeds, cones, twigs, dried flower petals, and even different colored earth and sand
- All types of ribbons, yarns, twine, embroidery floss, threads with cardboard looms
Light is also considered a material. Children work with transparent paper placed on a light table so they can play with the effects of layering colored tissue, drawing with color or arranging collage materials surrounded and immersed in light. You’ll find buttons, colorful candy wrappers, sequins, small shapes of cut paper, random objects, black and white pictures of the children, magazine photographs, copies of words or words from magazines, photocopies of children’s names, and cardboard of all shapes and types.
Most of these items are in open bins and shelves and available to students at all times. They are carefully organized and maintained by the teachers and children.
The children begin to work with most of these materials at age 3. If the children attend school earlier, they have a chance to use many of these materials as toddlers.
Environment as Teacher
The idea of relationship is a basic tenet of the Reggio Emilia approach. According to RE, trees epitomize the concept of relationship. Trees are not static; they are in constant motion, always changing and in a relationship with other elements. The educators of Reggio Emilia believe that young children can flourish when they are challenged and supported in discovering this complex mesh of relationships, which trees help them understand. They develop through paying close attention to trees, growing their own plants, working in gardens and “adopting” trees.
The best way to demonstrate to children that they are in a realtionship with the world around them is to have them eat something right from the land. Children tend to a garden and eat from its bounty to further learn many of these concepts.
Teachers often ask questions to initiate discussion on plants in relationship to other elements. When teaching about trees, the plan of the teacher is not to “teach” concepts of ecology, but to provide a context in which the children’s own ideas can grow.
Learning Space
A large part of the Reggio Emilia philosophy addresses the actual learning space. According to RE, the environment is a valuable teacher if it is attractive, comfortable, organized, inviting and engaging. Everyone in the school needs to feel welcomed, needed and engaged by exciting possibilities for learning and expressing ideas in “a hundred different languages.”
This is true of all space, from floors, to ceilings, to walls.
An ideal RE space is full of variety, with large and small spaces, areas for building, dancing, pretending, talking, thinking, reflecting and creating without distraction. Each space and each small corner of every space has an identity, a purpose, and it is cared for and respected by children and adults.
Conversations that Stimulate
The Reggio Emilia approach encourages small-group conversations with children for up to 30 minutes. Children and teachers chat, catch up, discuss ideas and enjoy each other’s company. There isn’t a rush or a sense that the teacher has a need for control.
The teacher asks good, open-ended questions that stimulate thinking and discussion. The teacher is there to facilitate and gently guide the conversation so that it doesn’t stray too far from the subject. Every child has a chance to participate, and children consider the topic at hand with all their full attention. In these conversations, the teacher does not seek right answers or impart information; adults accept the world as children see it. For example, if a child believes that a tree can talk, the teacher accepts this as a child’s own special intelligence instead of thinking it is cute/incorrect.
In order to do this well, teachers need to reacquaint themselves with the wonder of the world and see it through children’s eyes.
In addition to conversations, children are encouraged to draw and create as communication. Reggio Emilia purports that making marks and visual symbols is as important as making sounds and speaking. It allows for deeper reflection because ideas and responses become visual.
The creations by children demonstrate the great potential they have, to use materials to make sense of their various experiences, and to move them toward new insight about the world and themselves.
CONCLUSION
The Reggio Emilia philosophy believes that children learn in extraordinary ways. If we are able to observe them without judgement, provide them with rich experiences and materials and grow and learn with them, they will gain immense intellectual development.
As adults, we need to nurture and support children’s fundamental need to develop strong bonds with the world around them. We must help them find places to make their own and allow them time to explore and discover these things. For adults to be truly good at this, we need to share each other’s sense of wonder.
