CONVERSATION #1:
What is it that we want to make visible?
-in the context of a community facing event
We as a group of Reggio-inspired educators, if we want to be more community facing what is it that we stand for?
-Our context is a community that isn’t really into that side of innovation-Baltimore. We want to be the school that can put something out there and be the example. We have lots of Jewish preschools surrounding us, and none of them are really aware of what Reggio is. The importance of learning with the child, what the teacher what’s the children to know verse what the kids want to know. Speak with them, not at them. Kids are capable of so much. Looking at them as people who are capable. Go in with the idea of why don’t we just try it and see where it goes. You can put wire in front of a two year old, and they can make something and use it. We want to shift the image of the child.
-What I understand about Reggio is that it’s a community that began following WWII that was to help repair and help. It could be interesting to bring that voice forward again. The purity and the honesty of childhood and the process of going through that repair. It could be very powerful to bring that back and visible. The joy piece. Going back to the basics, but in an innovative way. Taking out all the things that are pre-done for the children because they are able and capable. Let them get dirty and be in the mud. Get rid of that museum mentality of don’t touch. It’s ok to play and experience things. If they don’t experience it then they won’t internalize. You can be in a place to learn from it too as a teacher and watch, and listen. Things that they say are profound. We focus on what we want them to do instead of how they are doing it. Focus on the process. We struggle with peeling the onion as teachers. Instead of saying that we’re watching the children, and they were curious about this, and we were watching them think. I think I read somewhere that even Malaguzzi himself came out of that time after WWII wanting to treat childhood as precious and joyful again, instead of the preciousness and joy taken away during the war. The goal of this was to bring the joy of childhood back to the children and then they learned what children were so capable because they let them go.
-We always talk about the wonder and the curiosity. Just listening in a twos classroom, the ahhs and oohs over just drawing with chalk pastels on paper. It just gives you that true innocence. The child has the pastel all over his face, and they are experiencing it literally for the first time, uninhibited. If we let them do it, they are engaged and intrigued. That’s real childhood.
-We learn from them. Today we were doing some observational drawings of bugs, and a girl was frustrated because she couldn’t draw the wings the way she wanted, so I suggested that we trace the wings with our fingers to feel what we need to draw and she said she could feel the line and then felt as though she could draw it. We take away everything from when we bring in our expectations. Her face lit up and she was proud. They own it. It becomes a part of them.
-I tell them I never want to hear them say I can’t. You can say I don’t know how, I haven’t learned yet. There’s a power in showing the community what children are capable of. So if you really want to transform what people view of children, you have to put it out there.
-The theater curtain project in Italy. The children went through the process of creating it and documented. They have bikes in the subway created by the children. These are there city sculptures. This isn’t something that our culture has even touched upon. I think it’s doable.
-Our goal at school is a relationship project. We are connecting as classes with community members/businesses and doing a study of that experience. We’re documenting it and having it our school and then in the business because want people to see what children are capable of. In Italy they wanted to convince their politicians that they wanted to have the funding so they showed them just what children are capable of. They went into businesses and studied, for example there was a bakery and their recreation was an exact replica of all the pastries and then they were displayed in the cases in the bakery alongside the actual pastries and people in the community saw them.
-It’s most important to show the work from the kids’ perspective, through their eyes because people get stuck on well that’s because it worked for you in your school. The kids aren’t different in Italy. The way that we set our classrooms up and how we treat the children allows the children to be. It’s the way in which it’s being done needs to be shown. But, anything is possible. Explaining that it just doesn’t have to be in Italy, there are schools all over that are doing this and to see really what they are learning. Slowing down and being with an idea, a process, whatever it may be and really digging deeper. For example, we’re looking at lines and we’ve been studying lines for months. You can really take something and learn from the kids in a reciprocal relationship. What we are showing them, people at large, is that we’re respecting the kids.
So, what is the community?? You mentioned parents, politicians, kids.
-I don’t think there is a specific community. Everybody needs o hear it. There are parallels to be seen between any group. I find that I end up talking about the same things, really, when I’m talking to my boyfriend but in very different contexts (I’m in early childhood education and he is in network systems). The concepts are broad concepts, not just early childhood concepts.
-I wonder if it’s more of a space than a group. I wonder if there’s a central space that could send a message where many people would cross that path. It if there is something that could move and be a representation in many spaces. When I think about Reggio, I think about their piazza and that’s where they tend to display. Where in a city is a space that is commonly used. Could we do digital? The possibilities that we have that we never have with technology. Social media, technology, I don’t know a blog, or good ol’ television. Something most likely would be tangible, but then could it be sent out further.
-It would also be nice to have an opportunity for dialogue. Technology can help with that or having a showing and a discussion afterwards. But, because Reggio is so reflective, so we don’t want to leave out that reflection. It would almost be interesting to put something out into the community, except reflection, and then alter it.
-Like a case study. I don’t know what it is that everyone’s thinking, but if there was work done and then a place for others to add or change the piece. And then watch that change and alteration. It can keep on, never ending. For example, what if we put something out in a community about weaving or wire, but you put it out in different communities and then have a way to observe how those differ and are the same? Represents that community, but it would be from different perspectives. Looking at something from a different angle, but with a common thread. Someone’s going to do it one way, and another may never even think of it that way. There’s not a right a wrong, but how are we getting there. You go in with an idea, but it takes a different direction, and you let the kids steer, and at the end you can look back at appreciate the unexpected.
-I’m thinking about those shipping containers that were part of an exhibit- where people could step inside and see someone from another part of the world. It was unsettling for some adults, but children loved it and were not hesitant at all. It would be cool to have something where children are sharing their perspective with people who haven’t seen it.
Why are we doing this? Why does it matter?
-Because children are our future. We’re defending children. We take everything away by being like oh, they’re being loud so take my ipad. We inevitably take away innocence. Realizing what children can do, what they can be capable of, and how we’re robbing them of all these abilities because we don’t want to have to do something.
- It’s not always about not wanting to do something, it’s also taking away the fear that parents have. There is access to information constantly. You hear about children being kidnapped and while I’m calm, I think about this all the time. And I get that feeling inside, in here. You are petrified for children. You don’t want them to be outside by themselves. It’s hard to live in this world bombarded by information that makes you fearful. I have to consciously think and allow them to go to the park. What do you do if you’re scared all the time? That’s where the trauma is now. This information age has created very scared people. And then you add on to that the pressures in early childhood, which is based in fear too. Right now success is so measured by these skills, and college degrees, where we forget what is behind those skills are these questions, and that sense of wonder.
-And children become adults who make all their own decisions. We make so many decisions for them when they are young, then they turn an age and we’re like “Decide for yourself”.
-We want to build emotional resilience in children, to acknowledge that you will experience many emotions as humans, but that’s ok. That’s what will be important in their future.
Back to big group, big ideas from each group:
Alex: Focused on relationships, three aspects as we were thinking about some kind of event, an “EVENT” sounds too restricting, reword that- community dialogue, empathy and caring. Relationships are what make us human.
Olivia: Not jaded by all the fear in the world
Meredith: the Parents as community, helping others understand why we do this approach and advertising us and what we do to educate children
Brittany: The stories should be plural, global, before we go out to the community, we should solidify ourselves as a community- RETREAT
Delonna: One of the threads we thought of was the 100 languages, the foundation by which we build off- our values and identity
January 17, 2018
CONVERSATION #2:
In thinking about community, Jen recapped where we started when we were talking about this idea of a community “event” (for lack of a better word). How do we make visible our community? How do we start? What is the community?
A community has a specific identity and you have to go to the next step of what is an identity? What goes into making up an identity? Usually when you have an identity it’s based on shared values. You can’t begin conversation about an event unless we are able to decide what our identity is and what are our values?
Thinking of common threads, one is how we see children… our view of the child… learning as a group… the child has a voice, and we want to hear that voice.
One of the first questions that came up in September was “Whose community?” Is it defined geographically? The geography piece is spreading - What is it that is pulling them? There’s something greater than the fact that we’re so close that’s attracting them to come to our group.
It’s the philosophy - and professionals are looking for people who are asking “how do I get better in my profession?” Parents are looking for how do I do this parenting thing a little bit differently than I grew up with? And the kids are saying, “I like this voice I have.” Everyone comes to it differently in the process, but everyone is invested in the child and that’s where it starts. It’s all child-centered as far as why we are either professionally doing this, why as a parent I’m investing in this. Kids are valued in a unique way and they know they have a voice.
This is centered around the child, but I feel like I’ve gotten so much growth myself. My first thought was that it’s about the child, but in this very moment I realize “but how much I’ve grown myself!” So, how can we share that with other people – how parents, children, and the grown-ups in the classroom, the teachers, are all growing so much within this process. There is so much internal growth as well as watching the growth in the children.
You’re talking about the voice of the child, but you’re saying we can’t hear the voice of the child unless we have our voices. So this is also about our voices. When you have 80 voices as opposed to three voices that voice gets stronger so it’s a matter of the strength of the voices and numbers and people who are all reaching for the same thing.
The strength of those multiplying voices, and thinking about the layers in Marc Bradford’s work, you can just pull a thread in one layer and see another layer right underneath of these growth experiences. Growth for the child, the adult educator, the parent.
If we take this back to the values, DCREA has very specific values. Because otherwise we could be any early childhood group. But we’re not any early childhood group.
Everybody who is here wants to be here. Professional development and child development, you can’t have one without the other. It’s important to have as much of it as possible because we never stop learning and we want to show that to kids too. We don’t know all the answers. I have lots of questions, I listen to other people who have questions. It’s part of a social process. This group for me fulfills all of those needs of learning and really getting into things like, who are we?
When I was a child learning was not a social process. I see it every day and learning is a social process. I need to hear lots of perspectives and invite others into the process with me. This is really important – inviting other people to be a part of our learning with us and our exploring. Showing the nature of our learning as a group.
What is it that we want to invite people in to explore with us?
Going back to our values. Reggio is the groundwork, it has its roots there. We do have the philosophy we all believe in, but it’s more how we use it here. It’s a foundation, but we’re trying to be our own, to figure out what it means to us as people who live in the DC Metro area – and how do we reflect the certain values that they reflect in Reggio, how are they different, how are they the same, how it is part of our culture as educators.
There is an essential set of core values that the RE system is based on. And those values inform how we approach children, how we talk to children, how we work with children, how children are facilitators of their learning. Those are values that spread out from there, like ripples in a pond. Reggio is where it originated. The ripples spread - there’s a branch in the water and that sends them in a different direction, and a pebble in the water, and it goes a new direction. We are the branches and the pebbles, and once those original ripples hit us, they get spread out in a different way based on who we are. We’re not here to “copycat” – this is who we are and this is our approach learning, and we were inspired by this approach that originated in RE.
100 languages is probably the foundation that our community is built upon. It allows us to think, whatever your experience, that a child could have a million ways to communicate. Introducing people or starting from there is a way to show people who we are and what our community is about. It’s the foundation by which all of this was built. When you go off of that foundation, we can make it our own in the DC area.
So we should make visible what 100 Languages actually means to us?
That is the pivotal thing that changes the course of the conversation. There are lots of schools who do documentation or tangible pieces of the practice. But for us, it’s the conversations, the deeper thinking. That’s what distinguishes us. Our community has to form that idea and give it identity. Which comes back to Identity and values. There’s what should be made visible in the community.
In our community, if this is a weaving and there’s a thread that goes between us, it’s the 100 Languages.
That is where we started off in the fall. The 100 languages poem encapsulates where we are coming from. We are the people that believe this.
What would our intention be in making this visible? To spread the word! To share these values.
They aren’t just values, they are also basic rights. We feel like it’s the right thing to do and is at the core of being educators and parents. What is the right thing to do? To listen to these people that have voices. That’s where we come in, we are making them visible. It’s important that everybody know that this is the standard we are setting for ourselves. Children deserve this way of being heard, and conversed with, and it’s bigger than just one. It’s a social process. Knowing that no matter what they do it’s okay and they have a voice that it is always heard. If more people really listened, these children would grow up confident adults that won’t question that children are valued and should be listened to.