France

Years ago, the Reggio Emilia project was popular here in Evansville. Like all programs, there are some things which a school can do, and others it can't. The Garden School teachers took from the Reggio program what we thought would work with us and because we don't have a bigger building, we simply couldn't do some of it.

I think it's a magnificent program and as they say so different from Montessori which I truly detest.

We had a workshop for Reggio at a center in Evansville when the interest was still high, and we came away laughing at what was deemed the garden: three half dead quarter sized plants in the middle of the room. If you can't grow a plant, you can't grow a child.

The program needs to be led by a teacher with not only ideas but a world of knowledge. I'm really doubtful if that's going to be possible in the ordinary childcare center. Here's what they are doing in France.


Newropeans Magazine France

The Reggio Emilia Approach in Early Childhood Education


Written by Francesco Bonavita
Friday, 09 September 2005

One of the most successful stories in Early Childhood Education is the Reggio Emilia project, which, for years, has been forging its own path worthy of greater consideration among educators and parents.

Spearheaded by the visionary founder, Loris Malguzzi and a host of daring practitioners as well as receiving the support of courageous parents, this Early Education design, which begins at the infancy level, has become a true bastion of schooling for the child where excitement for learning is generated.

Situated just a few miles south of Milan, the Reggio Emilia experiment has sought to promote a new vision of education that strongly defies the traditional canons of schooling, conceived within the usual classroom walls, characterized by a desk and pupil chairs, and the dominant presence of the teacher as if he or she were the ultimate oracle ready to dispense knowledge.

In a typical Reggio Emilia-inspired setting, - this concept has begun to spread like wild fire across the globe. There are now some hundreds of Reggio Emilia centers in Europe, Asia and in the U.S., most notably in Burlington, Vermont, Lincroft, New Jersey, Miami, Michigan and Washington, D.C. where innovative learning strategies in Early Childhood education are well on the way – one senses immediately a deep respect for the child upon entering any of these schools.

In an age whereby the culture of childhood is quickly undermined for the sake of imposing a more rigorous training program so that the child can get an earlier grip on standardized testing, thus accelerating the process of becoming an adult, the Reggio Emilia concept is a welcoming stride forward.

It promises to challenge traditional approaches while focusing on the childhood, exploring all its dimensions and, above all, instilling in the child the pleasure of learning. One of the temptations facing the initial observers of the Reggio Emilia experiment is the desire to label this as just another Montessori school.

While the two approaches are strikingly similar on the surface in that they both foster a climate that is conducive to the overall unfolding of a child’s potentials, the latter does not fully recognize the inherent expressiveness that the child brings to the educational cadre that is not limited to the linguistic component but rather it extends itself to a multitude of conditions, such as the imagination, communication in its wider dimension, ethnic, and cognitive occurrences.

Both methods advocate a smaller class-size and a highly stimulating learning environment whereby the child is allowed to explore without feeling inhibited. The Reggio Emilia mode is truly a constructivist approach, whereby the child gives meaning to its fantasies, creativity and to the way it perceives the world.

A 1996 exhibit of the Reggio Emilia experiment, titled The One Hundred Languages of Children,” is probably pivotal in understanding its philosophical orientation in that it accentuates the importance of the child’s total composition, be it psychological, physical, spiritual, cultural and otherwise. In other words, the one size fits all approach runs antithetical to this pedagogical notion.

On a recent visit to L’Atelier School of Miami, I had the privilege of observing first hand the vitality, the excitement and the pleasure with which children try to shape the world around them. Upon accessing the building, one has a sense of entering a habitat occupied by children, with its colorful decorations, plants and flowers, birds, photos of each child attending the school, designated by a flag, making specific references to one’s ethnic background and, most importantly, children’s work, posters, collages, artifacts ubiquitously displayed in every conceivable area of the school, clearly manifesting a reverence for the child and its work.

The drop off procedure, when the parent accompanies the child to school, is fairly atypical in that it becomes highly personalized. Parents are encouraged to stay with the child for a while and to partake of the morning assembly, by singing in a variety of languages so as to reduce any separation anxiety that the child may experience when saying goodbye to a loved one.

The transition from home to school is highly softened for the child encounters a nurturing ambience, designed to strengthen whatever insecurities may surface away from home. The traditional separation of school and society is quickly diminished here for there is a sense of the continuum in that the learning process is being conducted in another venue, without the child ever feeling angst away from home.

Once inside L’Atelier, children begin to interact with one another and to observe the world around them. The teacher’s presence is nonconforming in that learning activities are not predicated on what the learners are expected to accomplish at the end of a learning segment, rather it is the child who elects to partake of an activity.

The learning menu is highly diversified, ranging from dancing, coloring, painting, shaping clay, discovering one’s shadow, role playing and a whole host of stimulating experiences, such as helping one another, sharing a game, making friends and analyzing how things works so the child can find an appropriate comfort zone, which would allow optimum levels of expressions.

L’Atelier is also a laboratory whereby children learn to make discoveries about themselves in a variety of stimulating settings. If errors are made in their assumptions, they are given the opportunity to refine their self-expressions. But it is equally a collective experience whereby children learn to socialize, to get along with one another and to respect diversity in all its forms.

This is a school where everyone is engaged in the creative process, be it a mural, a dance, a game or a learning activity, without ever competing with one another. On the contrary, it is the celebration of the self within the collective effort of teamwork.

The relationship between the child and the teacher reaches a new plateau in that the dialogue is highly interactive, based on the notion that through synergetic education, by infusing joy to the learning process, a child’s capacity to create is unleashed.

Teachers in this setting have the uncanny ability of inviting the child to become expressive, to recognize the childish in the child and to reaffirm it rather than suppress it. In other words, the child’s curiosity and its inquisitive nature are fostered in every segment of a learning activity, for teachers do not talk down to the child.

If Jean Jacques Rousseau were alive today, he might say that Emile has been truly liberated not in the sense of roaming the wild natural habitat, rather liberated to make inquiries, to explore his sensory perceptions to the fullest extent possible and to give meaning to the world of his imagination.

Indeed, Emile would not be the least obstructed because the Reggio Emilia approach is naturally conducive to a learning mode which leans heavily on the learning style of the child, which in turn enables the child to unfold its optimum desire for learning. Perhaps, a poem by Malaguzzi himself says it best when he contemplates the strength that each child brings to the learning environment and which too often is ignored by school practitioners in their blind zeal to implement rigid state curricula:

Il bambino The childÈ fatto di cento. Is made of one hundred. Il bambino ha The child hascento lingue a hundred languagescento mani a hundred handscento pensieri… a hundred thoughts…cento mondi a hundred worldsda scoprire to discover cento mondi a hundred worldsda inventare to inventcento mondi a hundred worldsda sognare… to dream…Loris Malaguzzi

Translated by Lella Gandini