a place for exploring variations in tools, techniques, and materials with which to work.
I feel like the importance of this in a child's life is immeasurable. Giving children a space where they are able to explore in ways that are new to them is how they learn.
Two teachers per classroom as co-teachers
This is what I currently have in my classroom. I didn't realize how nice of a system this was until I had a co-teacher. I have always been in environments where there is one lead teacher and then assistant teachers, but I really love sharing the lead responsibility with someone else. It takes some of the pressure off of lesson planning and it allows for students to get teaching styles that are different from your own 100% of the time.
Participation by parents to infant/toddler centers and preschools forchildren with special needs
This is an element of early childhood education that I really wish was more prevalent in most traditional schools. This has been increasingly difficult with the pandemic at our center, because almost all teacher and parent contact has been taken away. This I feel has left a large hole in our classroom community because we really have no window into what is going on at home besides what our students tell us. Parents should be active participants within the classrooms.
seek public support for educational reform.
This has always been a personal goal of mine. I feel that early childhood education reform is so necessary in our nation and yet I often feel overwhelmed at how to go towards making strides for educational reform.
rather than child-minding they have to open up to observation, research and experimentation by teachers who, together with children, participate in constructing a new culture of education.
I really love this quote. Working together with children should be the focus of education.
But this is true if, and only if, children have the opportunity to make these shifts in a group context - with others - and if they have the chance to listen and be listened to by others, to express their differences and be receptive to the differences of the others.
This statement really stood out to me. The environment has to be hospitable for openness and listening.
• Listening is the basis for any learning relation-ship. Through action and reflection, learning takes shape in the mind of the subject and, through representation and exchange, becomes knowledge and skill.
I love this. If we are going to educate than we need to understand the importance of listening to our students. There should be listening and learning happening in both sides of the relationship between teacher and student.
istening should welcome and be open todifferences, recognizing the value of the other's point of view and interpretation
I feel like this is getting more and more difficult today!
.• Listening produces questions, not answer
I love this statement. If we are actively listening, we will have doors opened that raise more questions. Listening opens the door to further exploration and understanding of things rather than just providing us with straight answers.
to search for the meaning of life and their own sense of self as soon as they are born. This is why we, in Reggio, view children as active, compe-tent and strong, exploring and finding meaning -not as predetermined, fragile, needy and incapable.
I find this ideology so important. I feel like I constantly see parenting or teaching philosophies that focus on helping children do things constantly rather than seeing children as beings that are capable to do things independently and strongly. If we treat our children as fragile and incapable then like we have for years past than we are doing our children a disservice.
strongly suggested to listen to children. This word "listening," this concept, seems to have become more acknowledged, shared, and practiced. But this attitude cannot be limited only to this emergen
I feel like this is a common trend where people will all of a sudden remember to put their children first in emergent situations but then forget to in their day to day life. I appreciate this statement and how they are reminding parents and teachers and everyone else who works with children to remember to not only focus on the needs of their children in dire situations, but to be continually conscious of what children have to say.
difficulty in knowing how and when to intervene because this depends on a moment-by-moment analysis of the children’s thinking
I feel that I have similar issues because in certain cases I would choose not to intervene but my administration would see it as a situation to intervene. I would like to step back much more in my classroom and let the students show me what they like to learn. It can be stressful to constantly analyze and try and base things off of students engagement and thinking.
protagonists of their own growth.
I love this
how they prioritize them, turn them into concrete tasks, and talk about the reasons for what they do
It matters so much how we decide to prioritize the foundations of what we are doing in early childhood. If we approach it from the angle of the teacher being solely in charge of everything in the classroom, that takes away from the possibility of there being student-led moments. I love this idea of how we prioritize teacher responsibilities.
it is not easy to give a complete outline of the teacher’s task,
I love this!
W]e need a teacher
There are so many hats that teachers need to wear. I sometimes feel overwhelmed if I am balanced enough in all the different roles I need to consider.
inherently social
I feel like people forget this when they brush off the necessity of early childhood education
Patience not only opens opportunities for children to exercise their competen-cies, it also demonstrates a respect for children's agendas.
It is hard as adults to find the time to slow down speceifically for children.
t a commitment to honoring children's rights means appreciating the importance of slowing down.
I love this
ncluding language barriers and adults' fear of losing control
Adult fear of losing control is such an interesting point
impede child-adult understanding
It is hard because we are able to understand this with our child development knowledge, I just am wondering how to communicate this to parents so that we can avoid this issue as a whole.
surprised by the children's insistence that it was okay to be happy but not okay to be sad or to be angry
This is interesting! I feel like it is unfortunately common in parenting or through media for children to pick up on signals that it isn't okay for them to feel sad or angry.
10 Seen and Heard So it does not depend on the age of the teller, but on the sensitivity of the listener. A
I love this statement
The sheer magnitude of the Boulder Journey School Charter on Children's Rights should dispel any notion of young children as empty vessels waiting to be filled with adult ideas, i
Yes!!!
ldren have a right to have their words heard by other people • Children have a right to be listened to •
I love this. I love that children have a grasp on the importance of their words.
Children's Rights
This is literally my favorite list in the world this brought me so much joy to read.
the children compiled a list of their rights
The ideology of making children aware of their rights and helping to promote children's rights is something I have not thought about until being in this program. I am excited to learn more about how to promote the rights of children.
— a goodbuilding, good teachers, right time, good activities.This is the right of ALL children
I love this. I wish that everyone understood this. I feel like we would make more educational change within our government if everyone had this understanding.
There are many things that are part of a child’s lifejust as they are part of an adult’s life.
I love this idea. We need to remember the similarities and the differences between children and adults in order to create successful dynamics.
When a child feels these things are valued,they become a fountain of strength for him. He feelsthe joy of working with adults who value his workand this is one of the bases for learning.
We need to be the facilitators of creating spaces and giving children the opportunities to succeed. I feel like this encapsulates that sentiment.
Children are very sensitive and can see andsense very quickly the spirit of what is going onamong the adults in their world.
I feel like I interact many people who feel like children are not aware and absorbing what is going on in their surroundings. We need to be extremely conscious of how we present ourselves and what we say and conduct our classroom environment.
. An environment that grows out ofyour relationship with the child is unique and fluid.
I love this sentiment. We constantly need to be adjusting our physical environment to the needs of the child. Even if it is just adjusting it based off of special interests of children or their own art work to make the space more personal. I feel like it is easy to lose sight of the classroom being the child's space rather than the teacher's space.
een as learnersalong with the children
I love this idea that we are not the head or some sort of power figure, but we are learners along with our students.
Education has to focuson each child, not considered in isolation, but seen in relation with the family, withother children, with the teachers, with the environment of the school, with thecommunity, and with the wider society.
I always try to emphasize that education of a child takes a team and every team member needs to do their part. I feel like this really sums up that idea of the amount of different people and places that play a part in the educational process.
Children should be considered asactive citizens with rights, as contributing members, with their families, of theirlocal community.
I love this!
continue to formulate new interpretations and newhypotheses and ideas about learning and teaching through their daily observationsand practice of learning along with the children
This is basically the pinnacle for me of what being an early childhood educator is. We need to know our theory and past research but we are the researchers and developers of the future of early childhood education. Our observation and modifications to our teaching style are helping to shape the future of this field.
cooperative work is firmly rooted in the Emilia Romagnaregion and is based on a sense of community and of solidarity.
This is almost discouraging to me because I feel like our nation is currently so broken and divided to the point of not being able to come together for anything. I am hoping to see us move on from this soon.
participation by parents has all along remained an essentialpart of the way of working on education in that city.
I love how it all originated on parent involvement. I feel that parent involvement is so often overlooked in today's educational system - and quite frankly I feel that the level of parents willing to participate in their child's education has also diminished. I am hoping to learn ways to better parent connection and involvement so I love that the Reggio style was founded through parents.
a great deal of effort and political involvement
I am so impressed that this nation was actually able to accomplish making headway in early childhood education. One of my goals in early childhood is to make political change for early childhood education but I often get discouraged because it seems so impossible to get things through to our government. I am hoping that this will help inspire me that political change for early childhood education is possible and that change can be made on a national level.