Vacuuming around life
Reggio Emilia. It's a small town in Italy that had a tough go of it during the second world war. It's also the eponymous home of a unique philosophy on child rearing and early childhood education. About three years ago, before we had done much research on homeschooling, we were spending a lot of time in our local library reading up on all the different thoughts on how properly to educate a child during the pre-school years. After reading several books, and after drawing on my own brief stint in early childhood education, I became enamoured of the method, which embraces child and experience driven learning to the nth degree. The key word in Reggio is really respect, and I don't mean the respect a teacher demands of a student, but the respect they give to that student, and to the student's naturally derived desire to learn. Trust would be another good key word because the Reggio way requires a teacher to trust in a child's impulses to lead them (teacher and child). Reggio is also very much about using all the senses and having access to physical materials—not so much toys, but materials—and freedom to explore. Reggio relies heavily on a relationship developed between child and teacher, one that is developed through careful observation. A Reggio teacher spends hours observing the children and taking notes on their activities and inclinations so as to better guide the learning experience in the future—guide, not direct, and all based on the child's own interest. From my own interpretation Reggio is really the precursor to a life of unschooling. The early formation of an autodidact.
Reggio, as a method, is not easy to grasp or to understand, in part because it does not fit well into our own cultural beliefs about child rearing and education. For that reason a real Reggio school is hard to find here. Jon and I searched the area and found that there were no official Reggio preschools with teacher who had been trained the Reggio way, or at least none that were affordable, so we decided to learn what we could about the approach and adopt it as much as possible at home, and I've been pretty pleased with the results as a whole. Calvin is a very independent learner so far, sometimes to the point of wishing me away when he is busy in his own world. In fact, the hardest point I think is going to be gauging when he does need assistance, and teaching him how to accept it. Or maybe that's my own interpretation of the situation? But until now, actually, the hardest part has been letting go of the house keeping, because Reggio demands that a child is given as much time as necessary to explore the worlds they choose.
If there is a log community in process on the floor on vacuuming day, one just has to vacuum around it.
learning & teaching
Reader Comments (1)
What an interesting surprise to come check out your blog today and read about Reggio-inspired teaching. I was introduced to Reggio in 1993 by the director of the school where I taught--she'd just returned from there and got us all started on a transformation of our teaching. It's been my passion since. When I first heard of unschooling, it seemed like the natural extension of my Reggio-inspired philosophies, and became the obvious answer for us, too. Some day you'll have to come check out my Reggio-inspired family child care.