Reflections on Reggio approach

Like many educators there was a point where I used to believe that Reggio approach of teaching and learning was inspired, like the Montessori approach, by a person! So when I realised that Reggio is not a person but a place in Italy, I once again realised that the boundaries of how-much-I-don't-know, have been pushed further by yet another notch! :)

In the past few years, my interest in the Reggio philosophy has grown in leaps and bounds and influenced my beliefs about teaching and learning not only  in the Early Childhood area but also my primary and secondary school teaching. As I get ready to go to Reggio  and immerse in their teaching and learning culture, I am starting to revisit and reflect on my present understandings.

This morning I have come across yet another powerful reading of Loris Malaguzzi, founder of the Reggio approach. Many thoughts cross my mind as I read the article.

I reflect back on my beginning days as a teacher and parent. I used to pack the teaching days with learning activities and ensure that no time of the day was 'wasted'! As a mother, I used to try and create learning moments for my daughter at each point of the day! I would have paints and crafts or toys or books or music around her. But more often than not I would see her go and play with bottle caps and pots and pans and cardboard boxes and completely ignore my ideas for her! Due to health issues, I had to take a step back which turned out to be a great blessing for my daughter who then had much time to tinker around on her own and construct her own learning. I was fortunate that I got into the PYP early on and the more I looked at my own approach, the more I realised the depth of my ignorance of how children learn. My image of the child was built on my presumptions rather than my understanding.

Over the years the more I observe children, the more I realise that they have inbuilt mechanisms and behaviours for learning! They have the natural curiosity as well as ways to construct meaning. Infants, toddlers make meaning by repeating their actions again and again as they build connections and learnings. Some days ago, I played with a seven months old, who took a ball and flung it off my palm over and over again. She observed the way it rolled, followed it, communicated with her eyes that she wanted me to pick it up and repeated it. After having done this for a while, she picked up the ball, put it in her mouth (which is a way children learn to understand shapes, textures, tastes, temperature etc.); then she picked up a thin, long toy put it in her mouth again, then repeated the same with her ball, and continued till she decided that the long toy was an easier shape to get into the mouth. She was busy and naturally crawled towards the next area that she found interesting and would have probably continued to construct her learning ...

.... but we adults decided to intervene and upturned her whole toy box over! She was soon surrounded by many brightly coloured toys. It was an easy distraction from her personal experiment and kept her 'engaged'. However, engagement does not always directly translate to learning and our best intentions may actually not work the way we intend them to work. This is beautifully summed up by Malaguzzi - "Overactivity on the part of the adult is a risk factor. The adult does too much because he cares about the child; but this creates a passive role for the child in her own learning.". 

He says "What we so often do is impose adult time on children’s time and this negates children being able to work with their own resources........... Those who have the image of the child as fragile, incomplete, weak, made of glass gain something from this belief only for themselves.  We don’t need that as an image of children."

So what is our role as teachers and parents? "We need to define the role of the adult, not as a transmitter but as a creator of relationships — relationships not only between people but also between things, between thoughts, with the environment."

The continual learning for me is to think about the environment for learning and investing more time in observing. It is a way to respect children and their learning. Malaguzzi says, "When you learn to observe the child, when you have assimilated all that it means to observe the child, you learn many things that are not in books  — educational or psychological.  And when you have done this you will learn to have more diffidence and more distrust of rapid assessments, tests, judgments. The child wants to be observed, but she doesn’t want to be judged.  Even when we do judge, things escape us, we do not see things, so we are not able to evaluate in a wide way."

In my role as an administrator it is my constant endeavour to think about building a school culture where the children, teachers and parents feel respected and secure, to play, to experiment and to explore, thereby constructing new relationships and learnings. 

Looking forward to deeper understandings!

Learning in Action for Nepal

This is an old post which I had on my other blog. It is difficult to maintain two blogs so closing the other one! Needed to transfer the post as I want to keep my lessons from this.
Atima


The news of the Nepal Earthquake was bound to stir the school community as it did all others around the world. A few hours after the news, a trickle of messages across the whatsapp groups started with the idea of doing something. 

The school had had some experience last year in fund-raising for the Philippines Haiyan victims. Three children from Year 3 and 4, inspired by their families had come to us and wondered if they could do a used toys or a book sale. Wanting to encourage them to take action, a group of staff members and I started helping them in their endeavour. 

As the used toys and books donations trickled in, the children would bring it over to my office. I would sit back and listen to their conversations. There would be times when I was more the proverbial fly on the wall than the PYP Coord! It was tempting to jump into the conversations but I tried hard to control my impulses (which was hard!) and let them reach a point of getting stuck before jumping in with a question. My role then was to ask questions and more questions. From broad general ones "What is your plan?" "What do you need?" to more specific in the later stages "Where will you store these donations?" "How much will you sell them for?"  We would write the questions on a paper and stick it to my door. They would go back to their classes and often pop their heads in my room with an idea on their way to lunch or snack! Ideas ranged from wildly impractical to absolute functional and when we met as a group again, we discussed all of them. Very seldom did I need to interject as they debated their ideas. We went ahead with some ideas which I never thought would have been possible. In my best teacher intentions and infinite wisdom, I thought that I would let them carry out these ideas and they would learn when they failed. How wrong was I! I was limited by my own experiences and made assumptions  about what would work and what wouldn't. It was a mix of surprise, relief, glee at their success and self-realisation of my limitations when I saw that many ideas which I felt wouldn't work were actually very effective. I grew not only in my understanding of my role as a teacher but also as a person. My own beliefs and image of the child grew stronger as I worked with these children.

I am now of the firm conviction that no one, how much ever experienced and wise, has any right to take away the hopes and dreams of anyone else; for wisdom is often bound in the limitations of experiences which change as contexts change. 

While the Haiyan fund-raiser helped me in my growth, it influenced the wider school community equally. Children saw their peers capable of change and felt empowered. They felt that their ideas were valued and could bring big changes. Parents started viewing their children as agents of change.

A community grows in its learning and that became very evident when the news of the Nepal earthquake reached the masses. What started as a trickle of whatsapp messages in our teacher groups soon became a steady stream of "We need to do something." messages. When I reached my office after the weekend I had already received messages from teachers and parents about fund raising ideas. We took the news of the Earthquake to the Student Representative Council. Children were phenomenal! They had many ideas for fund-raising, Crazy hair day, Mufti day, Donation boxes, Carnival activities and many more. Student rep council teachers marvelled at the suggestions and children started building up on the ideas of each other; the co-construction of knowledge was evident and the roles of teachers and students blurred as the team brainstormed ideas together. Buddy reading at school was suggested, till a Year 3 girl said "Why are we restricting it to the school? Why can't we take it to the broader community? We could read books for younger children at our condos and raise funds." A goosebumps moment! A Year 5 volunteered to dress up as clown at the school carnival with a donation box around his neck. Others decided to run games and donate the proceeds.

Tuesday, a brother-sister duo came with their fund-raising appeal letter. The sister had helped lead the Typhoon Haiyan 'Used toys' sale and the younger brother was now inspired to help. Both decided to do another toys sale, this time at the upcoming school carnival.

We started our fund raising on Wednesday. The donation boxes were set up and the Vice Captains and the brother-sister duo shared their plans at the Pre-school assembly.

By Wednesday afternoon I had more children and teachers come up with ideas. Keeping in mind the busy-ness of the term we decided to not add any more events as it might dilute the donations and not necessarily add to them. Just as I was getting ready to wind down the school day a Year 4 girl walked straight into my office and said "I emailed you my plan. What do you think?" The plan is beautiful. She wants to create ... "a 'Wall of Hope' so that the people of Nepal don't think that everyone is just giving them money and forgetting about their feelings. We need to make them feel that other people are with them." She had suggested two other charities in her email and I pointed to her that the school had already decided to go with the Singapore Red Cross. Her response was swift, "That does not matter. Any charity as long as the message and the money reaches the people of Nepal is good." Her quick thinking with clear goals and instant decisions made it obvious that she owned the idea. Her determined look silenced any doubts that I might have had and I felt compelled by her enthusiasm to say yes! She is 8 years old!

Thursday morning she spoke to the children and parents at the Primary school assembly. She even got her older brother to design a video to support her request. She added requests of clothes, blankets, medicines which I hadn't said yes to... but I remembered my experience with children's ideas and decided to go with the flow.

In the meantime, our school Vice Captains reached out to each parent and their determined looks persuaded all to add to the donations. I was proud of their beautiful manners and equally beautiful persuasion skills.  

Little Miss 8 has now taken coloured paper for her weekend prep for the 'Wall of Hope'. She has promised to spend her lunchtime for the next fortnight managing the wall and persuading community members to add their messages and donations. I can't wait to see the "Wall of hope" build up at school! We have decided to send the messages to the Nepalese Consulate in Singapore. 

Students as little as four years old to as old as ten, have donated their pocket money for the week. A little four year old contemplated asking his older brother for a loan as he had finished his pocket money. I am in awe of these children. Many teachers have teary, shiny happy smiles of pride as their children have come forward with not only ideas but their own money earned by doing chores at home for the Earthquake victims. 

At the last count, we have already collected more than 800 SGD and as we continue our fund-raising next week, I am sure we will get a lot more to give. 

Learning empowers and action inspires. From three children fund-raising for Haiyan victims, we now have more than 12 students leading the Nepal fund-raiser. In the strictest definition Action is what the learner demonstrates and does voluntarily as a result of his/her learning. In my experience it has been evident that modeled, guided and shared action further inspires independent action. Action needs a toolkit of strategies, skills, knowledge and attitudes and is voluntary.  The PYP considers student's action as the most significant summative assessment of the efficacy of the programme.

I think it is safe to say that the efficacy of the programme is even more evident in the students now. The 'Wall of Hope' cannot but grow!