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ITALY: EMILIA-ROMAGNA: REGGIO
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1REGGIO AND EDUCATION:
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| In a northern Italian town, Reggio Emilia, after World War II, a
group of mothers sold the horses and wagons left behind by the
retreating German army and determined to use the funds to build a
cooperative preschool for their children. Their concept began with the
simple theory that the parents needed to be involved in their
childrens education and that it needed to be an education based on
respect for the individuality of children. The parents met frequently,
creating the ideas for, and actually building the school. |
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| Fortunately, a young educator in another Italian city heard of this
project, visited, became involved on a voluntary basis, and was
eventually asked to become the head of the school. This man was Loris
Malaguzzi, who just died this last year, and who was certainly a
genius who ranks as one of the centuries leading innovative educators.
Today there are 22 preschools and 14 infant-toddler schools in the
town of Reggio Emilia, supported by the municipality, and it has
become a mecca for the academic world of Early Childhood Educators
from the most prestigious Universities in the United States. Newsweek
magazine cited the schools of Reggio Emilia as the best early
childhood education in the world, and it has been featured in two PBS
series, Childhood and The Creative Spirit. |
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Reggio, as it is known, is not a new theory of learning, as was
Piaget, or Vigotsky, but a system of learning that incorporates all of
the best theories into a working whole. This system has been
developing over 45 years, and therefore, the first thing that is
always pointed out in any presentation by Reggio educators, is that
they do not expect any school to be able to become a total system, as
theirs is, and furthermore, since they believe that every system must
be based on the culture of the people it serves, as theirs is, that
that factor must be seen as paramount.
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| 2Why
Reggio Is Unique and Appropriate |
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What is and should be universal, is the approach to children that
Reggio advocates. The Reggio philosophy is based on the recognition
that young children have many ways in which they can express
themselves, and that we, as educators, must tap into those ways and
engage the children in their learning. You might ask, how is this
different from the hands on approach for Piaget? It goes much further.
For example, teachers trained with a knowledge of Piaget principles
would value the childrens active involvement in building a synagogue,
but the teachers would plan it completely as a craft project, that the
children would follow. The Reggio approach has us operating in a
totally different manner.
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| 3Sample
Project -- Building a Synagogue |
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 The Reggio
approach has the children visiting the synagogue over and over again,
each time focusing on the different aspects of the synagogue that they
want to build, from the kind of walls, the different kind of windows,
perhaps some stained glass windows, to how the Aron Kodesh, the Ner
Tamid, the Shulchan, the Torah, and Menorah can be built. Each time
they draw their concept of how the aspect they are focusing on could
be built, drawing how they could create each of these important Judaic
symbols. They discuss with the teachers their ideas of what materials
they will need, what building processes and decorating methods they
could use, to make their three dimensional creations look like what
they are seeing in the synagogue. The teaching staff then determines
how to get the materials, as much as possible involving the parents in
finding the materials, and throughout, the children keep returning to
the synagogue to check their concepts and to redraw in more detail
their blueprints, which their drawings have really become.
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This project illustrates how Malaguzzi carried the parents idea of
respect for the individual child forward educationally, teaching that
it is the respect for each childs ideas that is key to involving each
child in group problem solving.
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Through this process we have found that the childrens ability to
express themselves in both words and in pictures, and to solve
problems by themselves and together, has increased and expanded
dramatically. And finally, we have found that the childrens
identification with what they have absorbed themselves in over a long
period of time, has deepened their Jewish identity in an unbelievably
strong manner.
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 You have
probably noted that we have mentioned the children drawing
representationally. There are traveling exhibitions throughout the
United States of the work of the children of Reggio Emilia. Preschool
educators were at first stunned by the representational drawings and
sculptures shown at these exhibits. It was traditional belief that
three, four, and five year old children were not capable of
representational drawing. It took a leap of faith for our teachers to
begin to ask the children to draw what they were seeing in the
synagogue, for example. There is no longer any doubt amongst our
staff. We are only excitedly bringing in everybody to see what our
children are doing. We have come to realize that this drawing and
sculpture are powerful languages of children, ways children
communicate, and we are learning to use them as a means of
communication between the children, and between the child and the
teacher.
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With this emphasis on choice, and the child's own understanding and
ideas, it is not surprising that one of the biggest changes that has
occurred throughout the schools has been in the art area. Art is no
longer a craft that the teacher devises, but is a process of constant
choice, choice of ideas and choice of materials. For example, mezuzot
made by the children in a given class do not look all alike. Only the
inside bracha is the same. The children examine all kinds of mezuzot,
those collected by the teacher, those at home and those sent in by
parents, those in the synagogue gift shop, and those seen on a Mezuzah
hunt throughout the synagogue. Many of the different materials that
they examined on the different mezuzot are provided for them to choose
from, so that the mezuzah made by each individual child reflects his
or her observations and real involvement in choosing and developing
his or her own mezuzah.
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| 4Sample
Project -- A Jewish Home |
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 Another
example of how Reggio principles has changed our approach is in the
unit on the Jewish Home, for the three year olds. Traditionally it has
been taught by the teacher bringing in examples of different Jewish
artifacts that might be found in a Jewish home: learning about the
Mezuzah that signifies that the home is Jewish and making a Mezuzah
designed by the teacher, and perhaps playing in a large refrigerator
box for a few days that has a Mezuzah attached to the doorpost.
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 With the
Reggio approach, this unit has changed into one where three year old
children learn how to build their own Jewish homes from large hollow
blocks, to play whenever they want to build it throughout the year,
and to make their own Mezuzot for the doorposts. They go on to work in
small groups to make their own Jewish home dollhouse from materials as
different as styrofoam, boxes, paper cups, tile and wood and to make
them from the pictures that they have drawn and redrawn and discussed
with each other, as they are building. The parents are involved in
working with their children to either make symbols that reflect Jewish
artifacts in their own home, or to find different materials in their
home that could be used in the classroom to make the artifacts, which
are either three dimensional for playing with inside their hollow
block Jewish homes or in the Jewish home dollhouses or are two
dimensional in order to go on the bulletin board Jewish home.
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It is an important facet of Reggio that parents be involved. Reggio
concepts have helped us to change the format of our newsletters to
parents, and through this to have brought about a higher parents
interest in our daily work. Previously, teachers wrote a full account
of each unit after the unit was over. Reggio, with its emphasis on
parental involvement, has helped us to realize that our newsletters
must tell what we are going to do, not what we have done, so that
parents can be stimulated to involve themselves as much as possible in
what we are doing, as it is being done, and to be able to engage their
children in meaningful communication about the topic we are working on
with their children.
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Reggio has brought us to an understanding of the need for and value
of documentation for the children, the teachers and the parents.
Photographs of the process of the long term project as it moves along,
with which the teachers make thoughtful, descriptive bulletin boards
for the halls for the parents to see, is another important facet in
enabling the parents to remain part of the process throughout. Tape
recordings of project discussions help both the children and the
teachers to reflect on where each child is in their thinking and to
plan accordingly.
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We have begun to learn how to take slides of our field trips, such
as to the post office, in order that the children can revisit a post
office through the slides as they are planning to build their own post
office. You might ask why are we, a Jewish preschool, building a post
office? This is a part of any secular preschool curriculum, which we
always integrate into an overall Judaic theme. You might guess then,
that the post office unit will come at the time of Rosh Hashanah and
Yom Kippur, when the discussions, stories and songs about our Jewish
way of valuing and being considerate of our fellow man lead to our
making Rosh Hashanah cards to mail to each other through the post
office that we have made. Because of the Reggio approach, we hope that
the children will now be making Rosh Hashanah cards that reflect each
individual childs understanding of what it means to be a friend and to
help others, rather than a teacher developed and designed Rosh
Hashanah card.
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We have been able to be in the vanguard of our field in integrating
the Reggio approach with our Jewish pre-school curriculum for some
very important reasons. Since our goal from the beginning was to
integrate the latest knowledge in our field into our system, ehn
knowledge of Reggio came on the educational scene we already had a
system in place that had an attitude open to new innovations. We
already had a system where the teachers are trained within. We already
had a system wherein it is expected to be asked to change, change
being equated with growth, studying and taking on new ideas.
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 As indicated
in the examples, the other vital area of teacher development that is
necessary in order to do Reggio as we like to call it, is for teachers
to have moved from the teacher directed supervisory role to the
teacher facilitating through involving herself with the children
actively, in an ongoing manner, as they attempt to problem solve their
way through to a new understanding. Reggio has based this approach on
the writings of the Russian-Jewish psychologist, Lev Vigotsky. For the
past 10 years, we have been incorporating Vigotskys approach in our
work with the children on socialization through social-dramatic play,
so that when Reggio burst upon the educational scene here in the US we
were already understanding and training our teachers in the Vigotsky
principles. |
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| 5Conclusion |
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| To summarize, Reggio is not a curriculum. It is not a specific
psychological, or cognitive approach. It is a way of seeing children,
a way of working with children, that has combined the very best of the
different theories of child development and in so doing, demands a
very high level of teacher understanding, involvement and commitment. |
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| Source: http://www.bjechicago.org/ps_our_philosophy.asp#what |
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6REGGIO
ON THE NET:
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FOOD