The last couple of years, the Early Childhood division of the International School of Prague has been sending our Pre-k and kindergarten teachers to the traditional week long training in Reggio. This year, we sent all the specialists who support in the Early Childhood. I was asked to go on this training, but discovered that Next Frontier: Inclusion was organizing a study tour in Reggio with a focus on children with Special Rights (how they refer to students with disabilities). Next Frontier: Inclusion is an organization that aims to support International Schools in developing programs to support students with disabilities or special rights, a population woefully underserved in most International Schools. The three day study tour occurred November 20-23, 2016 in Reggio Emilia, was based in the Loris Malaguzzi International Center and included school visits as well. The opportunity to be at Reggio-Emilia to learn about their philosophy and approach to education generally and how they include children with special rights, specifically, was a revelation. Few professional development experiences have been so profound and powerful. There is much, too much to include in one reflection here, this is merely an attempt to begin to process and digest some ideas that will marinate and grow for years. What follows is my attempt to summarize, synthesise and consider the implications for my own work based on my notes from the experience.
“We have also learned that if we pay attention to the differences among children and, in particular, children with special rights, we can see that each child has a different way of being a child. It is important to let the children show us their approach to life. From their approach, we learn how to be with them. The children’s approach to life is a kind of research to try to understand the world around them – a very human way to try to know. Our experiences with children with special rights have given quality to our work because we have become better observers.” (Edwards, Gandini, and Forman, 2012, p.206)
Reggio: An overview
Reggio Emilia calls itself an educating city. This could not be a more accurate description. The level of importance placed on the education of children, especially the youngest, and the respect and care given to these learners is felt throughout the city and resonated from every person who spoke to us at the three day conference. They take pride in this commitment and it is a defining characteristic of their city. For a complete, and fascinating look at this history, which stretches back to the 1800’s but really began to flourish in its current form at the end of World War II, you can read The Hundred Languages of Children, especially the interview with one of the most important early educators, Loris Malaguzzi (Edwards, Gandini, and Forman, 2012)
On the first morning of the conference, November 21, 2016, Paolo Cagliari, Director of Preschools and Infant Toddler Centers, and Ivana Socini, psychologist responsible for the inclusion of students with special rights, gave us an overview of the most important aspects of the Reggio approach to working with children. What follows is a summary of their explanation given in Italian and translated to us. It is based on my notes from the day.
The Reggio educational project begins with an idea of difference. The first central priority is a value for the subjectivity of every child. Relationships which allow all differences to emerge are important. To make this possible there is always two teachers in a class, but also the cooks, cleaners, assistants, and all people who help to care for children in any way at school are part of the learning community and are seen as co-responsible for the children.
Another central priority is the atelierista. They are full time staff members with a background in art who work with teachers to multiply the possible entry points of knowledge and access. Atelistas support all the adults in understanding the child’s different ways of knowing and to help create a greater possibility to construct experiences that are varied. If the class offers a multiplicity of opportunities for learning, than all members of the group can be a part of learning in their own way.
Additionally, the environment plays a key factor which aides in the forming of relations among children. In Reggio it is often referred to as the third teacher. Environments create the possibility to create collaborative thinking, freedom to move and explore, the possibility of choice with whom to spend time and which problems or challenges to encounter. This is accomplished using materials that are set in the environment which make the learner feel curious and invites them to discover, suggests marvel and wonder, and offers encounters that are unexpected, allowing for exploration, creating relations between inside and outside and inviting different points of view and ways of connecting and circulating. The space promotes autonomy and is a manifestation of the intelligence put into the work, sending messages of respect and freedom of expression.
Pedagogistas work with schools and families to plan projects for all the schools and work with the multidisciplinary teams at the school level to help plan for the kids. These Multidisciplinary teams need time together to update their thinking, thus collaboration and time for collaboration is another central priority. This learning community works together to share their research about the children, consider possible interpretations of that research and plan for future provocations or recasting of ideas. To do this well, documentation is the last central priority that defines Reggio. Teachers in Reggio see documentation as an ethical choice, a tool to spy on the knowledge process of children. It makes it possible for us to intuit how children are doing their research, putting things together, and constructing their understanding and processing. By using documentation and reflecting on it within the multidisciplinary teams, adults can enter a dialogue with the minds of children, instead of dragging them down a planned journey. This is truely emergent curriculum. It is also a powerful tool for dialogue with parents.
Within this framework, a sense of wonder is used as an entry point to knowledge. A provocation is offered to the children – a question, a challenge, an experience, a set of beautiful things to consider – and then the adults document how the children engage with the provocation. The teacher is researcher, documenting what questions the students ask, in what ways they attempt to make sense of what is before them, are they interested in it or not, what do they discover while interacting with it? Then the multidisciplinary teams reflect on the research from that provocation. How close or far are the students from the task or learning it was meant to provoke? How might we use their questions and interactions to recast the idea to create new learning and push their understanding further? Did we miss the mark completely? Is it too far away from their zone of interest or development right now? In this way, students and the members of the multidisciplinary team co-construct knowledge and the path for learning that is most relevant to the learners.
Pedagogy of Listening
In her book The Republic of the Imagination, Azar Nafisi (2014) argues that literature, in the form of the novel, places a central and important role in supporting a functioning democracy. She argues that only through reading each others stories can we hope to develop empathy and understanding for the other’s point of view and history. Only with this empathy from listening, can we enter into honest public dialogue that advances democracy. Chimamanda Agozi Adichie (2009) in her powerful Ted Talk about the Danger of a Single Story eloquently argues for the importance of many different types of stories to allow for a multiplicity of identities to be recognized and understood, which weakens stereotypes, producing greater respect for and appreciation of difference, allowing for greater dignity for all.
Both of these profound arguments for listening are lived in the Reggio classroom. In fact, the educators of Reggio believe there can be no pedagogical discourse without the social and political discourse. It is not isolated from, but an important part of the wider community. It is through the education of our children that we communicate the values of the society and through observation, documentation, dialogue, and interaction adults show respect again and again for the stories of learning the students are communicating to them in whatever way they can – words, pictures, clay, etc. (See my previous blog post in which I explore a bit the importance of listening for democracy)
Because this profound respect for difference and the importance of the individual story of the learning journey is such a core principle in the Reggio education, it allows for individuals with special rights to be included so seamlessly. In fact, because they see their educational mission as so closely aligned with the social and political mission, they prioritize students with lower economic opportunity and special rights for entrance into the infant and toddler centers and preschools because they see it as important to provide more equal opportunities to all.
Individuals with Special Rights in the Reggio Context
From the beginning, Loris Malaguzzi believed that all children had the right to discover the world and keep in tact their curiosity, wonder, and desire to learn. He believed they have the right to keep poetry with science and emotion with reason. His beliefs in the 1960s were so strong that Reggio Schools included students with special rights (what they call students with disabilities) well before it was required by law. Ivana Socini discussed that ALL children, all human beings, have been made to ask questions. As educators we must listen for those questions to set the right environment and recast provocations to meet children (with special rights and others) at their proximal zone of development. She discusses how the pedagogy of listening is the starting point and then the pedagogy of relationships (knowing the children in front of you) guides the learning process. She stresses that this is the approach for ALL children, and so the same approach and pedagogy is used for student with special rights.
The role of educators within the Reggio context (and one could argue all educational systems) is to understand what type of question the students are asking right now? What explorations are they engaging in, how are they trying to think and reason in an intuitive way? We must take time to observe and then try to interpret. Your attention and interested attitude is how you show respect for the students’ learning differences. You then give yourself time to help them amplify their learning through questions and challenges, pushing their thinking to become more complex, multiplying it by figuring out ways to connect it to other concepts and ideas, and then relaunching it to increase the level of challenge, complexity, or depth by introducing new variables to move the learning forward. This cycle of observation, documentation, and interpretation leading to relauch is the same cycle for all students and enables students with special rights to participate in whatever ways they can access and demonstrate interest and learning.
Within the Reggio approach, it is believed that including and accepting and valuing students with special rights within the learning community improves the practice of teachers by making “ . . . it necessary for the teachers to broaden the opportunities, possibilities, and communication codes for all children. It forces teachers to create a more complex educational context” (Edwards, Gandini, and Forman, 2012, p. 190). Improved teacher practice benefits all students. Additionally, the students within the community have an opportunity to learn empathy and to accept difference in a way that would not be possible without the participation of these children. Again, it is another way that the schools demonstrate a commitment to living the ideals of their social and political context. Ivana Socini stated over and over again through the three days in one form or another that Reggio is not just about beautiful schools. It is about a deep, down culture of respect and value of difference (paraphrased from my notes, based on translation). They observe the children and then dream based on those realities to tell the story of the possible – and there is so much that is possible.
One quite powerful session was on the last day with Annalisa Rabitti, a parent of an individual with special rights. She discussed her experience of having a child with significant needs in quite powerful terms. She wrote a beautiful book about her son call Martino has Wheels (2016) in which she talks about how even though he is nonverbal, if you listen very carefully with your heart, you can hear his voice. She is a designer and she has worked with other nonverbal individuals from Reggio and has helped them to use their voices freed with the help of assistive technology to produce beautiful pieces of design through the klab project. She takes their words and creates beautiful objects of design. Some of my favorite quotes paraphrased through translation are below:
I don’t live myself as disabled but as a courageous boy who like all people is more or less capable of different things.
We are the quiet children of Reggio. We have no words but we are very intelligent. We are in the world . . . we are all equal in our thinking, we want to give space to those that have no space. We are the quiet children of k lab and we believe we have to invent a new way of constructing the future and the novel thing in this world is us.
I am a warrior of peace. I smile in protest.
It is only if we are made of light that we can turn the dark off.
What she stressed as a parent that echos all of the voices we heard over the days in Reggio and within the schools during the visits is this: It is not just about inclusion. It is not just having students with special rights in the schools. It is the way that adults accompany the children into that context that the magic happens. There is not a hint of tokenism in their inclusive practices. It is a deep belief in the importance of including all because it enriches the community and the learning of all. The level of respect for the individual learning journey as it connects to the community of learning is profound. This is why inclusion works in Reggio. It is an integral part of how they understand children and how they accompany all children on their journey.
What it means for us?
It was fascinating to me to hear the questions asked of the International Educators present at this conference. At almost every session, someone asked the educators at Reggio what they did with students that were too challenging to serve because of their behavior or extreme needs. Did they have to ask them to leave the school? Everytime it was asked, the people from Reggio were utterly confused. The answer was always, we don’t ask kids to leave. The kids who are at their school are the kids they serve. There is no need too great or too challenging not to serve. This was a remarkable response to many present who come from schools with narrowly defined definitions of which types of needs they do and do not serve, from schools with the privledge of excluding kids and who think that is an ethical practice. I wondered why it was so hard for these educators to comprehend that the Reggio schools serve all the kids who come without exception? I wonder if it has to do with a lack of experience in public schools where you would not have this option, or if there is something in their philosophies of education and learning that this level of inclusion contradicts?
Another revelation to me was the level of difference accepted and the level of choice afforded to students. If such careful attention is paid to the zones of proximal development of all students so as not to present tasks that are too distant from their current skill level and interest and respect is given to kids to choose the tasks they engage in, does this necessarily reduce challenging behavior among all kids, but especially kids with special rights? We know that disruptive and defiant behavior is often a manifestation of frustration in response to tasks that are too difficult and/or tasks that are less desirable and/or an effort to exert some level of control in response to a perceived lack of choice. If the environments of Reggio by definition are more observant and responsive to all of these possible root causes of disruptive behavior, might they see less challenging behavior among their students? Might this offer some insight to us about how to rethink our response to our most challenging students? Are we not being responsive enough to their needs? Are we misunderstanding what they are trying to communicate to us? Might we rearrange the environment and our expectations for them within the environment in a way that would allow them to find their entry point into learning? How can we multiply the entry points for all students and how might that affect the ability of our most vulnerable students to succeed?
All of the people we met at Reggio stressed that their schools are a very specifc manifestation of their environement of Central Italy and the history and culture it embodies. They are not replicable anwhere else. But how can we use what we have learned to be more Reggio inspired in our practice? That is the one of the many questions the International School of Prague is considering as we seek to apply more of Reggio's inspiration in our practice.
References:
Adichie, C.N. (2009). The Danger of a Single Story. Ted Talk. TedGlobal. Viewed on January 5, 2016 at https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story#t-1104844
Edwards, C., Gandini, L., and Forman, G., eds. (2012). The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Experience in Transformation, 3rd Edition. Santa Barbara, California: Praeger.
Nafisi, A. (2014). The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books. New York: Viking.
Next Frontier: Inclusion. Information found at http://www.nextfrontierinclusion.org
Rabitti, A. (2016). Martino ha le ruote – Martino has Wheels. Italy: Corsiero Editore.