This journey has been very exciting. In 2004 when we first open our doors we wanted the best quality program for our students. I attended many classes on a
variety of
approaches to early childhood education. The one that sparked me was
Reggio Emilia, the journey...offered by the Livingston County Child Care Council in November 2004. This little town in Italy was hailed as an exemplary model of early childhood education. Even though we are not in Italy, I found that our teachers at Building Blocks had many similar beliefs. In March of 2005, Tracy Kelly and myself went to
MIAEYC Conference in Grand Rapids. We took a class on
Reggio and technology. This was offered by University of MI
Dearborn. The presentation was very exciting. You could see by the documentation that the children were allowed to construct and
hypothesize their own learning.
Then over the next two years and many books and research papers read, many conference
attended, collaboration of staff, and staff trainning, we chose to walk down the
Reggio path. We believed in a deep respect for the potential of all young children, that communication and collaboration among
children, parents and educators was very important, rich environments that were
welcoming, organized, beautiful and supportive of the work of children and educations, voices of children made visible through documentation, and the used of many
expressive "languages" to represent ideas such as clay, paint, drama, play, music,
etc. were the elements that we were already in our
curriculum and our approach. With so many common beliefs we decided to take some time to reflect on the direction of our school. In September 2006, Tracy Kelly, our beloved director moved to TN, we needed to find the right director who had the same passions and excitement for
Reggio Emilia Approach to early education. We found that Emily
Hotchkiss who had the education,
experience, passion and belief that this approach was best practice and could be accepted and adapted in our school.
In January 2007, our staff and families came
together for an in-house class from, Carol Williams from Wayne State University, we learn more about the world renowned early childhood program in
Reggio Emilia, Italy. At that time, we began to discuss how we might implement aspects of the approach at Building Blocks Preschool. We began to look at our environment, our daily schedules, the purpose of our small group time, and the role of the teachers in our program. Many of us were excited about the prospect of change and many of us were hesitant to change an already good program. During the spring and summer, we met to discuss what we were learning, visited other programs in Michigan implementing
Reggio, and offered times for parents to come together with us to learn more about
Reggio.
In this past year teachers began to slow down and really pay attention to what the children were interested in doing. We introduced real clay and found that the children enjoyed the exploration. We brought in items like flowers, fish and caterpillars so the children could observe closely and begin to represent their observations in watercolors and clay. Teachers took time to write down children's conversations and to document through photos what the children were doing. The children still played in the mud, had water day, built with blocks and dressed up.
The four big changes we made in this past year, we
remodeled our preschool BIG room, we removed the carpeting and added a wood floor, painted the walls cream so this was a softer look to the room where the
children's artwork would be the focus. We expanded our parent resource center by adding a boat book shelf. Here in our area we are
surrounded by many lakes and this was Highland, MI and we wanted to reflect that at our school. We created an Art Studio for our Summer Arts program. This allowed children to have daily art workshops. Children worked with wire, clay, watercolors, textures, mosaics, paper
mache,
vinyl, acrylic paints, ext. They created many open ended art pieces that were showcased in our Art Show at the end of our summer program. We continue to work to
declutter our spaces and to add plants and other elements to soften our classroom. It has been our most successful year in our program.
As fall is approaching, the teachers are looking earnestly at what changes we wanted to make for the new school year. As most schools do, we started with the concrete - our environment. The schools in
Reggio believe that the environment is the third teacher in their programs. What messages were the children and parents getting from our environment? What could we do to make our school even more inviting?
The other changes we looked at involved our image of the child and the role of the teacher. How do we act if we believe the child is a competent and capable person who can show us what he or she wants and needs to know in order to continue to grow and develop? What elements of our program do we keep and which elements are we willing to change for the good of the child? What do we do with our new knowledge of child development and this
Reggio approach? The first things we realized was that continuing projects from day to day was going to be especially difficult since most of our children change from day to day. Is this our image of the child getting in the way or is it real? We changed to a buffet snack time in order for the children to be more in charge of their activity time. We adapted to a Co-teacher and multi age grouping. We kept the small group time to help the teachers and children connect with one another. We became more sensitive to what the children needed to extend their activities. We continue to reflect with the children on their choices and their projects.
I have observed over the past year many exciting changes. In playgroup the teachers are also making subtle changes. They are taking more and more cues from the children. If the children are engaged in an activity or want to do it again, the teachers will help the children by not hurrying them into a new transition. They will repeat a very popular activity, allowing the children to revisit the experience again and again. Less teacher-directed activities and more child-initiated art activities are being presented. Teachers have been documenting the growth and development of the children through photos and the recording of children's words. This allows parents, children and teachers to revisit activities.
Our biggest challenge this year has been to convince parents that the children do not benefit as much from teacher made projects and alphabet activities as they do from the writing and drawing that comes from their own experiences. We have seen a large increase in the writing by our four and five year
olds. The teachers have written children's stories and helped them write their own words whenever the children request it. We have noticed a big increase in the interest in words. Several classes have made books that the children have illustrated. We are very happy with the results of this change that we have made.
As we look toward next year, the staff and I are continuing to be committed to incorporating the
Reggio Emilia approach to our program.
Reggio melds into our developmental, play-based early childhood program to enhance what the children and staff are doing. When we see children playing, we will continue to ask, "What are they doing?", "Why are they doing it?", and now, "What should we do next?".
Warmly,
Suzanne Gabli
Executive Director/Owner
