In the Spirit of the Studio: Learning from the Atelier of Reggio Emilia 9780807756324, 9780807773666, 5220153722, 0807756326

Table of contents :
SECOND EDITION......Page 4
Contents......Page 8
Foreword......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 14
The Context and Inspiration of Our Work......Page 18
From the Beginning of the Atelier to Materials as 100 Languages: Loris Malaguzzi's Thoughts and Strategies......Page 24
Poetics of Learning......Page 34
The Amusement Park for Birds: Emergence and Process of a Project......Page 40
The Whole School as an Atelier: Reflections by Carla Rinaldi......Page 60
The Grammar of Materials......Page 66
The Atelier Environment and Materials......Page 80
Melting Geography......Page 98
Border Crossings and Lessons Learned: The Evolution of an INtergenerational Atelier......Page 110
The Atelier: A System of Physical and Conceptual Spaces......Page 128
The Story of a Studio in a Southern Arizona Public School......Page 152
Creativity at the Heart of Learning......Page 166
In the Spirit of the Studio......Page 182
Epilogue......Page 206
Glossary......Page 210
About the Editors and Contributors......Page 214
Index......Page 218

Citation preview

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION SERIES Sharon Ryan, Editor ADVISORY BOARD:

Celia Genishi, Doris Fromberg, Carrie Lobman, Rachel Theilheimer, Dominic Gullo, Amita Gupta, Beatrice Fennimore, Sue Grieshaber, Jackie Marsh, Mindy Blaise, Gail Yuen, Alice Honig, Betty Jones, Stephanie Feeney, Stacie G. Goffin, Beth Graue In the Spirit of the Studio: Learning from the Atelier of Reggio Emilia, 2nd Ed. LELLA GANDINI, LYNN HILL, LOUISE CADWELL, AND CHARLES SCHWALL, EDS. Leading Anti-Bias Early Childhood Programs: A Guide for Change LOUISE DERMAN-SPARKS, DEBBIE LEEKEENAN, & JOHN NIMMO Exploring Mathematics Through Play in the Early Childhood Classroom AMY NOELLE PARKS Becoming Young Thinkers: Deep Project Work in the Classroom JUDY HARRIS HELM The Early Years Matter: Education, Care, and the Well-Being of Children, Birth to 8 MARILOU HYSON AND HEATHER BIGGAR TOMLINSON Thinking Critically About Environments for Young Children: Bridging Theory and Practice LISA P. KUH, ED. Standing Up for Something Every Day: Ethics and Justice in Early Childhood Classrooms BEATRICE S. FENNIMORE FirstSchool: Transforming PreK–3rd Grade for African American, Latino, and Low-Income Children SHARON RITCHIE & LAURA GUTMANN, EDS. The States of Child Care: Building a Better System SARA GABLE Early Childhood Education for a New Era: Leading for Our Profession STACIE G. GOFFIN Everyday Artists: Inquiry and Creativity in the Early Childhood Classroom DANA FRANTZ BENTLEY Multicultural Teaching in the Early Childhood Classroom: Approaches, Strategies, and Tools, Preschool–2nd Grade MARIANA SOUTO-MANNING Inclusion in the Early Childhood Classroom: What Makes a Difference? SUSAN L. RECCHIA & YOON-JOO LEE Language Building Blocks: Essential Linguistics for Early Childhood Educators ANITA PANDEY Understanding the Language Development and Early Education of Hispanic Children EUGENE E. GARCÍA & ERMINDA H. GARCÍA

Moral Classrooms, Moral Children: Creating a Constructivist Atmosphere in Early Education, 2nd Ed. RHETA DEVRIES & BETTY ZAN Defending Childhood: Keeping the Promise of Early Education BEVERLY FALK, ED. Don’t Leave the Story in the Book: Using Literature to Guide Inquiry in Early Childhood Classrooms MARY HYNES-BERRY Starting with Their Strengths: Using the Project Approach in Early Childhood Special Education DEBORAH C. LICKEY & DENISE J. POWERS The Play’s the Thing: Teachers’ Roles in Children’s Play, 2nd Ed. ELIZABETH JONES & GRETCHEN REYNOLDS Twelve Best Practices for Early Childhood Education: Integrating Reggio and Other Inspired Approaches ANN LEWIN-BENHAM Big Science for Growing Minds: Constructivist Classrooms for Young Thinkers JACQUELINE GRENNON BROOKS What If All the Kids Are White? Anti-Bias Multicultural Education with Young Children and Families, 2nd Ed. LOUISE DERMAN-SPARKS & PATRICIA G. RAMSEY Seen and Heard: Children’s Rights in Early Childhood Education ELLEN LYNN HALL & JENNIFER KOFKIN RUDKIN Young Investigators: The Project Approach in the Early Years, 2nd Ed. JUDY HARRIS HELM & LILIAN G. KATZ Supporting Boys’ Learning: Strategies for Teacher Practice, PreK–Grade 3 BARBARA SPRUNG, MERLE FROSCHL, & NANCY GROPPER Young English Language Learners: Current Research and Emerging Directions for Practice and Policy EUGENE E. GARCÍA & ELLEN C. FREDE, EDS. Connecting Emergent Curriculum and Standards in the Early Childhood Classroom: Strengthening Content and Teacher Practice SYDNEY L. SCHWARTZ & SHERRY M. COPELAND Infants and Toddlers at Work: Using Reggio-Inspired Materials to Support Brain Development ANN LEWIN-BENHAM

Continued

Early Childhood Education Series, continued The View from the Little Chair in the Corner: Improving Teacher Practice and Early Childhood Learning (Wisdom from an Experienced Classroom Observer) CINDY RZASA BESS Culture and Child Development in Early Childhood Programs: Practices for Quality Education and Care CAROLLEE HOWES The Early Intervention Guidebook for Families and Professionals BONNIE KEILTY The Story in the Picture: Inquiry and Artmaking with Young Children CHRISTINE MULCAHEY Educating and Caring for Very Young Children: The Infant/Toddler Curriculum, 2nd Ed. DORIS BERGEN, REBECCA REID, & LOUIS TORELLI Beginning School: U.S. Policies in International Perspective RICHARD M. CLIFFORD & GISELE M. CRAWFORD, EDS. Emergent Curriculum in the Primary Classroom CAROL ANNE WIEN, ED. Enthusiastic and Engaged Learners MARILOU HYSON Powerful Children: Understanding How to Teach and Learn Using the Reggio Approach ANN LEWIN-BENHAM The Early Care and Education Teaching Workforce at the Fulcrum: An Agenda for Reform SHARON LYNN KAGAN, KRISTIE KAUERZ, & KATE TARRANT Windows on Learning, 2nd Ed. JUDY HARRIS HELM, SALLEE BENEKE, & KATHY STEINHEIMER Ready or Not: Leadership Choices in Early Care and Education STACIE G. GOFFIN & VALORA WASHINGTON Supervision in Early Childhood Education, 3rd Ed. JOSEPH J. CARUSO WITH M. TEMPLE FAWCETT Guiding Children’s Behavior EILEEN S. FLICKER & JANET ANDRON HOFFMAN The War Play Dilemma, 2nd Ed. DIANE E. LEVIN & NANCY CARLSSON-PAIGE

Possible Schools ANN LEWIN-BENHAM Everyday Goodbyes NANCY BALABAN Playing to Get Smart ELIZABETH JONES & RENATTA M. COOPER How to Work with Standards in the Early Childhood Classroom CAROL SEEFELDT Understanding Assessment and Evaluation in Early Childhood Education, 2nd Ed. DOMINIC F. GULLO Teaching and Learning in a Diverse World, 3rd Ed. PATRICIA G. RAMSEY The Emotional Development of Young Children, 2nd Ed. MARILOU HYSON Effective Partnering for School Change JIE-QI CHEN ET AL. Young Children Continue to Reinvent Arithmetic— 2nd Grade, 2nd Ed. CONSTANCE KAMII Bringing Learning to Life LOUISE BOYD CADWELL The Colors of Learning ROSEMARY ALTHOUSE, MARGARET H. JOHNSON, & SHARON T. MITCHELL A Matter of Trust CAROLLEE HOWES & SHARON RITCHIE Embracing Identities in Early Childhood Education SUSAN GRIESHABER & GAILE S. CANNELLA, EDS. Bambini: The Italian Approach to Infant/Toddler Care LELLA GANDINI & CAROLYN POPE EDWARDS, EDS. Serious Players in the Primary Classroom, 2nd Ed. SELMA WASSERMANN Young Children Reinvent Arithmetic, 2nd Ed. CONSTANCE KAMII Bringing Reggio Emilia Home LOUISE BOYD CADWELL

In the Spirit of the Studio Learning from the Atelier of Reggio Emilia SECOND EDITION EDITED BY

Lella Gandini, Lynn Hill, Louise Cadwell, and Charles Schwall FOREWORD BY

Steven Seidel

Published by Teachers College Press, 1234 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027 Copyright © 2015 by Teachers College, Columbia University Cover design by Pam Bliss. Front cover photograph by Charles Schwall. Back cover photograph by Lester K. Little. Credit lines for photographs and figures appear at the ends of chapters. Quotations from Loris Malguzzi and from Vea Vecchi in Chs. 1, 4, 7, 9, 11, and the Epilogue are republished with permission of ABC-CLIO Inc., from The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Experience in Transformation, by Carolyn Edwards, Lella Gandini, and George Forman, copyright © 2012; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. Title page and chapter heading drawings by children from schools featured in this book in Blacksburg, Virginia; Northampton, Massachusetts; St. Louis, Missouri; and Reggio Emilia, Italy. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available at loc.gov In the spirit of the studio : learning from the atelier of Reggio Emilia / edited by Lella Gandini, Lynn Hill, Louise Cadwell, and Charles Schwall ; foreword by Steven Seidel. — Second edition. pages cm -- (Early childhood education series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8077-5632-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8077-7366-6 (e-book) 1. Art—Study and teaching (Early childhood)—United States—Case studies. 2. Art— Study and teaching (Early childhood)—Italy—Reggio Emilia--Case studies. 3. Early childhood education—Curricula—United States—Case studies. 4. Early childhood education—Curricula—Italy—Reggio Emilia—Case studies. 5. Educational innovations— United States—Case studies. 6. Educational innovations—Italy—Reggio Emilia—Case studies. 7. Reggio Emilia approach (Early childhood education) I. Gandini, Lella. LB1139.5.A78I52 2015 372.21--dc23 2014043762 ISBN 978-0-8077-5632-4 (paper) ISBN 978-0-8077-7366-6 (ebook) Printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America 22

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We dedicate our work to you who hold this book in your hands. You are a part of a great collaborative community of educators all over the world who are creating new and vital visions of learning and teaching. May this book both honor your courage and sustain your efforts. —Lella, Lynn, Louise, and Chuck

Contents

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Foreword Steven Seidel

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Acknowledgments 1

The Context and Inspiration of Our Work Lella Gandini, Lynn Hill, Louise Cadwell, and Charles Schwall

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From the Beginning of the Atelier to Materials as 100 Languages: Loris Malaguzzi’s Thoughts and Strategies Lella Gandini

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Poetics of Learning Vea Vecchi

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The Amusement Park for Birds: Emergence and Process of a Project Lella Gandini

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The Whole School as an Atelier: Reflections by Carla Rinaldi Edited by Lella Gandini

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The Grammar of Materials Charles Schwall

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The Atelier Environment and Materials Charles Schwall

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Contents 8

Melting Geography: Reggio Emilia, Memories, and Place Barbara Burrington

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Border Crossings and Lessons Learned: The Evolution of an Intergenerational Atelier Lynn Hill

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10 The Atelier: A System of Physical and Conceptual Spaces Louise Cadwell, Lori Geismar Ryan, and Charles Schwall

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11 The Story of a Studio in a Southern Arizona Public School Pauline Baker

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12 Creativity at the Heart of Learning Susan Harris MacKay

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13 In the Spirit of the Studio Charles Schwall, Lella Gandini, Lynn Hill, and Louise Cadwell

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Design Invent Play: Engaging Contemporary Culture—Charles Schwall

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A School Visit: Observing and Listening—Lella Gandini

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The Power of Wind—Sha Shonie Reins, with Scott Mohan

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Countering Poverty with Aesthetics—Lynn Hill

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Children, Materials, and the Natural World—Louise Cadwell

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Epilogue The Editors

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Glossary

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About the Editors and Contributors

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Index

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Foreword

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his is a book about an extraordinary conversation among educators, artists, children, families, and their communities that has been going on for almost half a century in a city in Northern Italy. That conversation has inspired artists and educators around the world to enter into similar conversations. Children everywhere seem always ready to join these conversations, whenever the invitation is extended. It seems to take a bit more effort to get them going among the adults. I know this about the adults because I’ve spent much of my professional life trying to encourage, nurture, and provoke this dialogue between artists and educators—an often beautiful but also often frustrating, even heartbreaking, experience. Of course, in most K–12 schools, and even in many preschools in America, serious interactions between the arts and other subject areas—and the people who teach each—are minimal or nonexistent. There may be many reasons for this, but I find none particularly compelling, especially in light of the myriad good reasons for exploring the educational value of connections between the arts and other educational purposes and processes. If you wonder what those good reasons might be, I encourage you to visit the preschools in Reggio Emilia, Italy, the site of this long-running dialogue between art and learning. If you can’t get to Reggio, I encourage you to read this book, which provides both an introduction to the conversation in Reggio and wonderful examples of how that conversation has traveled across the Atlantic. Vea Vecchi, one of the early atelieristas in Reggio, wrote the Foreword to the First Edition of this book and addressed the value of this dialogue between art and education: I am convinced that including an atelier within the school curriculum and within a cultural context that considers the expressive languages just as essential as (instead of optional or marginal to) the academic disciplines that are currently privileged can render both the learning experience and the process of education more complete and more whole (p. ix).

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Foreword To be sure, American public education is not a cultural context that values—or, frankly, even understands—the “expressive languages.” So creating this dialogue in this country, whatever excellent rationale may exist for it, is exceptionally challenging. With this book, American educators can begin to find inspiration in work being done here, as well as in Italy. The conversation in Reggio began with a question: What might happen if there was an artist studio in the center of the school, and an artist working everyday with classroom teachers? The various authors of this volume provide rich images of the atelier and the atelierista in Reggio schools, and the history and ideas that are the foundation of these practices. Then, crossing the ocean, they share vivid stories, not only of what the atelier can look like in practice here, but of how practitioners here have done the work of developing their own understanding of the meaning of the atelier. It is the thoughtfulness and honesty of the stories—like Lynn Hill’s story of the “evolution of an intergenerational atelier” in Virginia; Susan MacKay’s account of the atelier both in a preschool and an elementary school in Oregon; or Barbara Burrington’s description of the atelier as a “laboratory for thinking” in Vermont; of not only what they did, but how they did it—that makes this book a beacon for those of us, like myself, who are inspired (and, in all honesty, also intimidated) by the remarkable Reggio schools. Though concise in the telling, these are not short stories. They reflect decades of direct engagement with Reggio practices and experiments in American schools. Each account in this book reveals the time, courage, and dedication it takes to build an authentic dialogue between artists and teachers in schools. This practice involves grappling with confusion and uncertainty, wrestling with one’s own values and how they manifest (or don’t) in lived experience, and accepting the demands of a life dedicated to perpetual research. Of course, it should not be surprising that these are also characteristics of the work of artists when they enter their studios or rehearsal spaces (the “studios” of performing artists). In the First Edition of this book, there is an interview with Laura Rubizzi, a long-time teacher at the Diana School in Reggio Emilia. In discussing her experience of the atelier in her school, she said, “Rather than only a physical space, I think that the true atelier is a mind-set” (p. 59). I love that thought—that “the true atelier is a mind-set.” But what happens in an artist’s studio and what are the qualities of that mind-set? Reflecting on my own past artistic practice in rehearsal halls and my many conversations with visual and performing artists, I’ve come to think of those studios as not only spaces for working, but spaces for learning, too. This perspective helps me to consider the mind-set of the studio. Studios are spaces for productivity, for sure, in terms of making objects and building performances. But they are also spaces where minds can and must pursue their thoughts without censorship or shame, where there is time for looking and listening

Foreword

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and freedom of expression, and where there is commitment to go deeper into questions that must be addressed—the very qualities of creativity, imagination, expressivity, and research that are described so often in this book. So the challenges are great, and yet it is possible to face them. Finding inspiration from Reggio and our colleagues closer to home helps. Understanding and using the “mind-set” of the artist as we undertake this work also helps. I want to suggest that this is exactly what these educators from America and Italy have done. Not only have they committed to the dialogue between art and education, but they, themselves, have also acted as artists, bringing the spirit of the studio and the mind-set of the artist into every aspect of their design, dialogue, thought, and practice. When I first visited Reggio and saw the schools for myself, I thought that this was the closest I’d ever been to an avant-garde movement in education. In the 1980s, I studied with the wonderful avant-garde artists of the Mabou Mines theater company in New York. Like those theater radicals, the Reggio educators question everything, constantly challenge themselves to live and work in accordance with their values, hold themselves accountable to their philosophical principles, engage in endless research, embrace complex emotions, experiment with technology, and are exceptionally demanding of—and generous to—one another. In The Creative Act, an essay from 1963, James Baldwin wrote, “The artist cannot and must not take anything for granted, but must drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.” This quality of creativity is very much ‘in the spirit of the studio’ and the mind-set of the Reggio educators, starting with Malaguzzi and continuing on for the next nearly 50 years. If, as you read this book and think of the authors and the Reggio educators, whose work has been their inspiration as avant-garde artists, they may come into a different, and useful, light. Like avant-garde artists, they are profoundly committed to considering the past, but also to inventing the future, rejecting what clearly doesn’t work. With all of the passion, imagination, and relentless drive they can discover in themselves, these educators are pushing toward what Malaguzzi called “a new culture of education” (this volume, p. 7) and “a world of the possible” (this volume, p. 135). —Steven Seidel

REFERENCE Baldwin, J. (1998). The creative process. In T. Morrison (Ed.), James Baldwin: Collected essays (pp. 669–672). New York, NY: The Library of America. (Original work published 1962)

Acknowledgments

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irst and foremost we want to thank the educators in Reggio Emilia for their dedication in realizing and evolving an educational experience that has given teachers all over the world life-long inspiration and courage to work for something new and bold for children and families in each of their own unique contexts. We thank them for their enormous generosity in contributing such valuable and substantial reflections to this book, as well as for providing beautiful visual images of their work. In particular, we thank Loris Malaguzzi, who died in 1994, Carla Rinaldi, Amelia Gambetti, Tiziana Filippini, Vea Vecchi, Giovanni Piazza, Bruna Elena Giacopini, Claudia Giudici, and Francesca Marastoni, along with the many educators in Reggio Emilia who have made our work on this book possible. We are equally indebted to the contributors from North America who have worked hard to realize the evolution of their work they write about in the following pages. George Forman provided an invaluable contribution through his expertise and support, and we are grateful to him. We thank Pauline Baker and Susan MacKay for their collaboration and essential contributions to this book. In addition to their own strong chapters, we also thank Barbara Burrington and Lori Geismar Ryan for their generous and skilled editorial help with several others, and we also thank Barbara Acton for her recent editorial help. We are all forever grateful to those colleagues with whom we and our contributing authors have worked side by side and day by day in each of our respective settings, who share our commitment to this work and who are often central characters in the stories that we tell here. In particular, we wish to thank many educators who have made contributions. From St. Louis we thank Karen Schneider, Melissa Guerra, Beth Mosher, Colleen Begley, Michael Holohan, Jef Ebers, and Anne Treeger and the members of the St. Louis Collaborative. We thank the educators at the Opal School, a public charter school and program of the Portland Children’s Museum, for their work and their inspiration. Other

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Acknowledgments powerful, inspirational teachers from Virginia are remembered for their courage and their ability to continue the journey, including the members of the Giles Early Education Project, Giles County School System, The Virginia Tech Child Development Center for Learning and Research, and The Virginia Tech Adult Day Services Program. We are enormously grateful to our families for their sustaining support and encouragement. We thank both friends and family for reading parts and whole sections of our manuscript and offering invaluable suggestions, in particular Lester K. Little, Jill Downen, Ashley Cadwell, Scott Hill, Katie Renga, and Meg Brown. We are grateful for all with whom we have worked at Teachers College Press, in particular Marie Ellen Larcada, Susan Liddicoat, and Karl Nyberg, for their kindness and skill, and for the artful skill of Pam Bliss in designing our cover. We appreciate the Bruno David Gallery’s exceptional support of young students’ work. We give special thanks to Annelise Brody for her Italian language translation. As we work together on the last phase of putting the chapters of our Second Edition together in Lella’s home in Northampton, Massachusetts, the air is soft and the sun is setting on a beautiful July day. It is with the spirit of collaboration with which we began that we thank one another for the privilege of working together toward such a beautiful result.

In the Spirit of the Studio

CHAPTER ONE

I will not hide from you how much hope we invested in the introduction of the atelier. We knew it would be impossible to ask for anything more. Yet, if we could have done so, we would have gone further still by creating a new type of school . . . made entirely of laboratories similar to the atelier. We would have constructed a . . . school made of spaces where the hands of children could be active for “messing about.” . . . With no possibility of boredom, hands and minds would engage each other with great, liberating merriment in a way ordained by biology and evolution. (Loris Malaguzzi, quoted in Gandini, 2012, p. 49)

The Context and Inspiration of Our Work Lella Gandini Lynn Hill Louise Cadwell Charles Schwall

As four editors, we are delighted to share this Second Edition of In the Spirit of the Studio with you. We received much encouragement to extend and update this book with many of the more recent and exciting initiatives and developments in both Reggio Emilia and in North America. You will find some new chapters and some that remain unchanged. The importance of the atelier, or studio (as it is often referred to in North America), in supporting aesthetic and poetic ways of knowing is more important than ever before. The chapters in this book bring this kind of rich and deep learning alive through stories. This Second Edition of a book on the development of the atelier in North America remains an exploration into uncharted territory. The original edition was the first book of its kind to focus specifically on the values and climate for learning inspired by the Reggio Emilia atelier, which Loris Malaguzzi invokes in the quote above. As such, we continue to see this book as an invitation to look at things as if they could be otherwise. We believe that the act of looking deeply and seeing things in a new way has the potential to restructure and reform our teaching and learning experiences. The atelier is at once an idea and a place that has initiated this kind of transformation. The transformation in teaching and learning in North America that we and others describe in this book has its roots in the experience of the municipally

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Lella Gandini, Lynn Hill, Louise Cadwell, and Charles Schwall funded preschools and early childhood centers of the northern Italian town of Reggio Emilia. These schools were born out of an Italian progressive movement in the 1950s, influenced by the work of Piaget, Dewey, Montessori, Hawkins, and other innovative thinkers in education, psychology, biology, and architecture, as well as other fields, and wisely supported from the beginning by the regional and local government. One of the central tenets of the Reggio Emilia approach that has guided and continues to drive Italian educators’ work is the idea that every child is a creative child, full of potential, with the desire and right to make meaning out of life within a context of rich relationships, in many ways, and using many languages. It was from this fundamental premise that the atelier was conceived of and developed, and still evolves. We are indeed fortunate that many Italian educators have contributed their experience and ideas to this book, as well as their most recent thoughts on the development and potential of the atelier, through their interviews with Lella Gandini and their own writing. The book presents a dialogue among cultures, ideas, and continuously deepening theories and practices.

ORGANIZING IDEAS AND QUESTIONS In many chapters we will consider the practices nurtured and developed in an atelier that grow from attitudes and dispositions in a school with or without a physical place that is called an atelier. As we think about the way we work with children and one another, we have come to embrace these practices that fit together like a puzzle or prism. We believe in, recognize, and respect the practices of: • Organizing rich experiences in the world and with materials alongside children • Wondering with children about what they see, think, and feel and how they make sense of experiences • Observing, noticing, and recording • Hypothesizing and posing new questions as adults and with children • Looking for and uncovering underlying or overarching ideas • Making meaning as adults and children through connecting experiences, ideas, materials, and the culture of the school and the wider community Both Italian and American authors will also address the more tangible aspects of the atelier, including stories about organization and care of the environment and materials; small and large projects explored in many spaces within a school; and the systems of the atelier (as both a way of working and a physical place) that foster collaboration, deep thinking, and meaning-making among all members of the learning community.

The Context and Inspiration of Our Work

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Through dialogue with one another, we have found many of the above practices have become integrated into our style of teaching and working. These attitudes are at the heart of the approach, and we want them to define the spirit of the schools where we work. Our own professional and personal transformations have been shaped by many ideas and questions; for example: • What promotes the power and pleasure of learning with and through materials? • How can an atelier inspire and sustain creative, innovative thinking and learning throughout the school community? • What kind of organization and interconnections among materials, spaces, people, and ideas do we need to invent in our North American context for poetic, expressive languages to flourish and to make the teaching and learning experience rich and whole? These and other questions create the context of this book and will be considered and woven throughout its pages.

AN OVERVIEW OF THE CHAPTERS Within these pages, we aspire to show the beauty and complexity of working in a way that considers respect for the interests of children, the school environment, the perspective of adults, and the qualities and characteristics of materials. For this reason, we have included a glossary of words that may need explanation for the context of this book. You will find these special words highlighted in bold the first time they appear in the text, beginning in Chapter 2. In sum, we want to portray the joy and learning that come from a commitment to working with the values found in the Reggio Emilia schools, while continuing to respect the culture and identification of our own contexts. We have become a collaborative group through the processes of writing and editing and have structured this book in ways that mirror this collaboration. Each author has generously contributed to the knowledge and understanding of all who are interested in learning more about the topic of the atelier. We have worked together in a way that we hope other teachers and children find inspiring and helpful. And so, in this collaborative spirit, we share our stories. In Chapter 2, Lella Gandini presents the beginning context, history, and evolution of the atelier in Reggio Emilia. Her chapter includes the perspectives of the most notable protagonist, Loris Malaguzzi, the pedagogical and philosophical founder of the educational project. She also takes up the structure and organization for the schools and early ateliers, as well as the development of an international exhibit.

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Lella Gandini, Lynn Hill, Louise Cadwell, and Charles Schwall In Chapter 3, we are pleased to include selections from an essay written by Vea Vecchi entitled “The Poetics of Learning,” which is included in the book One City, Many Children: Reggio Emilia, A History of the Present (Baldini, Cavallini, & Vecchi, 2012). In Chapter 4, Lella Gandini shares the development of a project in Reggio Emilia that took place at La Villetta School in 1992: The Amusement Park for Birds. The story of this project was first produced as a DVD by George Forman and Lella (1995), in collaboration with the Reggio Emilia educators. In Chapter 5, Carlina Rinaldi, president of Reggio Children and of The Loris Malaguzzi Foundation, reflects on the nature of creativity and the work of listening and observing, as well as the process of understanding that is embedded in research and documentation. In Chapter 6, Charles Schwall writes about the concept and practice of viewing materials as languages, with alphabets and grammar, that have developed in Reggio Emilia. We come to understand why these languages are critical to us as human beings who desire a rich and whole understanding of the world and also wish to envision and contribute to a meaningful life. In Chapter 7, Charles Schwall highlights the experience of overcoming barriers to achieve a purposeful organization of a space; the availability, quality, and range of materials within the space; and the children’s and teachers’ productive use of the preprimary atelier at the St. Michael School of Clayton in St. Louis. In Chapter 8, Barbara Burrington tells the story of ten teachers who decided to transform their staff room into a studio space for the children at their Campus Children’s Center at the University of Vermont. In Chapter 9, Lynn Hill shares the story of a lab school at Virginia Tech where educators chose to visualize and reinvent an atelier in a way that embraces their unique context. In Chapter 10, Louise Cadwell, Lori Geismar Ryan, and Charles Schwall, who were leaders in the St. Louis Reggio Collaborative for 15 years, focus on the processes and systems that support the way of thinking and working that develop with the atelier. In Chapters 11 and 12, we hear the voices of two pioneers in the United States who have been at work to create their own Reggio-inspired schools over several decades. In Chapter 11, Pauline Baker writes about her understanding of many ways to make the work of the atelier come alive in her context at the Ochoa School in Arizona. In Chapter 12, Susan Harris MacKay writes about creativity as the center of learning and how that is interpreted and practiced at the Opal School in Portland, Oregon. In Chapter 13, we give you a glimpse into our current work and how the spirit of the studio lives in many different forms in different places and settings. Finally, in the Epilogue we return to the thoughts of Loris Malaguzzi as he reflects on the genesis and meaning of creativity.

The Context and Inspiration of Our Work

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In conclusion, we believe, as Carlina Rinaldi writes, that the whole school can become an atelier. Carlina’s words, which echo Malaguzzi’s quote at the beginning of this chapter, reveal the Reggio Emilian educators’ belief in the work of teachers and children, their shared research, and their great potential and human right to learn in diverse, rich, and deeply meaningful ways using many languages. We hope that this book brings these qualities to life for readers, and inspires you, as it has inspired us, to think deeply about the power of the expressive languages when placed in the center of teaching and learning.

REFERENCES Baldini, R., Cavallini, I., & Vecchi, V. (Eds.). (2012). One city, many children: Reggio Emilia, a history of the present (3rd ed.; J. McCall, Trans.; P. Moss. English ed.). Reggio Emilia, Italy: Reggio Children. Forman, G., & Gandini, L. (1995). The amusement park for birds, Videocassette and DVD, produced by Performanetics, Amherst, MA. Gandini, L. (2012). History, ideas, and basic philosophy: An interview with Loris Malaguzzi. In C. Edwards, L. Gandini, & G. Forman (Eds.), The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia experience in transformation (3rd ed.; pp 49–97). Denver, CO: Praeger.

CHAPTER TWO

The first city preschools in Reggio Emilia started in 1963 with the Robinson School. The schools were directly inspired by the same mission to create better opportunities for all children that had guided the small, spontaneous schools built and run by parents in 1945 at the very end of the Second World War. However, the intent of Loris Malaguzzi, who guided their evolution, was specifically focused on innovation. This intent was based on his conviction that

From the Beginning of the Atelier to Materials as 100 Languages Loris Malaguzzi’s Thoughts and Strategies Lella Gandini

Children are born with many resources and extraordinary potentials, which never cease to amaze us. They have autonomous capacities for constructing their own thoughts, questions and attempts at answers. Therefore, schools have a new task: rather than child-minding they have to open up to observation, research and experimentation by teachers who, together with children, participate in constructing a new culture of education. (Loris Malaguzzi, personal communication with Lella Gandini, 1993)

EDUCATIONAL AND POLITICAL CHOICES The construction of this new culture in preschools was brought about by Malaguzzi in several ways. The first was by means of research, through reading and discussing with teachers writings by John Dewey, Lev S. Vygotsky, Erik Erikson, and other philosophers of education, whose works had only recently been translated into Italian. A second way was through visiting other preschools that progressive city governments were opening in Italy and keeping informed about educational experiments taking place abroad. In France, for example, there were schools that used the techniques of Celestin Freinet, and in Switzerland there was the Geneva school guided by collaborators of Jean Piaget. Finally, a third, essential way was to support the evolving culture of education that was emerging from seminars for teachers and parents led by progressive pedagogical leaders such as Bruno Ciari, a well-known,

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Lella Gandini progressive coordinator of the preschools in Bologna, and Gianni Rodari, a writer and activist in education (The Hundred Languages of Children, 1987). In 1965, when two new city preschools opened, Malaguzzi had the idea to employ teachers with an education in the visual arts in the role of assistants, because the funding available for the schools was too low to hire them as teachers. This was the way he found to have the first atelieristi, since these were teachers whose education had oriented them toward valuing children’s languages of expression. Rather than naming the space dedicated to creative exploration with children an “art room,” Malaguzzi chose the French term “atelier,” which evoked the idea of a laboratory for many types of transformations, constructions, and visual expressions. Therefore the teacher working with children on visual expression was named atelierista, rather than “art teacher.” Still another initiative undertaken by Malaguzzi was to seek public support for educational reform. He needed to make a statement to the citizens of Reggio Emilia about the importance of preschools, and offer proof of his beliefs. The year was 1966, and the way he chose to do this was to make the young children’s creative expression and autonomous desire to be engaged, to discover, and to learn as visible as possible. An atelierista from Anna Frank School wrote that with Malaguzzi, the teachers brought paper and painting materials into the center of the city and set them up under the colonnade of the theater. The children set to painting out in the public for all to see, and people crowded around, expressed surprise, and asked many questions (see Figure 2.1). All this was done in conjunction with an exhibit of children’s drawings from preschools of the whole province (Manicardi, quoted in Baldini et al., 2012. p. 93).

Figure 2.1. “Once a week we would transport the school, [the children and our tools,] to town. . . . The children were happy. The people saw; they were surprised and they asked questions.” (Gandini, 2012, p. 31)

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CITY REGULATIONS ABOUT THE STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION OF PRESCHOOLS In the late 1960s and early 1970s women, working women especially, were very actively asking for more equitable social laws and for participation in decision making. There was also a great deal of street protest by workers and students. Among the notable changes that followed these active interventions was a national law passed in 1968 that established free education for all children from 3 years to 6 years of age. This connected with the existing free public education for children from the age of 6 to 18. In 1971 a national law established infant/ toddler centers for children from 3 months to 3 years of age. In 1972 another national law established participation by a council of elected parents and students in the running of public schools all over Italy. In that same year the city government of Reggio Emilia, after long deliberations, created a new “rulebook” of principles and organization for the education of children 0 to 6 years of age. The main points established included the following: • The continuity of education for young children from 3 months to 6 years • A pedagogical-coordination-support team of pedagogisti and psychologists • Participation by parents elected in each school to form a city-wide school committee • Priority access to infant/toddler centers and preschools for children with special needs • An atelier and an atelierista in each preschool and each infant/toddler center • Two teachers per classroom as co-teachers • Permanent collegial work and professional development in each preschool or infant toddler center for all teachers, atelieristi, cooks, and auxiliary personnel • Recognition of the value of the indoor and outdoor environments as spaces for learning, including kitchens, bathrooms, and outdoor spaces (Regulations for the Municipal Preschool, 1972, translation of p. 119)

MALAGUZZI’S PHILOSOPHY OF THE ATELIER Beginning with the Robinson School and then the other preschools after 1963, Malaguzzi intended to experiment deliberately with different disciplines and different materials in appropriate spaces (see Figure 2.2). Yet the atelier and the atelieristi became officially part of the schools only in 1972 with the new rulebook. Over time Malaguzzi worked out his thoughts, hopes, and observations

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Figure 2.2. The Diana School atelier. about the atelier. In his words that follow, we can directly see how his language is rich, complex, and dense; it is poetic as well and thus invites careful reflection because it offers many layers of meaning. The role of the atelier, integrated and combined within the general framework of learning and teaching strategies, was conceptualized as a retort for the marginal role commonly assigned to expressive education. It also was intended as a reaction against the concept of the education of young children based mainly on words and simpleminded rituals. First of all, the atelier had to be viewed as instrumental in the recovery of the image of the child, which we now saw as richer in resources and interests than we had understood before. This new child had the right to a school that was more aware and more focused, a school made up of professional teachers. In this way we also rescued our teachers, who had been humiliated by the narrowness of their preparatory schools, by working with them on their professional development. Within our framework of many cultural and theoretical influences, we had to reinvent the original meaning of the atelier as an artisan’s or artist’s workshop. For us the atelier had to become part of a complex design and at the same time an added space for searching, or better, for digging with one’s own hands and one’s own mind, and for refining one’s own eyes, through the practice

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of the visual arts. It had to be a place for sensitizing one’s taste and aesthetic sense, a place for the individual exploration of projects connected with experiences planned in the different classrooms of the school. The atelier had to be a place for researching motivations and theories of children from scribbles on up, a place for exploring variations in tools, techniques, and materials with which to work. It had to be a place favoring children’s logical and creative itineraries, a place for becoming familiar with similarities and differences of verbal and nonverbal languages. Our intent was to drive the school in richer, more complex, and rigorous directions, and toward new anthropological and cultural paths. As you can see, this was an ambitious and vast process. From the beginning we concentrated on the observation of the explorations, of processes, and of strategic theories of children, as premises for studying, analyzing, and reflecting on hypotheses, and proposals for the action of teachers. We were convinced that, in the case of both children and adults, it was valid to use the rule stated by David Hawkins, who said that it was necessary to become familiar first by using directly what you know and what you have learned in order to acquire further learning and knowledge. The taking over of the school by the atelier and by the atelierista, a teacher with preparation from an art school, as organizer, interpreter, co-organizer, and collaborator (a role to be continually reinvented en route), intentionally created a disturbance for the dated model of school for young children. School, in our case, had already been modified by the presence of two co-teachers in each classroom, by the collegiality of work, by the participation of families, and by the cooperation of the school with the community council. Our school had already guaranteed the practice of working with the same children for the continuum of three years, and had been enriched by the opening of the infant/ toddler centers. The genesis of the atelier coincided with the genesis of a new overall educational project: systemic, lay (non-religious), and progressive. By and by, the atelier would develop through crises connected with social change and the historic situation; these led to various results, including a reformulation of our theory and practice. The one stable element was an equal respect for the plurality and the connections within children’s expressive languages. Throughout, it has been necessary to keep battling against the old but solid culture of antonyms, which sets up pairs of opposites rather than considering making connections. The tendency is unfortunately to place: behaviors versus morality; reason versus fantasy; the individual versus the group; expressiveness versus cognition. Technology brought the camera, the tape recorder, the video recorder, the photocopy machine, the computer, and so on into the atelier. The school continually needs more tools, appropriate architectures, and wider spaces; it cannot risk falling behind.

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Lella Gandini We have to convince ourselves that expressive competences grow and mature their languages near and far from home, and that children discover with us the friendliness of actions, of languages, of thoughts and meanings. We have to convince ourselves that it is essential to preserve in children (and in ourselves) the feeling of wonder and surprise, because creativity, like knowledge, is a daughter of surprise. We have to convince ourselves that expressivity is an art, a combined construction (not immediate, not spontaneous, not isolated, not secondary); that expressivity has motivations, forms and procedures, contents (formal and informal), and the ability to communicate the predictable and the unpredictable. Expressivity finds sources from play, as well as from practice, from study, and from visual learning, as well as from subjective interpretations that come from emotions, from intuition, from chance, and from rational imagination and transgressions. In fact, drawing, painting, and the use of all languages are experiences and explorations of life, of the senses, and of meanings. They are an expression of urgency, desires, reassurance, research, hypotheses, readjustments, constructions, and inventions. They follow the logic of exchange, and of sharing. They produce solidarity, communication with oneself, with things, and with others. They offer interpretations and intelligence about the events that take place around us. (See Figure 2.3.) Formulas? There are none. There are only possible strategies. Make sure, above all, that children become familiar in their minds with images, that they

Figure 2.3. “The eye is shaped like a puddle . . . Then the things that you look at are reflected in the eye. Blue and black eyes see a little bit differently: blue eyes see lighter, black eyes see darker. Sometimes the eye is happy.” (Baldini, Cavallini, & Vecchi, 2012, p. 170)

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know how to keep them alive, that they learn the pleasure of reactivating them, regenerating them, and multiplying them with the maximum amount of personal and creative intervention. It is an essential requirement that the images be good and meaningful for children and for adults. For it is only then that those images, combined and recombined (and not always in a linear or cumulative way) in the form of realism, of resemblances, of logic, of imagination, and of symbolism, will become signs that carry meanings. This is the only procedure: difficult and uncertain but, perhaps, the decisive one (Carini, 1988).

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN EDUCATION AND VISUAL EXPRESSION Malaguzzi wrote commentaries for the catalogues of a sequence of exhibits of children’s work: When the Eye Jumps Over the Wall (1980) and The Hundred Languages of Children (1987). He was aware of the power of the documentation that was produced through the educational and creative work of the teachers and atelieristi with the support of the pedagogical coordinators. This documentation served not only as information and communication to parents or as advocacy for the development and opening of new schools for young children by the city administration, but also as a way of creating great interest among educators from other Italian cities and European countries. Inevitably and rapidly this interest spread to educators at schools and universities in the United States and gradually to other countries all over the world. Exhibits with the intent of showing the work of children had begun very soon in Reggio Emilia after the opening of the first city schools in 1963 and 1964. Then, in the following years of rapid social change, the presence of the atelier and atelieristi, continuous reflection and re-thinking, through interdisciplinary exchanges and research, all combined to bring about a gradual but deep transformation. The innovative philosophical and pedagogical thinking that Malaguzzi and his various collaborators had constructed became a cultural project that had to be made visible. The principal goal—and challenge—was to render visible and readily understandable their research and documentation about the active role of children. Children involved in their learning experiences showing their competencies in different expressive languages (see Figure 2.4). Thus by 1980 they had constructed and launched a way to communicate this educational process by means of an exhibit that they named When the Eye Jumps Over the Wall. By this title they implied that one could see the potential of children and learning only if one were to overcome the wall of traditional educational commonplaces and conceptions. The intellectual underpinning of the exhibit drew heavily upon the dated but still valuable lessons by Froebel, Agazzi, and Montessori, but certainly more upon the vital pedagogical reflections of Dewey, Vygotsky, Erikson, Piaget, Schaffer, Hawkins, and other contemporary thinkers. This exhibit traveled to many

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Figure 2.4. The atelier of the Infant/Toddler Center Belelli with toddlers and teacher Lucia Colla. countries in increasingly complex versions until finally, in 1987, it arrived for the first time in the United States, in San Francisco. It was accompanied by a new catalogue, beautifully illustrated and translated into English; this new version bore the name The Hundred Languages of Children (1987).

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“The Pleasure of Understanding” Among the commentaries by Malaguzzi in the catalogue of the Hundred Languages exhibit are several succinct reflections that convey his vision; for example: The pleasure of learning, of knowing and of understanding is one of the most important and basic feelings that each child expects to receive from the experience he or she is living through: either alone, with other children or with adults. It is a constructive feeling that must be reinforced so that the connected pleasure lasts even when reality may prove that learning, knowing and understanding can be difficult and require effort. It is through this very capacity of overcoming the difficulty that pleasure transforms itself into joy. (The Hundred Languages of Children, 1987, p. 22)

Languages of Expression: The Seven Points The same Hundred Languages catalogue contained an extraordinary compression of so much of Malaguzzi’s thought into the following seven essential points: 1. First, we recognize that the human species has the privilege of expressing itself through a plurality of languages, besides the spoken language. 2. We recognize that every language has the right to realize itself fully, and in the process it becomes part of other languages enriching them as well. 3. We recognize that all expressive, cognitive and communicative languages that are formed through reciprocity are born and develop through experience. 4. We recognize that a child is a constructor and co-author of these languages and participates in contributing to their historical and cultural variations. 5. We recognize that all the languages that are already co-existent in the mind and in the activity of the child have the power to be generative of other languages, other actions and other potentials that are in turn generative. 6. We recognize that all these languages need to be considered with equal dignity and value. They should receive support and adequate competent support from the adults and the environment. 7. And finally we wonder what support and understanding these propositions might receive in the current cultural and educational approach toward children’s learning of today. (The Hundred Languages of Children, 1987, pp. 22–23)

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REFERENCES Baldini, R., Cavallini, I., & Vecchi, V. (Eds.). (2012). One city, many children: Reggio Emilia, a history of the present. Reggio Emilia, Italy: Reggio Children. Carini, E. (1988, December 12). Se l’atelier è dentro una lunga storia e ad un progetto educativo: Intervista a Loris Malaguzzi. [If the atelier is within a long history and within an overall educational project: Interview with Loris Malaguzzi.] Bambini, 4, 8–14. Bergamo, Italy: Edizioni Junior. Hundred Languages of Children, The. (1987). A catalog to accompany the exhibit by the same name. Reggio Emilia, Italy: Reggio Children. Gandini, L. (2012). History, ideas, and basic philosophy: An interview with Loris Malaguzzi. In C. Edwards, L. Gandini, & G. Forman (Eds.), The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia experience in transformation (3rd ed.; pp 27–72). Denver, CO: Praeger. Regulations for the Municipal Preschool. (1972). Reggio Emilia, Italy: Office of Schools and Social Services, Municipality of Reggio Emilia. When the Eye Jumps Over the Wall. (1980). A catalog to accompany the exhibit by the same name. Reggio Emilia, Italy: Reggio Children. Credits: Quotations from Loris Malaguzzi from Carini, E. (1988, December 12). Se l’atelier è dentro una lunga storia e ad un progetto educativo: Intervista a Loris Malaguzzi. [If the atelier is within a long history and within an overall educational project: Interview with Loris Malaguzzi.] Bambini, 4, 8–14. Bergamo, Italy: Edizioni Junior. Figure 2.1 from The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach Advanced Reflections. Figure 2.2 from Open Window. Figure 2.3 from The Hundred Languages of Children—Catalogue of the exhibition (1996/2005). Figure 2.4 from The Park Is . . . All © Municipality of Reggio Emilia–InfantToddler Centers and Preschools, published by Reggio Children, s.r.l., Via Bligny 1/A, 42124 Reggio Emilia, Italia, www.reggiochildren.it

CHAPTER THREE For an understanding of Reggio Emilia’s experience and history, I believe that it is important to reflect on the meaning and the role of the atelier, on the importance and the nature of the welcome given to the aesthetic dimension (or poetic, as Jerome Vecchi Bruner likes to define it) in processes of learning and knowledge-building in our infant/toddler centers and preschools for children from 3 to 6 years of age. One possible path is to start with the value given to pedagogical documentation. There can be no doubt: the presence of the atelier has been crucial for its evolution, as a natural consequence of the specific visual culture that the atelier tends to generate. Widespread pedagogical documentation, as a basis for work, gradually developed in the infant/toddler centers and preschools, and then progressively flowed into books, exhibitions, and publishing, initially for use in schools and later for the outside world. For all the schools, exhibitions have always constituted a deeper exploration of meaning in our work with children. They have been a democratic way of sharing what takes place in the schools, a rewarding testimony to the work of adults and children, and a reminder of the value and importance of education from the first city-based exhibitions of the 1960s. But also a connection to the official exhibitions starting in 1980s with And When the Eye Jumps Over the Wall that took the new name The Hundred Languages of Children after 1987, as well as several others. Initially these were exhibitions for the city of Reggio Emilia, but later they were proposed on a national and international level. We are convinced that growth and evolution are only possible through exchange of viewpoints and discussion, and exhibitions have been a privileged terrain for exchange. The first exhibit organized in the Diana preschool, where I was teaching, was in 1972. I remember working until late at night with some teachers: the exhibition had become so large that the central hall in the school could hardly contain it. It was open to the city public and had quite an impact because it offered an image of the child, of school, and of teachers that was very different from the usual one, certainly a more complex image that indicated a need for greater commitment, and the need for re-thinking early years’ education from

Poetics of Learning Vea

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Vea Vecchi the roots. Since then, the end of the school year has been a time for presenting exhibitions of various sizes in all our schools, always open to the local neighborhood and the city. One of the most original characteristics of the pedagogy of Reggio Emilia has been its receptivity to poetic languages (visual, music, dance, poetry, architecture, design) and to the aesthetic dimension as an important element in life in schools and in learning processes. It is impossible to have a good understanding of the pedagogy of Reggio Emilia, or of the role the atelier has played, without adequate reflections on this aspect. It is necessary to understand how sensory perception, pleasure, and seduction, what Malaguzzi called “aesthetic vibration” (Malaguzzi, personal communication) can become catalysts in learning, and how they can support and nourish many kinds of knowledge not feeding only on information. It is knowledge that by avoiding easy categories can lead to relations of empathy and sensitive relations with things, stimulating the construction of connections. To my mind, the most important aspect to evaluate concerns how and to what extent the importance we attribute to aesthetic can affect not only the final products, but intervene in the procedures and in the ways of doing school, and therefore affect the learning of children, the growth of the teachers, and the development of pedagogical philosophy. Each discipline is made up of rationality, imagination, emotion, and the aesthetic. A culture that separates these aspects and thought processes related to them in more or less rigid ways inevitably subtracts an essential part from each discipline (or language), giving engineers the rational part, architects the imaginary part, mathematicians the cognitive part, artists the expressive, and so on. In this action of reducing, dividing, and hierarchizing thought processes that are part of our species and our biological makeup in their entirety, cultural resources are effectively removed, with a consequent impoverishment of thought itself. Rationality without emotion and empathy, imagination without the cognitive and rational, will construct a knowledge that is more limited, less complete. In their different ways several contemporary authors consider aesthetic as a connecting process: In the words of Gregory Bateson, aesthetics is a sensibility for “the patterns which connect” (1979, p. 8). It must also be said that it would be ingenuous to think that the presence of an atelier in a school and a teacher, a so-called atelieristi, dedicated to it is sufficient to guarantee the presence of the aesthetic dimension as an activator of quality in learning. A pedagogy sensitive to poetic languages is necessary, with the awareness that those languages contain a different way of seeing, deeper and often ahead of our time, and will be part of an atelier that does not betray this philosophy in daily practice. The particular form of observation and educational documentation of processes developed over time and used in the infant/toddler centers and preschools in Reggio Emilia is a testimony to this careful relationship. The

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aesthetic dimension expresses its strength and capacity for linking and connecting most fully in the evaluation process. Another aspect that has promoted and supported the pedagogical approach of Reggio Emilia concerns attention toward environment and spaces. There is a close connection between school spaces and the process of education (Loris Malaguzzi defined environments and spaces as the third educator— considering that there are two teachers per classroom). Care and aesthetic attention are extremely important elements in spaces and environments, because they bring cultural and ethical attitudes that affect the construction of individual and social identity. In general I believe schools do not attach importance to the aesthetic dimension in learning because they consider it to be a pleasurable aspect but fundamentally superfluous, not strictly necessary. So perhaps an important aspect that requires shared evaluation has to do with the idea that seeking out beauty and loveliness belongs to our species in a natural and profound way, and it constitutes a vitally important component, a primary need. This aspiration to beauty is found in all peoples and in all cultures, contemporary, past, and ancient; an aesthetic attention understood and experienced as a filter for interpreting the world; an ethical attitude; a form of thinking that requires care, grace, and wit; a mental approach that goes further than the simple appearance of things and highlights their deep, unexpected qualities and aspects. Like many others, I continue to believe that beauty and the aesthetic are active elements, capable of acting positively on important aspects of the lives of women and men, capable of saving them from conformity and superficiality, and that adopting them as a fundamental, inalienable right would do a great deal of good for humanity. It is worth reminding ourselves that aesthetic feeling, precisely because it is deep and innate to our species, is manifested easily across various fields; it threads through all the disciplines; it is not only connected to art, but becomes a way of researching, a key for interpreting, a place of experience. There are many examples related to human activities, but we must remember that as with all other cultural activities, aesthetic sensibility must be knowingly and consistently supported and defended over time. Loris Malaguzzi’s choice at the end of the 1960s of introducing an atelier into every preschool and later in every infant/toddler center, run by a person with a background in the arts, was and continues to be a more revolutionary choice than at first it appears, because it brought a new way of seeing into schools and into learning processes, compared with the habits of pedagogical tradition required of schools and pedagogy itself. It is necessary to go beyond what ateliers have progressively introduced into schools, such as the choice of materials and the use of certain techniques. Without diminishing the value of work that has been done, we should become more aware of the importance of the competencies that are necessary and the quality of the processes deriving from the work done. Therefore we should

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Vea Vecchi go further than the materials and techniques and take time over the process of empathy and the intense relation with things that the atelier promotes. It is necessary to think of the atelieristi as guarantors of the presence, in every discipline or language, of both the expressive, emotional part and the rational and cognitive part. In the experience in Reggio Emilia with the atelier, with its work on the visual languages, which by nature are sensitive and close to all the other poetic languages, the aesthetic dimension has been expressed in important and tangible ways through hands that know how to simultaneously construct and feel emotion. In this process of exchange, of closeness and of kinship with the world of art, ways of organizing work and educational contexts were born. They were capable of generating a transversal process that in a short time has visibly spread into environments, into processes, and into final products.

Figure 3.1. Metaphor with pea pods, Alice, 5 years, 10 months.

Figure 3.2. Cranes, Marco, 5 years, 8 months.

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In an educational project, listening is a difficult but indispensable practice that is necessary to learn. Listening presupposes an idea of teaching not as a transmission of predetermined cultural knowledge and schemes, but as an evolutionary structure that can be interpreted in relation to a reality and a culture that change. Aesthetic tension, with its particular qualities of empathy, of seeking relations of “patterns which connect,” with its gift of grace, irony, provocation, and indeterminateness, supports the process of listening. In the aesthetic, as we understand it, as promoter of relations, connections, sensibility, freedom, and expression, it seems natural to understand its vicinity to ethics, and as far as education is concerned, I would define this as an inseparable alliance. I see aesthetics and ethics as the strongest alliance for distancing forms of violence and domination, for making aesthetic sensibility one of the most effective barriers to physical and cultural violence. This is because aesthetic experience is principally an experience of freedom.

REFERENCES Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and nature: A necessary unity. New York, NY: Hampton Press. Credits: This chapter excerpts Vecchi, V. (2012). Poetics of learning. In R. Baldini, I. Cavallini, & V. Vecchi (Eds.), One city, many children: Reggio Emilia, a history of the present (pp.150–155). Reggio Emilia, Italy: Reggio Children. Figures 3.1 and 3.2 from One City, Many Children (2012). All © Municipality of Reggio Emilia–Infant-Toddler Centers and Preschools, published by Reggio Children, s.r.l., Via Bligny 1/A, 42124 Reggio Emilia, Italia, www.reggiochildren.it

CHAPTER FOUR

The Amusement Park for Birds Emergence and Process of a Project Lella Gandini

In the beginning the ateliers in Reggio Emilia were set up as centralized spaces where the children would go in groups to work with materials such as paint and clay with the atelieristi. With the need to have more space for working with a variety of materials, a miniatelier was set up inside of or next to each classroom, and the work of teachers and atelieristi merged in reciprocal learning. This development became part of an educational project that encouraged and supported connections between different roles in preschool and infant/toddler centers. Vea Vecchi, as an atelierista, has described that experience in this way:

Working together, guiding the children in their projects, teachers and I have repeatedly found ourselves face-to-face—as if looking in a mirror—learning from one another, and together learning from the children. This way we were trying to create paths to a new educational approach, one certainly not tried before, where the visual language was interpreted and connected to other languages, all thereby gaining in meaning. (V. Vecchi, quoted in Gandini, 2012, p. 309)

For me, it was a fundamental learning experience to visit and spend time in several of the preschools and infant/toddler centers in Reggio Emilia starting in 1976. One of the features that stood out was the way the physical structure of each building and the organizational system of each educational center determined the space and functioning of the atelier. New buildings for young children in Reggio Emilia now include a specifically designed space for the atelier; in some cases the designs allow for direct access to the grounds outside and hence to natural materials. However, when a preschool is set up in a pre-existing building, some of the spaces for the atelier turn out to have features that are interesting sources of inspiration for the children’s and teachers’ explorations. Such is the case for the atelier of La Villetta School, which was organized on the top floor of this school’s old building. It had been a private home, a small villa with a good-sized green space around it.

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Lella Gandini The youngest children’s classroom and miniatelier are on the ground floor along with the large open space, or piazza, of the preschool. The 4-year-olds are on the second floor, and the 5-year-olds on the third; the fourth floor is given over to the atelier, which occupies two large spaces. The very stairwell connecting the classrooms with the atelier became a protagonist in exploration. The steps invited counting and even the writing of numbers; the children placed one number on each step going up from the bottom to the top and then another number from the top down. In addition, the stairwell’s small windows with their wrought iron bars on the outside provided an ever-changing design of light and shadow, always a source of surprise, which has led to many versions of representation. At La Villetta I had frequent occasions to observe the atelierista, teachers, and children involved in several projects and transformations of materials. But in particular I participated with George Forman in the extensive documentation of one long-term project, named The Amusement Park for Birds, which I will describe in this chapter. At the end of the chapter George provides some closing comments on our experience.

INTRODUCING THE PROJECT AND THE PROTAGONISTS The idea of observing and documenting directly a project taking place in Reggio Emilia came about when Loris Malaguzzi was visiting the University of Massachusetts in 1988. He had been invited by Carolyn Edwards on the occasion of the opening of The Hundred Languages of Children exhibit when it was hosted in the Art Gallery of the University. One of the historic meetings among many very relevant encounters in those days took place in the office of George Forman. There we had the good fortune to listen to Malaguzzi presenting, just for us, one of the projects of the exhibit The City and the Rain. That project offered many interpretations by the children connected with weather, water and various physical transformations described in both words and drawings. Needless to say, this experience stimulated a great many questions. Eventually, George Forman, then a professor of education at the University of Massachusetts, and I asked that we be able to observe and document the relationship and learning constructed among children, teacher, and atelieristi during the emergence and development of a project, right from its beginning. Malaguzzi accepted this request, and so at the beginning of 1992 we were able to observe the development of the next new project in Reggio Emilia—The Amusement Park for Birds. There were three principal protagonists involved in this project, all seasoned collaborators of Malaguzzi (see Figure 4.1). Giovanni Piazza, atelierista at La Villetta for many years, had been involved in many important projects that were well documented with books and videos, for example, the video To

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Figure 4.1. Most of the working group at La Villetta: Loris Malaguzzi, Carlina Rinaldi, George Forman, Giovanni Piazza, Amelia Gambetti, with Lella Gandini also present. Make a Portrait of a Lion (1987), the book Reggio Tutta: A Guide to the City by the Children (Ferri & Davoli, 2000), and the well-known large exhibits. His seminal reflections about the relationship of children with materials will be examined in Chapter 6 of this book. Here it is important to point out what his role was to be in the project we observed, in particular his way of creating a connection between the thoughts of children, their hypotheses, and relationships with materials that they then transformed with their ideas and hands. Next, Amelia Gambetti was a teacher at La Villetta who had a great deal of experience working with children and doing documentation. She had also been the protagonist in the video about the Portrait of a Lion. On several different occasions I had the opportunity to observe Amelia at work with children or with other teachers in the environment of a school. I have always been impressed by her way of “being there,” establishing a serious commitment and participation. It is a way that reciprocal trust with children and other teachers can be created. Amelia is able to be completely present, observing, and listening, mostly silent and alert; she becomes cognizant of what is around, what is missing, and seeks to provide or suggest what is needed. Her aim is to build a culture of learning and collaboration that includes being ready to accept constructive criticism, to share constructive criticism, and to help one another deal with weaknesses and opportunities.

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Lella Gandini And a third, essential presence was Carlina Rinaldi, who as pedagogista, or pedagogical coordinator, of La Villetta and other schools, provided a mirror for reflections and guidance. She has had all along the ability to connect, with grace and intelligence, what is happening with children to the shared philosophy of the Reggio Emilia educational approach, and to do research from a psychological perspective, as well as from the perspective of families and the city. One needs, of course, to keep in mind that along with these three, Malaguzzi himself was often present, always vigilant and supportive, and always ready with pointed questions and provocative suggestions. The grounds of La Villetta were also, in a sense, one of the protagonists of the story, since they provided its setting. The intention of George Forman and myself, as co-documenters, was to observe and at times discuss with the Reggio Emilia educators their interpretations of what was happening, not, of course, as advisers but rather as interested participant observers. Our intention was to construct and produce visual documentation, a video (Forman & Gandini, 1995), and perhaps a book. It turned out that George and I, with Amelia Gambetti, who came to the Laboratory Preschool of the University of Massachusetts to be a teacher, were able to work together on the editing of the video in preparation. Before his death in 1994, Malaguzzi saw part of the video in process, while he was writing powerful reflective essays for a bilingual book about that experience entitled The Fountains: “Let’s Make an Amusement Park for the Birds” (Malaguzzi, 1995).

THE PROCESS OF THE PROJECT AND ITS DOCUMENTATION At the beginning of their reflection, the group of educators considered that during the previous school year some of the parents had built a small lake on the grounds of the school. The children, working with them, had also constructed birdhouses. However, the results of their efforts were now in a poor state, and the parents seemed interested in returning to work in the park to restore some of those features. Besides, there was the strong possibility that children would like to participate or become involved in the restoration, and they might even engage in theories and representation about water and its transformation. The group tried to foresee various possibilities starting from the small lake in the park. This way to make hypotheses together is considered essential for teachers in Reggio Emilia and is called ricognizioni. The children could be interested in either of two general aspects: in fountains or in theories of water (which we observers hoped for). If interested in fountains, the exploration could develop in pursuing how fountains work, what shapes they have, what sound they make. But the interest in fountains, our group of researchers thought, could also lead the children’s interest to water mills, waterfalls, pressure of water, speed of water, and mechanisms about water. If the interest of children emerged

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directly toward theories of water transformations, the possibilities of explorations could be directed toward the city aqueduct and/or sewers, or even the rain (see Figure 4.2).

The First Conversation with Children about the Project On February 17, 1992, the first conversation with 11 children took place. The teachers had invited a group of children who were friends with one another. The children met with Amelia in a room next to the atelier and with another teacher as observer who was taking notes. Louise Cadwell was also present, as she was in Reggio Emilia for a year of study. Giovanni was videotaping and taking photographs; a tape recorder was also placed close to the center of the circle of children in the room. In this first conversation, which launched the project, Amelia asked straightforward questions so that the children could remember together what their experience had been the year before; for example: • What was in our yard last year? • Who built the birdhouses?

Figure 4.2. The chart of hypotheses that the group of adults made about the possibilities and directions the project hopefully could or would develop.

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Lella Gandini • Did the birds like the small houses? • What did the small birds eat? Because the children were accustomed to this kind of dialogue, they spoke with confidence and detail, with a spirit of collaboration. Together they created a detailed inventory of what they did the year before with the help of parents and teachers. This included making a small lake with water for a birdbath, building birdhouses, and providing food for the birds in various ways. When Amelia asked about what they might do now, this year, to provide food for the birds, the children began to talk about repairing the small lake, including engineering with pipes so that it might stay clean; they also considered building a fountain in the lake and maybe constructing a water wheel and a ladder for the birds. (This was the beginning of the project that continued for many weeks. Later, they would be developing ideas for what could become an amusement park for the birds.) Here is a brief excerpt from the end of that first conversation: Andrea: To make a ladder for the birds, we could use a drill. A bird presses a

switch.

Federica: The bird stays there, and waits and then he climbs on. Simone: We can also have a rope go through. Pull the rope up and the bird

goes up. Pull the rope down and the bird goes down. Loris Malaguzzi reflected about the first meetings with children to decide about the first steps in the project: The children already have considerable experience in conversing and discussing both in small and large groups. But this meeting for the “what to do” is especially eagerly anticipated. What is involved is finding a special idea, all together, toward which the work will be directed, and the project can last for quite some time—even weeks or months—if the idea catches on and the work turns out well. Each child can put forth his own ideas. . . . Whatever it turns out to be, the adopted idea in turn adopts the children and the teachers. (Malaguzzi, 1995, p. 10)

In this project, the initial idea was to create a lake for the thirsty birds that inhabit the school grounds . . . they must also be hungry . . . and perhaps they are tired. . . . Suggestions are made for houses and nests . . . swings for the baby birds . . . elevators for the elderly ones. The idea of “what to do” begins to take shape during the class assembly. What this idea will turn out to be, if and when the children do decide on it, will only be known after a hundred tosses and rebounds. Sometimes the idea is not satisfactory or does not gain consensus. But not to worry. . . . Everything will be postponed until tomorrow’s meeting. (Malaguzzi, 1995, p. 10)

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Drawings and Further Conversation At the end of the first conversation, the children were invited to go to the atelier and draw what they thought was needed in the park. Three of the first drawings are shown in Figures 4.3–4.5. Figure 4.3. A birdhouse with an elevator for older birds, by Andrea C.

Figure 4.4. A place for many animals, a birdhouse and a fountain, by Agnese.

Figure 4.5. A chute of water from the mountain and a bird diving in the water near the water wheel, by Filippo.

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Lella Gandini The next day, February 18, after the group of adults had met and discussed together what interest had emerged from the children, they decided to explore the ideas the children have about fountains and how they work. Amelia then has another conversation with the same group of 11 children to revisit their ideas. The day before they had spoken about the small lake, small houses for the birds, and some ideas about what they might do next to help the birds in the park. The children also described drawing some of their ideas in the atelier, and Amelia asked to look at the drawings with the children. This second conversation and looking at the children’s first drawings of elevators for birds, water wheels, ladders, slides, and fountains prompted Amelia to ask, Amelia: Do you know what a fountain is? Filippo: There are some fountains where you go to drink. Andrea: Some where one goes to wash. Agnese: Not the people—birds, dogs. Amelia: Did you see fountains somewhere? Filippo: At the public garden. Alice: I saw them in the mountains; they were made of ice. They were very

beautiful, all the things made of ice . . . they had round things. After this conversation, when the children move to the atelier, Alice draws her ice fountain (see Figure 4.6), and Giorgia invents a weeping fountain that she says looks like a weeping willow tree. This is some of what Giorgia says in describing her fountain:

Figure 4.6. Alice draws the fountain.

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The fountain throws out water a little like a spray. It is a fountain like a rainbow made somewhat in a curve shape. On the top there are small hearts. The hearts are cut with a machine and they stay on top. Water comes down from the larger spray to the smaller spray. Later Amelia reviews with the working group—teachers, Giovanni, Carlina, George, Lella, Malaguzzi—the first and second conversation, the children’s first drawings of elevators for birds, water wheels, ladders, slides, and fountains. The children continue to invent ideas that could be a part of their design for the park for birds. At the same time it is clear that the interest in the fountains will connect with the city itself, as there are several fountains in the park and city sites, and a visit is planned and carried out. The children also participate in documenting the fountains through drawings and taking photographs.

After the Visit to the City Park The children have visited the fountains in the park of Reggio Emilia. They have taken pictures and made several drawings. Now they know that water gets in the fountains, but the question is about how fountains work: Amelia: How does the water get into the fountains? Andrea: There are sprays. Giorgia: They come out of the fountain. Filippo: Pressure makes them go forward, backward, left, and right. Andrea: If there is little water, there is very little sprays. Giorgia: Maybe there can be an engine that makes the sprays go. Andrea: Yes; inside the fountain. Simone: Perhaps there is an engine in the fountain that blows some wind,

and the water comes out in sprays. If one pulls a handle, the engine would turn on, the wind would go on, and the water comes out in sprays. Andrea: In there is a little engine that goes on and stops, goes on and stops, maybe that is what makes the spray come out. Simone: A spray means the water comes out doing psst psst. Filippo: A spray comes out that way but does not go PSST . . . PSST! These three boys, Andrea, Filippo, and Simone, turn out to be the protagonists. At times there is some tension between Andrea and Filippo, but their friendship, and the friendship of two of the girls, Giorgia and Alice, helps to create a very strong working group. They advance several steps in the ideas and solutions for problems encountered in the experience of the project of the Amusement Park.

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Lella Gandini By examining the transcribed conversation with the ideas children had expressed about the mechanism and functioning of the fountains, the group of observers suggests that Amelia could also ask some of the children individually about their hypotheses. Amelia asks Filippo to tell her his view about how a fountain works (see Figure 4.7). Filippo has concrete notions and also makes a drawing to demonstrate how he thinks the fountain works so as to explain it to her. Amelia also asks Alice how, in her view, a fountain works (see Figure 4.8). Alice says that there has to be some water coming into the fountain. “How does the water get into the fountain and out of the fountain?” Amelia asks. “I do not know,” Alice answers, “there might be a well with water on the side of the street.”

Figure 4.7. Amelia asks Filippo how fountains work.

Figure 4.8. Amelia asks Alice how fountains work.

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Amelia responds, “Can you think about how it could work?” Alice remains silent and looks more and more concerned. Amelia waits a minute or two and then says, “I also always have difficulties in understanding how mechanical things work . . . . Maybe tomorrow morning early, before Giovanni, who seems to know everything, arrives, you and I could ask Filippo and Simone to tell us how a fountain works. Do you think that’s a good idea?” Alice thinks with a serious expression for a minute and then smiles and says: “Yes!”

Constructing Fountains The interest in fountains is extended to constructing fountains in clay, one of the materials that children have been using a great deal. From the 2-dimensional drawing to the 3-dimensional construction with diverse material is one of the features of the experience of children in the ateliers of Reggio Emilia. The children dedicated a great deal of attention to these constructions— sometimes referring to their drawings of what they had seen in the park, sometimes creating new structures (see Figures 4.9 and 4.10). They mostly worked in the atelier with Giovanni. They had done many drawings of the fountain’s working system after observing the fountains in the park and discussing how they work. Figure 4.9. The children construct fountains of clay.

Figure 4.10. This was called the fountain of angels.

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Lella Gandini Following up on one of the drawings by Filippo, the children start to explore drawing and constructing wheels for water mills, first in paper and then also in clay. In the construction they seem to ignore the shape of the paddle of the wheels and make them completely flat. Amelia, in agreement with the other observers on the team, finally asks Andrea to show her his paper construction of a wheel for the water mill (see Figure 4.11). By reviewing his process, he makes a sudden discovery. A compact series of photographs show the supportive and unobstructive way in which Amelia supports discovery and correction (see Figures 4.12–4.14). Figure 4.11. Andrea’s drawing and paper construction of a water wheel.

Figure 4.12. A composite of Andrea’s process.

2. Andrea shows Amelia his paper construction of a water wheel next to his drawing.

1. Andrea shows Amelia his drawing.

3. Andrea realizes, by explaining to Amelia how the paper wheel should move, that his construction was wrong.

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Figure 4.13. Andrea corrects the position of the paper paddle in order to make the wheel turn.

Figure 4.14. Right away Andrea goes to the space of the atelier where his clay work is in process and changes the direction of his clay paddle. The group of educators and researchers prepared the chart shown in Figure 4.15 to take stock of what the interest of the children had been; what they had explored, represented, or constructed in order to support children to make further exploration; and steps toward a possible shared goal.

Figure 4.15. A summary of the actions and possibilities with children.

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Lella Gandini

A SUMMARY OF THE ACTIONS AND POSSIBILITIES WITH CHILDREN At this point, the children and teachers revisited again their earlier conversation about ways to improve the school grounds (see Figure 4.16). Everything they had discussed and all the work they had been doing came together in an instant when one of the children declared: “We can make an amusement park for the birds outside and all around our school!” (see Figure 4.17). This enthusiastic suggestion quickly became a goal, then an overall design and a plan of action. It was followed in May by an intense period of construction, this time involving the whole school, plus parents, grandparents, neighbors, and even the city waterworks system, as workers came to set up a separate water main for supplying the many fountains as well as the small lake the children wanted to restore.

Figure 4.16. Meeting of the group to plan how to improve the grounds of the school and to follow up on their initial intentions.

Figure 4.17. A child in the group launches the idea of constructing an Amusement Park for Birds!

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All of this effort toward the end of the school year seemed to need a sort of grand conclusion. Children and adults imagined and desired a fitting celebration for the completion of this project (see Figures 4.18 and 4.19). Malaguzzi was in full agreement with this notion. He saw such a gathering as a perfect occasion, just as he had more than once in the past, to make visible to the citizens of Reggio and the public at large the achievements of his vision for the education of all children (see Figures 4.20, 4.21, and 4.22). His message reached the desired target directly for those many persons who attended the celebration and indirectly for readers of the local press, which devoted extensive coverage to the day’s events. Figure 4.18. An announcement for the opening and celebration of the Amusement Park for Birds is designed, printed, and distributed.

Figure 4.19. Amelia and the children read about their project in the local press.

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Lella Gandini

Figure 4.20. One of the working fountains built by children and teachers: the pinwheel fountain.

Figure 4.21. The crowd of parents, friends, and neighbors comes from all parts of the city of Reggio Emilia.

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Figure 4.22. The cooks of the school, helped by parents, prepare the biggest cake ever seen and many refreshments.

GEORGE FORMAN ON THE AMUSEMENT PARK FOR BIRDS To conclude, we might consider how projects such as the one described here fit with the fundamental principles of the municipal preschools of Reggio Emilia, in the view of one of the initial participants. George Forman, who was deeply invested in this experience and in the videotaping of the process, wrote the following: The educational philosophy behind these schools can be viewed as an interpretation of the constructivist and social constructivist theories. In the first analysis, these theories need to be distinguished from theories of knowledge. The basic premise is that knowledge is constructed as a system of relations, so that the simple association between two stimuli, or between a stimulus and a response, is insufficient to defining the knowledge-building process. It is only through a process of re-reading and revisiting that children are able to organize what they have learned from a single experience within a broader system or relations. These processes are individually and socially constructed, and herein lays the image of the child as an active constructor of his or her knowledge, which is one of the fundamental premises of the philosophy and practice that has come to be known as the Reggio Emilia approach.

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Lella Gandini The Amusement Park for Birds project is a wonderful example of a school as a place where children are encouraged to reflect on an experience rather than simply have an experience, a context that stimulates the children not only to observe but also to reflect on their observations. That is done not only from shared re-reading of the materials that document the children’s experiences, but also through the use of other expressive languages—drawing, sculpting with clay and wire, and so on—viewed as tools for designing, expanding, and elaborating ideas and experiences (see Figure 4.23).

Figure 4.23. Another of the many working fountains that lasted a few years in the park of La Villetta School.

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The social constructivism of this encounter rests in the manner in which the teachers respect the children’s need to generate their own questions and encourage children to revisit their choices. The teachers are keen to help children make sense of their experience, not just remember the experience. The children are taught to infer, predict, confirm—to go beyond the givens, that is, to organize facts into structures that make some possibilities more probable than others (Forman, Foreword to Malaguzzi, 1995, p. 8).

REFERENCES Ferri, G., & Davoli, M. (Eds.). (2011). Reggio Tutta: A guide to the city by the children. Reggio Emilia, Italy: Reggio Children. Forman, G., & Gandini, L. (1995). The amusement park for birds [Video]. Produced by Performanetics, Amherst, MA. Gandini, L. (2012). The atelier: A conversation with Vea Vecchi. In C. Edwards, L. Gandini, & G. Forman (Eds.), The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia experience in transformation (3rd ed.; pp. 303–316). Denver, CO: Praeger. Malaguzzi, L. (1995). The idea of the amusement park for birds and the fountains. In T. Casarini, A. Gambetti, & G. Piazza (Eds.), The fountains: “Let’s make an amusement park for the birds” (L. Morrow, Trans.; pp. 10–13). Reggio Emilia, Italy: Reggio Children. To Make a Portrait of a Lion. (1987). [Video]. Produced by The City of Reggio Emilia, Italy. Credits: Figures 4.1–4.23 and some excerpts from the books from The Fountains, from The Hundred Languages of Children—Catalogue of the Exhibition (1996/2005), and from The Amusement Park for Birds video. All © Municipality of Reggio Emilia–Infant-Toddler Centers and Preschools, published by Reggio Children, s.r.l., Via Bligny 1/A, 42124 Reggio Emilia, Italia, www.reggiochildren.it

CHAPTER FIVE

The Whole School as an Atelier Reflections by Carla Rinaldi Edited by Lella Gandini

Carla Rinaldi was the first pedagogical coordinator (pedagogista) to work with Loris Malaguzzi in developing the preschools and the infant/toddler centers of Reggio Emilia. Carla is a reflective writer who has been an attentive researcher and contributor to the continuous evolution of the thought and work developing in the schools of Reggio Emilia. Through her writing she continues to present the many connections and layers of complexity within the philosophy of the Reggio Emilia approach. Here, in a conversation with Ettore Borghi, published in 2001, are her reflections about the evolution of the Reggio Emilia schools.

E. Borghi: It was in the seventies. Your universe becomes richer: an

atelierista, two co-teachers together, and interaction of more adult educators. Carla: First, I want to highlight the very innovative element of the presence of two co-teachers per classroom. The presence of the two co-teachers, although they have analogous professional profiles, was completely focused on their differences. I think this choice was steeped in the idea of having two different points of view, considering dialogue and exchange as essential qualities of education and of the educator. Here the deep meaning of group work and, in an anticipatory way, a systemic interpretation of the relativity of the child emerges. We can see that the value of diversity is introduced through the presence of the two co-teachers and clears the way for the other presence, the one of the atelierista. This presence brings diversity into the school that is deliberately chosen and counted upon, where the metaphor of the hundred languages is represented in the professional formation in the visual arts. While the atelier was already in the schools in 1963, it was in the seventies that the theory of the hundred languages developed. It was then that the atelier was declared as the place for the hundred languages: drawing, painting, sculpture, math, poetry—languages that dialogue

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Edited by Lella Gandini with the different disciplines and different cultural worlds. The atelier brought another difference into the school and pushed the idea of diversity to the utmost, encouraging a new pedagogy that would highlight the subjectivity [and interconnectivity] of the child. Considering the atelier as a metaphor, I like to say (and I am not the only one) that the whole school has to be a large atelier, where children and adults find their voices in a school that is transformed into a great laboratory of research and reflection. (Borghi, 2001, p. 138) We continue with part of a lecture Carla delivered to educators in the city of Pistoia in the spring of 2003 offering her thoughts on creativity, an interpretation of this basic ingredient not always discussed in the workings of the atelier.

CREATIVITY AS A QUALITY OF THOUGHT What is extraordinary in the human mind is not only our capacity to move from one language to another, from one “intelligence” to another; we are also capable of reciprocal listening that makes communication and dialogue possible. Children are the most extraordinary listeners of all. They encode and decode, interpreting data with incredible creativity. Children “listen” to life in all its facets, listen to others with generosity, and quickly perceive how the act of listening is an essential act of communication. Children are biologically predisposed to communicate and establish relationships. This is why we must always give them plentiful opportunities to represent their mental images and share them with others. Moving from one language to another, from one field of experience to another, children can grow in the idea that others are indispensable for their own identity and existence. Through the act of sharing, we realize not only that the other becomes indispensable for our identity, for our understanding, for communication and listening, but also that learning together generates pleasure in the group, that the group becomes the place of learning. This is a fundamental value, which we can choose to adopt or not. We thus create what we call a “competent audience,” subjects capable of listening reciprocally, and becoming sensitive to the ideas of others to enrich their own ideas and to generate group ideas. This, then, is the revolution that we have to put into place: to develop children’s natural sensitivity toward appreciating and developing and sharing the ideas of other children. This is why we consider the learning process to be a creative process. By creativity, I mean the ability to construct new connections between thoughts and objects that bring about innovation and change, taking known elements and creating new connections.

The Whole School as an Atelier: Reflections by Carla Rinaldi

Figure 5.1. The child takes a piece of wire.

Figure 5.2. The child makes a bracelet with it.

Figure 5.3. The child places ears of wire on the chair and says, “Horse.”

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Here is an example: A 3-year-old child is playing with a piece of wire. First, he makes a bracelet, and then, on the back of the chair, the wire becomes a horseman riding his steed and, finally, it is transformed into the horse’s ear (see Figures 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3). As we know, human beings are equipped with two forms of thinking: convergent thinking, which tends toward repetition, and divergent thinking, which tends toward the reorganization of elements. Divergent thinking is the type we see in the previous example. It is the combination of unusual elements that young children put into place very easily because they do not have a particular theoretical background or established connections among objects and facts. Why is it so hard for adults to use divergent thinking? Primarily because convergent thinking is convenient, but also because changing your mind often represents a loss of power. Children, on the other hand, search for power by changing their minds, in the honesty that they have toward ideas and toward others, in the honesty of their listening. But (unfortunately) they quickly understand that having ideas that diverge from those of their teachers or their parents, and expressing them at the wrong moment, is not considered a positive thing. So it is not creative thinking that dies but the legitimization of the creativity of thinking. Creative thinking can also lead to solitude. Creativity is in principle relational; it needs to be approved in order to become a shared wealth. Too often, however, we are afraid of this creativity, even our own, because it makes us

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Edited by Lella Gandini “different.” In play, as Piaget noted, children take reality in hand in order to take possession of it. They freely decompose and recompose it, consolidating this quality of convergent and divergent thinking. Through play, children confront reality and accept it, develop creative thinking and escape from a reality that is too often oppressive. It is here that some of our most serious mistakes take root. The dimension of play (with words, pretending, and so on) is thus an essential element of the human being. If we take this dimension away from children and adults, we remove a possibility for learning. We break up the dual play-learning relationship. The creative process needs to be recognized and legitimated by others. Creativity is not just the quality of thinking of each individual but is also an interactive, relational, and social project. It requires a context that allows it to exist, to be expressed, to become visible. In schools, creativity should have the opportunity to be expressed in every place and in every moment. What we hope for is creative learning and creative teachers, not simply a “creativity hour.” This is why the atelier must support and ensure all the creative processes that can take place anywhere in the school, at home, and in the society. We should remember that there is no creativity in the child if there is no creativity in the adult: The competent and creative child exists if there is a competent and creative adult. Think of our relationship with art. Art has too often been separated from life, and like creativity, it has not been recognized as an everyday right, as a quality of life. The disciplinary development of the sciences has provided many benefits but has also led to problems such as the over-specialization and compartmentalization of knowledge. In general, our social system adheres to this logic of separation and fragmentation of the levels of power. We are too often taught to separate that which is connected, to divide rather than bring together the disciplines, to eliminate all that could lead to disorder. For this reason, it is absolutely indispensable to reconsider our relationship with art as an essential dimension of human thinking. The art of daily life and the creativity of daily life should be the right of all. Art, then, is a part of our lives, of our efforts to learn and to know.

CLOSING REFLECTIONS Carla Rinaldi, in her conversation with Ettore Borghi about the evolution of the schools in Reggio Emilia, points out that we cannot separate the powerful effect of the atelier from the important innovations that paved the way for its establishment. In particular, she highlights the introduction of the roles of two co-teachers, which was focused completely on contributing different points of view and “the value of diversity” to group work. Once again we see a system at work to create positive effects in learning and teaching.

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Next came Carla’s reflections on the connections among dialogue, communication, relationship, and reciprocal listening toward the formation of quality of thinking and, as a consequence, of creativity. Carla invites us to reflect on how the context of the schools, with the support of the atelier, must enable creative processes to take place everywhere, and to consider that creativity and art have to be recognized as everyday rights that contribute to quality of life.

REFERENCE Borghi, E. (2001). L’organizzazione, il metodo. (Organization and method). In Una storia presente: L’esperienza delle scuole comunali dell’infanzia di Reggio Emilia (A present history: The experience of the municipal schools of Reggio Emilia). Reggio Emilia, Italy: Associazione Internazionale Amici di Reggio Children & Reggio Children S.r.l., Edizioni RS Libri. Credits: Figures 5.1–5.3 from The Hundred Languages of Children—Catalogue of the Exhibition (1996/2005), © Municipality of Reggio Emilia–Infant-Toddler Centers and Preschools, published by Reggio Children, s.r.l., Via Bligny 1/A, 42124 Reggio Emilia, Italia, www.reggiochildren.it

CHAPTER SIX

“Alice and the Whale” is a ministory from the Hundred Languages of Children exhibit that offers insight into the powerful relationship that a young child can have with materials. In a beautifully documented sequence of images, Alice, a 2-year-old Charles Schwall from Reggio Emilia, is sitting at a table and playing with some pieces of copper wire. “I make a fish,” she explains as she uses her hands to form a piece of wire into a round, oval shape. She then uses smaller pieces of wire to create several little fish. As she notices the large scale of a piece of the wire in comparison to the smaller ones, she says, “This wire is really big!” Suddenly she raises her arms as high as possible, stretching the wire between her hands, and exclaims, “What a big fish! It’s a whale! What a big mouth you have! Better to eat you—Chomp!” And she forms the big piece of wire into a large oval shape. This ministory reveals a young girl’s imaginative use of wire for representation and storytelling. Her words and actions are full of wonder as she transforms ordinary pieces of wire into a story. In this small moment, the wire takes on qualities that are similar to language: The wire comes to represent several fish and denotes meaning within the various aspects of her delightful and surprising story (see Figure 6.1). Italian educators in Reggio Emilia use the phrase “hundred languages” as a metaphor for the teaching, learning, and expressive use of materials that occur within their schools (see Chapter 2). The idea that materials have the ability to take on expressive aspects and meaning comparable to verbal language is foundational to the pedagogy of Reggio Emilia. How does a small piece of wire, or any other type of material, communicate content and carry meaning? What does it mean for a material to become an expressive language? How can children form meaningful relationships with materials and use materials to express and communicate? Materials have powerful capacities to represent, depict, and tell stories. Educators can discover this potential by designing contexts for learning that encourage young students to use materials to search for their own strategies and invent their own solutions.

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Figure 6.1. Alice and the whale.

MATERIALS, RELATIONSHIPS, AND LANGUAGES: INTERVIEW WITH GIOVANNI PIAZZA In this interview, conducted in May 1997 by Lella Gandini, Giovanni Piazza, who was introduced in Chapter 4 as the atelierista at La Valletta School, discusses concepts that are central to the unique expressive use of materials found in the schools of Reggio Emilia. He discusses children’s first encounters with materials, how expressivity develops, and some of the essential characteristics of materials as languages: Children’s first encounters with materials involve exploration and action. This is a necessary step in the children’s process of understanding. Through such encounters and explorations, children build an awareness of what can happen with materials, and adults develop the ability to observe and support the significance of each particular experience. When we consider a material by itself or in the way that it is presented to a child, or when we just begin to explore it, it is too soon to speak about the language of a material. Material is static. Of course, it can suggest and inspire ideas, but it would be more appropriate for us to speak about the characteristics or properties of a material considered by itself and, as George Forman [1994, pp. 41–43] suggests, and to analyze the affordances of different materials. It is through interactions between a child and a material that an alphabet can develop. As the children use paper, clay, wire, and so on, different alphabets will

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develop from different materials. As children use their minds and hands to act on a material using gestures and tools and begin to acquire skills, experience, strategies, and rules, structures are developed that can be considered a sort of alphabet or grammar. This alphabet or grammar, of the use of materials, has to be discovered by children in partnership with adults. It is essential for children to acquire knowledge of materials, gain competence with them, and use them in a variety of ways. They often discover or invent different ways of using materials in the process of experimentation through observing other children. An alphabet is probably best described as the combination of the characteristics of a particular material along with the relationship that arises in the interaction between the child and the material. It is during the construction of that relationship that the possibilities of modification, transformation, and structuring of the material present themselves, so that the transformed material can become a conduit for expression that communicates the child’s thoughts and feelings. In a situation that supports communication, as in our preschools, where education is based in relationship, by transforming a material to communicate (paper, paint, clay, etc.), we structure a language. Each language has a communicative system. Searching for and discovering how a particular material presents itself and is transformed helps the child acquire knowledge about the material itself—about texture, form, shape, color, exterior and interior appearance. The child gradually learns that a material can be used in many different ways. [In our schools] children acquire a large spectrum of knowledge about materials, and this gives them the chance to use different alphabets in their individual process of representation and give shape to their own ideas. It is clear that in a space that is prepared and supported by adults with intentionality, the children, who already know some alphabets, will construct others. Children’s first explorations of and research on the qualities and characteristics of materials take place in the infant/toddler centers. Then, when the children come to preschools at around 3 years of age, the slow, progressive construction of knowledge of materials continues. This knowledge is based on the possibilities that they have to encounter different materials. We also have to keep in mind that for teachers, one very important point is to understand how to recognize (or, we could say, read) the relationship and exchange between child and material and cultivate the growth of awareness among colleagues to support it. Observing carefully and listening to the children helps us understand the ways of learning with materials that the children develop so that we, in turn, can support them. (Gandini, 2005, pp. 13–15)

Commentary: Affordances and Media Feedback The internal alphabetic quality, or grammar, of a material described by Giovanni refers to the physical properties that are unique to a material and

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Charles Schwall how a child uses those properties to express and communicate. Clay, for example, has plastic 3-dimensional qualities; it can bend, twist, or be modeled with the fingers, or it can take on volumetric form and surface texture. Paint has liquid mobility on a 2-dimensional surface; it can become opaque or transparent as well as delineate an endless variety of geometric or organic forms and colors. Found objects can also take on communicative qualities. Objects from everyday life, nature, or other sources are unique in that they can be collaged, assembled into various shapes and forms, and take on an infinite variety of symbolic associations. Each material has potential to become a unique communicative system. Giovanni also refers to the concept of affordances with materials in young children’s learning (Forman, 1994). Different materials each possess unique abilities for communication and have physical properties that make some concepts more easily represented than others. An affordance is the transformation of a material that a child can easily produce, so the material takes on symbolic content. A material affords content when it yields, through a process of transformation, to the child’s desire. Conversely, a material can possess a constraint if certain meanings are difficult for it to symbolize. Forman emphasizes that it is important for children to find the most effective material to express or represent an idea or concept, and then to learn to make creative compromises with the materials as their work is developed. Each individual child’s level of media literacy needs to be considered. Media literacy refers to knowledge of how a material can be used within the meaning-making processes. As with any area of knowledge, material knowledge is not static, but ever changing, growing, and evolving. Children construct material knowledge as they take time to explore and discover the unique capacities and techniques that a material offers. A child’s casual relationship to a material, however, doesn’t necessarily produce expressivity or an expressive visual language. Materials become languages when, through a child’s relationship to a material’s unique capabilities, meaning is created and communicated. In this process, the role of the teacher is layered and multifaceted. Frameworks for learning can be designed that engage children’s use of materials, promote open-ended discovery, and, over time, develop understanding of the expressive and communicative potential of materials. This chapter will focus on two stories, one from the St. Michael School of Clayton, in St. Louis, and another from Reggio Emilia. The first story, The Animal Sensory Book, addresses children’s initial relationships with materials, and how the senses are intricately connected to the symbolic use of materials. Bikes . . . Lots! is a project from Reggio Emilia that highlights the use of found and recycled objects that the students transform into complex, elaborate images of bicycles.

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THE ANIMAL SENSORY BOOK The Animal Sensory Book project took place in the junior kindergarten mixedaged classroom of 3- to 5-year-old students at the St. Michael School of Clayton, Missouri. The class was participating in a schoolwide research project about animals. The Animal Sensory Book was one aspect of the larger research project during the 2010–2011 school year. Rather than give a comprehensive view of the entire project about animals, this section will focus on children’s initial relationships with the materials. Inspiration for this project came when children became fascinated with a small pop-up book that they found in the classroom library. It was an interactive, multisensory alphabet book about bugs and insects. It had many pages that children could touch and feel, and various parts were 3-dimensional with appealing surfaces and textures. The children were intrigued with the book over a number of days. Colleen Begley, the junior kindergarten classroom teacher, observed the children’s love of the little book and wondered how their interest could become an opportunity that would connect to the schoolwide animal research project. During the time frame of the project, I was a studio teacher at the school, and Colleen and I collaborated closely with each other on a regular basis. She and I hypothesized about how the book’s sensory qualities had delighted the children, and wondered if it might be used in a new capacity. The research questions formulated for this project centered on the learning that occurs through children’s senses. How can children’s senses support learning about literacy and animals? How can materials support children’s learning? Based on these observations and questions, we organized a new learning opportunity for the children that would include family involvement and found items from home.

Collecting and Sharing Materials We suggested that the children and their families collect found objects and materials that reminded them of a specific animal. The collected items could be brought to school and shared with the class. In the communication to the families, we emphasized that it wasn’t important for the collected items to actually look like an animal. Rather, we requested that the children explore their home environments and collect materials that made them think of an animal in some way. We designed the proposal so that children could become researchers in their own homes, and to make connections between materials and animals. Our hope was that the proposal would function as an open-ended framework, or mindset, that would yield results that were creative, surprising, and unforeseen. Because all of the children in the class would participate in making collections, meaning could be co-constructed as items were brought in and shared with one another.

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Using the Verbal Medium Forman (1994) poses the questions: In what sequence or combinations should we present media to children? Should children progress through a prescribed cycle of media as they try to understand something? (p. 42)

Does it matter if they build something with their hands first? Or, rather, begin by drawing or some other means? Different sequences of media produce very different results. The verbal medium can be effectively used at the beginning of an experience to efficiently survey a topic or theme. This “verbal outpouring” can be used to gain access to children’s knowledge, memories, ideas, and speculations. Spoken language can become a playground for ideas because it is not constrained by the dictates of physical form. Our intention at the beginning of the project was to document the children’s connections between the collected materials and their ideas about animals. As children brought their collected items to school, everyone was excited to share what they had found. The items collected were very diverse. The students brought in objects such as scraps of fabric and felt, bubble wrap, cellophane, lids from various types of jars, golf tees, the cover of a mop duster, and a toy parachute, among other items. Class discussions took place as children brought in their collections. One girl brought in white cotton balls inside a cellophane bag. The children passed the cotton balls around the group and the children took turns feeling their softness and round shapes. Colleen asked the children, “What animals do these cotton balls remind you of?” The girl who had brought them in replied that she thought of sheep. Other children in the class quickly offered new ideas. One boy exclaimed that they reminded him of a cow; another child speculated, “soft buffalo feathers.” Each object sparked many different ideas about what animal it could represent. A scrap of gray felt was referred to as “mouse skin,” “a hippo,” and “rat fur.” Pink felt –“a kitty,” “a flamingo,” or “an ostrich.” The children made many connections between the textures, shapes, and colors of the materials and specific qualities that belonged to different animals. A white swatch of vinyl produced ideas such as “an elephant” or “a zebra.” The vinyl was rough like an elephant’s skin; however, it also had a striped pattern embedded within its texture. A boy who considered the white color replied, “An eagle.” The discussions continued in small groups, and the children’s words and ideas were documented in a notebook. The conversations during the first sharing groups were dynamic; children enjoyed “testing” their words and descriptions with the materials. Students

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were engaged in a game of identifying signs and symbols, and discovering possible meanings of symbols. Nelson Goodman (1976), noted 20th-century aesthetics philosopher, has stated that we read the painting as well as the poem, and in effect, the children were “reading” the materials. The students were first captivated by the sensory stimulation of the various items, and made the verbal associations about what the materials could symbolize. Up to this point in the project, the materials had not been physically transformed or changed, but many meaningful encounters had occurred between the children and the collected objects. Meaning was beginning to emerge through the children’s imaginations, senses, and the materials.

Materials, Drawing, and Writing As the project progressed, Colleen and I observed that individual children began to develop their own connections to some of the items, either an item they had brought in, or something another child had collected. We wanted to build on connections that students were creating, so we arranged for the students to work in small groups to further explore the collections of materials, this time through drawing and writing. In small groups, the children explored the collected items again, passing them among the group and touching them with their hands and fingers. Colleen read the children’s words from her notebook, in order to remind them of what had previously been said about each object. Colleen invited students to write words or phrases, draw pictures, or offer new ideas describing the animal or the material. Integrating the different learning processes of verbal language, drawing, and writing helped children deepen their understandings. Finding the objects at home and bringing them to school was a multi-sensory-based experience. Looking for the objects engaged the movement of the body as well as the senses of sight and touch. Children’s own desires were activated as they made their own connections between the objects and animals. Drawing and writing provided new ways to extend and deepen these connections.

Transforming the Materials Later, after students had participated in many small groups, the children worked with the teachers to create a book that combined the collected materials, the drawings, and written words. Each material referred to more than one animal, and the diversity of the children’s ideas could be represented on the pages in the book. As groups of children began to compose the book, the children began to transform the materials to resemble specific aspects of animals, such as the shape of the body or look of the face. For example, a piece of plastic wrap was twisted and shaped into the form of a stingray before it was glued onto the

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Charles Schwall page (see Figure 6.2). A toy parachute was folded to form a half circle shape, resembling the body of a jellyfish or a butterfly (see Figure 6.3). Golf tees were carefully placed on the page so that they pointed upward diagonally, to resemble the antlers of a deer or a giraffe (see Figure 6.4). Gold plastic lids that had a shiny and reflective quality were composed onto the page in close proximity to one another to have the look of a bat’s eyes shining from inside the darkness. The children visually articulated and refined their ideas as they worked. In other situations, the children chose not to change the materials, but instead placed them into the book in their original form. A swatch of gray fabric was glued onto a page unaltered, along with the descriptive words hippo, horse, mouse skin, and rat fur. On these pages, the students were satisfied with the result; the material held meaning and symbolic power for them without further transformation; the materials were denotative from the beginning. This is significant because it reveals the symbolic transfer of meaning that takes place in the mind. The piece of gray felt took on an aspect of language when it was recontextualized in the child’s mind as relating to a hippo, horse, etc. The felt had not changed physically, but was re-appropriated in the mind for the symbolic purposes, based on the desire of the child. Figure 6.2. Plastic wrap was twisted and shaped to represent a stingray.

Figure 6.4. Golf tees carefully arranged on the page resemble the antlers of a deer or a giraffe. Figure 6.3. A folded toy parachute depicts the body of a jellyfish or a butterfly.

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Sensory knowledge holds the potential to inform the development of a language: materials can become charged with meaning when the hands and the mind work together. Each material—the cotton balls, bubble wrap, or plastic lids—embodied unique and specific qualities that afforded different meaning based on their unique physical qualities. Children discovered the potential of the collected materials in partnership with the adults, and in the meaningful context of the project. Their first interactions with materials evolved into the pages of their own fascinating book that communicated the children’s first impressions of animals.

BIKES—LOTS! AN EXPERIENCE FROM REGGIO EMILIA If you visit Reggio Emilia, as you enter the underpass near the train station, you will see beautiful representations of many bicycles that are installed there. This installation is the result of a collaborative project that included the participation of the Reggio Emilia school system, REMIDA recycling center, and forty different schools and educational centers, including nursery schools, high schools, game rooms, and parish schools. The underpass of the train station is a place of public transit, used by many travelers in the city each day. It was transformed into a place for new encounters and dialogue, and the topic of bicycles was chosen because of its site-specific relevance to the use of the space. Children of many age levels from the various schools and centers created the representations of bicycles. Some of the compositions were made using traditional media, and others were produced from images of recycled items digitally scanned into the computer. While all the images are similar in that they represent bicycles, they were created in different locations and with many different imaginative approaches (see Figure 6.5).

Figure 6.5. Representations of bicycles installed on the underpass of the train station near the Loris Malaguzzi Center in Reggio Emilia, Italy.

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Workspaces Two mobile atelier environments, or workspaces, were created for the children and teachers. The first workspace created was in the REMIDA recycling center. It is an atelier with shelves of recycled and repurposed materials that coexist with digital media, such as smart boards, digital cameras, scanners, and networked computers. The second workspace was a mobile mini-digital atelier that could easily be transported to different schools. This workspace contained two scanners, digital cameras, and a printer. The tools in the mobile atelier are optimized for quick setup and use with the children. These two workspaces each functioned to support the emphasis of bicycle-related content as well as to explore and open up interactions between traditional materials and digital technology.

Experiments, Media Feedback, and Revision Some of the bicycle images were composed of found objects that had been scanned into the computer (see Figures 6.6 and 6.7). In one image, a silver chain represents a bicycle’s frame, flowers and yarn are arranged as the wheels, and a small toy fish adorns the bicycle as a seat. In another image, metal lids are used for the wheels, and a long, spiraling coil of metal represents the bicycle’s frame. This bike has a rider made from several gauges of wire that have been carefully wrapped and twisted in the shape of a body. The rider balances precariously on the bicycle’s seat. The Italian article about the bicycle project, Bicitante, by Giovanni Piazza and Bruna Elena Giacopini (2012), emphasizes the experimental nature of the work and valuing students’ first attempts and mistakes. They documented how some of the artwork evolved, such as ways that sketches on paper and the computer were combined through a process of trial and error. As the students worked on their images, they honed their abilities with the new technology. In a sense, the students were building new visual vocabularies, similar to the way a writer uses multiple drafts to refine and revise written language. Some media allow children more latitude for experimentation than others (Forman, 1994). For example, scanners provide children with greater degrees of freedom and possibility because complex arrangements can be scanned, and then easily modified and rescanned as required. Items placed on the scanner can be also be arranged, rearranged, and re-imagined in ways that would be impossible in the real world. Sweet gumballs from trees can represent wheels, a small stone can become a bicycle seat, or a collection of sticks can be arranged to look like a bicycle frame. Children can return to earlier drafts through the use of digital files or history commands found in the software. Media that offer greater degrees of freedom are considered nonreactive, in that they are free from the constraints of the laws of the physical world. Sweet gumball wheels

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Figure 6.6. Recycled objects were digitally scanned to create bicycle representations.

Figure 6.7. A bicycle image engages visitors in Reggio Emilia.

don’t have to support a real bike and rider. In this sense, the children’s use of the scanner is akin to drawing, painting, and other forms of expression that offer greater range of symbolic expression. In contrast, materials are reactive when they have a functional correspondence to the physical laws of the real world. Forman gives the example of blocks as a reactive medium because they fall down if they are not stacked or balanced effectively. Blocks have a self-corrective relationship to forces of gravity and balance and must conform to these physical laws; if not used well, blocks immediately react to these forces and topple over.

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Charles Schwall The bicycle representations from Reggio Emilia are experiments in symbolic visual language that require graphic literacy. Nonreactive media, such as graphics, drawing, or scanned images used to create collages, place cognitive demands on children that are symbolic, or virtual, rather than real. This provides children with a great deal of freedom. In graphic form, a bicycle frame doesn’t have to structurally hold together or stand up; wheels and foot pedals don’t have to mechanically propel a bike into motion. Graphic literacy, however, does require that these elements be symbolized effectively. The cognitive challenge of nonreactive media is to invent a coherent and meaningful representational system that symbolizes the objects as well as any physical dynamics involved. As children chose recycled items and assigned symbolic meaning, they were in effect building symbolic representational systems. Objects from the real world were reconstituted as part of a pictorial system based on the imaginative approach of the student. The search for correspondence between the object and what is represented builds a new visual language. As a child chooses an item, places it in a composition, and then assigns meaning to it, a new communicative system begins to emerge. The child can evaluate the relationship between the item and what is symbolized, based on the level of aesthetic satisfaction that it gives. One item used may give more fulfillment than another. The nature of the project, as described by Giovanni and Elena, encouraged the students to revise their representations because of discoveries made with the materials. Symbolic representational systems are open, fluid, and modifiable. A toy fish does not necessarily look like the seat of a bicycle, but it can symbolically represent one within an appropriate system of relationships. In a sense, anything can be used to represent anything else; there is no requirement that a symbol possess a visual likeness to the meaning that it signifies (Goodman, 1976). To represent, a material must function within a pictorial set of relationships that together form a system. Visual symbols are continually open for invention, revision, and discovery, based on personal or individual choices. This is also at the heart of the hundred languages metaphor, because materials offer unlimited modes of communication that can continually be reinvented and renewed. The expressive languages allow children the freedom to construct meaning, respond to feedback, and then make cognitive and aesthetic choices that remain in the symbolic realm.

Crossing Media: Interaction of Traditional Media with Digital Forms In an interview with Lella Gandini, Giovanni Piazza expands upon the concept of internal alphabets of materials. He states that after children discover the internal alphabet of a material and have a sufficient level of familiarity with it, they often discover that “the internal alphabet shares qualities with

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other materials and it is contaminated by them” (Gandini, 2005, p. 134). Each material, when used to communicate within a representational system, embodies its own techniques, knowledge, and processes. Once a child has gained expertise with a medium, it is possible to combine the knowledge of one material language with another to create something new. Contamination refers to the influence one form of expression has on another; a process of mutual influence takes place through the hybridization of the two forms. The bicycle project aimed to open up new interactions between traditional materials and digital media. The students combined traditional graphics and found-object collages with digital technology to create elaborate images of bicycles. Thinking across media to invent and merge diverse material processes helps to create new contexts for knowledge and increases conceptual and creative skills. The scanner acted as an intermediary between the analog system of found objects and the digital realm. Crossing this boundary merged the senses with the digital and virtual worlds. When diverse forms of media interface, they can take viewers to many new places. The digital tools allowed for new possibilities, as when the digital collages were rescaled to a larger size, printed, and installed on the underpass of the train station. Digital collages made from small materials were transformed into a site-specific installation. For viewers, it became an unexpected encounter with many bicycles that challenged them to consider new points of view, different creative approaches, and new visual languages. Digital forms, used in companionship with traditional art forms, can be a catalyst for the innovation of new visual languages. In the hands of young students, digital forms can be used to express desires, knowledge, and new forms of meaning. The bicycle project from Reggio Emilia represents an innovative interchange between boundaries of the traditional and the technological worlds.

INVENTING LANGUAGES Creative processes that occur when materials are transformed into languages are subtle, complex, and resist definitive description. Aesthetic choices that depend on the desires of the individual maker usually take precedence in the work. The process begins when one becomes familiar with the materials and first attempts are made. The material often resists, and the creator must find the strength to push the work forward. The imagination is engaged as hands carry out the work. At some point, the work begins to take on physical form; this may happen instantly or very slowly. Ideas sometimes emerge only after the material is manipulated for a period of time. As the material begins to take shape, a mental image grows. Awareness of the intended audience may further define the work. Again, there are no prescriptive paths in the creative process.

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Charles Schwall Materials can become inventive languages only through a dynamic set of relationships. Expressive languages are borne out in relationships among children, their knowledge and imaginative worlds, and the tools and materials that they have available for use. This is a different attitude than one that is prescriptive or gives rote sets of symbols or categories. Sometimes adults are compelled to create connections for children, provide superficial templates, or prescribe rigid categories of meaning. When adults engage in these types of interventions, they take away the power and potential of children’s work. Educators have the ability to empower students with the freedom to work with materials in ways that promote the construction of generative thought and authentic meaning-making processes. Contexts for learning with materials can be structured so that students are encouraged to go beyond the ordinary and develop a sense of their own expressivity. Children are capable learners, and in their hands materials have unique abilities to construct and carry meaning and activate many learning processes.

REFERENCES Forman, G. (1994). Different media, different languages. In L. G. Katz & B. Cesarone (Eds.), Reflections on the Reggio Emilia approach (pp. 37–46). Urbana, IL: ERIC/EECE. Gandini, L. (2005). From the beginning of the atelier to materials as languages: Conversations from Reggio Emilia. In L. Gandini, L. Hill, L. Cadwell, & C. Schwall (Eds.), In the spirit of the studio: Learning from the atelier of Reggio Emilia (pp. 6–15). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Goodman, N. (1976). Languages of art. Indianapolis, IN/Cambridge, MA: Hackett. Piazza, G., & Giacopini, B. E. (2012). Bicitante: The project. Reggio Emilia, Italy: Reggio Children. Credits: Figure 6.1 from The Hundred Languages of Children—Catalogue of the Exhibition (1996/2005), © Municipality of Reggio Emilia–Infant-Toddler Centers and Preschools, published by Reggio Children, s.r.l., Via Bligny 1/A, 42124 Reggio Emilia, Italia, www. reggiochildren.it. Figures 6.5–6.8 reprinted by permission of photographer Lester K. Little.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The St. Michael School of Clayton atelier was designed in 1994 to offer children and teachers a space to extend and support projects and experiences in the classroom, and to explore and combine many types of materials, tools, and techniques. I had been hired as the atelierista Charles Schwall at the St. Michael School in St. Louis in the fall of 1993. Our understanding of the role of the atelier has continued to grow and evolve since then. Even after years of work it seems as if the atelier’s potential, like a mine in the earth that holds vast resources yet to be discovered, is still largely untapped. Through our efforts to uncover the teaching potential of the environment, we have learned that lasting change is sustained through continually refining our ideas and use of this space. The gestures of everyday life, when viewed as inextricably connected to a space, have the potential to make, renew, and rejuvenate the places in which we live. John Dewey writes about the relationship between daily events and the tangible objects produced by cultures in Art as Experience (1934). He uses the metaphor of a mountain peak to highlight the inseparable connections between the products of a culture and daily human experiences. In his metaphor, the peak of the mountain represents the products or artifacts of a culture, while the mountain below portrays the events of everyday life. He writes, “Mountain peaks do not float unsupported; they do not even just rest upon the earth. They are the earth in one of its manifest operations” (p. 3). Each day, our atelier supports many experiences and ongoing projects that invigorate the lives of the children and teachers. We have learned to slow down and let events and situations influence how our spaces, including the studio, are used. When children live in a space, they own, feel, and find their place within it. Connections that take place between time and space happen through the rhythms of everyday life, connections to past events, and new experiences that reach toward the future. We aim to inhabit our spaces in ways that focus on variation and difference inside of our routines, rather than automatically repeating them. The children and the adults create the atelier anew every day, as we find the meaning of this place together.

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MATERIALS, COMMUNICATION, AND RESEARCH The atelier is a workshop for children’s ideas that manifest through the use of many materials. The style of working we have adopted is one of using materials as languages. In this view, materials are vehicles for expressing and communicating and are part of the fabric of children’s experiences and learning processes, rather than as separate products. Children are innately receptive to the possibilities that materials offer and interact with them in order to make meaning and relationships, explore, and communicate. The ways in which children invent with materials are often unexpected and surprising; therefore, it is important for the adults who work with children to adopt an attitude of freedom and open-ended possibility toward the children’s work. The atelier environment can facilitate new understandings about children’s cognitive and expressive processes. The products that children make can also be very useful in revealing their knowledge. In our school, the teachers and I often discuss and interpret children’s work and use it to find new ways to support their learning. Words are often not enough. It is very important for adults to consider objects that the children have made so we can share, talk, and search for new strategies together. The products that children have made can help us make these new choices. In some respects, the atelier is most of all about communication, because the artifacts of children’s learning can enable us to share with others what we have learned. All of this gives back to the teachers a renewed sense of meaning about their role, and strengthens the school. The educators in Reggio Emilia offer many provocative examples, and stress that their work is not a recipe. The sophisticated use of the environment and materials found in the Reggio Emilia schools is the result of many years of collaborative observation, documentation, and interpretation. Loris Malaguzzi emphasized that there is no one right answer or interpretation. Can those of us who live in other cultures adopt similar attitudes? Can processes of research help us to find answers about our own school environments and work with materials? Interpretations from Reggio Emilia are invaluable; however, ultimately we need to make our own meaning with the children in our culture.

THE IMPORTANCE OF RELATIONSHIPS The St. Michael School atelier has grown and evolved out of a distinct network of relationships and support systems. When I was hired in fall of 1993, the school did not have an atelier. Ashley Cadwell, the headmaster of our school, had just returned from a year in Reggio Emilia with his family. He had lived there while his wife, Louise, completed internships at the Diana and La Villetta Schools (Cadwell, 1997). When Ashley became the head administrator in 1992,

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he initiated many changes to support and develop the values and fundamentals of the Reggio Emilia approach in our school. The choice to create an atelier in the preschool was one of many decisions made at that time. The backgrounds of the teaching faculty also contributed to our unique context. I hold studio fine art degrees and have a life-long commitment to work as a painter. I began my career in the early 1990s teaching drawing and painting courses to adults at colleges in St. Louis. The preprimary teachers at the St. Michael School have diverse teaching backgrounds, with rich histories in experiential learning and developmentally appropriate practice. My collaboration with them began before the ideas from Reggio directly influenced our school. Prior to becoming the atelierista, I taught for two years in a parttime capacity at the school. During this time I formed important relationships with the teachers that would later be the basis for our collaboration around the Reggio Emilia approach. Our faculty also formed relationships with teachers in other schools in St. Louis who were interested in the Reggio Emilia approach. The St. Louis Collaborative was a cooperative organization including the St. Michael School of Clayton’s Family Center, The College School of Webster Groves, and Webster University. Initiated in the early 1990s with a grant from the Danforth Foundation, the collaborative supported study of the work from Reggio Emilia, as well as research in our own schools. We hosted regular meetings where teachers shared current work from their classrooms and encouraged one another’s growth. Over the years, as transformations have taken place in each of these three schools, the teachers have inspired and encouraged one another. The collaborative of three schools was also privileged to have Amelia Gambetti, a teacher for 25 years in Reggio Emilia and a consultant to schools for Reggio Children, work for short and intense periods with us through the 1990s. The passion, expertise, and energy she brought to the work at our school were invaluable; she pushed us in ways that we never thought possible. She taught us to look at the environment with a critical eye, and to include the children as we made changes to the classrooms. From Amelia we adopted rigorous practices. She encouraged us “to pretend to be visitors in our own classrooms,” in order to see new possibilities and find creative solutions. It was this attitude that gave us the courage to make many changes in our school environment. When Amelia first began working with us, she said that she had found “fertile ground.”

TRANSFORMING OUR ENVIRONMENT Our preschool environment is located in the basement of a church building. When we began to consider the environment, we realized our basement

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Charles Schwall classrooms were unlike anything that would be found in Reggio Emilia, and the possibility of creating an atelier seemed even further away. Because the appearance of our basement environment is so dissimilar to classrooms in Reggio, it has pushed us to think in deeper ways about how Reggio values might take root. At the beginning of our journey with the school environment, we were uncertain how our efforts would play out. Our atelier, in a sense, is the result of the juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated elements: a preschool located in a church basement and a desire to embrace the foundational ideas of the Reggio Emilia approach. Joining these elements transformed our situation into something new. Making changes to the preschool environment was one of the first ways that the educators in our school chose to begin exploring the values from Reggio Emilia. I think this happened because the school environment is very tangible and can be improved by having meetings, making lists, and carrying out plans. Our first attempts at change were small ones. We started by looking closely at slides of environments in Reggio Emilia and learned to become critical observers of our own classrooms. Some of our teachers had visited Reggio Emilia on a study tour and shared first-hand accounts of beautiful classroom environments filled with interesting and engaging materials. In each area of our classrooms, we asked one another questions about what worked well and what the difficulties were, and then we imagined new possibilities. These meetings often led to cleaning, painting, and moving furniture, and resulted in classrooms that were more beautiful and functional. These types of small improvements gave us genuine satisfaction, and confirmed our beliefs about the value of change. Our successful first steps gave us confidence to dream of bigger intentions. We wondered if part of our basement preschool could be transformed into an atelier. We were inspired by Louise Cadwell’s experience at The College School, where she and her colleagues transformed one room of their preschool into a beautiful and dynamic atelier (Cadwell, 1997). As we carefully considered our entire preschool environment, it seemed as if an area located between two classrooms held the potential to become a studio. It was a small space, approximately 11 by 25 feet, with no windows and poor lighting, but its close proximity to the preschool classrooms offered the promise of a more connected space. The teachers often referred to this space as the “wet area” because it contained the only two sinks in the preschool. Although it was used regularly by children and teachers, it was disorganized and full of clutter. While many people used the space, nobody was responsible for maintaining it. As we cleared out containers of old materials and equipment that had piled up, the space began to open up, but even though it was in the center of the preschool environment, it still seemed isolated and cut off. It was evident that we needed to make structural changes (see Figure 7.1).

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Figure 7.1. The space designated to become the atelier in 1993. Ashley Cadwell worked with a parent architect to design an atelier that embodied Reggio-inspired values. They developed a plan to replace the wall that divided the studio and the adjacent classroom with large windows. Windows in this location would create visual connections between the two rooms, and would reflect the values of openness and reciprocity (see Figure 7.2). A father

Figure 7.2. A plan of the preschool environment.

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Figure 7.3. The St. Michael School atelier in 1996. who owned a carpentry business was hired to construct the design. By the end of 1994, the atelier was completed and an open, spacious, and inviting space emerged (see Figure 7.3).

A Tour of Our Atelier Our atelier is made up of many elements that each hold unique identity, purpose, and possibility. It is a symphony of individual parts balanced to create a whole that is diverse and stimulating, but also amiable and harmonious; a multisensorial place that invites interactions by engaging the mind, hands, imagination, and senses. It is an environment that offers children high-quality materials, tools, and techniques that translate into numerous possibilities for experiences. We believe that these elements of the environment give dignity and respect to children’s experiences and play a crucial role in their education. Many of these items are visible the moment one enters the studio and stand out as valuable parts of the environment. The inventory of materials and languages available in our atelier is always changing and evolving, never static. The teachers and I continually update the materials, tools, and organization based on the needs and desires of each class. We regularly make lists of items that we have used in the past as well as new materials we want to try. This process helps us to evaluate and consider the many roles materials play in our school, now and in the future.

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An Inventory of Materials and Collections A free-standing wire shelving unit located in the center of the atelier defines the space. It is filled with a variety of interesting materials of many types in open jars, baskets, and trays (see Figure 7.4). These collections, such as flowers, sticks, shells, leaves, folded paper strips, and small wood and metal items, contrast and complement one another and vary greatly at any given time depending on the focus of our work. On the bottom of the shelf a basket holds many kinds of wire such as soft armature wire, thin copper wire, and telephone or computer wire. It also contains small items like beads or small nuts and bolts, and materials for twisting such as foil paper and screen door mesh. Materials presented in this enticing and inviting manner send a message of complexity, connection, and openness. Open or transparent containers communicate to children that these items are for them to use. The children make many of the items on this shelf. A small basket of paper figures recently made by the kindergarten children occupies a prominent place. Some children were fascinated with drawing people, cutting them out, and folding the paper so that the figures could stand up. They decided to share their “paper people” by placing them on the shelf for other children to use in their play. When these children went on to first grade, they chose to leave their paper people as a gift to new children who would soon use the atelier. It is this type of gesture that contributes to the particular culture of the place.

Figure 7.4. A shelf for collections of materials defines the atelier.

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Charles Schwall Collections of materials in other areas of the studio invite children to explore. One shelf near the large work table is filled with many tools for graphic representation such as markers of many kinds, pens, soft and hard lead pencils, various sizes of chalk, oil pastels, color pencils, and several varieties of black fine-line markers. Below the drawing shelf are many types of paper, including white drawing paper in various sizes and weights that is often used for drawing or painting. Close by, another shelf displays ceramic tools, scrapers, and other items for clay modeling. A stack of small boards, either Masonite or plywood covered with canvas, are also stacked on the shelf. These make excellent work surfaces for children because wet clay will not stick to them, and they also provide a good base for moving or displaying finished work. Various looms are offered for weaving, some large and some small, made from sticks, chicken wire, matte board, or cardboard. Large wooden looms allow for two or three children to work on one at the same time. Containers of fabric strips, yarn, or paper cut into strips attract children to try them. One year, a parent and I became interested in exploring weaving with children. She had a background in the textile arts and knew many weavers in the local weavers’ guild. The fiber arts were new to me, but I learned more about them by attending a weaving workshop at the St. Louis Art Museum. This experience enriched my understanding and gave me many new ideas and techniques for weaving with children.

Easels Inspired in Reggio Emilia An easel occupies the place next to the materials shelf. On my first visit to Reggio, the beautiful easels I saw in many of the ateliers and miniateliers captivated me. These easels were much larger than the ones usually available in the United States, and had work surfaces that accommodate many sizes of paper. When I returned to St. Louis, I worked on an easel design inspired by what I saw in Reggio Emilia. One of the fathers in our school was a professional furniture maker and donated his time, energy, and beautiful pieces of cherrywood for the project. We worked with several other parents to build three easels for the school. The results of our efforts are easels that look and feel more like furniture and are quite different than easels purchased through a catalog. Our easels are 25 inches wide and 48 inches tall, large enough to accommodate a 24-by-36 inch sheet of paper. The tray that holds the jars of paint is low, about 14 inches from the floor. This design works well for the height of most young children and allows for a larger work surface (see Figure 7.5). Near the easels, numerous jars of paint are stored on a cart that rolls under a shelf. This rolling paint cart, also made by one of our parents, has casters on the bottom and can easily be rolled to any location in the preschool. It has an open top for jars of paint, while gallons of paint are stored on a shelf below. We

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Figure 7.5. Easels inspired in Reggio Emilia.

keep this cart well stocked with a wide spectrum of hues and tones of color. Brushes of many sizes, types of bristles, and varieties are stored on a shelf near the easel. Some are large round or flat easel brushes, thick ones that will make washes, and tiny brushes for more detailed work. I often place containers of brushes near the easel when the children are painting so they can choose which brushes they want to use. Children help maintain the colors that are on the paint cart. When the paint jars are empty or the colors become worn out, we invite groups of children to mix new paints into empty, clean jars. This experience always has a life of its own; children delight in the process of dribbling one color into the next and take ownership through deciding which colors become available for everyone to use.

Clay Memories Through the process of revisiting documentation of past experiences, we reach back into our own history in order to use it to rejuvenate the present. On the wall in the studio, two panels serve as memories of pivotal experiences with clay. One panel, titled “Making a Figure in Clay,” hangs on the wall next to the large worktable in an easily visible location. This panel tells the story of how one boy built an action figure with clay, including his struggles, the adjustments he made during his work, and his perseverance (see Figure 7.6). During Amelia’s work with us, she encouraged us to “follow” children’s learning processes through documenting them. She asked us to become

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Figure 7.6. A panel in the studio documents building strategies with clay. attentive to, and write down, the sequences of events that occur within children’s learning experiences. The panel in the studio documents one boy’s building strategies as he worked with clay. It was inspired by an experience conducted by Vea Vecchi, atelierista of the Diana School in Reggio Emilia, that was included in the Hundred Languages of Children exhibit. On the other side of the studio, shelves display clay work made by the children (see Figure 7.7). These are not only beautiful and provocative to look at, but they also spark detailed conversations among children about how they were made and what they represent. One year, our culture of working with clay became even richer when a parent observed the children’s interest in building animals with clay. Because of his background in operating a local art gallery, he was acquainted with an internationally recognized ceramic artist, and he made arrangements for this artist to visit our school. During a morning in the atelier, the artist demonstrated and conversed with the children about techniques of building with clay. Traces of this experience remain in the studio still, through figures he made and a panel that tells the story. Even years after this memorable day, children often speak of his visit. Artifacts made by children can easily remain isolated

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and not touch other parts of our lives at school. However, our work to document experiences has taken us farther. The process of making learning visible through documentation and taking time to revisit it has rewarded us by supporting the continual learning processes of children.

The Presence of Technology Technology has a significant presence in the atelier; a computer with graphics and page layout software, a scanner, and a printer have become essential tools for our style of working. Teachers use technology on a daily basis to process numerous documents such as children’s conversations, letters to parents, photos taken with digital cameras, or documentation that will be placed in the school. The atelier is a space that can support the production of documentation as well as push us into new forms such as video, various types of books, and other digital media. The children also use technology in powerful ways in the atelier, and we are learning to interweave it with traditional media. We know that we are at the beginning of this journey, and are trying to take a few steps each year. The children also use technology in powerful ways in the atelier, and the digital forms can interweave with traditional media. Often in our school, young students use digital media as tools for storytelling. Student-created

Figure 7.7. Clay memories.

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Charles Schwall narratives consisting of text and illustrations can easily be imported into the computer as working drafts. Students can then use the digital drafts of their work for revision, editing, and publishing. From the teacher’s point of view, it is an effective strategy to begin with something familiar, like storytelling, and attempt to extend it with digital technology.

THE MAGIC SNOWFLAKE: LANGUAGES THAT OVERLAP One Morning in the Atelier The Sunlight and Reflections Project that occurred during the 2002–2003 school year, described in Chapter 10, influenced the culture of our preschool in many ways. For example, it caused Frances Roland and Christina Adreon, the teachers working with the 4- and 5-year-old class that year, to wonder about ways that light could become a meaningful material for their children. As they formed initial hypotheses, their questions centered on uncovering the potential that artificial sources of light offer to children. They organized new situations focused on children’s use of the overhead light projector to explore and discover light. Among these were initial encounters with the light projector, placing it in the block area to encourage children to investigate shadows in relation to constructions, and using it to project light on a large shadow screen that could be integrated with dramatic play experiences. After several weeks of exploring the light projector in the classroom, it was moved to the atelier with the hope that it would support these intentions as well as provide opportunities for new connections. After talking with the teachers, I set up the studio environment by placing the two easels next to each other on one side of the room. The projector was located on the other side so that light would shine onto the easels. On this particular morning, four children, Noah, Schroedter, Jack, and Madeleine, came into the atelier to explore the light projector in its new context. We sat on the floor together, and I asked them to remind me of some of the ways they had used the light projector in the classroom. Each child told me several of their favorite scenarios, and some gave detailed descriptions about how the projector functioned. The children and I talked about how the projector was set up to shine light onto the easels. They were very aware that small objects placed on the projector would be enlarged. They had experienced this in the classroom and were eager to try it again. After our conversation, I invited the children to go on a treasure hunt around the studio to look for objects to place on the projector. They found many small objects to try, such as beads, shells, plastic geometric shapes, a spoon, and a pair of scissors. The children were thrilled to watch the effects of each object as they placed them on the projector.

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The experience was a dynamic one with lots of movement. They moved their bodies in and out of the light to create different effects with the light, and often projections of the objects would shine on their clothing. The children also placed their hands on the projector and watched with delight as they were enlarged on the wall. “My things are getting big!” exclaimed Jack. Madeleine walked around the room continuing to search for new objects. At a certain point, she discovered a round paper doily on a shelf and instantly it became precious to her. She carefully rubbed her fingers over the soft paper to feel the texture of its intriguing pattern. She then took the doily over to the light projector and dropped it onto the glass top. Immediately, a large intricate pattern of light appeared on the easels. The children were delighted. The entire effect was one large circle made up of many tiny shapes of light. Madeleine was fascinated by it, went over to the easel, and carefully touched the complex pattern of light with her fingers. After a few minutes, she said that she wanted to trace the beautiful shape. Madeleine chose a thin marker and carefully began tracing around each spot of light (see Figure 7.8). It was a big job, and she invited the boys to help her trace. When they had finished their effort on all of the small spots inside the circle, they drew the line around the outside to complete the shape.

Figure 7.8. Tracing the beautiful shape.

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Charles Schwall I was unsure of what would happen next when Madeleine said, “I want to color the shapes in with bright colors.” The boys loved the idea and eagerly agreed. I thought for a minute and suggested tempera paints. The children and I pulled out the paint cart. The paints had recently been mixed and offered a wide range of colors to choose from. Because there were four children who were all going to work at once, I suggested they move the drawing to the large table in the center of the studio. Madeleine suggested the circle should be cut out with scissors before everyone began painting. She chose a pair of scissors from the shelf and carefully cut it out. The children selected the colors of paint and some small brushes and began carefully filling each shape (see Figure 7.9). As they worked together, the children began to share their thoughts and ideas. Jack said, “I think this is a snowflake. It’s the snowflake that the Snow Queen flies on,” referring to a Hans Christian Anderson story that the children had recently seen performed at a local theater. “It’s a magic snowflake!” added Madeleine. Jack affirmed her comment and said, “I think that, too.” Madeleine continued to develop her idea. “It’s a magic snowflake that can turn into anything. If you throw it up into the air, your wishes will come down from the sun!”

Figure 7.9. The children chose colors and carefully painted the shapes.

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Figure 7.10. Completing the magic snowflake. “Yea, it’s a snowflake that will give you anything you can imagine. Like bubble gum or candy!” Schroedter added. “Yea, it will hit the sun, and everything you want will become real!” exclaimed Noah. Looking at the bright colors of paint, Jack said, “I would want the snowflake to give me candy.” He pointed to the various colors and said, “This one is strawberry, this one is lemon, or maybe lime.” Madeleine added, “I think I would want tangerine.”

An Environment That Supports Creativity At the end of the morning after the group had finished painting, Madeleine sat quietly at the table and looked at the magic snowflake. The boys had moved over to the computer to work on some drawings they had previously begun. Madeleine told me that she thought the snowflake needed one more thing; she needed to draw a flower in the middle. She and I asked the boys what they thought, they agreed, and Madeleine took it upon herself to finish it. She chose some markers from the drawing shelf and completed the magic snowflake by drawing a delicate multi-petaled flower in its center (see Figure 7.10). Later, when I asked Madeleine why she added the flower, she said, “I think it looks like a snowflake and a flower. I want to throw it up in the air when it’s summer

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Charles Schwall time.” Then she pointed to tiny flowers in the pattern on the doily and added, “This has flowers on it.” As the children finished working, it occurred to me that this small episode that began with an exploration of the light projector had evolved into a collaborative event using different areas of the atelier and multiple materials to support the ideas. Madeleine’s discovery of the doily had invigorated everyone’s experience of playing with light, and had pushed it into new forms. Once the shadows of the doily were enlarged and traced it became a catalyst accessible to all of the children’s thinking. As they worked, the children continued to develop their ideas in relationship to one another and the familiar materials in the different areas of the atelier with a sense of ownership. They combined the precious object with light, drawing, and paint. As they collaborated, the children made connections to storytelling through the comparison of the round image of the doily to the giant snowflake in the Hans Christian Anderson story “The Snow Queen.” The experience with the light projector had not been an end itself, but a co-created and imaginative experience that transgressed the use of several materials. The rich environment of their atelier had supported this experience (see Figure 7.11). Loris Malaguzzi (2012) said that children are the best evaluators and most sensitive judges of the values and usefulness of creativity. He elaborated on

Figure 7.11. An environment that supports creativity.

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this thought by explaining that children easily explore and change their points view, and that their creative acts are born out of, and are part of, everyday life. He also said that “our task, regarding creativity, is to help children climb their own mountains, as high as possible” (p. 52). Just as John Dewey described mountain peaks as part of the earth, our school environments and the materials they offer are an integral part of children’s learning experiences. When the atelier, as well as all our school environments, are continually developed and used in purposeful ways, they transform our everyday life in school into a living manifestation of the richness of children’s potential.

REFERENCES Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. New York, NY: Penguin Putnam. Cadwell, L. (1997). Bringing Reggio Emilia home: An innovative approach to early childhood education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Malaguzzi, L. (2012). History, ideas, and philosophy: An interview with Lella Gandini. In C. Edwards, L. Gandini, & G. Forman (Eds.), The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia experience in transformation (3rd ed.; pp. 27–72). Denver, CO: Praeger.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The first stories that I remember were those that my mother and father shared about their personal experiences in World War II. They were stories of challenge, of courage, and of hope. My mother left Framingham State Teachers College on Reggio Emilia, July 3, 1945, to join the U.S. Marines, and Memories, forever after my mother was a teacher, and Place bus driver, farmer, cook, and corporal. My father, destined to farm the land of Barbara Burrington his father and forefathers in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, was determined to “help free Europe,” and he joined the Navy on May 10, 1943. He became a navigator on an LST boat that went between England and France delivering supplies and men. He saw the beaches at Normandy, and he brought those vivid memories and deep emotions to the dinner table with him. Together, with great passion and compassion, my parents regaled my siblings and me with stories of determination and heroism, desperate tales of homesickness and being afraid, but most of all, stories of enormous confidence. The first time I visited Reggio Emilia, Italy, I cried. Actually, I cried twice. The first time I cried I was sitting in the meeting room at the Martiri De Sesso Centro Verde Preschool listening to one of the original founders, a brave old woman, tell their history, describing an enduring strength and powerful will that became the strong foundation for the school:

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Founded in 1945, immediately after the Second World War by the Sesso branch of the Italian Women’s Union, its name commemorating the sacrifice of the 33 people shot during fascist reprisals against the civilian population of the village. (Martiri Di Sesso Centro Verde Preschool, 2002, p. 9)

At that moment my father’s spirit and life were embodied and important in that little school far from East Burke, Vermont, and my mother was part of their story, too. All the stories were one tale of bravery, and all our histories were related. My eyes were too wet to hide, and I fell in love with the place. I cried later, too. In the same school I entered the atelier and listened to the atelierista, Max, quietly describe his work with children. Everything in

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Barbara Burrington the room held meaning—clay monsters with oversized features, paintings of faces, weavings from cloth and ribbon, dried grass and flowers, handmade books with sculpted covers, vases of wildflowers, collections of seeds and leaves, things made from wire and woven with fabric, clay people suspended in motion on a tabletop. All of a sudden my body started to tremble, at first only a little, then I was wracked with the full force of crying, and I could barely breathe. My friend Lauren asked if I was all right. I can’t remember what I said. Thinking back now, I know that it is rare for a place to carry such deep meaning that it moves a person, through her memory and imagination, to other times. I had been similarly moved when I revisited the house I grew up in and the cemetery where my grandparents, my father, and my oldest brother are buried. This, however, was the first living place—for children and teachers—that moved me so. I recognized how special a particular place can be, exaggerated not in my imagination, but by the reality in front of me. In that moment I was faced with a place that exceeded my dreams. I knew then what I know now, that the atelier is worth thinking about. In Max’s atelier I could stop romanticizing about the ateliers in Reggio Emilia and begin to cultivate a relationship of my own with the idea of creating a place dedicated to expression.

WHY A STUDIO? In February 1999 my colleagues and I at the University of Vermont’s Campus Children’s Center made a wish come true. We raised enough money to participate in a Study Tour Delegation to the preprimary schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Our experiences and observations in Reggio Emilia created a broad stage for self-discovery and led us in one week to what felt like an accelerated process of personal and professional renewal. Back home we made a collective decision, based on our observations of our own children, that our center needed an atelier or studio space for children. We agreed that such a space would support our interest in scaffolding children’s fluency with multiple symbolic languages, create a context for looking deeply at what interests children, and allow us to better understand children’s processes for learning. So we began the slow process of transforming our staff room into “The Studio.” The place where we had previously had discussions and shared meals with one another, or simply rested, was to become a more intentional environment with new purposes. Our center had eight classroom teachers and 40 children between the ages of 6 weeks and 5 years old. Each year we educated approximately 22 early childhood education undergraduate students in their first fieldwork placement. Discussions among teachers were filled with big hopes for the studio and for all of the various people who would inhabit it.

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The teachers felt protective of the space and wanted to be sure that it was developed and utilized with thoughtfulness and purpose. We wrote a vision statement and posted it on the door. We created a journal for our communication where we would record our questions and shared ideas for environmental changes. Each week we devoted time during our staff meeting to the development of our practice in the studio. Michelle, a toddler teacher, reflected on the collaborative nature of the space: I think one of the challenges we have in the room is making it accessible to children of different ages. It is also exciting to have this room where children can cross over and do projects with a child from the Preschool, a child from the Young Toddler, and Older Toddler rooms. It is amazing to be transcending the boundaries. I think it is so exciting to work as a whole staff on this one space together. It is working to make us better collaborators, better thinkers together. The process has helped us become more of a community. We are going to be inventing our roles together. We will need to dedicate a lot of time to talking about it, to share our experiences and help each other learn and think together. In my opinion the atelier, or studio, is not only about the arts. Nor is it about something in addition to the work we do in the classroom. Rather, it is about linking the experience of teachers’ lives with the children’s lives and waking up together in the world of a new geography. This is a geography of the imagination. The territory is defined by sensations felt within children and indelible impressions made by each encounter with materials. The landscape reflects lasting, essential memories the children will carry through life, of color, of the way things feel, how something appears; a place where memories are created deep within children, shaped through everything made there; a place for learning all kinds of techniques and a place for research (see Figure 8.1). “The studio space is not an isolated place where artistic things happen. It is a laboratory for thinking” (Topal & Gandini, 1999, p. 24). Amanda, a toddler teacher, refers to the studio as “Our Sacred Materials Headquarters.” Marley, age 4, says, “It’s a fun place. It’s not so AHHH! screamy, so we can be a little quieter.” Blair, also 4, adds, “And there are treasures.”

DEVELOPING THOUGHTFULLY Since we were transforming the space ourselves in our spare time, with help from parents, naturally the project proceeded slowly. This was a positive thing. It created time for us to consider how we could best set up the space and how to work in the space. The process of painting the walls, building shelves,

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Barbara Burrington Figure 8.1. Madeline, 2½ years old, working with clay.

retrofitting tables, and gathering containers for materials took months. We were buoyed by our hopes for the space, and each effort to organize and furnish the space was necessary for developing a relationship and an understanding of the space. As described in Beautiful Stuff (Topal & Gandini, 1999), we asked all the members of our community, each teacher, student, and family, to find, scavenge, save, and contribute materials. Our letter to families reflected our values: In keeping with our commitment to promoting care and respect for the natural world, we would like to use as many natural and recycled materials as possible. We hope that you and your family will become engaged in an ongoing treasure hunt that will help strengthen the children’s connections to both the natural world and the studio space. We were delighted by the enthusiastic response, and our first encounters with materials lasted months. Sorting, categorizing, and displaying found and donated materials and objects became our introduction to understanding the important elements of the studio space. The studio space is dynamic; it changes over time with the addition of new members in our teaching community and the evolving interests and questions raised by different groups

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of children. Unlike the ateliers we had visited in Reggio Emilia, which often reflected the particular strengths and style of the atelierista in that school, our studio became a personal statement about a group of teachers (see Figure 8.2). We shared the studio with our student teachers as well, and needed to be mindful that many had never touched clay or learned how to spread paint. Many had not had the experience of drawing, sewing, or becoming visually literate with any media or space. All of us struggled, and struggle still, to be unafraid of experimenting with materials and media. We needed to have systems that support scheduled use of the studio as well as spontaneous situations that require us to visit. We had to be accountable for leaving the space the way we want to find it ourselves when we arrive with a group of children. Our emerging shared vision for the space and our values, practices, and attitude of research became common ground for viewing the space as special, even sacred, and provided a shared motivation to create a clean and beautiful place for all who entered. I do not want to imply that it has ever been easy. I am suggesting that perhaps the struggle itself added value, maybe even held out hope to us. In this case, optimism is reciprocal, from the studio to us, and back again.

MAKING MEANING Our early observations of children exploring materials in the studio are thick with anecdotes of children who took long periods of time to become familiar with the characteristics and possibilities of different materials.

Figure 8.2. Two views of the studio.

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Barbara Burrington Our first piece of documentary work regarding the studio was entitled “Realizing Our Right to a Sanctuary.” It tells one of the first stories in our history through the thoughts and images of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. That documentation reflects our success in creating a peaceful environment for our community of learners. It begins: The studio has become an integral part of the shared identity of our little school. We have actively and mindfully supported its continuing evolution and, in turn, the studio serves to inspire the hard work of children and teachers. Subsequent documentation titled “Getting to Know Materials, Ourselves, Our World” reflects children’s processes as they look closely at materials. Our early observations led to more complex stories of encounters between particular materials and the children from the preschool classrooms. We documented the relationships between materials that “sparkled” and “gem stones” and children’s personal narratives about their concepts of “love, beauty and family.” The children’s questions seem to continually revolve around their very attentive noticing and an internal quest to understand “What is beautiful?” We observe repeatedly that children see the inherent “beauty” in materials first (see Figure 8.3). Over the years the plots have thickened along with individual and collective competencies with different materials.

Figure 8.3. Oia, 5 years old, sketches a flowering plant. Her friend Lucia comments, “When you draw something that doesn’t move, it’s a still life, but when you draw people it’s a move life.”

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Figure 8.4. Intersecting passions. Sean, 2¾ years old, with trucks and paint! There is now a recorded history of stories, personal narratives, and reflections told in many, many languages through tempera, watercolor, and acrylic paints; collage; puppets; sewn objects; clay structures; masks and totems; wood sculptures; pastel portraits; drawn theories in pencil, ink, marker, and oil pastel; photographs taken by children; and beautiful paper handmade by children and their teachers (see Figure 8.4). We discovered a cycle of inquiry that constantly reemerges: an encounter between children and materials coincides with their imagination or interest, is recorded by a teacher or saved in an artifact, and is retold by children and teachers, which becomes a provocation to pursue the encounter into the future. It is a continuous cycle of perching and flying. Like birds landing and taking off, children and teachers survey the terrain and ascend in order to gain a new perspective. Teachers who visit the school most often ask, “How did you all agree to make a studio?” as if agreeing were the hardest part. Maybe it was, but only for a minute. Each day presented dilemmas. We faced them all through dialogue, in arguments, in notes to one another, by reading one another’s documentation, by listening, by observing children, and by sharing the questions our children and teachers pursue. We faced them with the kind of dignity that is blessed in an atelier.

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BENDING OUR EYES TOWARD THE FUTURE Education must stand on the side of optimism or else it will melt like ice cream in the sun. (Loris Malaguzzi, personal communication, November, 2000) After September 11, 2001, we had to listen even more closely to the children and their families. We had to think deeply about our community, and we had to consider how we would respond to the anxiety and sadness around us. Our own doubts and uncertainties compounded this very difficult time of crisis. During the days following September 11, the University of Vermont (UVM) undergraduate students who lived in the suites surrounding our center invited us to collaborate with them on a mural. The students had chosen to create a “Community Peace Mural” with painted images and poetry in response to the September 11 tragedy. This was very provocative for us. Our young children were not unaware of the crisis and anxiety around them, and their lives too were changed because of our proximity to the Burlington Airport, which is just one mile from our center. Our playground is beneath the flight path for planes taking off and landing every day. It is very common for the children and teachers to look up when a low-flying plane casts its shadow over the yard. The airport also serves as the station for the air unit of the Vermont National Guard. Usually once each morning and once each afternoon, the guard fly air patrols over the Northeast corridor, from Washington, D.C. north—F-16s in formation. After September 11, they flew around the clock for 122 consecutive days, and our little playground shook. We had to act on our belief that the multiple representational languages of children can be much more profound than simply talking. We know that the arts are a powerful way to communicate. We believed that throughout history, people have used the arts to convey their culture, identity, values, feelings, and ideas, and to define beauty. Art is a mechanism people use to mark time, to understand one another better, and to express and learn about the rich inner lives of individuals. As teachers we felt that the mural project provided a rich opportunity to respond to incredible sorrow and fear, in the context of community and metaphor. On October 5, 2001, we began our participation in the evolution of the community mural project on the east side of the Living and Learning Complex (see Figure 8.5). The preschool children were given a special section of the wall, between our studio and the pottery cooperative. We had spent the weeks leading up to the actual painting discussing which symbols would best represent the children’s ideas of happiness and peace. The children agreed on rainbows “because they are pretty and they make people happy!” Over the years we have become very familiar with the powerful nature of rainbows to

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Figure 8.5. Preschoolers composing the 9/11 peace mural outside the studio.

young children. We often observe children making rainbows to express hope, beauty, happiness, and love. We agreed with the children and set up the studio as a warehouse for all the materials we would need for painting outside on the concrete wall. The children worked tirelessly, taking short breaks from their own painting to watch the older UVM students paint, listen to their music, relax, reflect, talk, cry, and hold one another. The excitement became contagious, and children in the other classrooms wanted to join the process. The toddlers, young preschoolers, and infants contributed strokes of paint, handprints, and energy to the mural. The infant and toddler teachers added words to represent the often-unheard voices of young children. The mural symbolizes the values that moved us to build our studio and announces our presence to everyone on campus. It is a welcome message linking images, places, people, and events. If it could speak, I believe it would quote Cicero, “Be kind, for everyone is fighting their own quiet battle.” Over time we continued writing our history, evolving our future, and unpacking our memories and impressions from Reggio Emilia. This process is not something we think about continuously because it is part of being absorbed or consumed by the contentment work brings. And our studio nourishes that peace of mind.

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OUR LITTLE STUDIO GETS A SOUL After three years of growing and developing, our little studio’s soul became obvious. After the second year, the space had a physical essence, it served many people and purposes, but it had lacked enchantment. The studio needed to be invented first and then it needed to be lived in, in order to absorb some spirit so that, in turn, it could inspire others. Our studio had become a real place, not an imitation of a place. Its uniqueness seemed to be a good starting point for imagination and invited us to reside in it because it had a history. It is a vessel for hope; it holds stories and translates its intentionality and all the values we hold dear. One value is evident each time the little room is referred to as a “studio,” a name that implies work, study, and art all in a breath. Other values are communicated by the space as well. The studio is simple. We discovered a kind of richness in simplicity, displaying that which we really used, things we were connected to, things we considered beautiful, from nature and from one another (see Figure 8.6).

Figure 8.6. Natural materials gathered by children and available to everyone on the studio shelves.

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Figure 8.7. Gemma, 1½ years old, visits the peace mural. The invitation to work outside the studio on the mural for peace was a constant reminder that we can extend our borders (see Figure 8.7). This was the promise of enduring hope first nurtured in me by my mother, inspired in all of us in Reggio Emilia, and integrated into our little studio through the spirit of collaboration, an attitude of optimism, by strongly shared values and an abiding belief in the power of the arts.

REFERENCES Martiri Di Sesso Centro Verde Preschool. (2002). Along the Levee Road: Our school turns 50—From nursery school to municipal Centro Verde Preschool, 1945–1997 (English ed.). Reggio Emilia, Italy: Reggio Children. Topal, C. W., & Gandini, L. (1999). Beautiful stuff! Learning with found materials. Worcester, MA: Davis Publications.

CHAPTER NINE

Border Crossings and Lessons Learned The Evolution of an Intergenerational Atelier Lynn Hill

This is the story of the growth of community and amiability at the Reggio Emiliainspired Virginia Tech Child Development Laboratory School (CDLS), where I worked as an atelierista and Director of Curriculum for seven years. A decision in 2002 to initiate an intentional change in our learning community became our “project.” The Lab School served as a site for teacher education and research and provided quality care for the children of approximately 90 families. The children were enrolled in one of seven part-time programs, including infants through 5-year-olds. The center offered care and education to the children from the university and from the local community.

THE CONTEXT OF THE STORY The teachers at the Lab School were graduate and undergraduate students who were studying child development or early childhood education. The Head Teachers were graduate students and typically spent one or two years at the school. The undergraduate students were completing a yearlong internship and worked six hours per week in the school. While all the members of the community were committed to teaching and learning, the community was in constant flux. This contributed to a lack of continuity. At the beginning of each school year during our staff orientation, our most important goal was to emphasize a sense of belonging and feeling that the Lab School was a place where everyone would be nurtured, encouraged, and challenged to become strong, inquiring, and courageous teachers. The words from Mara SaponShevin (1995) were posted in a prominent spot in the school: “A community is a safe place for learning and growing, a space that welcomes you fully, that sees you for who you are, that invites your participation, and that holds you gently while you explore”(p. 99). In 2001 the Lab School was small but cozy, with four classroom spaces, a couple of offices, and a very tiny studio where I offered materials and support

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Lynn Hill for a variety of projects. We loved our little studio, but its size was limiting. Several of us had been especially drawn to the concept of the ateliers that we had visited in Reggio Emilia, and we longed for a similar space. Our enthusiasm for the thinking and the projects that sprang from those spaces knew no bounds, and our devotion to the concept was fueled by these words from Vea Vecchi: The atelier serves two functions. First, it provides a place for children to become masters of all kinds of techniques, such as painting, drawing, and working in clay—all the symbolic languages. Second, it assists the adults in understanding processes of how children learn. It helps teachers understand how children invent autonomous vehicles of expressive freedom, cognitive freedom, symbolic freedom, and paths to communication. The atelier has an important, provocative, and disturbing effect on old-fashioned teaching ideas. (quoted in Malaguzzi, 2012, p. 304)

A Unique Group of Neighbors Located within the same building as the Lab School was the Adult Day Services Program (ADS). The two programs were separated by an area that was used as a passageway and storage space. In many ways the ADS was similar to the Lab School, as it served as a day program for elderly members of the community who needed care while their family members were away from home. The ADS enrolled 10 to 20 “residents” who varied in their ability to care for themselves. Many had high levels of dementia, others were more lucid but had physical disabilities, and most had retained much of their long-term memory but had difficulty with short-term remembrances. Although the two programs operated side-by-side, for many reasons the CDLS and the ADS had never been successful in their attempts to relate as neighbors. From time to time the faculty from both programs would plan some “intergenerational activities.” These events were infrequent, and relationships were rarely formed.

Action Research—Making the Problem the Project As was our custom, each year the graduate students and the Lab School faculty declared an intent to study an aspect of our program—usually something that had emerged as a “problem” or “cognitive knot,” as it is called in Reggio Emilia (Edwards, 2012, p. 157). These action research projects were usually conducted by a team of researchers made up of faculty members and graduate students. We found the process not only insightful but also a lot of fun. Because we were committed to finding a way to foster amiable relationships within our learning community and because the idea of “an education based

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on interrelationships” (Malaguzzi, 2012, p. 42) resonated with us, we decided to study relationships. Over a couple of years there had been several very interesting offshoot studies that had helped us to re-evaluate some of our philosophy and practices and to grow as a community. Some of these studies went on to become inspiring and profound theses and dissertations. Research topics during that time included: • Examining Amiability and Democracy in a School • Are We Truly Partners? Exploring Home-School Communication and Relationships • What Happens When We Disagree? Teacher-Teacher Collaboration • Peer Scaffolding: A Community of Learners in a Classroom of 3-YearOlds • Humor as a Means of Relating • The Role of the Atelier: Can the Studio Encourage Community? As we read and explored the literature on community, we became motivated and encouraged by Thomas Sergiovanni’s (1992) definition of “school community”: one where “people who work in the same place (a community of place), feel a sense of belonging and obligation to one another (a community of friendship), and are committed to a common faith or values (a community of mind)” (p. 63). We came to use this definition as a beacon, as it reflected so much of what we understood from the philosophy of the Reggio Emilia schools. We felt that attention to this definition could help us to move from being an “organization” to becoming a “true community.” It was time to frame a new action research project, and it made sense to focus on a couple of areas in our school that needed some dedicated attention. Since we knew that our intergenerational program was lacking, and because our studio space was limiting our experience there and we were committed to enhancing community, we proposed a novel solution to these problems. We suggested the possibility of creating an Intergenerational Studio to be located in the unused space between the Lab School and the Adult Day Services Program. Loris Malaguzzi told us that “the atelier was most of all a place for research” (2012, p. 50), and we hoped that our newly imagined studio might be just that kind of place.

Consulting Research on Intergenerational Programs Our ideas were experimental, and we could not predict an outcome; however, we believed that an intergenerational studio would allow participants from both centers to share time, materials, and experiences with one another. The space might also more effectively serve the best interests and developmental

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Lynn Hill and functional needs of both adults and children. As we reviewed the literature on intergenerational programming, we focused on the following research: It is especially important for preschoolers to experience the benefits of intergenerational programs because many negative and stereotypical attitudes about older people and about growing older are formed during the very early years of life. (Fruit, Lambert, Dellmann-Jenkins, & Griff, 1990) Most intergenerational programs focus primarily on the benefits for the children alone while the older adults serve as minor participants. (Stremmel, Travis, KellyHarrison, & Hensley, 1994, p. 514) There is a real danger that well intentioned elder and childcare staff will assume that merely bringing together any number of older people and young children to do nearly any activity will produce results for both age groups. (Griff, Lambert, Dellman-Jenkins, & Fruit, 1996, p. 603) Contact with members of the younger generation is most likely to be positive for older people when they perceive themselves to be meaningful and valued role models. (Dellmann-Jenkins, Lambert, & Fruit, 1991, p. 22)

We also remembered that the presence of grandparents is important in the schools of Reggio Emilia. In Italy grandparents often transport their grandchildren to school and form meaningful relationships with the school. The older members of the families are often very involved in the educational system. Children in the United States do not often have the advantage of growing up within an intergenerational context. Because we tend to be a transient society, children do not often have daily opportunities to come to know and understand the older generation in their families. We hoped that our reinvented space might allow reciprocal participation in meaningful experiences that could lead to shared life experiences, the opportunity to engage in selfdiscovery through experimentation with materials, and a chance to build a bridge of relationships across the age span. Thus, we hoped this new and unique studio might emulate a version of what we had observed in the Italian schools and would provide an experience where both adults and children could discover possibilities and capabilities together.

A DECLARATION OF INTENT The point came when we needed to declare our intention. First we needed to state our beliefs: We believed that the philosophy and practice from Reggio

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Emilia could be a foundation for this particular community/environment. Specifically: • Children have potential from birth to enter into relationships, engage in interactions, and explore and learn from their environment. • The protagonists of education are children, parents, teachers, and the community. • The layout of space can foster encounters and learning. • The curriculum need not be established in advance. • Documentation, interpretation, and reflection can be retrospective and can also project future contexts for learning. Our beginning research questions became: • How might the philosophy and practice from Reggio Emilia, Italy, be recast for our unique context: An intergenerational atelier? • What would such an atelier look like physically, emotionally, and intellectually? • What might we learn about amiability by joining with the ADS on this shared project? • What would be the result of an encounter with another generation in the presence of materials?

PREPARING A UNIQUE STUDIO After receiving the go-ahead from both programs, we began another reinvention process. With this proposed evolution of space and place, and keeping in mind how it might impact relationships, enthusiastic teachers, students, and faculty worked late into many nights to prepare the new studio. This period was one of great chaos, confusion, and disorder. It was also a time of deep and thoughtful consideration as we pondered the placement of shelving, tables, and materials, always carefully considering the wide span of ages that would be using the space. Our committed groups of workers were extremely dedicated to the possibilities that might lie ahead and so together we inspired one another to continue the physical, mental, and emotional effort that it took to proceed. Unfortunately, the staff from the ADS was not initially pleased with the new space. They felt that it was inattentive to their residents’ needs and could cause many problems. Now, we were learning another lesson. Although we felt we had carefully attended to the ideas that had been put forward by the ADS in our early conversations, we discovered that many thoughts and concerns had not been voiced in those initial meetings. What had we done to

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Lynn Hill diminish the voices of our neighbors? The effort to create such an unusual setting seemed ripe for skepticism, disillusionment, and challenge. So we did then what we should have done much earlier, as frustrating as it felt to us— once again we slowed down and listened more carefully. Over the next several weeks we experimented with many changes to the space. We continually rethought the environment and reduced the number of materials that were visible. We reorganized the materials into baskets and tubs that gave the studio a very lovely and homelike appeal. We added indirect lighting to provide the space with gentle warmth. Surprisingly, even with these efforts some of the members of the ADS continued to remain skeptical about our unique way of envisioning space. In addition, the senior faculty who had disagreed with our original studio aligned themselves with the ADS staff and began to threaten to reclaim the space. It was during this phase of discomfort, and even fear that we might lose our space and our dream of reinvention, that we came to realize that one of the problems between our two centers might be that on every occasion we had taken complete ownership of the revamping of the environment. While we had certainly consulted the ADS staff, we had never included them in our efforts to reinvent the space. Certainly this style of interaction must have contributed to feelings of invasion of their territory and a lack of respect for their expertise. This was a painful lesson and difficult for us to learn as eager teachers: While we were trying to be amiable, in fact we had been prejudiced and even rude as we envisioned our dream studio. So we went back to work—this time in a more collaborative manner, including teachers, children, the older adults, and all the residents who would inhabit the space as we worked to find the solution to our environmental problem. These words from Loris Malaguzzi (2012) inspired us during this period: The school is an inexhaustible and dynamic organism: It has its difficulties, controversies, joys, and capacities to handle external disturbances. What counts is that there be an agreement about what direction the school should go, and that all forms of artifice and hypocrisy be kept at bay. Our objective, which we always will pursue, is to create an amiable environment, where children, families, and teachers feel at ease. (p. 41)

CULTIVATING RELATIONSHIPS When all of us were satisfied with the space, we began to invite the older adults and the children into the studio to work together. Both age groups sat comfortably around the central table; the children were perched on tall stools while the adults could roll their wheelchairs right up to the table. Representatives from both ADS and CDLS decided that we would spend the rest of the year

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exploring materials, but more important, we would focus on building relationships and a sense of community between the older adults and the children. Now that we understood that cultivating community was the curriculum, we hoped that shared experiences with materials in the studio would engender some deep understanding, respect, and appreciation for one another. The earliest experiences around the studio table were quiet. Our detailed observational notes from this time showed that the children seemed inhibited and even a bit nervous about these new “friends.” Some of the adults sat silently as they begrudgingly and haphazardly manipulated the new materials that were provided from our new studio shelves. To say the least, there seemed to be a lack of understanding and appreciation between the generations. There was also an inevitable tendency for the staff of each center to be protective of their own residents. After the early disagreements on space and display, as well as the visible disinterest between the older adults and the children, the research team planned several events that were designed to offer more moments of communication between the adults and the children. We were hopeful that these shared experiences would lessen the nervousness that the children seemed to experience when they were in the company of the older adults.

Shared Experiences During their time in the studio, as they messed around with an eclectic array of materials, the children and adults were observed quietly comparing hands, arms, faces, and even teeth. So the next several experiences were planned to build on these interests and to bring the adults and the children closer together. One opportunity included reciprocal face painting, where individual identifying traits could be acknowledged from a closer, more intimate stance. Wrinkles, hair color and texture, eye color and shape, teeth, and a variety of noses, ears, and smiles were carefully and affectionately noticed (see Figure 9.1). At our next research meeting we shared our most recent observations of the work coming from the intergenerational studio. There was certainly an emphasis on materials each day, but another element was the growing enthusiasm for being together and for forging friendships. Another observation that was carefully noted in our journal was the parallel development of personal and professional relationships between the two staffs (from CDLS and ADS). We were finally sharing meaningful and authentic information with one another, and were taking shared responsibility for contributing to the planning of the intergenerational experiences. Being together was starting to be fun, and as we compared notes we found a new sense of intersubjectivity. We were beginning to respond to one another with greater understanding and interest. We noticed that our new goals had become to build relationships, to observe what might inform our next steps, and to support one another.

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Figure 9.1. An opportunity to get up close and personal with one another led to a more comfortable pleasure between the groups.

One beautiful day we worked together to set up many easels on the ADS patio and to offer a wide range of soft pastels in order to provide a new context for the growing relationships. When the children and adults arrived on the scene, they were immediately drawn to the experience that had been prepared for them. They quickly paired themselves up (an older adult with a child) and began to experiment with the materials (see Figure 9.2).

Figure 9.2. A chance to work in couples gave us a look at different styles of collaboration.

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The next day we showed some visual documentation to the intergenerational group from the experience of working with pastels and easels on the patio. The power of documentation was immediately evident in the room. We found that both the children and the adults were thrilled to see themselves pictured in the documents but that something else was happening as well. The couples were now sitting together and pointing out remembrances to one another (see Figure 9.3). They also seemed excited and inspired to see their work once again. The enthusiasm expressed by our participants as they revisited their earlier work, reflected on those experiences, and then decided to move to the next level together was contagious. This is not to assume that all was completely agreeable on all occasions, but any dissent between our groups was beginning to challenge (rather than irritate) the members of each group. We were learning that embracing our disagreements and arguments, and the dissonance that came with them, brought our multiple perspectives into light where we could best address them.

A Brief But Empathic and Meaningful Moment As the children and the adults had the opportunity to spend more and more time together in the studio, we began to notice their empathy for one another.

Figure 9.3. The power of documentation was very evident among this unique group of friends and promoted further investigation of materials.

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Lynn Hill The most ordinary moments seemed to hold extraordinary possibilities. For instance, one day after the adults and children had finished creating a beautiful collaborative mural made from a variety of paper, fabric, cellophane, and string that they had glued to a large canvas, the big question arose: “What do we do about all this glue on our fingers?” Soon the friends were trading techniques for removing the glue. Clifton, age 84, showed Taylor, age 4, how to carefully roll it and remove it, while Monica, age 4, carefully moved around the table caring for everyone’s fingers in her own gentle way (see Figure 9.4). That day we learned that intimate touch and care for one another goes a long way in building affectionate and close relationships.

THE CHILDREN AND ADULTS TAKE THE LEAD Since we knew that the power of the studio could be felt outside its walls, we watched for additional ways to act on this understanding. One day in early spring the two groups decided to take a walk together to see the changes of the new season. There was great excitement from everyone when they discovered a rabbit’s nest on the playground. That’s all it took to launch the children and adults into a project that we called “Think Like a Bunny.” Children began to dress like bunnies and were

Figure 9.4. Monica’s empathic and affectionate approach reflects the core of this intergenerational experience.

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Figure 9.5. The onset of the “Think Like a Bunny” project. determined to build a fanciful house for them as well (see Figure 9.5). The adults supported the children every inch of the way. Some of the conversations went like this: Finn, age 5: Don’t forget we need some carrots! Where can we get some

carrots? I can draw some right now! Do you think the bunnies would like that? Betty, age 80: Sure, honey, I think that’s a fine idea. And so the Grandmas and Grandpas (as they were now being called) and the children worked for days, and as always, they chatted in a familiar way as they worked side by side. Corrine, age 4: Bunnies like to have a safe home—but we can make it fancy

too.

Betty, age 80: I used to have a bunch of rabbits when I was a child. Corrine, age 4: I got a chocolate rabbit for Easter. Clifton, age 84: I used to shoot rabbits for Easter dinner, heh, heh, heh.

And so it went . . . and humor carried us along. The summer and fall brought additional opportunities for the two groups to share experiences and to strengthen their relationship. So, one morning

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Lynn Hill there was great delight when Clifton, age 84, and a former farmer, informed us that the first frost was imminent. Clifton spontaneously initiated a flowersalvaging experience with the children (see Figure 9.6). He told the children that they could use the scissors to cut the flowers, and they jumped at this chance to participate. Next Geneva, age 84, led the group as she demonstrated a technique for pressing flowers, and then a week later she showed the children how to use those flowers to create paper. Perhaps even more remarkable was the transformation of Betty, age 80. Previously, her family had reported that generally she would return home after a day at ADS with nothing to tell. Now she described the time that she had spent with the children in the studio with great enthusiasm and even began gathering materials from home to bring into the studio (see Figure 9.7).

Figure 9.6. The flower harvest begins.

Figure 9.7. Materials are contributed from home.

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The adults and children were now taking ownership of the time that they spent together. Finally, as the literature on intergenerational experiences had predicted, the thrill of working as a role model for the children inspired a sense of self-esteem for our older adults!

WHAT WE FOUND Ten months after the beginning of our experiment to bring the adults and children together in a unique setting, we sat down to review the documentation and to interpret some of the data. Thinking about our original research questions, we attempted to respond to the following: What would an intergenerational atelier look like and would there be a way to find amiable common ground with the ADS? Revisiting Sergiovanni’s definition of community, we began to respond to the question.

A Community of Place We found that we needed to expand our definition of the atelier and to be willing to widen the walls to include both inside and outside space. We had found a particular way to create an environment filled with eclectic materials that allowed most members to make meaning and to discover the joy of representing their ideas in new ways. But best of all, our atelier had become a “place,” not just a “space” that was not privileged or separate, but that had infused each program. The studio table had become a place for sharing materials and for strengthening relationships. It reminded us of the kind of intimate and affectionate communication that happens in a busy kitchen when conversation flows while hands are busy. Clifton summed it up for us when he chuckled and said: “I’m real happy with the new studio. I’ve never enjoyed making stuff so much as when I’m with those kids.”

A Community of Friendship Although the adults and children were not related, there was now a beautiful sense of togetherness, tenderness, and affection among the members of this new kind of family. Now the older adults looked forward to the time that they could spend with the children. Margaret, age 84, said: “Oh, I always look forward to seeing the children every day . . . that’s the first thing I do when I get here every morning” (see Figure 9.8). Additionally, we found that the children had moved from being wary participants to making unplanned visits to the Grandmas and Grandpas just for fun. Grace, age 5, put it best when she said: “The grandmas and the grandpas like to be silly just like us” (see Figure 9.9).

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Figure 9.9. Impromptu merriment between the generations enhances relationships.

The interactions had become lighthearted and playful and seemed to bind the participants together. And the adults expressed deep affection and care for the children. “I just love those little children, I’d do anything for them,” said Margaret. While the older adults and children had definitely formed strong relationships, one of the more surprising results of this effort was the formation of parallel relationship between the staff from each center. The earlier feelings of distrust and lack of respect between the staff members had been transformed into a shared loyalty and vision for what could happen when a studio was introduced to a program.

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A Community of Mind The adults and children had moved from being followers to leading—truly coresearchers in the studio—assisting one another to learn and grow. As leaders of the programs, we had relinquished our control of the experiences and had opened ourselves to unknown possibilities. We had learned from the experience to open our attitudes and to seek new perspectives. We refrained from rushing in and fixing everything in favor of taking the time to embrace the process and to build strong, amiable relationships first. We found that multipart projects that extended over time like the “Think Like a Bunny” and the “Flower Harvesting” projects seemed to support and enhance sustained interest and proved once again that the curriculum did not have to be prescribed. Corrine, age 5, said: “I liked it with the flowers. My grandma likes red the best and we worked on a project together.”

Other Conclusions We believe that the supportive review of the documentation on a regular basis served as a powerful short-term memory enhancer. It seemed to be an act of love, creating a chance to reminisce and to share a sense of history and affection for our community. Margaret said: “I enjoyed looking at the pictures with the children. It helps both of us remember what we did yesterday.” Unlike the data we had reviewed in the intergenerational literature, the adults now exhibited a heightened sense of well-being and purpose. Clifton said: “Yea . . . we spilled that paint today, and it went everywhere . . . we were all green! But you know we just laughed and laughed, and then we started to clean it up together.” Contrary to the research, the children no longer exhibited fearful stereotypical behavior toward the adults. Lina, age 4, said: “They love me. I can work in the studio with my grandmas and grandpas and they never say hurry up” (see Figure 9.10).

CLOSING REFLECTIONS As this project drew to a close that year, we were excited by one more important revelation: The major tenets and principles coming from the schools of Reggio Emilia could certainly inspire work with older adults as well as with young children. As we at the Child Development Lab School worked to define and develop such Reggio Emilia principles as our understanding of “amiability,” “an education based on relationships,” “the image of the child,” “the environment as a third teacher,” and so forth (Gandini, 2002), we recognized with enthusiasm that these important concepts could also be applied to a very different population.

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Figure 9.10. Strong, respectful, and affectionate relationships were the result of the intergenerational experience and studio. Our group’s research, analysis, and decision to create an intergenerational atelier had led us on a creative journey. The experimental intergenerational studio had offered us a great opportunity to learn and grow as individuals and as a group. It had been, at once, an inspiring, frustrating, exciting, painful, and passionate attempt to find new ways to offer the benefits of the atelier to a unique group of participants. While the story of this novel studio may differ dramatically from the experiences of the readers of this chapter, I believe that you might find many similarities in the challenges that were addressed along the way. In the end, we continued to make headway, despite every adversity. We recognized that above all, the studio is about listening, communicating, and community. Developing a community of learners helped us to become more courageous risk-takers, and from that stance we all learned and grew together. We were still in the very early stages of imagining and creating a studio space that would celebrate the multiple use of materials; however, we knew that we had achieved one important piece of that way of thinking: We had come closer to understanding what it means to consider “an education based on interrelationships.” We believed that this was the first and most vital step to achieving an atelier that crosses borders and influences all who come in contact with it. We learned that by slowly and respectfully encouraging relationships and cultivating community, we had discovered the foundation of the idea of our atelier—amiability.

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REFERENCES Dellmann-Jenkins, M., Lambert, D., & Fruit, D. (1991). Fostering preschoolers’ prosocial behavior toward the elderly: The effect of an intergenerational program. Educational Gerontology, 17, 21–32. Edwards, C. (2012). Teacher and learner, partner and guide: The role of the teacher. In C. Edwards, L. Gandini, & G. Forman (Eds.), The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia experience in transformation (3rd ed.; pp. 147–172). Denver, CO: Praeger. Fruit, D., Lambert, D., Dellmann-Jenkins, M., & Griff, M. (1990). Intergenerational day care. Paper presented at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Gerontological Society of America, Boston, MA. Gandini, L. (2002). The story and foundation of the Reggio Emilia approach. In V. Fu, A. Stremmel, & L. Hill (Eds.), Teaching and learning: Collaborative exploration of the Reggio Emilia approach (pp. 15–20). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. Griff, M., Lambert, D., Dellmann-Jenkins, M., & Fruit, D. (1996). Intergenerational activity analysis with three groups of older adults: Frail, community-living, and Alzheimer’s. Educational Gerontology, 22, 601–612 Malaguzzi, L. (2012). History, ideas, and philosophy: An interview with Lella Gandini. In C. Edwards, L. Gandini, & G. Forman (Eds.), The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia experience in transformation (3rd ed.; pp. 27–72). Denver, CO: Praeger. Sapon-Shevin, M. (1995). Building a safe community for learning. In W. Ayers (Ed.), To become a teacher: Making a difference in children’s lives (pp. 99–112). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Sergiovanni, T. (1992). Moral leadership: Getting to the heart of school improvement. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Stremmel, A., Travis, S., Kelly-Harrison, P., & Hensley, D. (1994). The perceived benefits and problems associated with intergenerational exchanges in day care settings. The Gerontologist, 34, 513–519. Vecchi, V. (2012). The role of the Atelierista: An interview with Lella Gandini. In C. Edwards, L. Gandini, & G. Forman (Eds.), The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia experience in transformation (3rd ed.; pp. 303–316). Denver, CO: Praeger.

CHAPTER TEN

When we think about how we worked in our schools in St. Louis, how school is lived, and how teachers and children learn, we think of banks of clouds formA System of ing and changing as weather patterns unPhysical and fold. We think of natural, organic forms, and beauty and balance emerging in Conceptual Spaces tiny happenings as well as in big events. These are not the usual images of school; Louise Cadwell they come from other sources. They come Lori Geismar Ryan from nature, from the new physical sciCharles Schwall ence, from systems thinking, and from our growing understanding that this is the way the world works and this is the way that learning evolves. In the world of science, a living system is one where the parts are in constant flux in relationship to other parts, in relationship to the whole to which they all belong, and in relationship to other living systems. For a long time, schools have functioned as nonliving systems where there is little evolution of parts in relationship; rather, ideas are fixed, teachers teach them, and children are supposed to learn them. The educators in the schools of the St. Louis Collaborative were a part of a revolution in thinking about schools that is taking place in many ways and in many locations across the country and indeed around the world. The three of us and the schools with which we were associated were members of the Collaborative. We chose to co-author this chapter because we studied together as a small group of three within our larger group of colleagues, focusing on systems theory and how it supports our work. Our study of systems was inspired by the work of the schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy, and by other sources of reform and innovation in education as well as in other fields.

The Atelier

A NEW PARADIGM OF SCHOOL In our schools, we aligned ourselves with a way of thinking that is generative. As teachers, we aspired to bring all that we are to school and be fully present, knowing that if we did so, something new would likely come from our being together and that we would be changed. This is a big idea—that teachers will

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Louise Cadwell, Lori Geismar Ryan, and Charles Schwall be, and, in fact, want to be changed by, with, and through one another and with the children every day. Children live this way: They live as if they are conduits of energy and ideas rather than empty vessels seeking knowledge. We long to catch their comfort with living on the edge of the unexpected. We see ourselves also as conduits of energy and ideas rather than full, complete vessels imparting what we know to the empty ones. Fortunately, for many educators, the empty vessel idea is old and obsolete. It is a view of school as a nonliving system. The ways that we were learning to think together in our schools excited us. We were thrilled by the anticipation of what we might create together that in turn would be a container for the unfolding of meaning and ideas among the children. We sought to create the most exciting, fertile, safe, irresistible context in which children would take off and clamor to bump their ideas up against one another in thoughts, gestures, words—spoken and written, numbers, drawings, clay, and paint. At the center of our work, the atelier was at once the physical hub and the conceptual space that was both catalyst and container for our meaning-making. It was a dance of meaning that was made in relation to others and to experience. There was no fixed outcome. The outcome, we hoped, would be beyond our wildest dreams. We knew we were shooting for the stars.

Systems Theory There are key concepts that influenced our thinking, indeed, have changed our thinking, our behavior, our expectations, and our school cultures, so that when we are truly aligned, we live together inside a new paradigm of school. A group of us read and discussed the work of a number of authors, including Senge and colleagues (2000), Fullan (2001), Dufour and Eacker (1998), Lambert (2003), and Wheatley (1999), who embrace systems theory as a way to think about school reform and organizational change and growth. It is through Wheatley’s work in particular that we are gaining a clearer understanding of both the roots and the nature of our practice in school. These authors are part of yet a larger group that includes Bateson (1979), Maturana and Varela (1987), Capra (1996), Bohm (1996), and Alexander (1979) from multiple fields—psychology, physics, biology, physiology, religion, architecture, business. They are captivated by the scientific discoveries of the 20th century that began with physical science. In Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World (1999), Margaret Wheatley reflects on how systems theory that grew out of quantum physics can transform the way that we have traditionally thought about and managed organizations and institutions, including schools. Rather than a topdown management of a closed system, much like a factory model that, instead

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of products, produces students, we can recognize that all along we have been an alive system of alive individuals seeking to be liberated to reach our full potential together. Wheatley reminds us that the opposite is true in closed systems that are governed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics: wearing down and losing energy that can never be retrieved. “Life goes on, but it is all downhill,” she laments (p. 76). The characteristics of open systems are many. Open systems seek disequilibrium. They exchange with the world openly and use what they encounter for their growth and evolution. They thrive on participation of all the parts in a healthy, dynamic, ongoing relationship. They connect the parts through multiple locations and occasions for exchange; exchange is the most important means toward the system’s growth and health. They seek and find order out of apparent chaos. In an open system, order is not a structure, but rather a dynamic organizing energy. In an open system, information flows freely. Meaning takes on the qualities of energy, travels, and becomes a force of change. Meaning leads each and all the parts of the living system to center and circle around deeper purpose and lasting value (Wheatley, 1999).

Frameworks Over the years we have developed frameworks, forms, cycles, and actions that allow us to live school as an open living system. Some have to do with time and some with place; some revolve around the size of groups and numbers of people; some focus on the way that we trust one another and treat one another; and some involve ways of recording, keeping track of, and tracing our ideas and children’s ideas as they unfold. All of these forms and frameworks are interrelated and interconnected; they move together in synchrony as we move with them. Timeframes are agreed-upon meeting times when we consider ideas and experiences and enter into dialogue with materials, with one another, with the world, with shared experience. These are appointments for interchange and exchange among all the players in the unfolding drama of our living system. One example of a timeframe is morning meeting with all the children in a class. Another is morning work in small groups within a complex, richly developed, and well-cared-for classroom or atelier environment. Another is the regularly scheduled teachers’ meeting for reflection on and projection of ideas growing out of the work as it evolves. Yet another timeframe is regularly scheduled meetings, exchanges, and communication with parents. Some of the frameworks are space frames. Different spaces and places are permeable containers that generate curiosity, ideas, and exchange. These space frames are multiple and diverse and encourage interaction with the familiar and the unfamiliar. For example, we organize and reorganize big classrooms for a

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Louise Cadwell, Lori Geismar Ryan, and Charles Schwall large group of children furnished with small, intimate nooks within for small groups to organize themselves. We claim and rename small rooms and alcoves, also for small groups. We have carved ateliers and miniateliers out of existing classrooms and protected them with glass walls. We have reclaimed neglected parts of playgrounds and imagined and constructed outdoor rooms. We have ventured out into places in the community that become more and more familiar as they extend our classrooms into the neighborhood, the zoo, the riverfront, the weather, the seasons, the community garden, and families’ homes. Other frameworks revolve around the size and nature of groupings: from random to organized; from whole to part; from large to small; from individual, to pair, to group; from teacher and child, child to child, child to teacher, teacher to teacher, teacher to parent, child to parent, and back again. Information, ideas, experience, thoughts, wonderings, longings, friendship, and love travel in and among these groups in constant ebb and flow. These are the connections among the “building blocks of matter” that really matter.

Relationships Margaret Wheatley (1999) writes, “Matter doesn’t matter” (p. 153). The relationships matter. This is the theory that the Reggio Emilian educators, influenced by Bateson, Maturana and Varela, and others, have put into practice in their schools so exquisitely. As we’ve studied the Reggio Emilia approach since 1992, this practice continues to present us with the daily challenge of noticing and valuing the “in between,” and this requires a figure/ground shift. We want to seek out the places, spaces, times, attitudes, and practices that cultivate the birth of ideas, that nurture them, and set them off in endless cycles. This way of learning is rarely linear. There are not fixed ideas that are consumed and then owned by one child or one adult. Ideas are in constant circulation like the air, like oxygen, like food, like clouds, like the weather. Everything is influenced by everything, and that is what we are after. This is a way of working that cultivates creative thinking everywhere in the school. As we place more and more emphasis on the experiences that surround us, the ideas that grow among us, and the context that encompasses us, we become intimately aware of our need for one another and our interdependence. We become aware that we are on a journey into the unknown. We depend on one another to travel well, to take care of one another, to discover what is important and vital, and to make a difference in the world. Over time, through careful attention to the processes of documentation used in the schools of Reggio Emilia and through trial and error, we are learning to make meaning of unfolding, evolving ideas. We keep track of fragments of ideas and continue to examine them together as teachers and students, until they begin to take shape and to make sense. We do this on

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pieces of paper, on a computer screen, on audiotape, on videotape, and on film. We might record children’s and teachers’ ideas in a notebook at morning meeting, tape-record and transcribe small-group conversations in which we explore ideas together, or follow and note one child’s thinking as she imagines and draws a theory or builds a structure. We need a record, a trail that traces where we have come from as history, as foundation, as backdrop, and as framework for where we are going. We move forward as we build a context, a history, and a culture. Wheatley (1999) uses many metaphors to describe the way it feels to work together within this new paradigm of a living system. We found the following one particularly helpful: Those who have used music metaphors to describe working together, especially jazz metaphors, are sensing the nature of this quantum world. This world demands that we be present together, and be willing to improvise. We agree on the melody, tempo, key, and then we play. We listen carefully, we communicate constantly, and suddenly, there is music, possibilities beyond anything we imagined. The music comes from somewhere else, from a unified whole we have accessed among ourselves, a relationship that transcends our false sense of separateness. When the music appears, we can’t help but be amazed and grateful. (p. 45)

SYSTEMS: A MACRO AND MICRO VIEW We are amazed and grateful for the following story that is a part of our history. In many ways, it reveals the qualities of daily life of children and adults conversing, thinking, reflecting, writing, drawing, painting, and finding pleasure in being together in school. One central aspect of this story is how the concept of the atelier expands the interconnections of places and events into the entire community of school. Though it begins with the leading event that sparked a project and an overview of how that project developed, the heart of the story that follows is the studied documentation of one day, May 15, 2003, toward the end of the school year and the project. We were challenged by a friend and colleague from Reggio Emilia, Vea Vecchi, atelierista for 30 years at the Diana School, to follow a day in careful detail in order see the systems that support our work specifically and concretely illustrated within the context of one day. We accepted. Now, travel with us toward the search for light and the miracle of everyday life in the basement classrooms of the 4- and 5-year-old children at the St. Michael School, where Chuck was the atelierista. From the perspective of school as a living system, let us consider the unfolding of the following project and the day embedded within it.

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An Unexpected Event in the Classroom On the morning of September 12, 2002, as the children were sitting down for the classroom morning meeting, a few children noticed a circle of light reflecting onto the ceiling. The reflection was very animated, and jumped around the room from the ceiling, to the walls, then to the floor. As more children began to arrive, they also noticed this phenomenon, and a groundswell of excitement began to consume the class. At this time, Chuck was sitting on the steps in the classroom making notes in his notebook. The reflection on the ceiling was caused by sunlight as it came in through a small basement window and bounced off the crystal of his wristwatch. As Chuck changed the position of his arm, the circle of light would jump around the room, quickly moving from the ceiling, to the walls or the floor, then back onto the ceiling again. He hardly noticed the reflection, but the children greeted it with shrieks of delight. They were thrilled with this remarkable new encounter, and it caused sheer joy and fascination among all of them. The teachers, Karen Schneider and Melissa Guerra, sat down with the children to discuss this surprising event. Karen asked them, “What is it?” The children offered many ideas. Some called it “the flying thing,” others said it’s “Tinker Bell” or “Peter Pan.” One girl said, “It’s a reflection”; another boy proclaimed, “It’s the sun!” (see Figure 10.1).

Figure 10.1. The children are thrilled with the remarkable new encounter.

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Everything in the school environment is filled with potential for children’s learning. At the same time, each part of the environment is not always given attention and value. The St. Michael School preschool is located in the basement of a church building. This location has presented the staff with many barriers. As teachers, they have tried to view these barriers, not as deterrents that prevent them from trying, but rather as catalysts that can produce solutions that are new, unexpected, and innovative (see also Chapter 7). St. Michael School preschool classrooms have few windows, with little or no natural light. The only windows are small rectangular ones located just under the ceiling. Sunlight falls into the basement for only a short period of time each day. It would be easy to think that these windows offer the children no connection to the outdoor environment, and that therefore they are not able to enrich children’s learning experiences. The event that occurred in the 4and 5-year-olds’ classroom at the St. Michael School on September 12, 2002, reminded us that devalued elements of the environment can become powerful characters in children’s learning. This unexpected occurrence when the light danced through the basement classroom and the children responded to it was an opportunity filled with potential for learning, investigation, and continued study. Following this exciting morning, the teachers began to hypothesize what this experience might mean for the children and for their learning. Teachers shared ideas, exchanged some initial questions, and wondered, “Will the children’s excitement about the light continue for more than one day?” The teachers were hopeful that the energy they felt during one of the first morning meetings of the year could support something bigger. There were practices in place that served as frameworks to support the unfolding work of the children and the teachers. One such practice was regularly scheduled conversation and dialogue among children and teachers, as well as teachers and teachers. Another was the practice of recording conversation, revisiting ideas, and reflecting on some of the most provocative ideas together.

ONGOING RELATIONSHIPS AND SUSTAINED CONVERSATIONS At the St. Michael School, the preprimary teachers follow the children for a three-year cycle, beginning when the children are 3 years old and culminating when the children finish kindergarten. When the reflected sunlight event occurred, the children and the teachers were beginning their second year together as a class. The teachers knew the children and the specific qualities and characteristics that they brought to their learning. At the beginning of each year, the teachers share their observations with one another, and use them to develop intentions. Karen and Melissa had observed an emerging richness in the morning large-group meetings during the

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Louise Cadwell, Lori Geismar Ryan, and Charles Schwall previous year and had written specific intentions about supporting this richness in the new school year: Last year we began to notice that as the year progressed, the group time conversations grew richer and richer. There was a pleasant collaborative spirit in the classroom. Children began to have bonds born of conversation and collaborative talk. Though they may also be a springboard or a seed for future experiences, the act of conversing is an experience in itself. This sense of purpose in the social environment permeates the morning group meeting, as well as the entire day at school. This year, one teacher will take notes during each morning meeting to document the ideas expressed so that we can trace the children’s conversations and ideas as they develop over time. To ensure that this intention became a reality, the teachers created a notebook they called the Morning Meeting Journal. This journal was designed to capture children’s dialogue about many important topics that occur every day. One teacher would facilitate the meeting with the children, while the other would take notes. The teachers played both roles in a way that included the children as active participants. After the meeting, these notes were then placed into the journal. The Morning Meeting Journal was a key container of information that allowed the sunlight and reflection project to take shape. The teachers recorded the children’s thoughts and ideas in the journal and used them as a catalyst to organize and support new experiences (see Figure 10.2).

Figure 10.2. Recording the children’s thoughts and ideas in the Morning Meeting Journal.

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At the beginning of the project, collaborative talk at morning meeting was the main vehicle that children used to introduce and shape their ideas. The initial encounter with the light had been a collective experience shared by everyone in the class. Because of this, when one child offered an idea, others contributed or responded to it. Ideas began to emerge within the context of the group, and as this happened, the engagement of the class evolved and grew. In the middle of one such conversation after the reflected sunlight event, Chuck asked the children, “How did the circle of light get on the ceiling?” The children had many explanations to offer. Some children immediately made connections between the light and Chuck’s watch, while others had different theories. The teachers carefully listened to all of the children’s ideas. John began, “The watch makes it go up on the ceiling.” Elaborating on this idea, Jamie said, “The light is reflecting through the hole, reflecting onto the watch, and reflecting onto the ceiling.” Catherine added, “Maybe it climbed up there.” “Maybe one of the cameras is doing it,” Steven commented as he noticed the lens of Chuck’s camera. Ian said in a very confident voice, “It’s a reflection. It goes from the window to the wall.” Jamie pondered for a minute and remarked, “I think a reflection is something that shines on you.” John John speculated, “How can we make reflections?” Questions like John John’s were embraced by the teachers as opportunities to fulfill their intentions. The children inspired the teachers to proceed into uncertain but fertile territory. When the light entered the classroom on these early days in September, the commitment to collaborative, purposeful talk became stronger. Knowing one another well and knowing that they had another entire school year before them connected the past not only with the present, but also with the future. In the weeks and months to come, the children and the teachers had many new ideas born out of their interest in the reflection on the ceiling, their strong relationship and knowledge of one another, and their established practices as a learning community.

An Overview of the Sunlight and Reflection Project The following is a synthesis of how the experiences with sunlight and reflection evolved and transformed into a long-term project during the course of the school year. This survey of events is meant to provide a vantage point from which to view the whole project. It is presented here as an abbreviated sequence of events in order to ground the project in time and space. The experiences discussed later in this chapter can be examined and appreciated more fully once this larger context is understood. Embedded in this survey you will recognize the systems frameworks that were introduced at the beginning of

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Louise Cadwell, Lori Geismar Ryan, and Charles Schwall the chapter. For example, timeframes, space frames, size and nature of groupings, and records of thoughts and ideas in words and in media are examined, culled, and carried forward toward ever-more-layered and deeper-shared experience and learning. • During the first weeks of school in September, the children noticed a reflection of sunlight on the ceiling in the classroom. They responded with enormous excitement and curiosity. • Teachers had already organized themselves to document children’s dialogue at the morning large-group meeting. Because sunlight came in the classroom mainly in the morning, the large group meeting was the central forum where children talked about light and reflection. • Teachers informed the parents about the children’s interest in light and reflection at an evening meeting in October. Children’s conversations were shared with the parents using an overhead projector. Together they discussed the children’s curiosity and enthusiasm, and the potential that these qualities offered for learning during the school year. • The teachers invited Louise Cadwell to meet with them to promote the development of the experiences with sunlight. She agreed to periodically visit the classroom and offer her observations, thoughts, and questions as the project developed. • In an effort to involve the families in the research, a letter was sent home asking parents to help their children think about what objects would make a reflection. The children brought these objects to school. They included shiny stickers, small mirrors, pinwheels, jewelry, and mini disco balls. The children tested their objects in the sunlight to find out which ones might make a reflection (see Figure 10.3). These objects were then placed in a basket on the floor in the classroom where the children could use them throughout the day. • The children observed the objects, and noticed the reflections they made at different times of the day. The children and the teachers created a mobile of the reflective objects brought from home and hung it from the ceiling near a window in the classroom. • Children wondered and discussed how the sunlight entered the classroom at various times of the day. The four windows of the classroom were labeled with numbers so children could easily identify them. • Pairs of children took turns observing the morning sky to predict if the sun would shine that day or not. The children reported the weather conditions to the class, and teachers documented the findings in a small journal. • At an evening family event in January, the children and parents created mobiles of reflective objects to take home (see Figure 10.4). • Teachers reviewed the transcripts of the children’s conversations from the morning meetings and made lists of the children’s interests. Teachers

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Figure 10.3. Children observed objects and noticed reflections they made at different times of the day.

Figure 10.4. At an evening family event, the children and the parents created mobiles of reflective objects to take home.

grouped the children’s interests and ideas into categories. Then, children worked in small groups to investigate some of these topics: • Light and colors. The idea that colors come out of sunlight came up when one child brought in a CD. When the CD was placed in the sunlight it created a beautiful rainbow. The children experimented with glass prisms and transparent materials, and drawing their ideas about reflection. They also used wire and transparent paper to make a rainbow that represented their ideas of how rainbows are formed. • Theories about the sun and the moon. As children discovered that sunlight came in different windows at different times of the day, they began to discuss and explore ideas related to time change. This led to conversations about the movement of the sun, moon, planets, and solar systems. Groups of children collaborated on inventive stories about the sun and moon that were illustrated by the children using markers and watercolor.

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Louise Cadwell, Lori Geismar Ryan, and Charles Schwall • Where does the sun go when it’s not sunny? Sometimes there wasn’t any sunlight in the classroom because it was cloudy outside. The children’s question, “Where does the sun go when we can’t see it?” prompted investigations about clouds and, ultimately, rain clouds. Children expressed their ideas about how rain clouds function using drawings, and later made clouds with wire, beads, and fabric. • Combining dramatic play and light. The teachers observed children using the reflective objects in dramatic play. The children painted large murals with acrylic paint on transparent plastic depicting the daytime and nighttime sky. The murals were hung in the classroom and used in combination with dramatic play episodes. • Teachers presented the sunlight and reflection experiences to the parents at the end of the school year. Books of children’s work about these experiences were presented to the families as gifts.

A Culture of Thinking Together As we have written, the practice of dialogue is critical to our work. Regularly practiced dialogue can support and sustain a culture and community that thinks together. Thinking together is one of the bonds that connects the atelier to the classroom, the spaces within the classroom to one another, each classroom to the overall school, and in this case the St. Michael School to other schools in the St. Louis Collaborative. Different types of meetings were arranged, and informal exchanges took place at various times of the day, week, month, and year. Planned and unplanned conversations were essential to the evolution of our work. It was within the context of these encounters that we reflected on children’s learning, exchanged ideas, created new understandings, and organized for new experiences. Collaborative thinking, where multiple perspectives are shared, is essential to the individual and collective growth of teachers who view the school environment as a learning organization. These conversations become catalysts for new ways of approaching children’s learning, for forming connections, and for creating something together that they otherwise could not imagine on their own. Rooted in the idea of the atelier as conceptual space, these practices occurred in many places throughout the school and among various members of the community. The teachers at the St. Michael School met with the atelierista, Chuck, approximately once per week throughout the year to discuss initiatives in the classroom and the studio. During the evolution of the light project Louise periodically joined these meetings. This was an agreed-upon timeframe that supported the development of the work. As teachers in the St. Louis Collaborative, we continued to learn to play the roles of peer coach, questioner, analyst, provocateur, and co-teacher for one another. Over the years many of us have had the opportunity to work not only in our own school, but also within one another’s schools. We offer the views of colleagues who live and breathe similar

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systems and practices, but who at the same time may see the work from a different perspective. The meeting described below took place on May 14, 2003, preceding the agreed-upon documented day, May 15, as mentioned previously. Therefore, the event you will read about begins with a teachers’ meeting on the afternoon of May 14 and continues through the morning of May 15 (see Figure 10.5). From time to time we taped or video-recorded a teachers’ meeting or a parents’ meeting primarily for the purpose of sharing our work with other educators. As a matter of course, individual teachers kept their own notes at these meetings, and sometimes minutes were taken by one designated scribe. We tape-recorded this meeting because it was to be the official beginning of our documented day on May 15. The quality worth noting in this meeting is its normality. It offers one example of our way of thinking about what to do next with various information and ideas. It is a real meeting about real teachers making daily decisions. Yet the decisions are based on our trust in the process of dialogue and our hope that new, wonderful, and sound ideas will come out of our encounter with one another, our individual experiences and perspectives, and our shared intentions.

Figure 10.5. The meeting on May 14 to organize for future work.

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Louise Cadwell, Lori Geismar Ryan, and Charles Schwall Karen, Melissa, Chuck, and Louise sat down together in the atelier late in the afternoon with a sense of openness and expectation as they prepared to discuss and organize for the upcoming last days of school. Soon after the meeting began, Karen shared some of her recent observations about the children’s dramatic play. Karen: The children’s dramatic play has sometimes, not always, been

dictated by the reflections that were created by the objects we had in the classroom. When the sun came in through the window, it would hit the disco balls, and the children would place them in different areas of the room. And they would say “it’s the stars,” or “under the water.” We probably didn’t document it well, or value it as much as we could have. What could we do to have some new experiences that build on this idea of light as a character? Louise: I’ve never heard of that before. I’ve never heard of reflected light becoming a character. Chuck: The children use dramatics continually, but we don’t always choose to support it as a language. Also, I think that the most powerful dramatic play episodes take place when several different elements come together. Louise: What if you harnessed this idea of the “character” of light? There is mystery involved. When will it appear? What will it do? What will the children do with it? Dance? Move? Pretend? Karen: They love to dance to the light, and they ask for it. Louise: Maybe they could watch for the light, and then have a dramatic response to it. And we could just see what they do. Karen: I think the children would be pretty excited about doing that. Louise: What if you asked them, “What kind of things do you think you might do?” and “Are you going to use dress ups? What else do you need, if you are going to be a character with the light?” Also, it would help if they could have a cleared-out space, and ideally a small group. Melissa: The light is always on the small block platform. That area always gets the light. Maybe we could say, “Do you remember when you pretended that the lights were the sky and the stars?” Maybe they would pretend they are on the moon, and they are waiting for the light to come. Louise: Maybe the lights are something else. Maybe not stars or a rocket ship. Melissa: Oh, so a better question might just be, “What could it be?” Louise: I think that kind of question leaves it more open to the new interpretations that the children might come up with. Also, I wonder if sound could be part of it. If the group is set to wait for the light, you could ask them, “If the light had a sound, what would it be?”

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Melissa: Oh, light and sound together! Louise: Maybe one child could be responsible for giving the light a sound.

Then another child waits for the next light and gives it a sound. I don’t know how to structurally organize this. Melissa: Definitely a small group. I’m thinking, move the small block platform to give them room. Set up some instruments in that space, and talk with them before the light comes. Karen: But we don’t want the instruments too close to the block platform, because Chuck probably will have a group in the ministudio. They will hear that noise. Chuck: But won’t it just be little bells and things? Louise: Oh! I have some bells. That’s the sort of thing I was thinking. Tinkling sounds. Like Tinker Bell. Melissa: Remember, at the beginning of the project last September, the children said the light was like Tinker Bell! Chuck: That was one of the very first ideas! It’s in the very first conversation! Louise: If it’s a sunny day, and this happens, it might be a good idea to be ready to videotape. Chuck: We can do that. This meeting deepened our thinking about the children’s work and helped us to imagine new connections that could be made among past experiences and present possibilities. Karen and Melissa’s description of how children used reflective objects with their dramatic play was a key element. This generative, collective thinking led to the organization of an open-ended provocation where the children would wait for the sunlight and respond with voice, instruments, movement, and imagination. The teachers hypothesized that this small-group experience would expand the children’s understanding of and relationship with reflected light. Moreover, it could push the role materials play individually and collectively as they expand the possibilities for the children’s learning. This idea of finding new ways to combine light, its reflection, musical instruments, movement, dance, and drama was exciting to the teachers and they began to prepare. The teachers agreed that Melissa would facilitate a small-group experience involving sunlight, dramatics, and sound. Together they drafted questions for Melissa to ask the children. They brainstormed an inventory of types of bells and other musical instruments that Melissa would offer the children the following morning. Preparation also included how the classroom space would be used for this small group and the other two groups of children who would be working with Karen in the atelier and Chuck in the classroom.

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Projections in Action: The Next Day Unfolds The morning after the teachers’ meeting was a busy one in the 4- and 5-yearolds’ classroom. The teachers were eager to begin the day, anticipating the three small-group experiences they had organized for the morning. Some children would work in the atelier with Karen to discuss and draw ideas about rain clouds, Chuck would be in the classroom miniatelier with children mixing colors for a new mural, and Melissa would facilitate the sunlight, sound, and dramatic play group. Before beginning small-group work, Chuck arrived at morning meeting with a large painting representing the daytime sky made by several children earlier in the week. The painting was inspired by one boy who had suggested making murals of the sky to use as backdrops in the dramatic play area. All of the children liked his idea, which was to have two large paintings of the sky, one for the daytime and the other for nighttime. On this morning, a group of children would begin mixing colors with Chuck for the nighttimesky mural. The children who had created the daytime-sky painting explained to the rest of the class how it was made. They shared the reasons for their color choices, and that they drew with pencils before they worked with paint. While looking at the painting, one boy asked out loud, “Did you know there are always clouds at nighttime?” This led to a lively discussion about the nighttime sky. The children wondered together, “Are there clouds in the sky at night? How could you see the stars and the moon if there are clouds at night?” Many children had strong opinions, and not everyone agreed. As the conversation played out, Melissa recorded the children’s ideas for future reference. After some discussion about the logistics of the day, the morning meeting concluded, and the children dispersed into their small groups. Rain-Cloud Theories. Karen and a group of children moved into the atelier to discuss rain clouds. This group had already made two large clouds using wire, bead, and fabric, and they had many ideas to share with one another. As the children walked to the atelier, Emma told the others, “When clouds turn gray, that means they’re getting full of water.” The children sat down at the table, and Karen turned on her tape recorder (see Figure 10.6). After several minutes of dialogue, the conversation centered around how water might fall from a cloud during a rainstorm, and that it would somehow get back inside again. Angela said, “My dad told me this about rain. First, there is water in lakes and rivers, and rain goes up to the clouds and then keeps going back and forth. Up and down.” “So it’s a cycle?” Karen asked. “Yeah. Like when we said it’s daytime and nighttime. Back and forth,” Angela stated, referring to a conversation that took place with the large group.

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Figure 10.6. The children and Karen engage in conversations about rain-cloud theories.

Emma joined in, “I need to tell you something. The water from the rivers evaporates. It goes up to the clouds. Then it comes down.” “How do you see it go up?” wondered Renee. “You can’t see it go up,” Angela replied. Renee thought out loud, “It turns invisible? I think you can see water when it goes up.” Angela clarified her idea, “You cannot see water when it goes up. The water drops are so tiny.” “I thought you were saying it goes up like a waterfall. Like as fast as a waterfall. That’s what I thought you were saying!” exclaimed Renee, noticing the difference between her idea and Angela’s. The conversation continued and the children discussed what it might look like to be inside a rain cloud. After the conversation, Karen asked the children to draw their ideas. Each child made several drawings based on the ideas discussed (see Figure 10.7).

Figure 10.7. Angela’s representation of the cycle of evaporation.

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Louise Cadwell, Lori Geismar Ryan, and Charles Schwall Colors of the Night Sky. Back in the classroom, Chuck had prepared the

miniatelier by placing bottles of paint, empty jars, and spoons for mixing on the table. The purpose of the experience on this morning was to mix colors that would later be used to paint the mural. Earlier in the week, he had asked the children, “What colors would you need to paint a nighttime sky?” The children specified they would need blue, gray, and black paint. These colors, along with many others, were ready for the children to use. Each child began with three jars of paint, one of each color, which were filled about halfway full. Other empty jars were available for the children to pour paint into. The children began mixing the paint from their full jars into the empty ones (see Figure 10.8). They used large spoons to transfer paint from one jar to the next. Within a few moments brilliant new tones of each color appeared in the jars. When the children were satisfied with the newly mixed colors, these jars were removed from the table and saved for use on the mural. Chuck documented each child’s ideas as they worked, writing notes in a journal and taking photos with a camera (see Figure 10.9). As the children worked, they talked about the stars and informed Chuck that they needed yellow and silver paint, too. The experience was a symphony of children’s voices and the sounds of pouring, mixing, and stirring.

Figure 10.8. Children mixed and selected colors for the mural of the nighttime sky.

Figure 10.9. Colors for the nighttime sky.

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Sunlight, Sound, and Dramatic Play. Outside the school building, the morning clouds had broken apart, and patches of sky were beginning to show through. In the classroom, Melissa had prepared an area of the classroom near the windows for the small group. Here she had placed two baskets on the floor, one containing reflective objects and the other small musical instruments. She sat with four children on the floor, and they talked while they waited for the sunlight to peek through the windows. John John immediately observed the overcast conditions and said, “There is a faint sunlight today.” A spot of bright sunlight appeared and Ellie exclaimed, “The light!” “It’s not faint anymore!” cried Melissa. John John added, “We could make reflections and shadows, too!” Melissa had the Morning Meeting Journal with her, which contained the children’s previous conversations. She reminded the children of the time they first noticed the reflection in September. She asked, “Remember when we first saw the reflection of Chuck’s watch on the ceiling?” The children responded, saying that they did. Then she read to them from the journal, “We asked everyone, at that time, ‘What is it?’ People said that it was a flying thing, a spaceship, or maybe the tooth fairy. Well, if the lights that we see today had a sound, what do you think they would sound like?” Catherine said, “Tinker Bell.” Ellie agreed and added, “A bell.” “I have a basket of bells and other instruments, and I thought maybe you could choose some and try to make a sound that you think the light might make.” The children chose the ones they wanted to try first. Melissa continued, “If it’s a strong light today, and the disco ball makes reflections, what kind of sound would the reflections make?” Catherine exclaimed, “One big noise!” John John was captivated by this idea and added, “Yea, we could do that at once! It could go, shwoosh! We can count to two, and then we will ring it!” Ellie suggested a different idea, “Maybe it could be one soft noise.” John said, “Or a lot of little noises.” John John continued with the big sound idea, “If you do it a lot, it might scare the light away!” “And then we couldn’t do it,” Jamie concluded. The children took turns placing reflective objects where they thought the light would shine. Suddenly the sunlight arrived and reflections appeared around the room. The children immediately made many sounds with the bells, all at the same time. After a minute, the sunlight faded and the children exchanged instruments. This cycle of trading instruments and experimenting with the sounds to the light repeated several times. Melissa suggested that the children take turns individually. Jamie decided he wanted to make one soft noise, and carefully rang his bell one time for the

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Louise Cadwell, Lori Geismar Ryan, and Charles Schwall light. John John announced he would like to do “a bunch of little noises,” and hit his triangle many times when the reflections emerged. Catherine noticed light reflected on the ceiling and said, “I want to lie down.” She lay on her back and rang a bell while she looked at the reflections on the ceiling. “It’s quiet and loud,” she said. Suddenly, the children noticed that the reflections were shining on their bodies. Jamie shouted, “It’s on you! It’s on your mouth! It’s on your cheek!” Melissa said, “Look! It’s on John John’s leg!” Everyone broke out into laughter. “It’s on my foot, or it used to be,” John John said as he watched the reflections move across the floor. “It’s on your neck!” declared Jamie. John pointed with his finger and exclaimed, “It’s on your hair!” When Jamie noticed the beads and sparkles on Catherine’s shoes, he announced a new idea, “I know what can shine. Catherine’s shoes!” Everyone agreed and the shoes were placed into the sunlight. Instantly tiny reflections covered the floor (see Figures 10.10 and 10.11). At this point the children could no longer contain themselves. Jamie asked Melissa, “Can we dance to it?!” All of the other children echoed his desire. Melissa agreed and the children got up and danced around the room with great enthusiasm. “We’re dancing! We’re dancing!” they exclaimed as they moved. The room was entirely transformed. Reflections from the disco ball and Catherine’s shoes sprinkled across the walls and the floor. Melissa played the bells as the children danced through the sunlight and the reflections.

Figure 10.10. Reflections from the disco ball and Catherine’s shoes sprinkle across the walls and floor.

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Figure 10.11. Experimenting with sound and light.

What Are the Children Learning? We have used a close-up lens to examine the systems inside one day as well as the particular story of that day. As teachers looking back on this day, what meaning do we make of it? How can it inform us about the whole project and, further, about our way of working within a systemic context? What the children are learning during the course of this, or any project, is of critical concern. From a systemic perspective, our questions become: • What did we all learn, children and adults, because of the way we immersed ourselves in the processes, depth and breadth, and relational qualities of our experience? • If we place value on relationships above all, then what has changed in our understanding of light and other elements of our world because of the course of this project and all that evolved out of it? • What have the timeframes, space frames, various groupings, dialogues, recordings, and reflections in words and in media enabled us to learn? We started out with the intention of learning with breadth and depth, all of us, in a way that was expansive, cross-disciplinary, and relational. The knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors that come from this way of learning are greater than the sum of the parts. There was a wholeness that grew out of our learning journey that is manifest in the whole as well as in the single day we follow here. The children reached high levels of scientific skill not because we taught them, but because their discoveries unfolded in meaningful and significant ways. Parts of their learning connected to other parts and together manifested in something

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Louise Cadwell, Lori Geismar Ryan, and Charles Schwall bigger than discrete, narrowly defined bits of information. The children became experts in the study of light and, more important, skillful and competent scientific thinkers with research questions to pursue and solve. During the documented day and throughout this project we observed evidence of learning within high-quality environments for young children, as written about by members of the Education Development Center supported by a National Science Foundation grant. Worth and Grollman (2003, pp. 18–22) describe characteristics of environments that reflect scientific learning. Such environments • Build on children’s prior experiences, backgrounds, and early theories. • Draw on children’s curiosity and encourage children to pursue their own questions and develop their own ideas. • Engage children in in-depth exploration of a topic over time in a carefully prepared environment. • Encourage children to reflect on, represent, and document their experiences and share and discuss their ideas with others. • Embed learning in children’s daily work and play and are integrated with other domains. • Provide access to science experiences for all children. Moreover, the authors suggest that earth and space science is perhaps the most complex of the sciences. To understand the structure of the earth and its history, climate, and meteorology, the solar system, and the universe requires understanding of many concepts of life and physical sciences. In addition, studying the ideas of earth and space science means thinking about long time scales, unseen forces, and far-away places. (p. 143)

In this project, these complicated ideas, although not fully understood by the children, were explored and pondered and theorized. When we consulted a rubric for a K–6 report card in Grant Wiggins’ wellrespected and influential book Educative Assessment (1998), we were intrigued to discover that most of the children would have attained the fourth level out of eight in science understandings and communication skills as evidenced by their engagement in inquiry, observation, representation, and communication of their learning. Beyond this sampling of science and communicative knowledge and skills, we reviewed Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind: 16 Characteristics for Success (Costa & Kallick, 2008, pp. xx–xxi). The authors describe sixteen observable characteristics of intellectual growth. Based on the work of key researchers on intelligence and creativity, these following characteristics occur again and again among people in all walks of life who have developed their thinking abilities. They are:

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1. Persistence 2. Managing impulsivity 3. Listening to others with understanding and empathy 4. Thinking flexibly 5. Thinking about thinking (metacogniton) 6. Striving for accuracy 7. Questioning and posing problems 8. Applying past knowledge to new situations 9. Thinking and communicating with clarity and precision 10. Gathering data through all senses 11. Creating, imagining, innovating 12. Responding with wonderment and awe 13. Taking responsible risks 14. Finding humor 15. Thinking interdependently 16. Remaining open to continuous learning Evidence of developing intellectual behaviors can be noted in both children and adults in the Morning Meeting Journal; teachers’ notes; a file of digital photographs; video documentaries; teachers’ and parents’ observations of children’s developing interest, knowledge, and skill over time; and children’s questions, observations, and work in media collected over time and sequenced. But beyond even these ways of assessing knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors, what is the gestalt of the whole? How do we all feel now about this story in our lives and what we experienced and discovered together?

EMBRACING THE COMPLEXITY As teachers we search to make sense of our experiences, of the moments in our lives in school, and of the bigger picture and possible consequences of our actions. Systems thinking has taught us that sense-making is not a simple process of looking at life’s events in a linear, cause-and-effect way. The temptation to see teaching as a string of events where “a leads to b” and then “b leads to c” is difficult to reject. Most of us have interpreted our lives this way forever. It seems that this view is no longer possible in schools where light shines through a basement classroom window; connects myriad events, processes, and structures; and then sparks, ripples, and reflects the complexity of the lives of a group of children and their teachers. These experiences, and others like it, coax us to avoid the appeal and convenience of educating children in a linear fashion. They force us to see teaching and learning in a more circular way. The complexity can be compelling. It can push us to look beyond our influence on the children, to notice and

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Louise Cadwell, Lori Geismar Ryan, and Charles Schwall embrace their profound effect on us. During this project, Karen reminded us of this when she spoke of these experiences as “a gift from the children.” Complexity leads us away from lesson-planning what we will teach, to searching for systems that organize and prepare us to think together. In this project, when the children expanded their understanding of reflected light, it didn’t happen in isolation or in a simple way. The children learned about reflected light in connection with a multitude of other elements—reflected light and music, reflected light and movement, reflected light and dance and drama, reflected light and color and prisms, and the sun, moon, and sky. At times it seemed that these combinations and connections occurred all at once. At other times they fragmented and disconnected, only to come back together as a whole that would make sense in yet a new way. When we work this way, we discover a renewed sense of ourselves as teachers. The children, the parents, and the ever-changing experiences in and outside of the school become part of this complex mix of events and part of our reality. We all become meaning-makers within the spirit of the conceptual atelier. And perhaps most important, as lifelong learners ourselves, we venture into new places where the light draws us—places we have never really been before.

REFERENCES Alexander, C. (1979). A timeless way of building. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and nature: A necessary unity. New York, NY: Bantam Books. Bohm, D. (1996). On dialogue. London, UK, and New York, NY: Routledge. Carpa, F. (1996). The web of life. New York, NY: Anchor Books. Costa, A. L., & Kallick, B. (2008). Learning and leading with habits of mind: 16 characteristics for success. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. DuFour, R., & Eacker, R. (1998). Professional learning communities at work: Best practices for enhancing student achievement. Reston, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Fullan, M. G. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley. Lambert, L. (2003). Leadership capacity for lasting school improvement. Reston, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Maturana, H., & Varela, F. (1987). The tree of knowledge. Boston, MA: Shambala. Senge, P., Cambron-McCabe, N., Lucas, T., Smith, B., Dutton, J., & Kleiner, A. (2000). Schools that learn. New York, NY: Century. Wheatley, M. J. (1999). Leadership and the new science: Discovering order in a chaotic world. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler. Wiggins, G. (1998). Educative assessment: Designing assessments to inform and improve student performances. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley. Worth, K., & Grollman, S. (2003). Worms, shadows, and whirlpools: Science in the early childhood classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

My first introduction to the work of the municipal schools for young children in Reggio Emilia was at the 1993 National Association for the Education of Young Children annual conference. Little did I know that this first encounter would lead me to transform my professional and even my personal life. I began to study everything I could find about these schools, and Pauline Baker I attended conferences wherever I could find them. The more I learned about the Reggio Emilia approach, the more I loved it. In 1997, I attended my first Reggio Emilia Study Tour. I was overwhelmed by the beauty and integrity I saw there. In 1998, two classroom teachers invited me to be the studio teacher in their preschool program at Van Buskirk Elementary School, a public school in Tucson. I wrote a short piece about this experience for the First Edition of this book. In the spring of 2004, I was invited to be the studio teacher in Ochoa Elementary School’s preschool program. It took many months to transform an old, wooden, portable building into a studio that would become the place of many wonderful adventures with children. As I write this chapter, I am in transition to a new role to collaborate in creating a site for professional development with the Tucson Children’s Project, focused on the Reggio Emilia approach and the role of the studio and materials in teaching and learning. In this chapter, I will share some of the principles and practices that have become foundational to my work and the way that I interpret the role of the studio.

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BEING OPEN TO POSSIBILITIES—DESIGN MATTERS When we create spaces and opportunities for children, one of our biggest challenges is to be open to possibilities—things unknown and different. Malaguzzi said that “a child’s world should be a world of the possible” (personal communication, 1994). It is in creating this “world of the possible” in the studio that I have found the greatest challenge and the greatest joy as a studio teacher (see Figure 11.1).

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Figure 11.1. The peace garden studio opened in January 2005.

The Reggio Emilia approach is about opening doors in a democratic and profound way. It is profound because these doors lead to all kinds of undefined worlds. As educators, we do not find it easy to push ourselves out of the boxes that define what to do and how we do it. In the municipal schools for young children of Reggio Emilia, education is a dynamic part of a culture and a community, and thus part of a living democracy. When we try to emulate what is being done there, we are challenged to include a political perspective, an active process of dialogue and participation in our communities. We are challenged to design spaces and experiences for children and adults that nurture and foster these values. It is critical to my role as a studio teacher to design a place of research for children and adults—a place where they can use graphic and three-dimensional materials (intelligent materials, as they call them in Reggio Emilia) in many different ways. I need to provide a variety of opportunities for the children to explore these materials over time, and then to try using materials in different ways for different reasons. In the schools of Reggio Emilia, everything begins with a strong belief in the competence of children. When I design invitations

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for the children in the studio, I often create a variety of study areas. In order to do this, I draw from my years of experience collaborating with children and learning during my conversations with teachers. I provide diverse invitations that don’t focus immediately on the creation of products, but rather on supporting the children in building relationships with the materials, tools, and processes of the studio (see Figure 11.2). Materials can’t become languages for learning until they can be used with intention. If children don’t have opportunities to try out different materials and tools to see what they can do, or if they are judged on the products of their experiments, then how can they really develop their competence and confidence in their hundred languages? It is powerful to witness a child begin to connect with a material or a tool and become completely engaged in trying new things. I have witnessed so much joy and satisfaction in children when they do this. Through interactions in the studio, a growing relationship develops between the child and materials, and this encourages children to invent, to think, to problem-solve, to strategize, to create, and to wonder about themselves and the world around them. Shouldn’t these skills be valued as a part of intelligence and a good education? In designing the studio, I include things that are unique, natural, manmade, intriguing, recycled, and beautiful. I try not to have anything in the studio that sends a message to the children that it is a model or is the “right” way to do something. The resources in the studio are for children to use as references, provocations, aesthetic sources of calm, and reminders of place and identity. The children are the owners of their own creativity and their own ways of representing who they are and what they care about and know.

Figure 11.2. Intentional arrangement of materials.

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CREATIVITY You have to invent your own tools and your own procedures. (Richard Serra, in Tappeiner, 2005) Loris Malaguzzi (2012) believed that “creativity should not be considered a separate mental faculty but a characteristic of our way of thinking, knowing, and making choices” (p. 51). This idea has challenged me to question myself, and to listen to the children very carefully. I have to make sure that my concepts of teaching and learning are not closing doors to creativity. I have found this to be tricky because it is easy to be drawn to a lovely product a child has made that makes my way of doing things seem right. There is also the impediment posed by the many educational requirements that get in the way of really seeing and hearing children and their hundred languages (see Figure 11.3). The hundred languages are a metaphor for the extraordinary potential of children, their knowledge-building and creative processes, the myriad forms with which life is manifested and knowledge constructed. (Reggio Children, 2010, p. 10)

As educators, we need a strong belief in the competence of all children whenever we speak with other teachers and consider ways to support children’s learning across all curricular areas. Belief in children’s competence and potential doesn’t mean praising or rewarding. Praise and rewards do not help children develop their intrinsic curiosity and motivation to figure things out themselves. Belief in children’s competence and intelligence means to notice,

Figure 11.3. Wire and tools invite invention for a 2½-yearold child.

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to listen, and to provoke children’s thinking and inventing. We need to support children’s creativity, even though they get discouraged. Malaguzzi (2012) wanted people to see what the children were doing in the schools of Reggio Emilia. He believed that when they could see the children’s studio work, they could begin to understand that children were communicating their ideas, not just making pretty pictures or demonstrating art techniques. This is why the story and practice of the municipal schools of Reggio Emilia and the Wonder of Learning exhibit are so profound. In my collaborations with children and adults, I want to be open to all possibilities and not “steal ninety-nine,” as Malaguzzi (2012) describes in his Hundred Languages of Children poem (p. 33).

“Alphabets” and Materials in the Studio The idea of an alphabet of a material is a profound idea that I have come to appreciate. It took a bit of time for me to figure out what an “alphabet” or “grammar” of a material was, but as I read and re-read the words of Giovanni Piazza (see Chapter 6), as well as those of Gianni Rodari (1973) in the Grammar of Fantasy, this concept has become more clear to me. When we create an unconventional alphabet of a material and display it, we offer children and adults some ideas about the potential of a material without communicating too tightly how it is to be used. Little books of photos of children using wire or clay or other materials communicate the freedom to invent. The children love looking through these books. They laugh and they look more. I don’t think that they ever think they have to use a material in a certain way. Thinking about the idea of an alphabet of a material helps me to learn more ways to support children in developing their relationships with materials. I even have my own alphabet of found wire displayed in a small corner of the studio that has attracted a lot of interest when educators visit.

Clay Alphabet In the studio I have several airtight buckets of clay, soft and pliable and formed into balls or cubes ready for the children to use at the clay table. The clay table is a low end table that I purchased at a thrift store and covered tightly with heavy canvas. Several small chairs are placed around it. On a shelf next to one side of the table, a much-loved alphabet of clay booklet is displayed along with a variety of interesting objects that I hope provoke and inspire the children’s interest (see Figure 11.4). The alphabet of clay booklet is a collection of images of Ochoa children working with clay at this table. It helps communicate that there are many ways to use clay. I have witnessed delightful invention when the children are able

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Figure 11.4. These children are creating their own alphabets of clay.

to experiment and try things out with the clay. It would often be more than an hour before we would stop.

Studying Flowers If preschool children are studying flowers with their classroom teachers, when they come to the studio in the morning, we go outside with drawing boards, paper, and fine Sharpies. Sometimes, we take oil pastels. We look very closely at the flowers that we find outside, often using a magnifying glass to examine them. Then each child selects one to draw. When we return to the studio, there are a number of flower books on the table for the children to study if they choose. I might also put a vase of flowers with drawings pens and liquid watercolor on the light table as a choice for continued study. There could be images of flowers printed on overhead film near the projector, or collage materials to use to create more flowers. There are always many different things for the children to do and see in the studio, both connected to their classroom studies or projects as well as for exploration. Even the children in the older grades (third through fifth) like to have time to work in the studio.

Drawing Chickens For several years, Paula McPheeters, a preschool teacher, kept chickens in the garden near the studio. If she wanted the children to study and draw the chickens, we would observe them carefully just as we did the flowers. The children

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would walk all around the chicken pen to see the rooster and the hens. One day, when we were drawing the chickens on overhead film with black markers, I asked Omar if he wanted to show the chicken what he had drawn. He did this with a genuine respect for the perspective the chicken might have. Later, the children added color to their drawings using a large set of colored Sharpies. They were then able to take the drawings to the overhead projector in the studio and project them on the wall, adding yet another dimension to their chicken-drawing experience.

FINDING OURSELVES IN THE STUDIO—IDENTITY AND VISIBILITY A healthy sense of identity is one of the most important resources children have. In the studio I provide many ways for children to see themselves and one another in positive, unusual, and inventive ways (see Figure 11.5). What follows is an inventory of some of the ways that I encourage self-identity and group identity as well as creativity, knowledge, and a high level of organization in the studio.

Figure 11.5. The surprise of a mirror in an unexpected place.

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Pauline Baker • I use mirrors near the light table, on the floor, next to the easel, on shelves behind materials, and on the wall. Children see themselves reflected in the different mirrors in many ways. • In one area, children can study a collection of masks. As a provocation, I have posted a question in English and Spanish, “Do you know me when I wear a mask?” • In the center of the studio there is a big table with stools around it that is at a higher level than the other tables in the studio. We refer to it as “the studio table” even though there are others. There is always a place at the studio table with a mirror, a large piece of white paper, and a Sharpie for making self-portraits. Children of all ages are drawn to this place. • I copy and laminate photographs of each child on cards. When a child comes to the studio, she finds her card on the studio table and places it on a choice board next to the study area photo where she wants to study. • I also have the children’s names and photos visible in sections of a large portfolio box where their paintings are saved. • I print children’s photos in thumbnail size on magnet paper, cut them up, and place them on the magnet boards to manipulate as they chose. • In addition, there are 8½ x 11 sheets of copy paper with a large photo of each child slipped into a page protector ready to use on the light table. • Near the overhead projector, I place small photos of the children printed on overhead film in a box for use on the projector and to incorporate into their designs. • On a large digital photo frame on the counter, placed at the children’s level, a loop of several hundred images of children working in the studio plays throughout studio time accompanied by a variety of different music. • On a small shelf near a low ceiling, I display color photos of children doing a wide variety of things in the studio. • At least a dozen acrylic stands with mini documentation stories with photos of the children involved in a variety of projects and explorations are placed all around the studio. I have organized notebooks focused on particular study areas, such as the magnet board, the floor loom, the easel, the light table, and the overhead projector with images of children working in these areas. Every day, I take photos of the children in the different areas of the studio. I edit and date these photos and print them on cardstock. These are placed in page protectors and displayed in the current year’s notebooks on a low cubby. There is a little leather Mexican chair near it so that children can sit and look at these collections. I now have nine years of these diary notebooks, and they have become a vital resource for me in so many ways, as they show:

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• How the studio is used by the children • How I have prepared my invitations for encounters with a variety of different materials and tools • Whether the study areas were appealing or intriguing to children • Whether my desire for the children to see themselves in the studio was realized In addition, the notebooks document short-term projects and special projects that were done over longer periods of time. I share them with educators and other visitors to demonstrate the research of the children with materials and tools.

BOOKS AND LETTERS IN THE STUDIO There are books, words, and letters everywhere in the studio available to look at, use, and study. I have found that, at times, children like the provocation of the images that they find in books, and at other times, they want to draw from their imagination. Whichever way they choose, I want to facilitate their research in the studio. It is one of the most important things I try to do. I don’t want children to feel that there is one right way to represent letters, words, or images. Sometimes, I put books out and open them on a studio table. If I know that several children are interested in motorcycles, I might have some motorcycle books on the studio table to examine, or I might invite them to select a motorcycle book from the shelves of books all around the studio. Children also love dinosaurs, cars, insects, dogs, cats, horses, buildings, and trains. There are several places in the studio where children can find books about these subjects to study or use as references or contemplate with a friend (see Figure 11.6). I love to see children take out giant books and open them up with excitement and the expectation that they will find something wonderful. Sometimes when children are in the studio, they want to sit and read slowly, looking at page after page. If this happens frequently, a disposition develops to use and enjoy books in this way. This interest can become a resource for children for their whole life. Sometimes when a child is working at a studio table, she looks up and says, “How do I make this?” Then, I have a very important job to do. Does the idea come from a book, or is it in her mind? What experiences has she had using the materials that she has chosen? I need to be sure that there is a way for her to do what she hopes to do that is open to invention. A book can help her access the idea she has or help her find a place to start. I might ask, “Where do you want to start?” or “What part do you like the best?”

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Figure 11.6. The joy of sharing a book on the studio table. I want to do something or say something that provokes the child and keeps the question alive and her attention piqued. I need to support the risk-taking involved the moment the child begins to take action. The books and materials in the studio offer ways to provoke thinking as children develop “languages” for learning. Rafael, a kindergarten student, loved vehicles of all kinds. One day, I placed a Japanese book with pictures of vehicles on the studio table. It contains lots of images of all types of construction vehicles with descriptive writing in Japanese. Mario opened the book and decided where he wanted to start to read it. He then began to draw vehicles using this particular book as a reference whenever he came to the studio. When Rafael had drawn several vehicles, I asked if he wanted to paint them. He became very excited as I set the book up in a book holder on a stool next to the easel. He began painting the images he had drawn with gusto, commenting on some of the details that he noticed in the book. It was a very important moment for Rafael when he realized there are different ways to make images and add details. When children work with a variety of materials and tools, they become more able to interpret and reinterpret the world around them in ways that are particularly meaningful to them.

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A PLACE OF RESEARCH— ASKING QUESTIONS, MAKING MISTAKES If we really believe that “creativity should be at the heart of teaching and learning,” as Malaguzzi (2012, p. 51) so powerfully communicated, and that “research is behavior for life,” as Carlina Rinaldi said in 2001 at a conference in St. Louis, then what are we doing as teachers to live these beliefs? (See Figure 11.7.) Are we developing the habits of the mind in children that will help them become responsible and healthy citizens of the world? Are we helping children develop the discipline to work hard and know what is right and wrong? What skills and dispositions are children gaining in school today? If I define the materials, tools, and actions of the studio too tightly, I am guilty of “steal[ing] ninety-nine” of the hundred languages, and I have been. But Carlina Rinaldi says that teachers have the right to make mistakes! We should be ready for the unexpected, for reassessing our initial hypotheses, for constructing strategies and for readjusting our course if we make mistakes (which we have the right to make and are part of our professional growth). (Rinaldi, 2006, p. 125)

Figure 11.7. A slice of agate and colored beads on the light table offer an intriguing opportunity for research.

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Pauline Baker Many times this idea has given me the courage to keep trying in my efforts to make the experiences of the studio worthy of the children. Yet, the idea that teachers make mistakes is the antithesis of what is expected of educators today. When I realize I have made mistakes in my collaborations with children, it helps me to consider what I did wrong and what to do differently next time. This is also why I have to examine how I set up the studio on a regular basis: • How do I invite the children to discover and then make connections to some of the materials and tools around the room? • Have I organized them in a way that communicates invitation, as well as provocation? • What aesthetic elements are important to consider? • Have I set up the space and the materials in a way that welcomes and does not portray a stereotypical view of young children? • How have I shown my belief in their competence, and my appreciation for who they are, and how they learn? For this reason, I don’t tell a whole group of children how to put paint on their brushes when they chose the easel as their study area. However, I might loan knowledge (a Reggio Emilia phrase that means to share an idea or information) to a child who is frustrated because there is paint dripping on her paper. I think that a very important part of my role in the pedagogy of listening (Rinaldi, 2006) is to allow children “to invent [their] own tools and [their] own procedures,” as Richard Serra, the sculptor, advises (Tappeiner, 2005). The minute that I make a judgment and say a child has too much paint on her brush or that she has to use the brush in a certain way, I am closing a door. Of course, I have made this mistake, too. I am still learning.

BEING INSPIRED: BEING IN DIALOGUE If we believe that we are co-constructors of knowledge, how do we have a dialogue with children that is rich and vigorous? How do we have this same kind of dialogue with our colleagues? Amelia Gambetti says that she and her co-teacher decided not to work together after 25 years because they didn’t argue enough. They felt they had become too staid in how they did things together. So, how do we learn to place more value on dialogue and questioning, and feel the disequilibrium and uncertainty that come with real teaching and learning? In order for this to happen, there must be an attitude of openness and dialogue nurtured in our schools. Teachers need to feel free to notice and express disapproval of the lack of respect for children or families represented

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in a district mandate, or the segregation of children learning English from English-speaking children; or dismay at the fear of deportation that we witness in many of our families. There must be an expectation that this is what professionals do. It is our moral and ethical responsibility to question mandates and requirements that concern us. It is part of our democratic way of life to recognize that learning happens in many different ways and that children, teachers, and families have rights beyond those that are only legally expressed. I try to have an open attitude when I collaborate with teachers, by documenting my teaching and learning experiences in the studio and sharing these in as many ways as possible (see Figure 11.8). I also try to say what I wonder about and what I think can help support our efforts to be Reggio-inspired. I study the Reggio Emilia philosophy every day. I study it in relationship to all of the other disciplines and experiences that are a part of my life as a woman, a mother, a daughter, a grandmother, an artist, an educator, and

Figure 11.8. Our pedagogista and preschool teacher consider the documentation display I prepared for a third-grade project on spirals.

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Pauline Baker maybe sometimes a revolutionary. I am not just “the art teacher.” I have studied curriculum design and have written early childhood education standards. I’ve studied assessment tools and been provoked by the idea that we think we can standardize intelligence. Of course, I have studied a lot about art, history, and design. It is my job to study, to always be learning and to be in dialogue with others. Whether we think about the hundred languages as materials, tools, and processes, or as sound, or movement or information and technology, whatever it is, I think we have to cross borders into new and often uncomfortable territories in teaching and learning because otherwise we are closing doors on possibilities. I have tried to build bridges across these borders so that the studio can be viewed as a place of creativity and research and so that children will be valued as the creative and intelligent people they are.

REFERENCES Gandini, L. (2012). History, ideas, and basic philosophy: An interview with Loris Malaguzzi. In C. Edwards, L. Gandini, & G. Forman (Eds.), The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia experience in transformation (3rd ed.; pp. 27–72). Denver, CO: Praeger. Indications. (2010, April). Preschools and Infant Toddler Centers of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, p. 10. Malaguzzi, L. (2012). No way the hundred is there. In C. Edwards, L. Gandini, & G. Forman (Eds.), The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia experience in transformation (3rd ed.; pp. 2–3). Denver, CO: Praeger. Rinaldi, C. (2006). In dialogue with Reggio Emilia: Listening, researching, and learning. New York, NY: Routledge. Rodari, G. (1973). The grammar of fantasy: An introduction to the art of inventing stories. Torino, Italy: Reggio Children. Tappeiner, M. A. (Writer and Director). (2005). Richard Serra, thinking on your own feet. Documentary produced by Wesdeustscher Runfunk in association with Zwetes Deutcshes Femsehn (ZDF), the German public service broadcast in Mainz, Germany.

CHAPTER TWELVE

What if educators viewed all children as creative, full of imagination and wonder, and felt capable of and responsible for nurturing those traits? What if school curriculum was shaped and influenced by teaching professionals who recognized creativity as the birthright of every child? Harris MacKay These are questions that thrill and inspire me, and challenge me to value the power of my own imagination and the responsibility that I have for stretching it, especially in my work with children. These are questions that I will explore in this chapter as I share a glimpse into the work that we are doing at Opal School to learn a little more each year about the relationship among materials, learning, creativity, and the ways we want to be together in this world. Within the complex, complicated relationships among childhood and adulthood and teaching and learning, we have every necessary resource to create futures where understanding, empathy, democracy, peace, and innovation thrive. It is easy to forget, sometimes, while we are in the company of children in early childhood classrooms, that we are holding that future in our hands. But there is an awe-inspiring power in the recognition of that potential that becomes available to us in amounts commensurate with the strength of our image of every child. Our first step is to recognize that creativity, imagination, and wonder are natural dispositions that accompany every human being’s drive to make sense of and build relationships with the world. In her essay Creativity as a Quality of Thought, Carlina Rinaldi (2006) poses questions central to our work:

Creativity at the Heart of Learning Susan

How can we help children to find the meaning of what they do and what they experience? How can we respond to their constant questions, their “whys” and “hows,” their search for that which we like to think of as not only the meaning of things but the meaning of life itself, a search that begins from the moment of birth, from the child’s first, silent “why” to that which, for us, is the meaning of life? (p. 86)

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Susan Harris MacKay To see children as strong, competent, and wise is to acknowledge their innate need and active search for meaning and the companion need to express the results of their encounters. All human beings are born with the capacity to be creative—to make meaningful, novel connections and to communicate their ideas in original ways.

SUPPORTING CREATIVITY In the spring of 2002, I had the privilege of joining a study tour to the municipal schools for young children in Reggio Emilia. During that trip a comment made by an Italian educator surprised me. She said that the work of the adults was to intentionally design experiences for children that would promote the development of creativity. I found this possibility to be deeply inspiring. That school could be the place in our communities where creativity was nurtured, sustained, and matured with intentional strategies, opened a door into a new world of possibility and hope. The schools of Reggio Emilia offer a tremendous example of the potential that exists in offering tools, strategies, and challenges to children that will enhance their capacity for creative thought and action. What happens when we attempt to translate that example into the lives of older American public school students? In American public school, we emphasize teaching over learning. The recurrent lament that children arrive at kindergarten unprepared to learn supports a persistent folk wisdom that learning is the equivalent of curating an ever-growing collection of skills and facts delivered from the teacher to the ready-recipient mind. This prevalent assumption ensures that teachers are poised to ignore the prior experience of children and their attempts to make sense of it. It prepares teachers to fill buckets they perceive to be empty, rather than to kindle fires already burning in the minds of the children. In order to embrace a new vision, we need to value creativity as vital to the things we have come to take for granted that we teach in school, as well as other values that we hold dear, such as democracy and the sustainability of our planet. It is not nostalgia for a time of innocence that leads us to demand dispositions and skills that support creativity, but a vital need for the future well-being of our communities. Even if we limit our focus to core academic areas, we find that understanding of subject matter thrives and relies on imagination and wonder. The most current studies in neuroscience have confirmed that there is no learning unless what is already known can be connected to something new (Brown & Roediger, 2014). That leap of connection is an act of imagination. Finding our way from the known to the new is a personal journey best facilitated within a brain that is well-practiced in seeking patterns and connections. Charles Schwall (2008),

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drawing on his experience as the studio teacher at the St. Michael School in St. Louis, said in a lecture: “To be creative is to be in a state of becoming.” Teaching has the potential to nurture those who are in the process of inventing themselves through providing materials and experiences that facilitate personal connection. The learning process is a creative process.

AUTHORING In her book Imagination and Literacy, Karen Gallas (2003) writes: “Authoring represents a physical incarnation of imagination as it comes in contact with the world” (p. 100). To author is to seek connections and relationships, to find them, and to express them. The arts and sciences that we ask children to study in school are such physical incarnations, authored by historians, mathematicians, scientists, and artists. Whether we are widely and famously studied or executing our first scribbles, we all express our ideas to better understand ourselves, to become visible to others, and to receive feedback and validation. Only when we learn to perceive and respond to children who we understand are becoming authors of their own lives will we see how willing children are to learn, how driven they are, in fact, to learn. The arts are authoring tools that allow both the creation and interpretation of sensory images as they express layers of perspective, color, texture, sound, and words. For this reason, the arts are perhaps the most powerful way to nurture the creativity of young children and at the same time to allow adults to perceive their expression as authorship. Opal School teacher-researcher Levia Friedman captured such a moment of authoring while working with a group of 10-year-old students one fall. They had just returned from an annual fifth-grade overnight outdoor challenge course, and Levia asked them to reflect by considering how what they had experienced on their trip might support their work in school. How would having taken risks on the high ropes and giant swings support them to learn and grow at school? Levia invited her students to develop these reflections by working with clay. She asked them: How will the clay help you move from reliving the activity to finding a discovery that applies to other experiences you expect this year? What did you learn about yourself? Senan started by playing with the clay. He noticed that a friend had stuck his finger in the clay and that it made a suction noise when he pulled it out. Senan tried to re-create that suction feeling, and also that noise, which distracted everyone at his table, and he quickly became more interested in getting everyone to laugh than in the work at hand. Levia had a choice to make. Should she step in? Should she redirect Senan? While she considered her options, Senan filled the hole in his clay with water,

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Susan Harris MacKay and when he pulled his finger out, the whole thing collapsed, forming a bigger hole in the center. As this happened, Levia saw Senan’s approach to the material change, and become suddenly more focused. He pulled parts of the clay into what looked like fingers, and made an important discovery, finally adding a representation of himself to the sculpture (see Figures 12.1 and 12.2). Then he was ready to write. Here is a snippet of that written reflection: It’s like a hollow feeling when you fall down. You fall into this . . . you start to swing. You fall into a hole, it’s slippery inside and you have no idea what’s going on. My body shut itself down and I closed my eyes and I thought I was dreaming. I was super happy after I did it. You have to face your fears. —Senan, age 10.

Figure 12.1. Senan’s approach to the material changes.

Figure 12.2. He added himself to the sculpture and began to write.

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We often see such moments of fluid integration between materials, playfulness, meaningful reflection, and powerful writing in Opal School classrooms. It can be difficult and uncomfortable for teachers to take the risks inherent in making time for materials and play, especially as children get older. It is easy to relate to Levia’s inner conflict as she watched Senan entertain his friends in the room when she intended to engage them in serious reflection. But that moment of hesitation and internal deliberation offered just the time Senan needed to prove the strength of his willingness to engage in the cycle of experience, reflection, and expression. Children need ample and myriad opportunities to take in new information and turn it out again in ways that are personal and original—to engage in authoring. This happens when educators offer tools and environments where children can make their interpretations and connections visible to themselves and others. Carlina Rinaldi (2001) writes, “From the beginning, children demonstrate that they have a voice, know how to listen and want to be listened to by others” (p. 3). But in our classrooms, so often, we instead focus our energy on teaching children to suppress their natural desire for meaning and relationship, to remember what they are told, and to recite correct answers that are segregated from feelings of curiosity and imagination. Children learn to numb these feelings in order to survive. Literacy specialist Ellin Keene (2008) encourages us this way: “It is we teachers who can create the conditions and engage in the modeling necessary for children to experience and become intoxicated by the scope and power of their own minds” (p. 139). It is we teachers who must. Because we know that it is possible to support children to experience the power of their own minds, it is an issue of human rights to provide these conditions for every child. What’s more, we all benefit, both now and in the future, because sustaining our creative birthright is the most joyful pursuit of human rights we could ever have the privilege and possibility to defend.

CREATING A COMMUNITY OF AUTHORS: A JOURNEY THROUGH SEASONS Used as languages, the arts open windows of imagination and possibility, offering children a chance to be known as authors within a community of authors. Rinaldi (2006) writes: “This then, is the revolution we have to put into place: to develop children’s natural sensitivity toward appreciating and developing the ideas of another, sharing them together” (p. 90). At Opal School, we work actively to cultivate the skills of artists, scientists, and authors that allow the children to express the meaning and complexity in the world as they encounter and interpret it every day, and to share with one another. Several years ago, I had the opportunity to journey with a group of

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Susan Harris MacKay 5- to 7-year-old children through a rich exploration of the seasons, which began one day with a hike. In our beautiful neighboring Hoyt Arboretum, there is a special collection of intentionally planted white birch trees that is called the House of Summer. Many of the children had been to this place before, but I had not, and they promised they could lead me there. We enjoyed a wander but did not find the House of Summer, and though we were disappointed, we determined to try again another day—with a map in hand. Soon after, the fall foliage was reaching its peak, and we set out to enjoy it. I intended to lead them to the House of Summer, but while we walked out the door, I overheard someone behind me comment hopefully, “Maybe we’ll find the House of Fall today!” I laughed to myself and jotted this optimistic line in my journal as we headed into the Arboretum. We still didn’t make it to the House of Summer that day, but what turned out to be even better, we found ourselves in our own House of Fall (see Figure 12.3).

Figure 12.3. We find ourselves in a grove of fiery smoke trees and imagine we’ve stumbled into the House of Fall.

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I thought about these words from Elliot Eisner (2006): Great ideas have legs. They take you somewhere . . . With them, you can raise questions that can’t be answered. These unanswerable questions should be a source of comfort. They ensure you’ll always have something to think about! Puzzlements invite the most precious of human abilities to take wing. I speak of imagination, the neglected stepchild of American education. (p. 222)

The House of Fall, and later what became the Houses of Winter and Spring, turned out to be great ideas, full of delightful puzzlements. These Houses of the Seasons inspired the children to share their ongoing and growing theories of the turning of the year—the natural patterns that they had observed over their short lives. One structure we use in Opal School classrooms to support the sharing of theories is called a science talk, inspired and informed by the work of Karen Gallas in her book Talking Their Way into Science (1995). As they make their theories public to peers in whole-group science talks, children open themselves to possibilities they may not have considered on their own. Science talks encourage children to value questions and the power of their own thinking, and to build on the ideas of others. After discovering the House of Fall, the 6-year-olds sat in a circle and shared their theories about the question: How do leaves change color? Anna: I think that they want to play, and the wind helps them. Elke: I think they get older and older, and then when fall comes, they’re

just so old that they can’t hold on to the green anymore, and they start turning other colors. Josephine: When the wind blows, the rain gives the tree the message that it’s time to change color. Brittany: I think like Elke, when they get really, really old, they can’t hold onto their green anymore. Elke: I think maybe that why they lose their green is because they want to go out and play, but they want to change their clothes before they do that. They take off their green and put on their other colors. Anna: Yeah! They change clothes! Josephine: I think the leaves trade the color to each other. They let their colors go down a branch into another one. The wind tells them it’s time. It goes to one leaf and then that leaf goes to another. Signe: The leaves change color by winter coming . . . the wind gets harder and tells them to change. Tenzin: I think the wind has a relationship with [the leaves], but how it works is the wind comes from a different place, like from Mexico, and on its way here it tells the leaves in Oregon to fall off.

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Susan Harris MacKay Signe: Maybe the wind tells them each year, and they tell them to remove

their clothes so they take off their other colors . . . the other shed from the other year. Elke: I think that the wind is the leaves’ mother, and the tree is the leaves’ father, and the wind is telling them to change their clothes ‘cause their old clothes are dirty, and then their father lets them go. Here is evidence of children’s active search for meaning as they make connections to prior experience and knowledge: an impatience to go out and play, parents insisting on a change of clothing, the movement of the wind, the concept of shedding, and even seasonal migration. We also witness their willing building on one another’s ideas, constantly working toward inclusion, to make sense, to make things fit together—to understand. The intention of a science talk is to support children to produce questions and to seek answers— two of the most powerful tools of the creative mind.

SHARED TEXTS: BRINGING IN DISTANT AUTHORS Great books also inspire great questions, and we read a lot of them. In the dead of our Pacific Northwest green, wet winter, reading Grandmother Winter by Phyllis Root and Beth Krommes (1999) engaged us in an inspiring puzzlement. In this story, Grandmother Winter is responsible for making a quilt of snow that turns the world white in winter. So the children wondered: Does Grandmother Winter live in Oregon? Will she lay her white quilt in our House of Winter? Matt: I think she just sleeps there. Scouten: I think she puts treasures in there that we don’t know about yet. Elke: I noticed icy dew on the windows. Anna: Maybe the quilt is just a cloud. Astrid: It’s almost springtime. It wants to take over but winter won’t let them

because the flowers are blooming but it’s still cold.

Anna: Maybe Grandmother Winter is putting winter over spring. Scouten: I think she is giving a big mystery for us. We have to find the quilt

and make it winter over. Tenzin: Maybe we can find the quilt—make it snow a bit, and then make it spring. Scouten and Tenzin’s idea to find the quilt inspired an invitation to work with collage materials to design a quilt for Grandmother Winter. Using a variety of white materials, and with great hope, the children worked together to create the quilt (see Figure 12.4). When it was finished, it hung on a wall

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Figure 12.4. The children told stories in a small House of Winter they’d created with clay. Their version of Grandmother Winter’s quilt hangs on the wall.

above a set the children made of clay to represent our House of Winter, and they played there, telling stories they imagined happening there. I thought this imaginative play would be the best we could do as Spring was looming, and I wondered what impact it would have on the children’s understanding to have read about and imagined the snow without the benefit of real experience. And I worried about their diminished joy, having found the quilt by inventing it, but not being able to make it really come alive. They were so engaged in the story. Would disappointment interrupt their engagement? But then, as if by magic, on the day before spring break, Grandmother Winter granted our wishes, and we hiked knee-deep in unexpected snow to the House of Winter to thank her (see Figure 12.5).

Figure 12.5. Everyone throws snowballs into the air to thank Grandmother Winter for shaking her quilt.

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Susan Harris MacKay Moments of such wondrous happenstance always amaze me, and offer genuine puzzlements that allow the imagination to, as Eisner (2006) wrote, “take wing” (p. 222). It’s as though the field of imagination and possibility, when traversed with experience and reflection and in the company of friends, throws treasures in your path at every turn, and keeps you seeking more. Regularly, as the children played, I would overhear snippets of conversation such as this: Mary: Trees can understand leaves. Anna: Well, the dad is . . . Elke? Elke: The tree. The aunt is the sun. Lou: Well, who is the cousin? Anna: The stars.

A CULMINATING PROJECT: PAINTING THE SEASONS As the year drew toward a close, we turned to materials in order to synthesize our experiences. Because paint allows endless choices of color and form, and because paint itself, like the seasons we would evoke, is an exercise in change, I invited the children to work in small groups to use acrylic on canvas and create an image of each season. They responded with a deep appreciation for their relationship with the turning of the seasons (see Figure 12.6). As she considered the work, Signe, age 6, wrote:

Figure 12.6. Children collaborate using paint on canvas to evoke the seasons.

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The paintings help me see how powerful the seasons can be. Winter is breezy cold, autumn’s a leaf, in summer it’s hot, hot, hot and in spring a rainbow is touching the misty dew. They help us have a feeling. Signe’s reflection illustrates this description by Elliott Eisner (2002): The arts invite us to attend to the qualities of sound, sight, taste, and touch so that we experience them; what we are after in the arts is the ability to perceive things, not merely to recognize them. We are given permission to slow down perception, to look hard, to savor the qualities that we try, under normal conditions, to treat so efficiently that we hardly notice they are there. (p. 63)

Children are eager to slow down because this pace feeds their curiosity and brings fresh opportunities to experience wonder and surprise. The reflections of the children show us that it was richly satisfying for them to take the time to explore the feelings of the seasons, to slow down, and to represent those perceptions through paint with friends. Jaden, age 6, wrote: When I look at a painting for a long time, I kind of feel like what it felt in that time. When I look at winter, I can feel the cold air blowing, in fall I can see the leaves falling, in summer I can feel the sun’s hot rays, and in spring I can see the flowers. The act of painting and collaborating enhanced the perception of their ideas and feelings—allowing them to savor the qualities that they had experienced over the year. Astrid, age 6, asked: “What if we didn’t know the difference between all the seasons? What if you didn’t know all those feelings?” Astrid’s questions have always given me pause. What if we didn’t know all those feelings? What could we possibly understand? What a gift we humans have to be able to conjure the world of the senses in our imaginations. The richer this imaginative content, the greater opportunity we have to make connections with other people, near and far. Creativity is required but also allows us to reach into our private histories and make connection with the experience of others. This desire is the power of aesthetic force. Knowing the feeling of things opens us to connect with one another in the way that is most fundamentally human.

LEARNING TO SEE WITH NEW EYES: USING THE PAST TO IMAGINE THE FUTURE As children grow older at Opal School, and their capacity to relate to others across time and space expands, the arts continue to support their search for the

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Susan Harris MacKay patterns that connect us all. In Oregon the study of state history is expected in intermediate grades, but is rarely presented from the perspective of voices other than pioneers on the Oregon Trail. At Opal, we seek Oregon stories to explore in our fourth and fifth grades that invite the students to learn history in ways that call on cognition, stir emotion, and strengthen identity. The power of the aesthetic is that it lies at the intersection of these qualities. As Michael Brenson (2004) writes: The aesthetic response is miraculous. Such an astonishing amount of psychological, social and historical information can be interwoven into a single connective charge that a lifetime of thinking cannot disentangle the threads. (p. 66)

The arts allow us to facilitate continuity between rationality and perception, and preserve and value the wholeness of human experience. One year, our long-term Oregon history study focused on the construction of the Dalles Dam and the resulting inundation of Celilo Falls on the Columbia River and the experience of the Wy’am people, who for 10,000 years had fished and raised their families in the area of the Falls. In his In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust writes: The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is. (Proust, Moncrieff, & Hudson, 1913/2006, p. 657)

This study took us all on that kind of voyage. The study of history can be fresh, original, full of possibility, and reliant on divergent thinking. We invited children to draw on what they already knew and to experience the power of their own minds by challenging them to make sense of new information in ways that were unique and personal. The arts provided opportunities for the children to make their developing understanding of many aspects of the story of Celilo Falls visible (see Figure 12.7). Through drama, clay, paint, poetry, and literature, we asked such questions as: • How might we see new paths and connections among the past, present, and future? • What does the story of Celilo Falls have to do with our identity as residents of the Pacific Northwest? • Why should we remember what happened there? • How might our learning affect the choices we make today?

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Figure 12.7. Children use clay to begin building a model of Celilo Falls.

SEEKING CONNECTIONS, COMMON GROUND, AND COMMUNITY The children studied the story of Celilo Falls from multiple vantage points for the first six months of the school year. Taking this time increased their potential to understand connections among this story and many others, past and present, personal and public. For the children, Celilo became a reference point for thinking about other stories from history. Abundant time spent making meaning of this story from a variety of perspectives, through the use of the arts, opened the children’s minds to possibilities for connecting with other stories of conflict between cultures at any period in history. Connections are

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Susan Harris MacKay the very stuff of meaning and understanding, as Brown and Roediger (2014) explain: There’s virtually no limit to how much learning we can remember as long as we relate it to what we already know. In fact, because new learning depends on prior learning, the more we learn, the more possible connections we create for further learning. (p. 76)

Our challenge is to ensure that the things we hope to teach become a genuine part of each child’s repertoire of prior learning. Late in the year we asked the students to craft essays in response to these questions: • How does your understanding of the story of Celilo Falls help you understand another story of conflict in American history? • What connections do you find between the story of Celilo Falls and the new story? I hoped these questions would be seen as puzzlements that would allow their imaginations to take wing. Here are some brief samples from their essays: I could feel empathy for the Wy’am because of the plays we did and the pieces we wrote that actually made us imagine the perspective of the characters that lived at that time (see Figure 12.8). I have learned how important it is to have your voice represented in the government because the government has so much power. So when I studied about slavery, I

Figure 12.8. Fourth- and fifth-graders work in the classroom’s dramatic play environment to imagine the perspectives of those at Celilo Falls.

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used my schema (for what happened at Celilo Falls) to connect to how the government made slavery legal, then illegal, and then made Oregon’s exclusion laws, all without the black people’s say. —Sophie, age 10 By studying the story of Celilo Falls, it helped me understand the Battle of Little Big Horn. It reminds us that what we want or need often influences what side of the story we choose. By caring about what happened in the past, it helps you make sure that one culture is not condemned by another in the future. —Davis, age 10 I think all fourth- and fifth-graders should study Celilo Falls and the women’s suffrage movement because both stories are about fighting for what you know is right. Students need to know about people who have fought for what they know is right so that they have models when they are struggling. —Olive, age 10 Both the Puerto Ricans and the Wy’am tribe at Celilo Falls suffered for the sake of progress and money. They both lost their land and homes, and they both lost a clean healthy environment like the salmon going upstream in the Columbia River and the chemicals that polluted the water in Puerto Rico. Most importantly, they lost their culture and identity. —Karla, age 10 The essays required a high level of traditional academic skill, but equally required imagination and creative practice. As they contemplated history, the children created fresh perspectives and new possibilities to share. Such practice supports a future citizenry that has strategies for living with uncertainty, ambiguity, paradox, and conflict because it allows children to take charge of the future through personal interpretations of the past. Cognition, emotion, and identity are intertwined.

GETTING AS CLOSE AS WE CAN TO ONE ANOTHER When our imaginative capacities have the chance to connect with those of others through a text of any kind—a story, a painting, a song—we have the opportunity to grow our understanding of the world and of ourselves from the inside out. Playwright Kenneth Lonergan (2003) wrote for the New York Times: I think we live so much in our imaginations—not just artist types but everyone— that in some ways the imaginative connection you get between a play or movie or book or painting or piece of music and its respective audience is as close as we ever get to each other.

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Susan Harris MacKay In the classroom, this creative process can be invited in as an intentional and collaborative process that ignites the imagination and encourages us to practice the value of staying close to one another. Imagination provides us with both the capacity that we need to consider things we have never actually experienced and the tools we need to create productive visions for the future. Children have a right to the most generous access to the use and development of their creative capacities that we can provide. I would like to give 7-year-old Scouten, an Opal School student, the last word. She advised: Let creativity flow across your mind and see what comes. Creativity is like an eagle soaring on wind’s edge, like a fish gliding in the water, like a spider weaving its web. Creativity inspires ideas and ideas are life.

REFERENCES Brenson, M. (2004). Art criticism and the aesthetic response. Acts of engagement: Writings on art, criticism, and institutions, 1993–2002. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Brown, P. C., & Roediger, H. L. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University. Eisner, E. W. (2002). The arts and the creation of mind. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Eisner, E. (2006). The satisfactions of teaching: How we teach is ultimately a reflection of why we teach. Educational Leadership, 63, 44–46. Gallas, K. (1995). Talking their way into science: Hearing children’s questions and theories, responding with curricula. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Gallas, K. (2003). Imagination and literacy: A teacher’s search for the heart of learning. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Keene, E. O. (2008). To understand: New horizons in reading comprehension. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Lonergan, K. (2003, February 23). Spring theater: In times like these. New York Times. Available at www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/theater/spring-theater-in-timeslike-these.html Proust, M., Moncrieff, C., & Hudson, S. (2006). In search of lost time: Remembrance of things past. London, UK: Wordsworth. (Original work published 1913) Rinaldi, C. (2001). The pedagogy of listening. Innovations in Early Childhood Education: The International Reggio Exchange, 8, 1–4. Rinaldi, C. (2006). In dialogue with Reggio Emilia: Listening, researching and learning. London, UK: Routledge. Root, P., & Krommes, B. (1999). Grandmother winter. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Schwall, C. (2008, January 13). Relational creativity. Questions that matter: Exploring sustainability and creativity. Lecture conducted from St. Louis Collaborative’s 2008 Winter Institute, St. Louis, MO.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

In this concluding chapter we four editors each share a story that reveals the spirit of the studio as it makes its way outside the walls of the school and outside the traditional ways of thinking about materials and art. Our stories also feature examples Charles Schwall of what is most important to each of us in Lella Gandini our current work and what shape the inLynn Hill spiration of the work from Reggio Emilia is taking in each of our lives now, ten Louise Cadwell years after the First Edition of this book was published. Charles Schwall describes a collaboration in St. Louis among a school, a contemporary art gallery, and the local community. Lella Gandini shares a story where children from The New Mexico School for the Deaf explore materials and natural forces in unusual ways. Lynn Hill writes about how aesthetics can enrich the lives of children and families of poverty in unexpected ways. Louise Cadwell makes connections among our instinct to love the natural world, our intuitive aesthetic sensibility, and possibilities in schools. We hope that you, our readers, will identify with these stories and discover and tell your own so that this kind of work might inspire others to create a more open, creative, and hopeful life in schools.

In the Spirit of the Studio

DESIGN INVENT PLAY: ENGAGING CONTEMPORARY CULTURE Charles Schwall It’s opening night, and the Bruno David Gallery in St. Louis is filled to capacity. Visitors, families, friends, and students move around the gallery, discovering new ideas at every turn. The exhibition is like an incubator of generative thought. Models, prototypes, and drawings for inventions are carefully hung on the walls or placed within the areas of the gallery. Large-scale monoprints depicting prominent architectural structures found around the world, made by fifth- through eighth-grade students, adorn two large walls. Treehouse models inspired by the natural environment made by second- and third-grade

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Charles Schwall, Lella Gandini, Lynn Hill, and Louise Cadwell students are placed on small shelves near the gallery entrance. Designs and models of athletic shoes occupy a prominent position near the entrance to the back room. At the center of the gallery, designs for items from everyday life are featured, such as furniture, chairs, tables, and ceramic pottery (see Figure 13.1). A student-created video animation plays on a screen in the gallery’s new media room. Excited young students pass quickly through the gallery with their parents traveling behind them, trying to keep up the pace. The students eagerly point to the things that they have made, impatient to tell their parents about their accomplishments. Everywhere, children are explaining to their parents and other adults the deeper aspects of their creations. There is naturalness to their descriptions, and an assurance that comes with having created something oneself. The gallery suddenly fills with the music of a group of students, several of whom are performing for the very first time. The evening described took place on January 18, 2014, when the Bruno David Gallery in St. Louis hosted Design Invent Play, an exhibition of student work from the St. Michael School of Clayton. The student work on display was generated from a schoolwide research project centered on the elements of

Figure 13.1. The Design Invent Play reception at the Bruno David Gallery.

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contemporary design. This was not the first time that a whole-school research project was featured in the St. Louis community. The St. Michael School has over two decades of history with thematic, interdisciplinary research projects and with documentation and display with early childhood and elementary and middle school students. Young students are natural researchers, and the 2013–2014 year-long study provided many meaningful learning experiences connected to the multifaceted field of design. Every child in the school, junior kindergarten through eighth grade, was represented in the show. Students proudly stood by their work, answered questions from visitors, and facilitated discussions. The aim of the exhibition, as well as the school project, was to use the different areas of design as a powerful context for students’ learning and knowledge. The event celebrated the children’s innate desire to build, invent, and create. The Bruno David Gallery specializes in showing the work of contemporary artists and plays a vital role within the St. Louis art community. Sometimes the gallery works with schools and educational programs to create and host exhibitions that benefit the public. The St. Michael School worked with Bruno David in 2007, and an opportunity presented itself again in the 2013–2014 school year. Since 1992, engaging with the work in Reggio Emilia has been central to the school pedagogy in deep and compelling ways. Over the years, the school has hosted and co-hosted thousands of educators for dialogue and learning about the Reggio Emilia approach. In May 2004, the St. Louis Collaborative hosted a conference, Creativity Doesn’t Fall From the Sky: Education and the Expressive Languages, in partnership with Webster University and Washington University in St. Louis. Vea Vecchi (2004) traveled from Italy to St. Louis as the keynote speaker. The ideas presented at the conference had an important influence on the school, and continue to grow and evolve today. During the course of the two-day conference, Vea encouraged school educators to take an active role in their cities or communities and to think beyond the walls of the school when organizing curriculum. She further challenged educators to embrace contemporary art and culture as a resource to inform projects and learning experiences. Through shared examples from Children, Art, and Artists (Vecchi & Giudici, 2004), a cultural project extending from the work of Italian artist Alberto Burri, Vea encouraged educators to consider how artistic thought could take place within school curriculum. She defined artistic thought as a balance between the rational and the emotional, between research and innovation. Young students can make meaning from the work of contemporary artists when given the appropriate context. Rather than asking students to imitate the look, style, or results of an artist’s work, a more effective strategy is to place the children’s learning processes side by side with the creative practice of the artist. This happens when children are introduced to an artist’s thought processes, motivations, and material techniques, and then

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Charles Schwall, Lella Gandini, Lynn Hill, and Louise Cadwell given the freedom to discover the paths of their own work. This approach to teaching respects the work of the children and the artist equally. Inspired by this conference, St. Michael faculty has worked over the years to create meaningful relationships with museums, galleries, and other cultural institutions. For over a decade, the school has partnered with organizations in St. Louis to inform and invigorate school programs. Design Invent Play was a natural result of a decade of engagement with the St. Louis community. For 20 years, I taught early childhood and early elementary age students as studio art teacher, co-constructed documentation, and helped to promote research and collaboration among the faculty. As a practicing artist in the area of painting, I maintain my own studio, creative practice, and schedule of exhibitions. My wife is a professional sculptor, and together we visit museums, seeking out new ideas and pushing one another to think in new ways. For many years the reciprocity between teaching very young children and making my own artwork was very rewarding; it has proved invaluable to my career and my life. In the spring of 2013, I was ready for a new challenge as an educator. Beth Mosher, head of school, envisioned a new role for me. The school needed a person in a pedagogical role to help organize the curriculum and documentation of the interdisciplinary research projects. Pedagogical documentation requires much time and effort because teachers are engaged in the intense processes of writing, editing, and creating graphic layouts to communicate student learning. At the end of the 2013 school year, I left my long-held position as studio teacher and took on a new role as the pedagogical curator of the school. Our vision is that in this new capacity I can support the school’s innovative projects and discover new paths to communicate the vital and innovative learning experiences taking place at the school. Dynamic learning experiences in the school setting easily vanish if they are not put into some understandable form that can be communicated, such as photos, written notes and observations, documentation panels, publications, and exhibitions. Curating the exhibition at the Bruno David Gallery was an outcome of this new role. For the Design Invent Play research project, the faculty considered how the work of artists, designers, and inventors could become a central focus within the school’s curriculum. Students studied the work of many contemporary artists, designers, and inventors. They accessed the world of design in many different ways. They learned to recognize design in the world around them: in buildings; bridges; everyday objects found in the home, such as furniture, quilts, and pottery; fashion; and other functional items (see Figures 13.2 and 13.3). Students utilized local and international cultural events: the 250th anniversary of the city of St. Louis exhibition and the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. They studied the work of contemporary artists Schotten and Baijings and designers Charles and Ray Eames, to name a few.

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Figure 13.2. Architectural monoprints and furniture designs in the Design Invent Play exhibition.

Figure 13.3. Shoe designs for athletic shoes in the Design Invent Play exhibition.

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Charles Schwall, Lella Gandini, Lynn Hill, and Louise Cadwell Exhibitions at art museums and other cultural institutions can be a valuable resource to invigorate learning. Educators can find new and innovative ways to engage exhibitions: • Groups of teachers can view an exhibition together, before they take students, so that they have time to hypothesize about possible directions that might emerge. They can ask explorative questions such as: What aspects of the exhibition might engage the students most? How might students respond to specific works? What implications does this exhibition have for school research, teaching, learning? • Teachers can think in advance about the big ideas an exhibition might address, and about the possible outcomes. • Rather than visiting a museum only once, students can view the same exhibition several times over a period of weeks or months in order to build a deeper understanding of the work. Students often have deep responses to exhibitions when they return multiple times to a work or exhibition. • Exhibition publications, the internet, and tablet computers are an efficient way to access exhibitions happening in other cities or locations. The Design Invent Play exhibition offered many opportunities for student and adult learning. While the show was on view, groups of students made return trips to the gallery to revisit and discuss their work. As curator, I collaborated with the faculty and wrote a curatorial statement and gallery guide that offered insights into the show. After the exhibition was over, many of the works were reinstalled in the school, along with documentation panels that highlighted processes of student learning. The decision to create the Design Invent Play exhibition set in motion a dynamic cycle of events and opportunities for learning. It brought to life the aesthetic values of the arts connected to exhibitions, publications, and performances (Weiss & Lichenstein, 2008). Students were encouraged to prepare their best artwork for the gallery and music for the evening event. Students considered how viewers and audiences might receive their work. The faculty engaged in curatorial processes as we worked with the gallery director to publish a catalogue that accompanied the exhibition. The exhibition touched the community in many compelling ways, and made the work of the school, its students, and its teachers visible, understandable, and beautiful.

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A SCHOOL VISIT: OBSERVING

AND

LISTENING Lella Gandini

In November, 2013, I had the good fortune to engage in beautiful day visits to the New Mexico Schools for the Deaf in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. The schools were established in 1887 by Lars Larson and his wife, who had dreamed of establishing a permanent school where deaf and hearing-impaired children could receive a quality education. For 129 years, the schools in both Albuquerque and Santa Fe have offered comprehensive and accessible educational and support services to such children and youth between the ages of birth to 21 from all over the state of New Mexico. Any child or youth who resides in New Mexico and has a diagnosed hearing loss can be considered for school enrollment. Students from New Mexico attend free of charge. Children and youth who are enrolled in public school programs, their families, and their educational teams are eligible for outreach services. Both the Albuquerque and Santa Fe schools have been inspired by the approach of Reggio Emilia. They made visible for me once again that considering children competent, resourceful, curious, imaginative, and communicative is key for the success and well-being of all children and also for their teachers, who spend such intense and focused time together. The quiet atmosphere of a beautiful school for deaf children was something I had not experienced before, and I am very grateful to Principal Scott Mohan, who has visited the schools of Reggio Emilia. Through the help of an interpreter, Scott guided me through the school in Santa Fe and explained many initiatives that he had taken and how he supported the families. It is clear that discovering and becoming friends with materials supports children’s communication skills in a pleasant and harmonic way. As the teachers make materials available, children are invited to invent and “tell” stories about their transformation. In the Santa Fe school what struck me as brilliant was to see small children, probably three years old or so, use a small hair dryer to explore the wind and transform paint on a low-framed table. This is why I asked Scott and Sha Shonie Reins, an early childhood teacher, to share the following story in our book on the atelier. They offer it for all children.

The Power of Wind Sha Shonie Reins, with Scott Mohan The children’s interests in the wind and air began with reading the story of “The Three Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf.” We decided to support the children in understanding how different materials respond when one tries to apply

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Charles Schwall, Lella Gandini, Lynn Hill, and Louise Cadwell pressure to move them. This interest was sparked when the children noticed how each one of the pigs’ houses was blown away by the big bad wolf. One of the activities involved putting straw, bricks, and wood sticks in front of the children to see how those items could be moved by blowing. The experiment was not enough for the children to understand the power of the wind. Through observation and dialogue with other colleagues, we thought about how to expand the concept of wind and the power behind its force. A huge revolving fan was brought to the classroom as a provocation for the children to experience and understand wind power. Children used the same materials from the story and put them in front of the fan. We observed that the children noticed that the materials moved differently. Soon afterward, the children began to shift their focus and showed more interest in using the fan as a tool to understand the power of wind. Slowly, they began to experiment with different materials with the fan. This time, the experiment was dynamic for the children. This was a good opportunity for me to read them a new story, The Wind Blew, which helped the children expand on the concept of the wind. Soon, they began to gather different materials to experiment with the fan to see the difference between heavy and light objects and those that would be blown away and those that would not. This investigation led them also to experiment with different ways that they could produce air. They used straws to make their own wind and experimented with different materials such as paint. They discovered simple but important changes in their paint through blowing, such as bubbles developing in paint from air, creating small paint speckles, and also paint blending together at the edges. They also discovered that it took a lot of effort on their part to blow through straws, and they commented how hard it was to breathe after blowing through straws. They also commented that the paint moved very slowly when they blew on it with straws. It was apparent that the children were tired from blowing. That afternoon, the children had an opportunity to review and observe themselves on video blowing paint with their straws. After some reflection on how to enhance the children’s interest in the wind study and using materials, we introduced a hair dryer to the class. This choice was based on observations that the children became too focused on the difficulty of using the straws to manipulate the paint. Adding the hair dryer was one of the provocations that we believed could be thought-provoking and offer a new way for them to see how the force and speed of wind could shape their paint differently. The children had some prior experience using the hair dryer, and this was not a new tool for investigation. However, the concept of using a hair dryer with paint was new to them. They were left to explore and experiment with the hair dryer. Soon enough, they discovered the joys of experimenting with paint. The straws were replaced with hair dryers. The children were partially motivated by having anticipated results similar to those that they experienced

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with straws. They still took turns and participated in this activity. To their amazement, they made several discoveries (see Figures 13.4 and 13.5). During this study, we observed the children transform the way that they used the hair dryer. They were able to use it in a new way by angling the dryer in different directions and seeing the results of the paint splatter. Some splattered sideways or upwards, and bubbled. They experienced the material react and respond as they watched paint merge into different colors, swirled together in a way that created new images for them to interpret. They also observed paint being moved fast by air and how quickly their work changed with the movement of the hair dryer and the proximity of the air. The closer the air source was to the paint, the more the paint “moved and changed.” The farther away they held the hair dryer, the less air movement and fewer changes in their paint that they noticed.

Figure 13.4. Wow!

Figure 13.5. The paint moves much faster on the paper with the dryer.

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Charles Schwall, Lella Gandini, Lynn Hill, and Louise Cadwell Some children made bolder attempts to manipulate the process by pouring paint out of the container and thrusting the hair dryer in front of it to see what would happen. To the children’s delight, paint splattered all over the table in little dots. One boy, Kane, took note that paint splattered onto my pants. Naturally, he found that fascinating. He, after some negotiation with me, decided that it would be better if he tried to get the paint onto my arms instead of my pants. This experiment and study motivated the children to start thinking about the difference between using the hair dryer and using straws to blow wind. Different comments were made about using the straws. (Children’s comments were made through American Sign Language and translated into English.) “I can’t blow anymore, I got tired.”—Lorena, age 3 “I can’t blow through straw.”—Tav, age 3 “Blowing makes it hard for me to breathe.”—Sybella, age 3½ “I got tired after blowing over and over again.”—Kane, age 3½ While blowing paint with a hair dryer, the children all focused on how easily and fast the paint spread. The experience of becoming tired from blowing through straws was also important to them. They commented that it was more fun and easier to use the hair dryer. The children also had an opportunity to review and observe themselves on video using the hair dryer. Some of the comments among our children: “The paint spread in larger areas.”—Sybella, age 3½ “Blow dryers make paint go all over.”—Tav, age 3 “The paint moved faster.”—Kane, age 3½ “Wow!”—Lorena, age 3½ We found it amazing how simple objects like the hair dryer, straws, and a floor fan can change children’s understanding and perspectives of wind. These tools, especially the hair dryer, led us to take the project study in a different direction, and new investigations were derived from this. Some of the children continued to investigate the concept of wind with different materials. New connections were made between the children’s discoveries and inquiries. They were curious about their own breathing, in particular breathing into water, and making bubbles. Those connections led the children to take their newly discovered knowledge and apply those concepts in the block area and sensory

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table. Keeping in mind the children’s interests of breathing difficulties during straw-blowing discoveries, I introduced them to a new experiment where they compared how hard it was to blow out one candle and ten candles. The concept of wind and air seemed like a simple concept in the beginning, but in the end, we were amazed—or we should say blown away—that this project had endless possibilities and different ways to experiment with air and wind and materials. It all began with a simple story of the three little pigs.

COUNTERING POVERTY

WITH

AESTHETICS Lynn Hill

The cavernous room has walls that are made of concrete block, and they’re painted that strange industrial shade of green. The ceiling is extraordinarily high, which ensures that sound bounces and echoes like in an airplane hangar. On one side of the space there is a long bank of windows that looks out onto a parking lot and a couple of trash dumpsters. But if you pay attention you can smell wonderful aromas and you can feel the hum of excitement. There is a long, long line of eager children and adults at the door awaiting their turn. It’s summertime, and it’s lunchtime, and it’s time to serve up a free meal for those in need. Even though school is out, this cafeteria at Narrows High School is still in full swing and has been transformed into a place where hungry residents from Giles County can find a hot lunch five days a week.

Beautiful, Troubled Giles County, Virginia Giles County, where I live, is located in the southwest region of Virginia, deep in Appalachia. The county is staggering in its beauty, with some of the tallest mountains in the east, the spectacular New River that runs directly through it, gorgeous waterfalls and hiking trails, and four seasons that change the face of the county each year—each one more beautiful than the previous. But the reality is that many of the 17,000 citizens of my county are poor—really, really poor. Recent poverty statistics show that 54% of children under 6 live 200% below the Federal Poverty Level as compared to a national average of 44.6%. Giles is a county that has been designated a Medically Underserved Area (MUA), with only six physicians. Sadly, 47% of our teenaged girls are pregnant by the time that they are 19, and with no local source of prenatal care, they struggle to find medical options in neighboring counties. Confirmed cases of child abuse and neglect rank among the highest in the state, and drug problems in the household are often the cause. Abuse of prescription drugs, methamphetamine, and, most recently, heroin make up nearly 95% of the felony arrests in the county. And—the children are hungry (Giles County Community Health Needs Assessment Report, 2012, emphasis added).

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Charles Schwall, Lella Gandini, Lynn Hill, and Louise Cadwell There are many citizens in Giles who are dedicated to making a difference for our children and to finding ways to break the cycle of poverty. In a county with so few resources, that task has proven to be a difficult one. Scott Meade, Assistant Superintendent of the Giles County Schools, said, “For years, I have worried about some of our children being hungry during the summer break. Unfortunately, I’ve even noticed where children have lost weight during the summer.” Then, in 2012, Scott and his competent and passionate colleague, Christy Lawson, applied for a coveted grant from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to host a Summer Meals Program. With much celebration, this grant was awarded and the project took on a life of its own. One of the only two high schools in the county stepped up to offer their cafeteria space as the host site. Menus were planned, volunteers were recruited. Families were notified through multiple means (flyers were sent home with schoolchildren, notices were posted at childcare centers, there were newspaper ads, and flyers were posted all over the county). All children were to be given a free lunch, and adults would be charged $2. Because of the very rural nature of our county, transportation had to be arranged, and volunteer bus drivers signed on to drive miles and miles to the many outlying homes and trailer parks where they might find children who were interested in hopping on a bus in order to be transported to lunch and back. It was during that time that my friends and I (The Giles Early Education Project, also known as GEEP) asked if we might provide an activity/studio space in the rear of the cafeteria. We hoped that after the children had enjoyed a nutritious lunch they could spend some time playing and exploring together.

A Difficult Concept Vea Vecchi (2010) said something that is so poignant and that deeply resonates for this program: It is neither comfortable nor simple to speak of beauty and aesthetics in a world afflicted by injustice, poverty, repression and cruelty. Beauty and aesthetics may seem ideas so ephemeral and far removed from our everyday lives that we feel almost ashamed to speak of them. At the same time we can sense how they counter apparent fragility with an extraordinary strength and resilience that derives from this intrinsic fragility itself. (p. 10)

The idea of countering poverty with aesthetics might seem unusual for some. But together the GEEP members rolled up our sleeves and created a space with untold opportunity. We stocked the space with eclectic and donated materials. We created a schedule that would allow each of us to have prolonged time with the children so that we could build relationships and enjoy

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being together. We decided that each of us would offer our unique talents to the cause. Among our group of educators we have a poet, a writer, a painter, a stained glass artist, and an art therapist. We thought that the children would absolutely love this opportunity, but initially we were mistaken.

The First Summer The setting was something that none of us had ever experienced. After their lunch the children reluctantly and hesitantly moved from the lunch tables to the rear of the cafeteria where we were waiting. They glanced at us through hooded eyes. They were silent and suspicious. With gentle encouragement, we invited them to join us in the studio. Many of them were completely confused. Our attempt to offer paint and paper was met with bewilderment by some children. One 8-year-old boy told me: “I’ve never even held a paintbrush.” As much as I tried to coax and reassure him, he could only stand at the table and look down at the materials. The children who had sat down at the table silently and haphazardly applied paint to paper and then jumped up—sometimes leaving their work on the table, sometimes throwing it in the trash. We knew that we were going to have to find a way to “hook” these kids. We started to sit with the children as they ate their lunch and brought along little clues as to what we had prepared for them in the studio on that day. The children seemed intrigued when we offered them tiny pieces of insulation tape, or a little ball of clay, or a small collection of petals. “What the heck am I supposed to do with this?” they’d ask. We just shrugged and invited them to join us in the studio to answer that question. Part of our challenge was that we had children ages 15 months to 15 years sitting side-by-side in our studio space. We began to offer a variety of experiences that might be enjoyed by a wide range of ages. Over the course of several weeks we offered paints to be explored—acrylic, tempera, “biocolor,” water. Various papers were investigated—tracing, watercolor, contact, and tissue. Various adhesives were considered—“Elmer’s,” mosaic glue with glass, and various tapes. And finally the 8-year-old child who had never painted before picked up a brush (but still standing), dipped it into paint, and made his first mark ever. I wanted to cry. Slowly but surely, the group that ranged from 20 children on a quiet day to 70 on especially active days began to trust us and were much more eager to join the table. It didn’t take long after that before they dubbed themselves “The Lunch Bunch” and collaborated and encouraged one another to be creative and to cover the walls and windows with their work (see Figure 13.6). At the end of the summer, the children eagerly and carefully collected their precious pieces and placed them in portfolios to take home. They were thrilled when we gave them end-of-the-summer gifts of watercolors and paper so that they could take a little piece of the studio home with them.

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Figure 13.6. The cafeteria starts to glow as the children contribute daily to their ever-evolving “gallery.”

The Second Summer At the beginning of the second summer, we were all so happy to see one another. One child ran up to me and said, “Do I look familiar? You might not recognize me ’cause I got a haircut.” Another child brought an example of a watercolor piece that she had worked on at home, which went right up on the wall as a way to begin our Lunch Bunch gallery of season two. Things were different than our first summer. The atmosphere was upbeat and fun. New children were welcomed to the table and were guided by their more experienced friends. Tammie Sarver, a member of the GEEP group, spends time with the Lunch Bunch weekly. After a day spent with paint and stones gathered from one of our many creeks, she said: In all of the experiences that I offer, I include found objects. I want the children to reap the benefits of using non-traditional art materials, but more importantly, I want to send the message to the children that art materials, resources, symmetry, design, and beauty are all around us and free for the taking. I collected rocks from a creek near the trailer park where I know some of the children live. The children recognized these

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stones as a type that is often found in the waters in Giles. On that day as they painted them, I could sense a connection between me and the children and also one between the children and the place where they live. As the children became more comfortable and trusting in our presence and as their hands were busy, they began to tell their own stories. Sadly, the stories revealed their adultlike understanding of the difficulties associated when a family is living a life in poverty. Some conversations went like this: “Did y’all know that you can buy free food at the Mission on Tuesdays? . . . and there’s hardly any brown spots on the bananas.” “As soon as we get back on our feet, we can get lights again.” “My dad lost his job so we’re staying at the [homeless] shelter for a little while . . . it’s kinda nice there. They have bunk beds and a TV.” “A cop got us on the way here—just ’cause my dad didn’t have a sticker. How are we gonna pay child support for my little sister and the ticket?” “These are the shoes that I’m gonna get for school [showing a manytimes-folded advertisement from Walmart that he kept in his pocket at all times]. Mom said maybe on the first of the month we can think about it.” “I have six stepsisters and seven stepbrothers.” I said, “How do you keep them all straight?” “I only know four of their names, but we think we’re gonna all get together soon.” “I really need a chest x-ray because everyone says I have pneumonia. We’re hoping my mom might come by today and take me to the doctor.” “My birthday is coming up.” I said, “How old will you be?” “I’m not sure.” “Well, how old are you now?” “Six.” “So what comes after six?” After some obvious deep thought, “Seven?” “Yay, let’s celebrate seven!” What ensued was a day filled with finding seven beads, seven flowers, seven ceiling tiles, seven windows. With all of this information, we realized that we had a wide range of problems to consider, and determining which issue to deal with first can be daunting. With great hope, we chose to do what we could do best. With Vea’s wise words in our hearts, hands, and minds, we began to devise ways for the children to come together for peaceful, aesthetic group experiences. The Lunch

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Charles Schwall, Lella Gandini, Lynn Hill, and Louise Cadwell Bunch decided that it was time to cover up those green walls and to continue to make the windows glow. Their group pride and sense of ownership of the space inspired and motivated us all. We began to work on long-term collaborative projects where multi-aged children sat side-by-side to eagerly create a Nature Mural that depicted all the beauty that their amazing Giles County home has to offer (see Figure 13.7). Together we also created a “Yoko Ono Wish Tree” made from a large bare branch from my yard. Ono’s tree graces a sculpture garden at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., and it inspired us to help one another to imagine a more peaceful world. We invited the children to collaborate in adorning this tree. Collages and drawings were created to hang on its branches and later they began to write their hopes and dreams. Reid (age 10), whose home was in turmoil, wrote this: “My wish is for

Figure 13.7. Consulting field guides for flowers, trees, birds, butterflies, snakes, and mushrooms, the children work together on a nature mural to honor Giles County. There was an air of creative contentment at the table during these sessions.

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Figure 13.8. Emily makes a contribution to our Wish Tree, inspired by the Yoko Ono Wish Tree, an installation at the Smithsonian Sculpture Garden.

calm, and happy.” During the course of all of this time together in the studio we could clearly see that aesthetic encounters were leading to powerful healing moments (see Figure 13.8).

Program Success There are so many more stories to tell about the wonderful cooks who arrived at 5 a.m. to make homemade hotdog buns (a Narrows High School staple for decades), about Christy and Scott who showed up almost every day to serve the children and to clean up. There are stories about the children who arrived alone on one of the buses, barefoot and hungry because they hadn’t eaten since the day before, and stories of the mom who brought her children five days a week so they could have a hot lunch and have some fun with other kids, even though she couldn’t afford the $2.00 for an adult meal. And there is a beautiful story about how this program was chosen a “Best Practice Summer Lunch Program” by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). But maybe the most important outcome for the Lunch Bunch and for GEEP occurred when the Town Manager invited the children to display their work in the County Courthouse. Another request arrived to create a gallery

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Figure 13.9. Chris, a member of The Lunch Bunch, displays his comfort with materials and the distinct artistic style that he developed over the course of the summer. Afterward, he was nominated for, and accepted into, the Gifted Art Program at his school.

show for an annual county festival. “We’re gonna be famous!” one child exclaimed (see Figure 13.9). The program is currently serving over 600 child meals per week and is receiving national press coverage through USDA. (For more information about Summer Lunch Programs, see usda.gov.) Watching Scott and Christy, the GEEP group, the cooks, and the hundreds of volunteers come together to make a difference for children has been inspirational for me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such selfless acts of pure kindness like this. When I asked Christy to help me understand where that came from, she said, “We might not always see eye to eye, but we’ll pitch in when needed—it’s the Giles Way.” And Scott followed with, “Of all the things we’ve accomplished in education, being able to meet this need ranks high.” I am so proud to have been a part of this incredible project. It has been one of the most profound and meaningful experiences of my life.

CHILDREN, MATERIALS,

AND THE

NATURAL WORLD Louise Cadwell

Ever since I can remember, I have loved walking in the woods and meadows, listening to the song of the white-throated sparrow and the thrush, feeling the blue cold of winter and the steamy heat of summer. Biologist and Pulitzer Prize winner E. O. Wilson and architect Stephen Kellert (1995), among others, have named our strong connection with the natural world and other species biophilia. The term literally means “love of life or living systems.”

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In my case, the instinct to love the world was nurtured by my mother. As Rachel Carson, author of The Sense of Wonder (1936), explains, in order to fall in love with the world, we need an adult guide who knows and loves the natural world, as well as encourages plenty of unstructured time, to play, to look closely, to imagine. My mother, who was my first teacher, was just such a guide. She loved the out-of-doors and that is where I spent most of my time with her. By her side, I wandered our St. Louis neighborhood with its towering oak trees, pond with bullfrogs, and leafy hideaways and paths. In the summers, we traveled to the Maine coast, and I kept following her, hand-in-hand, into the evergreen woods, into the fields to pick blueberries knee-deep in bushes laden with fruit, or to carry a picnic onto the hot granite rocks that led to the sea. I learned to love the world with her. I also loved to draw, paint, and make things as I was coming to see more intensely. Because I arrived twelve years after my closest sister, my mother had time to share with me the things that she cared about most. It was through these early experiences and memories that my love of the natural world and my love of materials were born. No matter what kind of life we are born into, however, these instincts belong to all of us. Schools where imagination thrives can contribute a richness of experience to life and learning that can change people’s lives. That is what this book is about. Vea Vecchi (2010) reminds us that aesthetics are a part of the life of our species that is ancestral. This includes our response to the world and how we shape it, in images or in lines or colors, in words or in gestures. Psychologist, early childhood educator, and researcher Rhoda Kellogg (1970) has shown us that children all over the world, from the beginning of human history, no matter where they live, have made marks with sticks in the sand, hands in the mud, pencil on paper in instinctual gestures of circles and lines, dots and mandalas. We start out our life with these abilities in our very DNA. They are a part of who we are. It is thrilling to think that our natural instincts for biophilia and aesthetics are already a part of us when we begin our journey in life. To think that connection with the natural world—the light, the green realm, birdsong, the habitats where we find ourselves—is what we seek. It is equally wondrous that we also have a drive to make sense of things and that we have an aesthetic gene and a curiosity gene that lead us to draw and sculpt and wonder and tell stories. When I arrived at the municipal schools for young children in Reggio Emilia in 1991, I saw everything that most of us dream might be an integral part of human life, not only for young children, but for all of us: beautiful spaces dancing with natural light, interior courtyards with green plants and trees, places to sit amid sculptures made by children. I saw children’s ideas, full of imagination and insight, beautifully composed and posted on the walls, along with their work in many different media. I witnessed the ample time, the amiable pace of life, the excited, engaged children, the wide-awake teachers designing environments and experiences that challenged and delighted their

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Charles Schwall, Lella Gandini, Lynn Hill, and Louise Cadwell young students, where pleasure and effort joined forces and resulted in deep, lasting learning that was shared with the community. The instincts to connect with nature and with one another, to make sense of our world, and to find great pleasure in thinking deeply and communicating in diverse and artful ways are nurtured in the schools of Reggio Emilia still. These many years later after my first exposure to it, the work of the Reggio Emilia Municipal Preschools and Infant/Toddler Centers and of the Loris Malaguzzi International Center becomes continuously richer and more compelling. There are many educators in schools all over the world who are inspired by the work from Reggio Emilia. We are, in fact, a large community of learners, fortunate to live at a time when there is such a beautiful, well-developed school system that believes in and makes visible the full scope of human intelligence and creativity. I would like to describe one of the schools inspired by the work from Reggio Emilia that I have grown to know well over the last 15 years, Opal School, a program of the Portland Children’s Museum that includes a fee-based preschool and a K–5 Portland Charter School. In Chapter 12, Susan MacKay offers a further glimpse into the life and work of this school. When Opal School’s founding director, Judy Graves, returned from her first visit to the Municipal Early Childhood Schools of Reggio Emilia in 1993, she brought with her an idea. She and a group of collaborating educators wanted to open a school for American public elementary students, preschool through grade five, that was inspired by and built upon the principles and practices of the municipal schools of Reggio Emilia. With a huge amount of work and dedication, as well as the support of their community, Opal School opened in 2001. There are many reasons to go to Opal and to learn from Opal. I want especially to emphasize several aspects of their work with materials and the natural world. Like the schools in Reggio Emilia, many of the classrooms at Opal are flooded with light and would be considered biophilic design, as they enhance our need and our desire to connect with the natural world. One of my favorite rooms feels like a tree house as it is surrounded with windows on three sides. Loris Malaguzzi used to say that they wanted to design the schools in Reggio Emilia to be like aquariums so that they looked out on the world and the world looked in on them, embodying transparency, connection, and beauty. Opal is a good example of this kind of thinking about school spaces (see Figure 13.10). As we move around the studios and classrooms at Opal, there are all kinds of materials beautifully arranged and fully used. Many of the materials are natural materials—leaves, seedpods, pinecones, petals, stones—that are collected by children and families and teachers from the richly diverse and lush Oregon landscape and seascape. These materials are used in inventive, creative, and natural ways by children and teachers. Susan shares several excellent examples in Chapter 12.

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Figure 13.10. Biophilic design at Opal School of the Portland Children’s Museum.

Beyond what we think of as natural materials, almost all of the materials that we form and work with, in their raw form, are elements of the earth. For example, clay, pigment, fiber, ink, wire, metal. And colors, textures, forms, shapes, and lines—these are the elements that we see and observe in the world. They are also the elements that we use to create with materials. Where do we all start? How do we invite or entice or set the stage so that children want to tell stories or illustrate a theory or explore and express a feeling or an idea? The educators in Reggio Emilia often begin with a question or a collection of arranged materials or an experience that sparks children’s imagination, theories, dialogue, and action. The educators in Reggio Emilia refer to such starting points as provocations. Provocations most often come from close observations of what children are naturally doing and saying. They are meant to engage everyone in deeper thinking. A provocation is composed as a suggestion and invitation, a place to begin that engages the imaginations of both the children and the teachers. A provocation is a catalyst that inspires

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Charles Schwall, Lella Gandini, Lynn Hill, and Louise Cadwell new ideas and connections and action. Many chapters in this book explore the practice of designing provocations to support engaging teaching and learning. At Opal School, everywhere you look, there are questions or irresistible collections and arrangements of materials that are specific invitations to begin somewhere (see Figure 13.11). The Opal teachers have decided to print many of these provocative questions and display them on tables in Lucite frames or on the wall in large lettering. The school feels as if it is living in wonderful questions. In the spirit of such provocations, I would like to return to a question with you: What kinds of dispositions, skills, and understanding develop in our students when their instincts to love the natural world and to respond and make sense of their experience are nurtured and developed fully? I asked this same question of the group of 200 or so participants at the Opal School Symposium in June 2014 after showing many examples from Reggio Emilia of children’s work with natural materials. My main context for this presentation was the project on trees that I witnessed at the Diana School during the year that I lived in Reggio Emilia and wrote about in Bringing Reggio Emilia

Figure 13.11. Shelves with natural materials at Opal School.

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Home (1997). The Diana School is in the middle of the Public Gardens and is surrounded by trees. Among other learning experiences from this project, I shared the children’s careful observations of the trees through the seasons, in different conditions and weather. I also showed the children’s theories about why trees are important, expressed in words, in drawings, and in clay. Participants addressed the question that I posed by saying that students would: • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

See how things are connected Observe and know cycles and systems of the natural world Take risks Recognize beauty everywhere around them Want to be outside Feel confident and prepared Have high esteem because they would be developing solid skills in communicating Be collaborators and inventors Become engaged citizens Be able to solve problems and think outside the box Want to protect natural habitats, and see the big picture of how habitats are connected and everything is hitched to everything else Feel hopeful See the future Work to make things beautiful

All of these dreams for our children and ourselves can be realized. We are not only wired to love the natural world and to make meaning and sense. We are wired to be creative, to work together, to invent, to be joyful, to seek and find beauty, to be engaged citizens. We need to build schools that honor the inherent capabilities, needs, and rights that we each have to fully develop our enormous potential—for ourselves, for our families, for our communities, in the service of the healthy, hopeful future that we all want to create (see Figure 13.12). Figure 13.12. Self-portrait with natural materials at The College School.

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REFERENCES Cadwell, L. (1997). Bringing Reggio Emilia home. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Carson, R. (1936). The sense of wonder. New York, NY: Harper Collins. Giles County Community Health Needs Assessment Report. (2012). Available at issuu. com/carilionclinic/docs/giles_chna_2012 Hudgins, P. (1993). The wind blew (reissued ed.). New York, NY: Alladin. Kellert, S., & Wilson, E. O. (1993). The biophilia hypothesis. Washington, DC: Island Press. Kellogg, R. (1970). Analyzing children’s art. Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company. Vecchi, V. (2004, April 30–May 1). The city in waiting, & Children, art and artists. Presentations at Creativity doesn’t fall from the sky: Education and the expressive languages. Hosted by the St. Louis Collaborative in partnership with Webster University and Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO. Vecchi, V. (2010). Art and creativity in Reggio Emilia. New York, NY: Routledge. Vecchi, V., & Giudici, C. (Eds.). (2004). Children, art, and artists: The expressive languages of children, the artistic language of Albero Burri. Reggio Emilia, Italy: Reggio Children. Weiss, C., & Lichtenstein, A. (Eds.). (2008). AIMPrint: New relationships in the arts and learning. Chicago, IL: Columbia College Press.

Epilogue

We end as we started, with the words of Loris Malaguzzi (2012), as we continue to highlight his commitment to children. Here he speaks to Lella Gandini on the genesis and meaning of creativity during an interview in 1990:

As we have chosen to work with children we can say that they are the best evaluators and the most sensitive judges of the values and usefulness of creativity. This comes about because they have the privilege of not being excessively attached to their own ideas, which they construct and reinvent continuously. They are apt to explore, make discoveries, change their points of view, and fall in love with forms and meanings that transform themselves. Therefore, as we do not consider creativity sacred, we do not consider it as extraordinary but rather as likely to emerge from daily experience. This view is now shared by many. We can sum up our beliefs as follows: 1. Creativity should not be considered a separate mental faculty but a characteristic of our way of thinking, knowing, and making choices. 2. Creativity seems to emerge from multiple experiences, coupled with a well-supported development of personal resources, including a sense of freedom to venture beyond the known. 3. Creativity seems to express itself through cognitive, affective, and imaginative processes. These come together and support the skills for predicting and arriving at unexpected solutions. 4. The most favorable situation for creativity seems to be interpersonal exchange, with negotiation of conflict and comparison of ideas and actions being the decisive elements. 5. Creativity seems to find its power when adults are less tied to prescriptive methods, but instead become observers and interpreters of problematic situations. 6. Creativity seems to be favored or disfavored according to the expectations of teachers, schools, families, and communities as well

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Figure E.1. In the atelier of La Villetta School, a 5-year-old girl explores the projection of lights and color, part of a story about robots created by a group of children with the atelierista and their teachers.

as society at large, according to the ways children perceive those expectations. 7. Creativity becomes more visible when adults try to be more attentive to the cognitive processes of children than to the results they achieve in various fields of doing and understanding. 8. The more teachers are convinced that intellectual and expressive activities have both multiplying and unifying possibilities, the more creativity favors friendly exchanges with imagination and fantasy. 9. Creativity requires that the school of knowing finds connections with the school of expressing, opening the doors (this is our slogan) to the hundred languages of children. Often when people come to us and observe our children, they ask us which magic spell we have used. We answer that their surprise equals our surprise. Creativity? It is always difficult to notice when it is dressed in everyday clothing and has the ability to appear and disappear suddenly. Our task regarding creativity is to help children climb their own mountains, as high as possible. No one can do more (pp. 75–77).

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REFERENCE Malaguzzi, L. (2012). History, ideas, and philosophy: An interview with Lella Gandini. In C. Edwards, L. Gandini, & G. Forman (Eds.). The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia experience in transformation (3rd ed.; pp. 27–72). Denver, CO: Praeger. Credits: Figure E.1 from La Villetta School, 2004, unpublished. © Municipality of Reggio Emilia–Infant-Toddler Centers and Preschools, s.r.l., Via Bligny 1/A, 42124 Reggio Emilia, Italia, www.reggiochildren.it.

Glossary

Action Research: A method of qualitative research that includes a cycle

of inquiry and action. Action research is related to a pedagogy of listening as well as a pedagogy of relationships, and has launched many projects in the schools that are described within the pages of this book. Change and evolution can be the products of collaborative research, careful listening and observing, and related action. (See Chapter 9.) Aesthetic Dimension; Poetic: Terms used in Reggio Emilia to describe

different concepts and processes that are very close in meaning. Aesthetics is defined as a branch of philosophy that focuses on the nature and appreciation of art and beauty. In the municipal schools for young children of Reggio Emilia, these terms refer to the attention given the design of the environment, the materials offered to children, the expansive way the world is researched and discovered using all disciplines, and the form of children’s and educators’ work that is held together by a sense of wholeness, wonder, and beauty. (See Chapter 3.) Affordance: The inherent properties of an object or material that lead

most easily to action on or change to that object or material. In the case of visual arts media, an affordance refers to the ease of transformation of a particular material that can lead to symbolic representation and the expression of a thought, an idea, or an emotion. (See Chapter 6) Amiability: Loris Malaguzzi spoke of an amiable school as an environment

where children, families, and teachers feel comfortable—an objective of the schools in Reggio Emilia. (See Chapter 9.) Atelier: The French word atelier refers to the kind of workspace typically

used by an artist in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th in France. The name was chosen by Loris Malaguzzi in order to differentiate this space from the art room used in traditional elementary schools, and to introduce a new way of working that values children’s

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Glossary expression, multiple materials, and the research of meaning-making processes of both the child and the adult. (See Chapter 2) Atelierista (m and f, s.): The person with a background in the visual arts who

works in close collaboration with teachers to supply and organize a wide variety of materials and tools in the school and to provoke and observe children’s creative and learning processes. The atelierista supports teachers in the process and the design of communication and documentation. atelieristi (m, pl.); atelieriste (f, pl.) (See Chapter 2) Biophilia: An instinctive bond between human beings and other living

systems, a term introduced by Edward O. Wilson in 1984. (See Chapter 13). Contamination, contaminated: In the Reggio Emilia approach, this term

does not have a negative meaning but rather points to change through absorption of new, usually enriching elements, as in the linguistic model. (See Chapter 6). Cycle of Inquiry: Jeanne Goldhaber, Dee Smith, and their colleagues

at the University of Vermont use this term to describe the process of documentation of children’s and teachers’ learning. Each step in documentation represents a process of inquiry that is based on the previous step and determines the following ones, repeating continuously in an outward spiral. (See Chapter 8.) Intelligent Materials: In the municipal schools for young children in Reggio

Emilia, materials of all kinds are often referred to as “intelligent materials.” This term implies that if materials are open-ended and of quality, children can find many different, inventive, and resourceful ways to use the materials to create intelligent solutions and strategies. (See Chapter 11.) Intersubjectivity: Emphasizes that shared cognition and consensus is

essential in shaping our ideas and relations. (See Chapter 9.) Loan Knowledge: The educators from Reggio Emilia suggest that there are

times when adults or children can support individual or group learning by offering information, a technique, or a hand. (See Chapter 11.) Miniatelier: A space in or adjacent to each classroom, organized as an

inviting space with many materials. A miniatelier is similar to the central atelier but on a smaller scale. The miniatelier makes it possible for small groups to work together with or without a teacher. (See Chapter 4.) Pedagogista/Pedagogisti: There are 8 pedagogical coordinators in the

city of Reggio Emilia; they work as a group to support the city’s thirtythree early childhood educational institutions, infant/toddler centers, and preschools. In this complex role, they support the work of teachers, enrich their professional development, support their relationship with families, and facilitate their connection with the superintendent of schools. (See Chapter 2.)

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Project: In the Reggio Emilia schools the meaning of this word varies

depending on the context. Therefore, in translating, we have adopted the following terms. Project-based work, or projects: When the Reggio Emilia educators

speak about their daily way of working in their schools. Overall educational project: When the educators refer to the

philosophy, organization, practice, and strategies that guide their work in their city. Reciprocal Listening: Carla Rinaldi, president of Reggio Children, uses

this term to describe the principle and practice of listening to children as the most important tool teachers have to understand children’s theories, ideas, thoughts, and feelings. This is an essential practice for a school that believes in the powerful intelligence and creativity of children. (See Chapter 5.) Ricognizioni: An Italian word meaning “surveys” or “bird’s-eye views” that

is used when teachers, with a pedagogista or among themselves, take stock of all of the aspects connected with the development of their work or of a particular project in order to make decisions about what next step to take. (See Chapter 4.) Science Talk: An open classroom dialogue where children are invited to

talk and share their theories about complex and sometimes unanswered questions of science. The dialogue is facilitated by the teacher with children who sit in a circle. Children are encouraged to participate naturally, building on one another’s ideas and intentionally connecting their theories to one another’s. At Opal School, science talks are often followed by an invitation to draw or work with other materials to capture each individual current theory; see Chapter 12. Wonder of Learning Exhibit: An international traveling exhibit featuring

children’s work and processes of learning curated by the educators and designers of Reggio Emilia, Italy. (See Chapter 11.)

About the Editors and Contributors

Lella Gandini moved from Italy to the United States in 1972 but remained connected, both as educator and parent, with her home country’s innovative programs in early childhood education, especially those of the cities of Pistoia and Reggio Emilia. She earned a B.A. and M.A. at Smith College and an Ed.D. at the University of Massachusetts, where she taught together with two of her professors, George Forman and Carolyn Edwards. In the same period she published several books for children in Italy, focusing mainly on traditional nursery rhymes and fairly tales. As she became familiar with schools and childcare centers in this country, she realized that many of the practices that she observed did not correspond to the child development theories she had studied that placed value on relationships and learning. Thus she began to bring visual materials and documented stories from Pistoia and Reggio Emilia to present and publish in this country, to help educators open new possibilities both for children and for their own profession. Since 1994 she has served as Reggio Children’s United States Liaison for the Dissemination of the Reggio Emilia approach. Since 1997 she has been Associate Editor of the journal, Innovations in Early Childhood Education: The International Reggio Exchange. She has also been a Visiting Scholar at Lesley University since 2008. Her honors include an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from the Erikson Institute (2004) and the Smith College Medal for Distinguished Alumnae (2008). Among her publications for educators, the best known is The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach to Early Childhood Education, co-edited with Edwards and Forman. Lynn T. Hill received her Ph.D. in Child Development from Virginia Tech, where

she taught courses in teacher education and served as the curriculum coordinator and studio teacher in the Child Development and Research Laboratory School. She is the founder of Rainbow Riders Childcare Center in Blacksburg, Virginia, and worked as Senior Social Worker serving children in foster care.

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About the Editors and Contributors She has co-authored and co-edited four previous books on the Reggio Emilia approach. Her research focus and life’s passion have been about building communities of learners through the arts. Currently she serves as an educational consultant and works primarily with underserved children, their families, and their teachers. She lives in rural Virginia with her husband and a menagerie of four-legged companions. Louise Cadwell is co-founder of Cadwell Collaborative: Sustainability Educa-

tion and School Design, a consulting firm that works with schools to design meaningful curriculum and vibrant learning communities. Louise was a fellow in Reggio Emilia, Italy, at the Diana and La Villetta schools in 1991–1992. She received her Ph.D. in 1996 from Union Institute, and she is an adjunct professor at Butler University and a Visiting Scholar at Lesley University. Louise is the author of Bringing Reggio Emilia Home: An Innovative Approach to Early Childhood Education (1997) and Bringing Learning to Life: The Reggio Approach to Early Childhood Education (2002). Her work as a teacher and researcher has focused on children’s development through the arts and spoken and written language, particularly as children discover their place in the natural world. Charles Schwall is pedagogical curator at the St. Michael School of Clayton,

where he previously worked as a studio teacher for 20 years. He has worked nationally as an educational consultant to schools and presented at many conferences and workshops. He is the author of the chapter “The Atelier Environment: Recognizing the Power of Materials as Languages,” published in Next Steps Towards Teaching the Reggio Way (2004, J. Hendrick, editor). In addition to his role as an educator, he is also a practicing artist in the areas of painting and drawing. The Bruno David Gallery in St. Louis represents his work. He holds a B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute and an M.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis. He currently lives and maintains a studio in Kansas City. Pauline Baker is a studio teacher, artist, and designer who works with teach-

ers on the learning environment, curriculum design and implementation, documentation, and studio projects. She works as a consultant for Head Start and other public and private programs in Arizona. Pauline has taught college and community classes focused on the role of materials in teaching and learning, creativity, and the study of the Reggio Emilia approach to education. She is a contributor to the following books: Insights and Inspirations from Reggio Emilia: Stories of Teachers and Children from North America (2008) and In the Spirit of the Studio: Learning from the Atelier of Reggio Emilia (2005). Pauline is co-founder of the Tucson Children’s Project, a non-profit organization committed to developing community projects that bring people and resources together in support of high-quality learning experiences through the study and inspiration of the

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Municipal Schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy. Pauline received an M.F.A. degree from The University of Texas at Austin. Barbara Burrington co-taught in the Early Childhood Teacher Education

Program at the University of Vermont, where she also coordinated preschool programs at the University of Vermont’s Campus Children’s School from 1993–2007. Currently, Barbara is the principal in a public middle school in northwestern Vermont. Barbara was named the Vermont Principals’ Association Elementary Principal of the Year in 2012. She received a Prospect School and Center for Research and Education Practitioner Fellowship from the University of Vermont Libraries in 2013. Her writing has been published in early childhood education journals and as chapters in edited volumes. Susan Harris MacKay received her B.A. in English from Vassar College and

her M.A.T. from Lewis and Clark College, and has taught in Oregon’s public school classrooms since 1995. Her participation in study tours to Reggio Emilia in 2002 and 2012; rich, ongoing collaboration with colleagues; and unanswerable questions have inspired her work with Opal School teachers and children since 2002. Susan has published articles in the Journal of Teacher Research, Innovations, and Democracy and Education and chapters in Living the Questions: A Guide for Teacher Researchers and Language Development: A Reader for Teachers. In her current role as Director of the Portland Children’s Museum Center for Learning, she presents and consults nationally and internationally on topics of arts and literacy, play, supporting social and emotional intelligence, and nurturing relationships between children, materials, and the natural world. Carla Rinaldi was born in Reggio Emilia and earned a degree in Pedagogy

from the University of Bologna. In 1971 she began working as a pedagogista with the Municipal Infant/Toddler Centers and Preschools for young children in Reggio Emilia. She later became Pedagogical Director. In 1980 she was one of the founders of the National Nido Group with Loris Malaguzzi and became vice-president. She has been a senior advisor to Reggio Children since 1994, and in 2007 she became president. She has been responsible for research projects with universities—Harvard Project Zero, New Hampshire, Stockholm, and Milan—and with companies—Lego, Sony, Alessi, and IKEA. In 2007 and 2008 she was a member of the National Commission for the Italian Ministry of Education. Since 1999 she has taught at the University of Reggio Emilia and Modena in the Sciences of Education graduate course. A selection of her writings has been published in In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia: Listening, Researching and Learning (2005), edited by Peter Moss and Gunilla Dahlberg. Lori Geismar Ryan received her Ph.D. in Early Childhood Education,

Research, and Evaluation from the Departments of Education and Psychology

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About the Editors and Contributors at the University of Buffalo. As the Director of Early Childhood Education and Family Engagement, she worked for several decades in a public school district in Missouri as a leader in applied research and innovative practice and the development of inclusive, project-based curriculum for young children. Lori is currently a Senior Instructor of Early Childhood Education in the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Colorado Denver, where she focuses on early childhood education, educational leadership, inclusive schooling, and diversity and equity. She teaches courses in the Early Childhood Leadership Program and works in partnership with community schools to nurture the growth of teacher candidates as they prepare to become early childhood educators. Vea Vecchi was born in Rome and graduated from the Academy of the Arts

in Modena. In 1970 she began working as atelierista in the city-run Diana Preschool for children, 3 to 6 years, in Reggio Emilia. In close collaboration with Loris Malaguzzi and others, she contributed to the construction of the pedagogical theories and practices of the educational experience in Reggio Emilia. She worked with others to curate the first and successive editions of And When the Eye Jumps Over the Wall exhibition and catalogue (1980), which later became The Hundred Languages of Children. Since 1994 she has worked as Senior Advisor to Reggio Children, and since 2006 has been responsible for Publishing, Exhibitions, and Ateliers. In 2001 she received an Honorary Degree in Visual Arts from the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture in Helsinki, Finland. She curated The Expressive Languages of Children: The Artistic Language of Alberto Burri exhibition (2002) and catalogue (2004), and the Dialogue with Places exhibition and catalogue (2006). She was a member of the group of curators for the exhibition The Wonder of Learning and the catalogue (2011).

Index

Acrylics, 158–159, 177 Action research, 94–108 intergenerational research project, 95–108 literature review, 95–96 Adreon, Christina, 74–79 Aesthetic/poetic dimension aesthetic tension, 21 countering poverty with aesthetics, 175–182 nature of, 17 poetics of learning in, 17–21 Aesthetic vibration (Malaguzzi), 18 Affordances, 50–52 materials and, 50–52 media and, 51–52 nature of, 50–51 Alexander, C., 112 Alphabet in communication, 51 materials and, 51–52, 60–62, 139 nature of, 51 Amiability, from change in learning community, 93 Amusement Park for Birds (La Villetta School, Reggio Emilia), 4, 23–41 conversations with children, 27–31 drawings, 29–31 George Forman on, 39–41 fountain construction, 33–35 impact of visit to city park, 31–33 project description, 24–26 protagonists, 24–26

summary of actions and possibilities, 36–38 Anderson, Hans Christian, 76, 78 Animal Sensory Book project, 52, 53–57 class discussions, 54–55 described, 53 materials in, 53, 55–57 writing in, 55 Anna Frank School (Reggio Emilia), 8 Arizona. See Ochoa Elementary School (Arizona) Art as Experience (Dewey), 63 Art Gallery of the University, 24 Atelier, 111–134. See also names of specific schools aesthetic/poetic dimension, 18–21 aesthetics and poverty, 175–182 concept of wind and air, 171–175 design considerations, 66–68, 83–87, 90–91, 94, 97–98, 135–137 Design Invent Play exhibition (St. Louis), 165–170 dialogue between education and visual expression, 13–15 expressivity in, 12, 13–15, 49, 60–62 frameworks, 113–114 hundred languages metaphor and, 43–44 identity and visibility in, 141–143 importance of concept, 1 introduction in Reggio Emilia, 1–2, 9–15, 19–21 making meaning through, 85–87

201

202 Atelier (continued) Malaguzzi’s philosophy of, 9–15 materials and, 63–79, 136–137, 182–187 miniatelier, 23–24, 70, 114, 128 in new buildings of Reggio Emilia, 23 observing and listening during school visit, 171 official status of, 9–10 poetics of learning in, 17–21 practices used in, 2–3 reinventing meaning of, 10–11 relationships. See Relationships role of, 10–11 support for creative processes, 46–47 systems theory, 112–113, 115–117, 133–134 technology used in, 11, 58–59, 126–127 as term, 8 whole school as, 43–47 Atelieristi, 63, 65, 122–125 in dialogue between education and visual expression, 13–15 official status in Reggio Emilia schools, 9–11, 18–21, 23–24, 43, 50, 72, 81–82, 115 origins of term, 8, 11, 18 Authoring, 151–158 common ground in, 161–164 community of authors, 153–156, 161–164 materials in, 151–153 shared texts, 156–158 Baker, Pauline, 4, 135–148 Baldini, R., 4, 8, 12 Bateson, Gregory, 18, 112, 114 Beautiful Stuff (Topal & Gandini), 84 Begley, Colleen, 53–57 Bicitante (Piazza & Giacopini), 58 Bikes–Lots! project, 57–61 experimentation, 58–59 media, 58–59, 60–61 reactive versus nonreactive materials, 59–60 workspaces, 58 Biophilia, 182–187 Bohm, D., 112 Books Animal Sensory Book project, 52, 53–57

Index as materials in studio, 143–144 Borghi, Ettore, 43–44, 46–47 Brenson, Michael, 160 Bringing Reggio Emilia Home (L. Cadwell), 186–187 Brown, P. C., 150, 161–162 Bruna, Elena, 58, 60 Bruner, Jerome, 17 Bruno David Gallery (St. Louis), Design Invent Play exhibition, 165–170 Burri, Alberto, 167 Burrington, Barbara, 4, 81–91 Cadwell, Ashley, 64–65, 67–68 Cadwell, Louise, 1–5, 4, 27, 64–65, 66, 111–134, 120, 165, 182–187 Cambron-McCabe, N., 112 Campus Children’s Center (University of Vermont), 4, 81–91 cycle of inquiry, 85–87 described, 82–83 development of atelier, 83–87, 90–91 need for atelier, 82–83 Peace Mural Project, 88–89, 91 Carini, E., 13 Carson, Rachel, 183 Cavallini, I., 4, 8, 12 Children, Art, and Artists (Vecchi & Giudici), 167 Ciari, Bruno, 7–8 Cicero, 89 Class discussions Amusement Park for Birds Project, 27–31 Animal Sensory Book project, 54–55 creativity inspiration in dialogue, 146–148 science talk in, 121–122, 126–130, 132, 155–156 as verbal medium, 54–55 Clay, 71–73, 139–140, 151–153, 161, 177 Closed systems, 112–113 Collaborative thinking, 122–125, 146–148, 159 Colla, Lucia, 14 College School of Webster Groves (Missouri), 65, 66 Complexity, embracing, 133–134

Index Contamination/contaminated, 61 Convergent thinking, 45 Costa, A. L., 132–133 Creativity, 149–164 divergent versus convergent thinking, 45 environment that supports, 77–79 hundred languages metaphor for, 43–44, 138–139 identity and visibility in, 141–143 inspiration in dialogue, 146–148 inventing languages, 61–62 Loris Malaguzzi on, 189–190 mistakes in, 145–146 as quality of thought, 44–46 questions in, 145–146 solitude and, 45–46 support in ateliers, 46–47 supporting, 150–151 Creativity as a Quality of Thought (Rinaldi), 149 Creativity Doesn’t Fall from the Sky (conference), 167 Cycle of inquiry, 85–87 Davoli, M., 25 Dellmann-Jenkins, M., 96 Design Invent Play (Bruno David Gallery exhibition), 165–170 Dewey, John, 2, 7, 13, 63, 79 Dialogue creativity in, 146–148 between education and visual expression, 13–15 Diana School (Reggio Emilia), 10, 17–18, 72, 115, 186–187 Divergent thinking, 45 Dramatic play in authoring process, 162 in Sunlight and Reflection Project, 122, 124–125, 129–130 Drawings Amusement Park for Birds (La Villetta School, Reggio Emilia), 29–31 Animal Sensory Book project, 55 of chickens, 140–141 DuFour, R., 112 Dutton, J., 112

203 Eacker, R., 112 Eames, Charles and Ray, 168 Easels, 70–71, 100–101 Educative Assessment (Wiggins), 132 Edwards, Carolyn, 24, 94 Eisner, Elliot W., 155, 158, 159 Erikson, Eric, 7, 13 Expressivity dialogue between education and visual expression, 13–15 language and, 61–62 materials and, 12, 13–15, 49, 60–62 Face painting, 99 Ferri, G., 25 Flowers Flower Harvesting Project, 104–105, 107 studying, 140 Forman, George, 4, 24, 25, 26, 31, 39–41, 50, 52, 54, 58, 59 Fountains, The (Malaguzzi), 26 Freinet, Celestin, 7 Friedman, Levia, 151–153 Fruit, D., 96 Fullan, M. G., 112 Gallas, Karen, 151, 155 Gambetti, Amelia, 25–41, 65, 71–72, 146 Gandini, Lella, 1–5, 2, 3, 4, 7–16, 23–41, 25, 26, 31, 41, 43–47, 50, 51, 60–61, 83–84, 107, 165, 171–175, 189–190 Giacopini, B. E., 58, 60–61 Giles Early Education Program (GEEP, Virginia), 175–182 poverty in Giles County, 175–176 Summer Meals Program, 176–182 Yoko Ono Wish Tree Project, 180–181 Giudici, C., 167 Goodman, Nelson, 55 Grammar of Fantasy (Rodari), 139 Grandmother Winter (Root & Krommes), 156–158 Graphic literacy, 60 Graves, Judy, 184 Griff, M., 96 Grollman, S., 132 Groupings, 114

204 Guerra, Melissa, 116–134 Hawkins, David, 2, 11, 13 Hensley, D., 96 Hill, Lynn, 1–5, 4, 93–109, 165, 175–182 Hudson, S., 160 Hundred Languages of Children, The (exhibit/ catalogue), 7–8, 13–15, 17, 24, 49, 72 arrival in United States, 13–14 key points, 15 poem (Malaguzzi), 139 Identity, 141–143 If the Eye Leaps Over the Wall (exhibit/ catalogue), 17–18 Imagination and Literacy (Gallas), 151 Infant/Toddler Center Belelli (Reggio Emilia), 14 In Search of Lost Time (Proust), 160 Intelligent materials, 136–137 Intergenerational research project, 95–108 atelier preparation, 97–98 declaration of intention, 96–97 Reggio Emilia schools as basis for, 96–97 relationships as basis, 94–95, 98–107 Intersubjectivity nature of, 99 in shared experiences, 99–101 Kallick, B., 132–133 Keene, Ellin O., 153 Kellert, Stephen, 182 Kellogg, Rhoda, 183 Kelly-Harrison, P., 96 Kleiner, A., 112 Krommes, Beth, 156–158 Lambert, D., 96 Lambert, L., 112 Larson, Lars, 171 La Villetta School (Reggio Emilia) Amusement Park for Birds, 4, 23–41 materials in, 50–52 Lawson, Christy, 176 Leadership and the New Science (Wheatley), 112–113

Index Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind (Costa & Kallick), 132–133 Lichtenstein, A., 170 Light projectors, 74–79 Listening in educational projects, 21 pedagogy of (Rinaldi), 146 reciprocal, 44–46 during school visits, 171 Loan knowledge, 146 Lonergan, Kenneth, 163 Loris Malaguzzi Foundation, 4 Loris Malaguzzi International Center, 184 Lucas, T., 112 MacKay, Susan Harris, 4, 149–164, 184 Malaguzzi, Loris, 1, 3, 4, 7–16, 18, 19, 24–41, 43, 64, 78–79, 88, 94–95, 98, 135, 138– 139, 145, 184, 189–190 Manicardi, V., 8 Martiri De Sesso Centro Verde Preschool (Reggio Emilia), 81–82 Masks, 142 Materials, 49–62, 63–79. See also Technology acrylics, 158–159, 177 affordances, 50–52 alphabet of, 51–52, 60–62, 139 for Animal Sensory Book project, 52, 53–57 clay, 71–73, 139–140, 151–153, 161, 177 collections of, 69–74 contamination of, 61 easels, 70–71, 100–101 environmental, 64 explorations of, 51 expressivity and, 12, 13–15, 49, 60–62 gathering, 83–85, 90 intelligent, 136–137 intentional arrangement of, 137 for intergenerational research project, 99–101 as inventive languages, 61–62 inventory of, 69–74 knowledge about, 51 media and, 51–52 natural world and, 182–187 for painting, 99, 100–101, 158–159, 172–175, 177

Index pastels, 100–101 Giovanni Piazza on, 50–52, 139 reactive versus nonreactive, 59–60 sensory knowledge of, 57 symbolic representation systems, 60 transforming, 55–57 in wind studies, 172–175 Maturana, H., 112, 114 McPheeters, Paula, 140–141 Meade, Scott, 176 Media in Bikes–Lots! project, 58–59, 60–61 class discussions as verbal medium, 54–55 contamination of, 61 interaction of traditional media with digital forms, 60–61 literacy concerning, 52 materials and, 51–52. See also Materials Media literacy, 52 Miniatelier, 23–24, 70, 114, 128 Mirrors, 141, 142 Missouri. See St. Michael School of Clayton (St. Louis) Mistakes, creativity and, 145–146 Mohan, Scott, 171–175 Moncrieff, C., 160 Montessori, Maria, 2 Mosher, Beth, 168 National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), 135 National Science Foundation, 132 New Mexico Schools for the Deaf (Albuquerque and Santa Fe), 171–175 observing and listening during school visit, 171 wind studies, 171–175 Nonreactive materials, 59–60 Ochoa Elementary School (Arizona), 4, 135–148 books and letters, 143–144 workspace design, 135–137 One City, Many Children (Baldini et al.), 4 Ono, Yoko, 180–181

205 Opal School (Portland, Oregon), 4, 149–164 authoring, 151–158 biophilia, 184–187 Oregon-history study, 159–163 Seasons Project, 153–159 Open systems, 112–113 Oregon. See Opal School (Portland, Oregon) Overhead projectors, 142 Painting, 99, 100–101, 158–159, 172–175, 177 Pastels, 100–101 Peace Mural Project, 88–89, 91 Pedagogistas, 26, 43–47 Pedagogy of listening (Rinaldi), 146 Photographs, 142 Piaget, Jean, 2, 7, 13, 45–46 Piazza, Giovanni, 24–41, 50–52, 58, 60–61, 139 Poetics of learning, 17–21 Poverty, and Giles Early Education Program (GEEP, Virginia), 175–182 Projects Amusement Park for Birds (La Villetta School, Reggio Emilia), 4, 23–41 Animal Sensory Book, 52, 53–57 Bikes–Lots!, 57–61 Flower Harvesting, 104–105, 107 intergenerational research project, 95–108 listening in, 21 nature of, 11 overall educational project, 11 Peace Mural Project, 88–89, 91 project-based work/projects, 11 Seasons Project, 153–159 Sunlight and Reflection, 74–79, 116–133 Think Like a Bunny, 102–104, 107 Yoko Ono Wish Tree, 180–181 Proust, Marcel, 160 Questions, creativity and, 145–146 Reactive materials, 59–60 Reciprocal listening, 44–46 competent audience for, 44 example of, 45–46 nature of, 44 Reggio Children, 65, 138

206 Reggio Emilia aesthetic/poetic dimension of pedagogy, 17–21, 167 Amusement Park for Birds (La Villetta School) project, 4, 23–41 ateliers in, 9–10, 94 Bikes–Lots! project, 57–61 biophilia and, 183–187 city regulations about structure and organization of preschools, 9 creativity and, 150–151 educational and political choices, 7–8 educational philosophy behind schools, 39–41 engaging with work in, 167, 171, 184 environmental materials, 64 grandparents in schools, 96–97 official status of atelieristi, 9–11, 18–21, 23–24, 43, 50, 72, 81–82, 115 opening of first city schools, 13 origins of atelier approach in schools, 1–2, 9–15, 19–21 relationships in Reggio Approach, 114–115 Reggio Study Tours, 135, 150, 184 Reggio Tutta (Ferri & Davoli), 24–25 Regulations for the Municipal Preschool, 9 Reins, Sha Shonie, 171–175 Relationships in authoring process, 153–156, 161–164 collaborative thinking and, 122–125 community of friendship, 105–106 community of mind, 107 community of place, 105 education based on, 94–95, 98–107 empathy in, 101–102 importance of, 64–65 intersubjectivity and, 99–101 in Reggio Emilia approach, 114–115 shared experiences in, 99–101 at St. Michael School of Clayton (St. Louis), 64–65, 117–119, 122–125, 131–133 at Virginia Tech Child Development Laboratory School, 94–95, 98–107 Ricognizioni, 26–31 Rinaldi, Carla, 4, 5, 25, 26, 31, 43–47, 145, 146, 149, 153

Index Robinson School (Reggio Emilia), 7, 9 Rodari, Gianni, 7–8, 139 Roediger, H. L., 150, 161–162 Roland, Frances, 74–79 Root, Phyllis, 156–158 Ryan, Lori Geismar, 4, 111–134 Sapon-Shevin, Mara, 93 Sarver, Tammie, 178–179 Scanners, 58–59, 61, 73 Schneider, Karen, 116–134 School community (Sergiovanni), 95 Schwall, Charles, 1–5, 4, 49–62, 63–79, 111–134, 150–151, 165–170 Science talk nature of, 155 in Seasons Project, 155–156 in Sunlight and Reflection Project, 121–122, 126–130, 132 Seasons Project, 153–159 Senge, P., 112 Sense of Wonder, The (Carson), 183 Sergiovanni, Thomas, 95 Serra, Richard, 138, 146 Shared experiences, 99–101 Shared texts, 156–158 Smith, B., 112 Snow Queen, The (Anderson), 78 Social constructivism, 39–41 Solitude, creativity and, 45–46 Space frames, 113–114 St. Louis Art Museum, 70 St. Louis Collaborative, 4, 65, 111, 122, 165–170 St. Michael School of Clayton (St. Louis), 4, 52, 63–79 Animal Sensory Book Project, 52, 53–57 atelier, 63–75, 115–134 clay, 71–73 communication and research, 64 described, 63, 117 Design Invent Play (Bruno David Gallery exhibition), 165–170 easels, 70–71 environment that supports creativity, 77–79

Index relationships, 64–65, 117–119, 122–125, 131–133 Sunlight and Reflections Project, 74–79, 116–133 supporting creativity, 150–151 technology, 73–77, 126–127 tour of atelier, 68–74 transforming preschool environment, 65–74 workspace design, 66–68 Stremmel, A., 96 Sunlight and Reflection Project, 116–133 collaborative thinking, 122–125 dramatic play, 122, 124–125, 129–130 learning by children, 131–133 Morning Meeting Journal, 129 origins with Magic Snowflake, 74–79 overview, 119–122 relationships in, 122–125, 131–133 science talk, 121–122, 126–130, 132 special topics, 121–122, 126–130 unexpected event in classroom, 116–117 Symbolic representation systems, 60 Systems theory embracing complexity, 133–134 macro versus micro approaches to, 115–117 open versus closed systems, 112–113 Talking Their Way Into Science (Gallas), 155 Tape recorders, 126–127 Tappeiner, M. A., 138, 146 Technology interaction of traditional media with digital forms, 60–61 light projector, 74–79 overhead projector, 142 scanners, 58–59, 61, 73 at St. Michael School of Clayton (St. Louis), 73–77, 126–127 tape recorders, 126–127 use in ateliers, 11, 58–59, 126–127 Think Like a Bunny Project, 102–104, 107 Timeframes nature of, 113 Oregon-history study, 159–163 To Make a Portrait of a Lion (video), 24–25

207 Topal, C. W., 83–84 Travis, S., 96 Tucson Children’s Project, 135 U.S. Department of Agriculture, 176–182 University of Vermont (UVM), 88, 89 University of Vermont Campus Children’s Center, 4, 81–91 Varela, F., 112, 114 Vecchi, Vea, 4, 8, 12, 13, 17–21, 23, 72, 115, 167, 176, 183 Vermont. See Campus Children’s Center (University of Vermont) Vermont National Guard, 88 Virginia. See Giles Early Education Program (GEEP, Virginia); Virginia Tech Child Development Laboratory School Virginia Tech Child Development Laboratory School, 4, 93–108 atelier development, 94, 97–98, 105–108 described, 93–94 Flower Harvesting Project, 104–105, 107 importance of relationships, 94–95, 98–107 intergenerational research project, 95–108 Think Like a Bunny Project, 102–104, 107 workspace design, 97–98 Visibility, 141–143 Vygotsky, Lev S., 7, 13 Washington University, 167 Webster University, 167 Weiss, C., 170 Wheatley, Margaret J., 112–115 When the Eye Jumps Over the Wall (exhibit/ catalogue), 13–15 Wiggins, Grant, 132 Wilson, Edward O., 182, 194 Wind studies, 171–175 Wonder of Learning Exhibit, 139 Worth, K., 132 Writing. See also Authoring Animal Sensory Book project, 55 Yoko Ono Wish Tree Project, 180–181