IMAGE OF THE CHILD
After our class discussion and reading the assigned articles about how the child is viewed in the Reggio Emilia schools, how have you changed your thoughts about the way that you will teach your children in your future or current classroom?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIn "The Emergent Curriculum and Social Constructivism" article & interview, I favored how Carlina Rinaldi, who has worked with Loris Malaguzzi for many years, described the "image of a child.” She defined children as rich, strong, and powerful beings. According to her, Reggio-inspired educators see the children as unique subjects with rights rather than simply needs. “They have potential, plasticity, the desire to grow, curiosity, the ability to be amazed, and the desire to relate to other people and to communicate.” Our course has changed my idea of children from being empty vessels needing to be filled with facts (as embarrassing as that is to admit) to how Carlina views children. I see how crucial it is to let children explore & have time to develop their thoughts & ideas as well as teach me things through letting them talk and communicate openly. Also, it’s unbelievably important to create an inviting classroom that makes children comfortable enough to WANT to learn. I don't want my students to ‘zone off’ because of boredom and/or lack of interest. Most importantly, I’m changing the view I have of myself as a future art educator because if I view myself as ‘above’ children, thinking I’m more knowledgeable than them, then I may make myself appear “unapproachable,” which I don’t desire. If I get down on their level, they will feel more comfortable interacting & sharing their ideas with me.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I had a lot of "Reggio-esque" thoughts before I knew what Reggio Emilia was. I don't know where they came from, I just felt the need to see a change in the way things have been done. So I guess what I'm learning now is how to build on my original way of thinking.
ReplyDeleteWhat I found VERY interesting in the "Foundations of the Reggio Emilia Approach" article, was that "many of the basic ideas that informed the work of educators in Reggio Emilia originated in the U.S. and are, in a sense, returning to their point of origin" (Gandini 16). The principles of Piaget, Vygotsky, and Dewey may be the basis of my teaching style, since I've been aware of the "big 3" since high school.
One thing that I wasn't aware of until now was the "Three [sociological] Subjects in Education: Parents Children & Teachers," (Gandini). This also goes along with Rankin's principle of reciprocity: Communication, Caring and control (Rankin 217), which in many ways goes hand and hand with Parents, Children and teachers throughout the learning process. This sociological approach to education is quite a change from the traditional three [academic] subjects taught (reading, writing, & 'rithmatic). I think the strong bond practiced with the Reggio 3 subjects is EXTREMELY important, and in the US, often overlooked. One could only imagine how much more our children would thrive if we had that same admirable cyclical connection.
Another thing that I'd like to REFLECT upon (because the Reggio way is all about Reflecting and rethinking), is my original idea of planning. I'd LOVE to try 'planning' a project out the way the teachers of Reggio Emilia do (according to definition #2 by Rinaldi in "The Emergent Curriculum.." article.) But one thing I will struggle with as an art teacher is the MAJOR time constraints that WILL be imposed upon me. Many times (especially in the lower grades) I will only see a group of students once a week for less than an hour! How does that give me any time to allow for the basis of "authentic growth?" ( Rinaldi 103). This is a major issue I hope we address in class
Anyway, I found all the articles very interesting, and after looking over all my notes, I noticed that they all had a common theme- they all mapped out how a Reggio-inspired or true Reggio Project actually unfolds, in a way that centers on collaboration (Danko- McGhee, Slutsky 14). I’d like to end this blog comment with a FAVORITE Reggio Emilia quote found in Rankin’s ‘Dinosaur’ article:
“Tak[e] the child by the hand, [but] always let/ the child stand on their own two feet” (Rankin 230).
The Reggio approach is such a fundamentally different way of teaching than our traditional methods that we use here in the states. From the “Foundations of the REggio Emilia Approach” by Gandini “All children have preparedness, potential curiosity, and interest in engaging in social interaction, establishing relationships, constructing their learning, and negotiating with everything the environment brings to them.” This unique image of the child is the basis for the way they approach teaching their students. There is a much higher level of respect for children in these schools and they are treated as such. This was very apparent in the video clip that was showed in class portraying the difference among Reggio schools and the schools here in the states. The teacher in the video was very secluded in a way from her students. She had her own ideas and was not willing to hear what her students had to say. The children on the other hand were getting extremely bored with her style of teaching. In Reggio, the students are able to learn what they want that day and at their own pace. This can be extremely difficult to do in a traditional school since there is usually one teacher for around 20 kids. There are ways that I can incorporate this teaching style into my own classroom though. One of the things I will do differently is listen to the children and find out what their interests are. It could be a new movie that just came out and I can center a lesson around that.
ReplyDeleteReggio schools are very successful because of the collaborative efforts of the parents, communities and teachers. In traditional schools there are generally several teachers that teach the same grade level but in different classrooms. I think that a lot more can be accomplished if teachers work together and share their knowledge and resources. When I start teaching, I will collaborate with the other teachers that teach the same grade level that I am in order to gain new insights and share new ones. Working together creates new ideas and benefits the children in so many ways. This concept was touched on in almost all of the readings emphasizing the importance of it.
There are many ways to bring Reggio into our traditional schools and I think it is very important in order to help the children actually learn.
this class has changed my ideas about how i will run my classroom. The whole idea of having an idea that is subject to change is very Reggio. The kids in reggio are able to quit a project just as quickly as they began it and move onto something else that suits them better. And that is the way i will run my classroom. I will have ideas that are always open to change and suggestions from my students as we learn together. In the article by gandini, she describes how open the teachers were to her own presence with her cameras and her questions and even interaction with the class's Dinasaur project.
ReplyDeleteAnther idea that i have adopted is that "Time is not set by a clock". A child may take a project into a whole n other avenue and must be allowed the time to explore it.
Another change that will be made to my teaching style is not to force the child into social situations that they are not comfortable with. Gandini says , "Teachers offer the possibility for children to be with teachers, and many of the other children, or with just a few of them, or even alone when they need a little nich to stay by themselves" Being an American, raised in our schools, it is hard for me to not view a child's need for solitude as dangerous isolating behaviors. But everyone needs some tome to themselves and children are no exception.
I am currently teaching art at a high school level. i would like to try the reggio approach in my classroom. letting the students start the spark that creats the idea for the class project. getting their input and find out what questions they might want answers to. encourage them to find more background information to expand on the projects. if they start to loss interest add more to the discussion. always encourage their progress.
ReplyDeletethere is not a lot of interest in art in my school but i think if they create a topic they would have more interst. i have had a couple of days where i just set out some fun art materials and didnt give out any directions. i sat back and watched as most of them got pretty crafty with the colored papers, foam cut-outs, and feathers. i would like to have the students have small group discusions and feed off each others creativity. printing out some of their thoughts and display with finished projects. this can help on lookers to understand the object of their projects. it would be nice to have the parents involvement but that might be difficult at this age.
After having a further study of the Reggio approch, I think that any child could prevail and exceed in their academics with such an approach. I'm studing early childhood edu and I think the earlier a child is introduced to creative thinking, the better the turnout will be. According to the Gandini article, the image of the child is most essential in providing children with the skills needed at Reggio. The child's welfare and fundamental rights must be considered, in doing so the child can grow in learn with a favorable environment.
ReplyDeleteWhile the standard school have rules and a basic code that must be followed, there are still some things that must be considered. Children come with preparedness, potential, curiosity, and interest in engaging in social interactions, establishing relationships, constructing their learning and negotiating with everything the environment brings to them, according to Gandini. With that being said, I believe the more a teacher embarks on these the more the child can succeed. I would like to set my classroom up with these things in mind. So I can then enhance these skills and have a classroom of students who are so engaged.
These goals are accomplished due to the teacher being aware of the child's potential and construct thier work and environment and to respond to the goals in an appropiate manner. So, it is helpful learning the Reggio approach; so that I may be able to identify the strengths and weaknesses in each of these areas.
After studying the Image of the Child from the Reggio Emilia perspective, I would say it's had a lot of changes on how I previously thought my classroom might be structured.
ReplyDeleteSome of the best ideas I think would be good to incorporate is the notion that the actually content of what I'll help children to understand and explore, ought to come from the children's own inspirations and interests rather than me telling them what the project will be. Giving children the freedom to make independent choices allows them to make free associations that I (as the authority figure) cannot supply them with. Even if I were to make these types of choices for the child, in order to move the process along efficiently, it's likely I would in actuality be stumping their creative intuitions and critical thinking skills as I pushed my own agenda on them. Giving children this freedom is one crucial change to my pedagogical perspective. This is one way in which an Emergent Curriculum can be implemented and carried out. Although I recognize I (as a licensed teacher of the State of Ohio) will have a formal curriculum, I think there's a possible synthesis here between starting with the state curriculum as a general guideline and then using the curriculum that emerges out of the children's own interests to play a part in exploring ideas contained within the formal curriculum.
The readings and discussions have set quite a few ideas in my mind as to how I will run a future classroom. I don't think I'm planning on teaching early childhood, in fact, I'm leaning toward either high school or maybe even a university position. But, either way, the ideas presented in Reggio, I believe, can be used to an extent in older classrooms. For example, the idea of time presented in the Gandini reading, that time is not set by a clock and continuity is not set by a calender. I agree with this completely, that if a person has a real interest in something, they will push themselves to Vygotzgy's zone of proximal development in their own time, and that it's the teacher's job to facilitate this type of learning.
ReplyDeleteIn the Reggio Emilia schools, the child is everything. They lead in discovery, adventure, and learning. In "Foundations of the Reggio Emilia Approach" Gandini states, "All children have prepardness, potential, curiosity, and interest in engaging in social interaction, establishing relationships, constructing their learning, and negotiating with everything the environment brings to them. Teachers are deeply aware of children's potentials and construct all their work and the environment of the children's experience to respond appropriately" (p. 17). This can easily be applied to my future classroom. I plan to teach at the high school level, but the same theory can apply. I plan to lead the students towards critical thinking and discussions. I hope that if I can plant the seed to explore issues further, their art will follow suit. I know that there are standards that I have to follow by law, however, I plan to keep projects as open-ended as possible. I feel this will allow my students to take the reins so to speak and push their minds further.
ReplyDeleteSo many of us have already quoted the Gandini article, it becomes a bit redundant, but for any outsider viewing these responses, they would clearly realize the importance of this statment. Time is not set by a clock. This statement seems absurd but in the context of early childhood it stands for a less rigid form of education. As educators we must provide students with the means neccesarry and especially the time needed in order to complete thier thought process. In mainstream schooling, kids are now shuffeled through the subjects never truley getting any closure on their previous thought processes. Think about it like extinguishing a fire. The longer it burns the harder it is to put out. If we are putting out our childrens "fires" before they can fully "burn" into their memories, we aren't giving them much of an oppertunity to grow.
ReplyDeleteIn Reggio, the students are not sheltered and have a sense of home to them in the classroom. I hope to have my students feel they are not confined to just there desk or area they have but to anything in the classroom. I want my class to be able to share everything they would like and not have our names on everything for only one person. With Reggio, teachers are exploring issues that normal schools arent in today's society. Our society today is so caught up and worried about children passing our state boards when we should be worried about what they know. If a children passes a test really doesnt mean they actually understand it. I want to be able to have the children work at a level where they dont feel rushed but yet were not working on it for days.
ReplyDeleteLuckily, since I will be teaching art, I think it will be much easier for me to implement the Reggio style into my classroom than it would be for a teacher of a more standards-based classroom. Our schools today are so focused on cramming as much information into the students as possible, because they have standards they must reach to keep their schools open and their jobs as teachers. Students go to school, and can expect the same routine day after day. They go through all the subjects daily, for a predetermined amount of time, and then have to switch to another subject regardless of the students' interest or readiness for it. I plan on breaking away from this form of teaching. As stated in the Gandini reading, time is not set by a clock. If my students are really actively involved in a project and are engaged and learning and exploring, who am I to tell them they have to stop, and cut off all that creativity?
ReplyDeleteI will work on the same level as my students, and really listen to what they want and what they're interested in, and find a way to cater the teaching to that. I want my students to feel like respected equals. When I was in high school, I transferred schools from Indiana to Ohio. My school in Indiana was very strict and regimented, and the teachers expected to show their dominance over the students. In my school once I moved to Ohio, the teachers treated us more like adults, and respected us in the same way they expected to be respected. I noticed that the students in my old school in Indiana were actually more rebellious, even though the school was more strict. The students at my high school in Ohio were more excited about school and more engaged in learning, because they felt respected. And that's how I expect to treat my classroom.
After our class discussion and reading the articles about how the child is viewed in the Reggio Emilia schools I am looking forward to implimenting the Reggio approach. I think the hardest thing for tradiditional American educators would be opening up to the child and allowing him or her to be the driving force in the direction that is taken in class activities. This is echoed by Rinaldi in "The Emergent Curriculum and Social Constructivism: An Interview with Lella Gandini" when Rinaldi says, "the challenge for the adult is to be present without being intrusive."
ReplyDeleteI hope to be able to involve parents, teachers, and other adults in a collaboration such as that mentioned Rankin in the Dinosaur poject. My concern is that the Reggio cannot easily be implimented in American Public schools, at least in their present form. In order to impliment any ideas from Reggio Emilia one would most likely need to teach in a private or charter school. Public schools do not have the manpower necessary to work with children in small groups as described by Rinaldi. As Rinaldi discusses dynamics of varius sized small groups, she concludes that"in order to maximize the cognitive learning process, group size shoul be limited to five. Beyond this number, group dynamics become too complex."
My hope is that I may, in some way, be able to facilitate the incoporation of the Reggio approach of collaborating with students, teachers, parents, and other adults to create develop a project based on a students' ideas.
First I have to say that that i have always thought that children need to be guided in all aspects of life. That guidance extended into and included art, I felt that art projects should be neat and could be used to teach children how to follow direction such as cutting, gluing and placing items in appropriate spots. After seeing the process of teaching using the Reggio philosophy i can see that there are many other ways to view art. I particularly found it interesting that Lella Gandini notes that classrooms in the U.S. and Canada are dominated by color, mainly primary colors in the assumption that children prefer the bright colors. I must admit that I had never even thought about that, what colors exactly do children prefer? Do they want everything around the masked in primary colors, even if the "real world" items are not? I would think that the children would enjoy things as naturally occurring as possible and I feel that is what the Reggio style strives for. Authentic and real come to mind when I think of what the classrooms are like.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing i will most likely use is the use of scribbling, not just for the sake of it, but to allow the child to extend their feelings. As an adult, when i am bored I often doodle on the edge of my paper in no real design but simply to draw lines. I have to believe that children would also find this interesting. One of the things I really liked was when the Sparlings suggested that you should make comments on the child’s art work. Asking them to tell you about what they have made is a great way to understand what they are interested in as well as building communication skills. So often I think adults look at a picture, not sure what it is and worry about embarrassing the child, so they simply reply that it is a nice picture. By asking the child to explain you can then pick out the parts of the picture and make a connection with the child. I was one of the "that’s a nice picture" people and i plan to ask my students many questions about their art.
Before I signed into this course I didn’t have any knowledge of the Reggio Emilia schools and their approach towards education. Nor did I understand the theoretical views of Dewy, Vygotsky or Piaget. The Reggio Emilia approach is based on the theoretical views of each of these philosophers. Based on the way I was taught in public schools, I would’ve never guessed there were so many varieties of ways to teach. I always saw my teacher as an authority, which means they had power over the children and the children were beneath them in a sense. That’s the opposite of how I want to teach my students. From Gandini’s article I understand the positive affects Reggio Emilia has on the children. The parents should be just as much involved in their child’s education as much as the teacher. After studying the articles, reggio emilia, and the many theories of education, my view of how important the child is has changed. The goal is not only to teach the child but also to create an inviting, warm, comfortable environment so that they themselves will be willing to learn instead of forcing them to learn. Also as a teacher I’m learning that you have always keep an open mind because these children might teach you more than you’ve taught them.
ReplyDelete