The Voices Of Children: Lessons Learned While Listening

While visiting the Diana School in Reggio Emilia in 1997,  I saw a little triptych posted outside a classroom, on which there were hand-written notes and drawings describing the children’s day for parents to read. I suddenly realized that there was, in that triptych, tremendous potential for documenting children’s process and thinking in an immediate, yet still fairly deep, way. From that point forward, I  kept a “daily log” of the group process in our classroom. I found these logs indispensable to the process of teacher research. Soon I realized that those moments of brilliance that were documented in the log were too good to keep to myself. I began to share them with parents, as attachments in email. Finding this method of dissemination problematic (only some of the parents could access the log), I tried every form of technology as it came available to me over the years: writing in Netscape, with Dreamweaver, with iWeb. When blogging became popular, the concept and infrastructure finally coincided, and what was once a private blog for only the parents and teachers at our school could then become public. I invite you into our world of one thousand moments…of the lessons we adults can learn from the voices of children. Thank you for reading!

 

 

The Gift Of The Awake Mind

The Gift Of The Awake Mind

I taught Kindergarten and Junior Kindergarten (4's and 5's) in the same school for nearly 4 decades. For 26 years, essentially the entire time I was in JK, we were Reggio inspired. I had noticed early on a remarkable difference from my pre-Reggio experiences: the...

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Dreamworld and Languages For Symbolic Thinking

Dreamworld and Languages For Symbolic Thinking

A small group of children (all girls, as this is a story from a single-sex school) met to plan what to build next on the block platform. We had set up this protocol...planning together before building...to encourage collaboration and small group project work, and by...

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The Child’s Right To Try

The Child’s Right To Try

I've been thinking lately about the right of children to "try." So much of data-driven, test-apprehensive pedagogy has set the shared value at the right answer. Failure is to be avoided at all costs. If they can't pass the standardized test, push more, push harder....

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Constructing An Image Of God Part II

Constructing An Image Of God Part II

Conversations with children about philosophy can be particularly rich. Big questions like "What is real?" or "What makes me me?" or "What happens after people die?", big questions without obvious answers, are like playgrounds for the intellect.  Some of the deepest...

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Constructing An Image Of God, Part I

Constructing An Image Of God, Part I

As Autumn blows slowly through the wooded path along the James River in my neighborhood, I am reminded of the conversations held by a group of children I know to co-construct an image of God. How profound their thinking, and how beautiful their representations! This...

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