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!