A New Calender To Fill Up

This is the cover from my calender from July 08 through July 09. This year was a mix of many ideas and moods a lot of them frustrating and disappointing. I am now just one month into a new calender, and have yet to put a blank sheet on it for doodling (no long boring meetings). Already it has been eventful. I have quit my old job and as a result I got to finish my August with circus camp, which was totally inspirational. I got to meet a one armed juggler and family counselor who juggles bowling balls, and I get a few days off before I start my new job this week. A job that I hope will give me a lot more inspiration and joy. last year had some dark and desperate times almost all of them job related. I am hoping that the change I am making will make a huge difference in my creative life. It is already having a good effect on my outlook. Thursday is my first teacher in-service and potluck meeting with parents. For once I am not dreading paperwork days and multiple days of meetings in which I have to listen to the word from on high and not so high. I am in charge of the preschool, but I aim to invite children and parents into a learning collaboration. I think in this new coop school setting it will be possible. I know this year will be full of challenges and adjustment, but I am really looking forward to working with children and families and not having to prove that I am doing something by entering data and checking boxes. My documentation this year will be photographs and works of art, language samples and videos. The challenges will be how to cram it all into a tiny classroom and the time that I know will seem to short for all the ideas we want to explore.

Beginning the Journey Again

I wrote a comment on a list to a student who was wondering if the Reggio Emilia child centered approach to preschool was they way to go for a teacher just starting out. After I wrote I realized it really was a pep talk for myself.

I love teaching 3 to 5 year olds, but I am often left frustrated and de-inspired by the program I work for and my supervisor, who has a philosophy that you must keep children in line and under control. And then there is the never ending paperwork that has nothing to do with teaching or learning. I am nearing the end of another year in this program and I realize that I have been guilty of giving up the soul of my teaching out of laziness and frustration instead of putting into practice my philosophy where I can squeeze it in. It is so easy to fall into the I can get through this attitude when faced with the ever present status quo thinking, but the bottom line is I have not done enough to create the learning community I want my classroom to be. If I am not committed to the ideas that inspire me then how can I convince others to step onto the path. If I start now I will be ready for tomorrow and that will launch me into the next day. Little steps, carefully taken on the path to my goal of a classroom of engaged learning, I can do this if  I seize my opportunities and inspire others. If start with a little dreaming today, I can go into tomorrows planning session with some fire to light the first steps to finish off the year with some enthusiasm.

Here is my pep talk:

1. If you are working in large program or with a team, what are the approaches they use now and can the Reggio approach be used within the existing structure? How much do your team members know about this approach and are you ready to inspire change? It is challenging to be the only teacher in a program using this model.

2. Have you done the work of exploring your ideas about children and how they learn? On what inspires you and how you form relationships with children, parents and other teachers? If you are ready and committed to the philosophy then even if you stumble around a little, you will know that it is all part of the process of becoming an authentic teacher, but you have to know how you fit into the process first.

You have to know that whatever you do will look different than anything else if you are doing it right. This approach is about building a community of learners: Teachers, students, parents, siblings other members of the enveloping community. Your learning community will be a collaboration of all its members and so unique. If you are ready for being open to whatever happens and to building relationships based on respect and creativity then you are ready to start. The main thing is to reflect on the journey as you take the steps and not be too impatient. Have big ideas as you take the little steps along the way.

The Unchangling

I wish I could say anything changed

the dawning takes eternity fragments

and hurls them toward infinite fleeing stars

Everything in motion, nothing changes

Matter is vibration, music of particles

anything in the soup remains there

cooling, coalescing, and dispersing

I always come back to this place

trying to make changes

how can I even find the tiny machinery?

it is locked in a border zone between

nothing and something.

How do I bring into my magnifying vision,

within range of the tools I haven’t even

invented,

the ghostly sound of a web

shivering in a whisper of dawn?

Bringing a Little Wonder Back to my Work

I have worked in programs that are supportive of the kind of child led learning that I believe in, but often administrators pay lip service to it while piling on prewritten curricula and norm based goals which in my opinion dilute the learning process into a gray soup of letters and numbers instead of a rich interactive environment in which the children and teachers collaborate on the curriculum as passions and interests and opportunities present themselves. It is more about a static norm based approach as opposed to a fluid child based approach. We have so little time for projects or even the kinds of conversations necessary for developing the ideas that children have. Parent involvement is also difficult since most parents work and many have infants and toddlers. My time is also an issue as I am expected to do the social service work for 19 families as well as the educational planning and running a classroom for the children in 40 hours a week.

As I write this it sounds so negative. At this point I am so burnt out and mentally exhausted by the paperwork and academics that I have to make a commitment to do at least a little each week to move toward creating more wonder and excitement and interaction in my class. I made some easy changes to the environment to attract children to little used areas (a mirror on the science table, and a magnet board in the library). This week I am starting a car project as I have mostly boys who are completely into cars. I already am feeling more positive and energetic toward all of my job. I am also working on a class project on the Reggio approach so this will give me some good examples of my own work to include.

Here is one a poem by Loris Malaguzzi one of the founders of the Reggio Emelia approach in Italy. There is alot in here about the way I like to teach.

The Hundred is There

The child
is made of one hundred.
The child has
a hundred languages
a hundred hands
a hundred thoughts
a hundred ways of thinking
of playing, of speaking.
A hundred always a hundred
ways of listening
of marveling of loving
a hundred joys
for singing and understanding
a hundred worlds
to discover
a hundred worlds
to invent
a hundred worlds
to dream.
The child has
a hundred languages
(and a hundred hundred hundred more)
but they steal ninety-nine.
The school and the culture
separate the head from the body.
They tell the child:
to think without hands
to do without head
to listen and not to speak
to understand without joy
to love and to marvel
only at Easter and at Christmas.
They tell the child:
to discover the world already there
and of the hundred
they steal ninety-nine.
They tell the child:
that work and play
reality and fantasy
science and imagination
sky and earth
reason and dream
are things
that do not belong together.
And thus they tell the child
that the hundred is not there.
The child says:
No way. The hundred is there.

Loris Malaguzzi
(translated by Lella Gandini)

Nailed to the Floor of My Life

It seems like lately I have no ability to rise above the busy noise of day to day life and enjoy my life as thinking, dreaming, living being. I am trapped in other people’s versions of the world and frankly, I am bored by the small rooms they build to surround their lives so they don’t have to use their minds too actively. So much of the world is about data and objective reasoning, which in their place serve a purpose, but I need more imagination and joy mixed in. I need to paint ceiling with unlimited spaces and my walls with the world all around. So I will let the part of my mind that handles the part of the world that is nailed down and painted by the numbers, and let my dreams take me to other places where there are no walls and no nails, only things of light and music and maybe a few scary monsters just to keep it interesting.