Power children

From the book Powerful Children by Ann Lewin-Benham



Human learning is best when it is....given over to constructing meanings rather than receiving them.
- Jerome Bruner (1996, p.84)

they learned
how to state their opinions, explain their choices, and be receptive to better choices; how to be confrontational without being destructive; how to disagree without triggering rancor; how to accept criticism without being defensive; how to acknowledge mistakes without making excuses or blaming. It was a huge breakthrough when they .. [realized] that criticism can strengthen one's own performance.. [and yielded] individual control to group process.
- Lewin-Benham, 2006, p.100)

What is the Reggio Emilia approach?

The Reggio Emilia approach fosters children's intellectual development through a systematic focus on symbolic representation. Young children are encourage to explore their environment and express themselves through all of their available "expressive, communicative, and cognitive languages," whether they be words, movement, drawing, painting, building, sculpture, shadow play, collage, dramatic play, or music, to name a few.

Classroom are organised to support a highly collaborative problem-solving approach to learning.

Other important features are the use of small groups in project learning, teach-child continuity, and the community-based management method of governance.

In Reggio Emilia, education is seen as a communal activity and sharing of culture through joint exploration among children and adults who together open topics to speculation and discussion.

- "Hundred languages of children"




Glossary of Reggio Emilia Terms:

Atelier: workshop, or studio, furnished with a variety of resource materials, used by all the children and adults in a school

Atelierista: Teacher trained in art education, in charge of the atelier; supports teachers in curriculum development and documentation

The Reggio children

Reggio Children is a mixed public-private company that the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, along with other interested subjects, decided to establish in 1994 to manage the pedagogical and cultural exchange initiatives that had already been taking place for many years between the municipal early childhood services and a large number of teachers and researchers from all over the world.This new experience was based on an idea originally proposed by Loris Malaguzzi and carried on by a committee of local citizens and educators. Reggio Children's aims and purposes are inspired by the philosophy and values of the

educational project developed and practiced in the Municipal Infant-toddler Centers and Preschools of Reggio Emilia, in order to protect and communicate the wealth of knowledge developed within this experience. The aims of Reggio Children include:

fyfuy to communicate a forceful idea of childhood and of children's rights, potentials, and resources, which are often unrecognized or neglected; to promote studies, research, and experimentation in education, with particular emphasis on children's active, constructive, and creative learning processes; to advance the professionalism and culture of teachers, promoting a greater awareness of the value of collegial work and of meaningful relationships with the children and their families;

to highlight the value of research, observation, interpretation, and documentation of children's knowledge-building and thinking processes; to organize guided visits to educational programs, cultural initiatives, exhibitions, seminars, conferences, professional development courses on the issues of education and the culture of childhood.

100 Languages of Children

This is really inspiring.

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 marvelling, 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)