What I Do | Workshops | SummerCamp |Arrangements & Fees

LESSONS FROM REGGIO EMILIA, ITALY'S PRESCHOOLS
Newsweek calls them: "The best schools for young children in the world"

For people who work with children ages 3-8

This workshop has a dual focus: on the arts as the core of early childhood education, as children express their feelings and represent their ideas in many media, and on teacher reflection & documentation of work in depth with young children. 

To stimulate discussion I can share many photos, overhead transparencies & other representations of Reggio Emilia work with children, including, if you like, a 30-minute video, Portrait of a Lion, which shows children working in clay, paint and pencil on representations of the stone lion in their market square.  The levels of concentration and of skill attained with this approach are astonishing!  Teachers who think young children have a "short attention span" will have a chance to rethink their belief.  The function of visual representation as it supports clear thinking is embedded in the Reggio work.

I can give some insight into which practices from Reggio are good to bring into US classrooms, and why.  This workshop is an antidote to burnout for bright teachers looking for new concepts and challenges.  It helps teachers think through some connections between science and art.

In longer versions of the workshop there are slides and photo albums to study, other videotapes to analyze, and experiences we can share to deepen our understanding of this joyous, intellectually engaging way of being with children.  I do this workshop for three hours or more.  My favorite version of it takes 12-15 hours on a weekend, with the a full day's focus on documentation (See Documentation workshop, below.)

This workshop raises more questions than it answers, but it raises the questions in ways that are rich and growth-producing.

E-mail:  sydney@eceteacher.org, www.eceteacher.org • (C) Copyright Sydney Gurewitz Clemens, 2007