Reggio What???

Ok, so maybe you didn't study early childhood education and you aren't exactly familiar with Reggio Emilia.  Well for starters, it is a beautiful city in Italy where some of the most innovative schools IN THE WORLD are located.  The Reggio Emilia approach to learning is one of creativity, inspiration, and discovery.  It is an approach based around certain fundamental values about how children learn.

What are those values?  Well I'm so glad you asked!  First and foremost, the child is an ACTIVE PARTICIPANT in learning.  The child is a protagonist who is allowed to follow his/her own interests.  Second, the environment serves as a teacher in the learning process.  Everything in the classroom down to the positioning of the furniture is intentional and designed to provoke learning and discovery.  Third, the teacher, parents, and child work in collaboration throughout the process of learning.  To promote this feeling of community we host several events throughout the year to allow parents, teachers, and students to intermingle and share experiences together.  And last but certainly not least, making learning visible.  When you walk into one of our classrooms at SVK the evidence of learning is insurmountable.  And the key to this is that you will not only see the beautiful products created by the children, but you will also see documentation of the PROCESS of learning.  Photographs of students in action, quotes from the students as they hypothesize about an experiment, collage art that shows the significance of group work in our classrooms.  The opportunities for documentation are endless!

So there you have it!  A wonderfully concise description of what Reggio Emilia means to us.  As a teacher there is nothing more incredible than making a difference in the life of a child, and what better way to do that than to inspire their creativity and help them discover the extraordinary person that they already are??