It generated an awareness that the issues of children and childhood cannot be treated separately from the issues of women, men, families, and society.

In the awareness that we are dealing with an organism characterized by interactions that are rapid, complex, and simultaneous, we cannot think in terms of wanting to exercise overall control; we do, however, hold ourselves responsible for choosing and thus designing, to the best of our ability, the qualities of the bonds that we want to bring into existence.

Staff collegiality is not taken for granted; it must be supported by professional development initiatives and also requires that times and opportunities be established within the work schedule.

We chose to have a working team in the school, where collaboration and collegiality are seen as quality features of the school's identity.

A no less important gain can be found with regard to the responsibilities vested in us as educators. In the conscious construction of a dialogue between ideas and practices that embodies the unpredictability and uncertainty of the real pulsing of life, we are constantly faced with the need to make choices, to rearrange elements of our own experience and that of others in sequences that generate innovations.

Building and maintaining relationships is the guiding thread that accompanies children through the various times, spaces, and activities of daily life; it is the main occupation to which they dedicate energies and passion from the moment of birth.

We havealso asked ourselves, as teachers, about our goals forthe children and we have asked the children abouttheir goals for themselves. The responses to thesequestions are then a part of the documentation that isvisible in our school. These respectful and reciprocalrelationships resultin a richer andmore dynamicexperience for allthe members ofour community at ChicagoCommons

“What are your goals for your children?”

If teach-ers respond too quickly and immediately to follow asurface interest, they may lose the child’s attentionand engagement because they did not take the timeto observe and listen for the child’s core interests,ideas, motivations or intentions

As a result, we have been able to work with teachers’potential to become more reflective thinkers and facilitators who could support and provoke childrento develop and become problem solvers, decisionmakers, negotiators, collaborators and good commu-nicators who express themselves in many ways.

A minimum of three and ahalf hours per week is dedicated to planning, gather-ing, interpreting, designing and displaying documen-tation.

I don’tbelieve that educators can know each day where theyare going and where they would like to go. It is a routethat you discover as you travel.

hese interpretationswith very young children . . . how we create frames ofreference and how we translate these tiny gestures . . .gives us a way of sharing with parents and othercolleagues a vision of children, so that they can collaborate in producing these interpretations

This is important because interpretation is subjective.

Great minds, people who produce the culture of ourtime, do not work in isolation.

During a meeting with our colleagues from the infant-toddler centers and schools working on the guide, weshared these suggestions for open questions, and wealso shared possible strategies in order to encourageconversations and dialogues with the children

We did not ask questions onlyto discover what the children know and don’t know.

This new child had the right to a school that was more aware and more focused, a school made up of professional teachers.

This new child had the right to a school that was more aware and more focused, a school made up of professional teachers.

Two teachers per classroom as co-teachers

The children set to painting out in the public for all to see

rather than child-minding they have to open up to observation, research and experimentation by teachers who, together with children, participate in constructing a new culture of education.

Observation, documentation and interpretation are woven together into what I would define as a "spiral movement,"

Documentation can be seen as visible listening

The task of those who ducate is not only to allow the differen es to be expressed, but to make it possible for them to be negotiated and nurtured through exchanging and comparing ideas.

it abounds in young children, who are the greatest listeners to the world that surrounds them.

we value the unknown, and overcome the feelings of emptiness and precariousness that we experience when ourcertainties are questioned.

These theories are provi ional and can be continu-ously re-worked.

Personally, I think we have debated very much [in our small groups], but I never felt that I was inadequate, or felt diminished when I was discussing. And I think that if you don’t debate professionally, you won’t grow.

Rather, they are moments of cognitive disequilibrium, containing positive possibilities for regrouping, hypothesis testing, and intellectual comparison of ideas

Educators in Reggio Emilia do not consider the teacher’s role to be an easy one, with black and white answers guiding what teachers should do. They do possess, however, the confidence and sense of security that their approach to teaching, developed collectively over the past 50 years in Reggio Emilia, is the way they should be working.

Discussions takes place at different lev-els involving groups of different sizes, ranging from discussions with a few oth-ers (co-teacher, atelierista, pedigogista), to meetings of the entire school staff, to workshops designated for particular types of teachers, to large assemblies of educators from the whole municipality.

At that point, moreover, they will not offer ready solutions but instead help children to focus on a problem or difficulty and formulate hypotheses

Throughout the project (as well as in other daily work), the teachers act as the group’s “memory” and discuss with children the results of the documenta-tion.

The teachers work in co-teaching pairs in each classroom. The co-teaching organization is considered difficult, because the two adults must co-adapt and accommodate constantly, but nevertheless, it is powerful because it requires each adult to become used to peer collaboration, acquire a value for the social nature of intellectual growth, and become more able to help children (and parents) as they undertake joint learning and decision making

We must be able to be amazed and to enjoy, like the children often do.

aking responsibility for recording and documenting what is observed and then using it as a basis for decision making shared with children and parents.

the role of the teacher in Reggio Emilia is com-plex, multifaceted, and necessarily fluid

18 Seen and Heard tion of rights. One tension we explore throughout this book is the need to balance children's perspectives and adults' perspectives. Children demonstrate an astute awareness of the privileges and responsibilities of the adults in their lives. In the Charter on Children's Rights, for example, children stated, "Children have a right to brush their own teeth (and parents have a right to check their teeth when the children are done brushing): As another example, for the project in which 2-and 3-year-olds reflected on the rights of infants, the teachers offered the older childrenmarkers and paper and encouraged storytelling and drawing. The following storyresulted.Maggie was looking at a beautiful butterfly and she wanted to touch it, but she couldn't walk. What if Walter saw a friendly spider but he couldn't get it because he didn't know how to walk? They couldn't walk and the teacher had to come and get them closer. These young children expressed the sophisticated notion (explored further in the section in Chapter 2 on disability rights) that infants have a right to experience their environments despite their lack of mobility, and that adults have a responsi-bility to foster infants' participation in the world around them. A second tension inherent to children's rights is the need to balance protection rights and participation rights (a focus of Chapter 3). Young children understand this balance as well. They believe that they should be able to make choices, but that these choices are constrained by concerns for safety. For example, one right listed in the Boulder Journey School Charter on Children's Rights is, "Children have a right to pretend with glass, but not a right to drop it 'cause that's not safe." And another: "Children have a right to run or walk, to choose which one, if it's safe." Children also understand that the manifestation of rights, particularly protection rights, changes across development. Older children appreciated the greater need for protection earlier in life. As one 3-year-old working with the infants noted, 0We have to keep babies from choking: A third tension that recurs throughout this book is the tension between indi-vidual liberties and communal responsibilities (see Chapter 4). Children are eager to live and work with others, especially other children, and show a keen sensitiv-ity to varying perspectives. As one of many examples of children's ability to hold different viewpoints in balance, consider this entry in the Charter on Children's Rights: "Children have a right to talk, as long as they do not interrupt someone else who is talking first, but children have a right to wait for their turn to talk." Each of these tensions is explored in the theoretical discussion of the first four chapters, and illustrated in the two more applied chapters that follow. CONCLUSION The work on children's rights that children and educators at Boulder Journey School began in earnest in 2003 continues to this day,

large-scale assessments of isolated individuals who either fill out a questionnaire alone at a desk or participate in a one-on-one interview with the researcher in a quiet and secluded room.

His classmates shared his excitement. 'Take a picture of my finger next:

ation-the intriguing shapes and splashes of puddles, the intricate

In listening to children's behavior, adults must attend closely to their play. Developmental psychologists and early childhood educators increasingly under-stand that play is crucial to the well-being and development of children, and is the main activity through which children seek and find meaning

this drawing conveys with artistic precision the sense of smallness that children often experience in the world of adults.

10 Seen and Heard So it does not depend on the age of the teller, but on the sensitivity of the listener.

Overactivity on the part of the adult is a risk factor.The adult does too much because he cares about thechild; but this creates a passive role for the child inher own learning.

Our problem is that to make the hot airballoon fly we have to make sure that parentsunderstand the importance of what the teachers andchildren are doing in the hot air balloon.

their most impor-tant task is to build relationships with friends.

The child wants to be observed, but she doesn’t wantto be judged.

We need to producesituations in which children learn by themselves, inwhich children can take advantage of their ownknowledge and resources autonomously, and inwhich we guarantee the intervention of the adult aslittle as possible.

All of this pushes us to produce a higher level ofobservation.

All of this is a great forest. Inside the forest is thechild. The forest is beautiful, fascinating, green, andfull of hopes; there are no paths. Although it isn’teasy, we have to make our own paths, as teachersand children and families, in the forest. Sometimeswe find ourselves together within the forest, some-times we may get lost from each other, sometimeswe’ll greet each other from far away across the forest;but it’s living together in this forest that is important.And this living together is not easy.

It is also important for the teachers to enjoy beingwith the other teachers, to enjoy seeing the childrenstretch their capacities and use their intelligences, toenjoy interactions with the children. Both parts areessential

We need to be open to what takes placeand able to change our plans and go with whatmight grow at that very moment both inside thechild and inside ourselves

Children are not at all like this, predictable. Butsometimes schools function as if they were; these areschools with no joy.

They understandwhether the adults are working together in a trulycollaborative way or if they are separated in someway from each other,

There’s a difference between the environmentthat you are able to build based on a preconceivedimage of the child and the environment that you canbuild that is based on the child you see in front of you— the relationship you build with the child, thegames you play

Each one of you has inside yourself an image of thechild that directs you as you begin to relate to a child

Theycanlastfromafewdaystoseveralmonths.

Ateacherwhoisusuallypreparedinthevisualarts(butalsoinotherexpressivearts)workscloselywiththeotherteachers

theymakechildrenawarethattheireffortisvalued;

theycompare,discuss,andinterprettogether

theyobserveandlistentothechildren

activecitizens

engenderedinsuchendeavorstendstotranscendthoseneedstoleaveenduringmarksuponthecultureoftheirregion.WhatarethedistinguishingfeaturesoftheeducationofyoungchildrenwithregardtotheoryandpracticethathavemadetheReggioEmiliaapproachsonotable?AnexaminationofthefeaturesofthisphilosophysoonrevealsthattheeducatorshavebeenseriousreadersofJohnDewey,JeanPiaget,LevVygotsky,DavidHawkins,JeromeBruner,HowardGardnerandotherworldrenownedscientistsandphilosophers.

peoplethereareaccustomedtoconstructandmaintaintheconnectionswiththecommunity