I love this, because of course it had cultural relevancy in that it created a deep philosophy of education that gained international attention, but it's also just a good way of looking at the work that children are doing. Children are current citizens of a place and a culture and so the work they do inherently becomes a cultural project anyway that can then become visible.

It's important to support research and parent outreach so you don't end up with outdated pedagogy! This reminds me of Ellen Hall switching BJS to Reggio 6 months or so after building and opening her new school

This is what we talk about in ODA, how our interpretations are inherently part of our documentation. This also makes a lot of sense because we can talk about what our children did that day, but through documentation, others can see it and offer perspectives on it that mean something.

I love watching videos of babies who are only a few months old being propped up so they can see their parents. When their parents are talking to them, they can be so animated, moving their arms and legs and their mouths and they look like they're trying to participate in the conversation! And they probably are! At the very least they're very in tune with the conversation and this need to converse only grows over time.

This is so true, and I knew that the more places children went on a regular basis, the harder it could be to adjust and feel like their feet were on the ground, but I didn't think about television playing a part in the search for meaning. It makes sense though, especially with preschool children's television shows often showing an ideal world with ideal solutions to common problems.

Interesting that this includes "hard enough!" I think that's an important aspect of this that I wouldn't have thought to put in that way.

I feel like this is a really helpful way to show when to step in. I'm never sure if I step in too much or not, but but trying to explain and then doing when that won't work is a good rule of thumb.

I like that it can also be nonverbally because that can extend to toddlers as well.

This is something I'm working really hard to figuring out how to do! How can I be a co-actor in discoveries while also stepping back and letting children take the lead? Maybe the key is just to not try so hard?

ahh I see, I understand now. We're not supposed to be teachers of parents, but partners with them.

I agree with encouraging family involvement and communicating with families, but what exactly are we educating families about?

Such a tall order, but also exactly who I want to be? This really speaks to the mixing in of atelierista roles with teacher roles

This is something I have to work on, especially when waiting for a child to stop doing something they are not supposed to. A lot of my children love the sink and are fascinated by the stairs used to climb to the sink, but seeing as they are mostly all 1 and not very steady on their feet, they are only really allowed to go up the stairs when it is their turn to wash their hands. Often times, when a child climbs the stairs of their own volition, my first reaction is to tell them to come down and then, if they don't after about 30 seconds, or they move up the stairs instead of down, I go to move their bodies down the stairs and often across the room. While this is a safety issue for them, I wonder a) what we can do in the room to make the stairs less appealing and b) what I can do to honor their autonomy in this instance.

This is a really insightful conversation on children's rights and one of those moments that we can really see into the minds of children. The chapter details below that the leap of logic the third child takes in their request is about their own autonomy, but I really love the expressions the children use because they really feel like a coming to life of the 100 languages of children

I love this right and the one below stating "Children have a right to help other people and even birds with broken wings (so it's okay for people to touch them)," because it shows that children also have a right to change their minds about things and edit what they say.

Is he saying this here as a positive or negative? Are we drawing the child out in this metaphor or are we dimming the child's light?

This is really important and something I need to remember and learn how to do better! I feel like I'm so worried about things going off plan that I often say "well i'll figure something out" instead of planning something out

ok I started off highlighting the first sentence and saying "ain't that the truth" but then went on to read the next sentence and that is so true. I went to three separate elementary school campuses and at every one, the playground was little more than a blacktop. One had a tetherball pole (but no tetherball), one had some monkey bars, and one had a weird divet in the asphalt that would fill up when it rained and you could float the dry milkweed pods on the fence in it like boats. I think this is a good snapshot of public elementary schools and how they expect children to play exclusively with the spray-painted four-square courts or play basketball with the one hoop on the blacktop and leave no room for imagination except by accident.

This is a very important example to me because it is one that I try to avoid falling into, but sometimes have trouble with even with a heightened awareness of how I am thinking about boys and girls. I find myself offering baby dolls to even toddler girls and wondering if it's because I think they'd genuinely like it or if there's something still in my subconscious that says "they're a girl, this would be a good toy for them"

I like how she uses the word "environment" here because environment could be the work being done in the classroom, the classroom setup, the attitudes of the teachers and students, etc.

I'm still trying to figure out my stance on how public school from first grade on operates, but a big part of my qualms with it is the emphasis on "success." Especially when viewed from a lens of early childhood education, success is so varied that this emphasis on getting kids ready to "succeed" in schools is almost insulting to the the children

I really like this and I think you can see it in how Reggio-inspired approaches play out in different places. There is no one way to do Reggio, only contextual interpretations, which is why it doesn't feel canned

I like that this is highlighted! I like this idea that parents aren't simply the people that kids go home with at the end of the day but co-educators and people who can be an integral part of children's education

This is so important. I feel like too often you see children with special rights turned away by preschools or considered big behavior challenges by staff and ultimately by classrooms. To see that they have precedence in becoming part of a school at Reggio Emilia is so good to see and an important message of worth to the child and especially the family, who would probably have more to do with the enrollment.

I love this commitment to the ever-changing curriculum!

I cannot believe that they have a publicly-funded ECE program! My biggest fear is that I will not be able to pay my bills as a preschool teacher, which is leading me to consider what my future after this year looks like. I've jumped to considering administration over being a classroom teacher because of the pay alone! My hope is that either I find a school with good pay or a closely related field that pays a bit more