Reimagining Early Childhood Education at the Time of Covid 19
Authors: Dr. Anne Bauer, Dr. Beatrice Balfour, Elaine Brown, Hazelle Fortich, Dr. Susan Lyon, Susan Stevenson, Tristen Taylor.
Biographical information of the authors
Anne Bauer
Director at Aquatic Park School
Anne Bauer is a Director at Aquatic Park School, Berkeley CA and I have been with the school since 1996, first as a substitute teacher when I found my calling in Early Care and Education (ECE) I have now been one of the school leaders for many years and am deeply committed to a values and relationship based leadership practice that emphasizes democratice practices and ongoing learning supported for each member of our school community. I first became inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach at a Summer Institute at Mills College in 1998 where Vea Vecchi presented a workshop and it transformed my perspective on the purpose and practice of Early Care and Education. I have been an active participant in ITP for many years - hosting professional development workshops at Aquatic Park School for educators around the Bay Area through ITP’s Roundtable series, and learning and growing with the Director’s group. I received my MA in Education and my EdD in Educational Leadership with an Early Childhood emphasis from Mills College. My research interests include the connection between theory and practice; professional identity negotiation of ECE teachers; democratice practices; intersectionality; and adult learning.
I am a school leader, teacher and researcher with a passion for early years education. Holding American/Italian dual-citizenship, I grew up in Italy, and lived, worked and studied in the US, UK, and Ecuador. After completing my undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley and teaching at a local Reggio Emilia inspired school in San Francisco, La Scuola, I completed a masters' and PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge where I was awarded the highest honors for my dissertation on the Reggio Emilia Approach - a renowned and progressive educational approach for children from 0-6 years old that originated in Italy after the Second World War. As part of my research, I spent one year in Reggio Emilia working with, and conducting research in, the famous Reggio Emilia preschools and toddler centres. After completing my PhD, I worked in Ecuador where I was Professor of Education at the National University of Education of Ecuador and where I led the creation of the laboratory school connected to the University. After moving back to California, I continued my career in school leadership. I am currently the Principal of PK-1st Grade at Escuela Bilingue Internacional, EBI.
Dr. Beatrice Jane Vittoria Balfour
Hazelle Fortich
M.Ed. Elementary Education and Leadership
Director, APS/Pixar Child Development Center, Berkeley California
I have been an educator in both elementary and early childhood programs for 30 years. I am passionate about the use of art and design in Reggio-inspired curriculum and teaching. I also infuse my Reggio work with anti-bias education and social justice issues. I am currently working on finding new ways to integrate our Reggio-inspired teaching with environmental and nature education in an urban setting.
Executive director, owner and head of school at Aquatic Park School since 1998 and Pixar Child Development Center since 2017 both in Berkeley, CA. I have been working collaboratively with the Innovative Teacher Project (ITP) since 2005 and have been in the field of education since 1990. I have a BA in Elementary Education and a BS in Outdoor Education studies both received at UNC in Greeley, Co. I have a master's degree in ECE from San Francisco State University 2003. I have been working and teaching since 1990, for over 30 years. In 2008, I went to Reggio with the Northern California delegation for the first time with 7 teachers from APS and since that trip I have been inspired by the Reggio education system while working alongside children, teachers and parents, with inquiry based, democratic processes, social justice and green practices, In 2018, I returned to Reggio with 3 more teachers and a total of 17 teachers from APS have gone to Reggio to learn their approach. It is my life’s work.
Susan Stevenson
Elaine Brown
Co-Director and Co-Founder of Monteverde School in Berkeley,California. BA in Social Work and Elementary Teaching Credential from San Francisco State University. My association with the Reggio Emilia Approach includes nearly 30 years of study and practice: From participation in state and national conferences, a decade of collaboration with the Bay Area Innovative Teacher Project in which we have hosted conferences with local educators, and travel to Reggio Emilia to attend their International Study Groups. I continue to be inspired and challenged by this deeply thoughtful approach to early childhood education.
I hold a B.A. in Psychology from UCSD and M.A. in Child Development from UC Berkeley and I have been the co-founder and co-director of Monteverde School in Berkeley since 1993. I was originally inspired by the Reggio Emilia Approach at the 1992 CAEYC conference, and subsequently by attending the conference organized by Dr. Susan Lyon at Dominican College which featured speakers from Reggio Emilia. I have been on this journey ever since, visiting Reggio Emilia twice and being involved in the Innovative Teacher Project for more than a decade.
Tristen Taylor
Dr. Susan Lyon
My interest in Reggio Emilia began in 1991 on a delegation to visit the schools organized by Angela Ferrario and Reggio Emilia. I am the Founder and currently the Executive Director of The Innovative Teacher Project and the Co-founder and past Co-chair of Narea.
Introduction
Figure 1: ITP East Bay Group, Screenshot of Zoom Meeting. On the left: Susan Stevenson, Elaine Brown, Tristen Taylor. On the right: Dr. Beatrice Balfour, Dr. Susan Lyon, Hazelle Fortich.
We, the authors of this piece, are a group of ECE educators, directors, leaders and head of schools inspired by the Reggio Emilia Approach. At the time of the writing of this piece, we all live in California, around the Bay Area. We participate in monthly meetings of the East Bay Innovative Teacher Project and during such meetings, we collaboratively reflect on our experiences through a Reggio Emilia inspired lens.
The Innovative Teacher Project (ITP) was established in the California Bay area in 1994. The project offers professional development opportunities for teachers, professors, administrators and parents interested in studying the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education. Roundtables, seminars, directors meetings, and special conferences with contributions from internationally recognized educators create a forum for professional development and ongoing dialogue with Reggio Children. The ITP provides educators a shared experience and a network for collaboration with the goal of elevating the quality of early childhood education. Many of us from the San Francisco East Bay ITP Group have been in collaboration with each other for over 20 years, some for 2 years, but we are all interconnected by belonging and contributing to ITP and by being inspired by the educational approach of Reggio Emilia.
Our collective of Directors of schools of the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area, includes Susan Lyon, as the Executive Director of ITP, and the following schools and directors:
Aquatic Park School, Berkeley, CA with Anne Bauer, Director and Susan Stevenson, Executive Director.
Aquatic Park School/Pixar Child Development Center, Berkeley, CA with Hazelle Fortich, Director and Susan Stevenson, Executive Director.
Escuela Bilingüe Internacional, Oakland, CA with Beatrice Balfour, Principal of Pre-Kinder, Kinder and 1st Grade.
Monteverde, Berkeley, CA with Elaine Brown and Tristen Taylor, Co-Directors.
During the Covid 19 pandemic, in our ITP meetings, we focused on the below quote by Carlina Rinaldi to reflect on our understanding of our current context, the challenges this time produces and our approach to conducting our ITP meetings. Rinaldi’s quote says,
“[o]ur way of listening means to be open to doubts and uncertainty. This listening means to be open to crisis, to accepting frustration. When I was in the United States, many, many teachers were worried because a child was in crisis, or they themselves were in crisis. It is not always bad to be in crisis, it might be because it means that you are changing… Listening also means welcoming uncertainty and living in the zone of proximal development.”
Reggio Emilia educators have long inspired us with this capacity of working within the unknown, the uncertain, while deeply trusting children. We are, at the time of the Covid pandemic, feeling closer to these ideas - now more than ever. We were surprised and inspired by children’s ability to adapt to uncertainty, the unknown and the incredible changes that this situation is creating. In turn as adults, educators and school leaders at this very unique time, we have come to see that we are called to model this trust and faith in what is continuously changing to children and to the members of our schools.
In our monthly discussions, our ITP East Bay group has engaged in deep readings of text from Indications of the Reggio Emilia Preschools and Infant Toddler Centers, published by Reggio Children (2010), in relationship to the challenges we are all navigating at this time of a pandemic. In the Bay Area, the pandemic has also come with wildfires, financial strain and stress for Early Care and Education, including our schools. It also has exacerbated the realities of racial injustice and economic inequality present in the context of the U.S society, and thus present in our work within our schools. In this time, we have found solace, inspiration, and a deeper sense of embodiment and connection to the values of the Reggio Approach project. In this piece, we describe some of the ways that we have found inspiration, comfort in, and a deeper and renewed understanding of the Reggio Emilia principles and practices throughout the pandemic.
How the Historical Context of Reggio Emilia Connects to Our Current Condition
As the Covid 19 pandemic developed, we have gained strength in reflecting on the history of the Reggio Emilia schools.
The preschool and toddler centres of Reggio Emilia were born out of a moment of crisis - in the aftermath of WWII. During the WWII and the Nazi-Fascist Regime, early childhood education in Italy took a very traditional and childcare like approach mainly focused on the care, rather than the education, of young children. Schools were highly regulated, sanitized spaces, almost hospital-like environments where parents were not allowed to enter and teachers were more like nurses and babysitters caring for the health and safety of the young students. Rather than being seen as professional, educators were caretakers and the children were seen as naive, empty vessels to be cared for.
After the war, in response to the Nazi-Fascist Regime, there was a desire of creating a new and better society, starting from the education of young children and the creation of a new type of school. The first schools that opened in Reggio Emilia after the war were started by parents, local citizens and volunteers. At the forefront of this movement of people were the women of Reggio Emilia. These women were interested in a new idea of the child and early childhood education - one in which the children were seen as capable, high quality education as a right of young children and educators (traditionally, mostly women) as professionals, not just caregivers.
In our conversations during our ITP meetings at this time of Covid 19, we were inspired by this history. We noticed that today, a lot of the policies regressed towards a model of early childhood education as childcare. At the start of the pandemic in the Bay Area, schools could only open to offer ‘childcare’ to young children, not education. According to such policies, teachers in the class could not teach, they could only look after the children, help them to eat, nap etc. in a way that resembled regressing very much towards a childcare like model of education. Our schools have been working on the Reggio Emilia principles for many years now, but in some ways, we feel that we are seeing the Reggio Emilia principles and their value with new eyes during this pandemic. Realizing this crisis we worked hard in our schools during the Covid 19 pandemic to reimagine our high standards of education and continue to offer ‘education’ (rather than just care) within the parameters offered by the law.
The temporal and metaphorical connection between our moment of crisis and the context in which the Reggio Emilia school were born - especially the history of the women leading the opening of the first schools - has been of inspiration for us especially as early childhood education remains a profession that is mainly led by women and as we are a group of women running and working in local schools at this time. Sentiments we share with those women who first founded and established the Reggio Emilia schools are both a sense of uncertainty for the future, a sense of hope starting from our experience of working with the children, and a deep understanding of the importance of continuing to fight for the right of young children to have high quality education. These women and their successes have inspired us to continue to fight for high quality early childhood education in the midst of the pandemic, defend it and reimagine for the present and the future amidst all these changes.
A strong foundation in collaboration and participation, and the innovative uses of technology
ITP organized an exhibit from Reggio Emilia , “The Wonder of Learning” to be at Mills College, Oakland for two years between 1998 and 2000 with the intention of using it as a catalyst for professional development in the Bay Area. ITP was developing a network of schools that brought their teachers to the exhibit for ongoing workshops, conferences and seminars. The concept of the roundtable had been established for many years and schools were opening their doors to other educators to discuss the Reggio Emilia principles within their schools and inspired by the exhibit. Director’s meetings began monthly and continue in 2021. Schools and teachers began to experience the value in visiting other schools and talking with each other about their work. The Reggio principles were discussed in great detail and experimented with. Overtime teachers and directors participating in the ongoing professional development offered by ITP began to see the value in collaboration and participation. The more sharing in the schools the more creativity of ideas and experiences schools initiated. Directors and teachers began to understand that they needed time for collaboration with teachers and reflective team meetings were set up. Educators began to understand more the relationship with parents, that it needed time and structure to strengthen.
Our ITP network of schools began building a solid foundation based on collaboration and participation within the Reggio Principles of early childhood education which we now realized served us well in this pandemic crisis. Our twenty plus year relationships as directors and educators developed a trust in each other that was vital in approaching our situations in our schools during the pandemic. This realization and experience is inspirational bringing joy in tough times. The importance of creating and maintaining this strong and yet flexible foundation has never been more critical than when confronting a true crisis such as the Covid pandemic has presented.
A pillar of the Reggio philosophy, the primacy of relationships, and the collaboration and participation between all stakeholders is essential and reveals itself in new and unexpected ways under these unprecedented conditions. In our work with children, these established relationships and connections allow us to follow their inquiries and emerging ideas and theories in smaller groups. With teachers, this current time has presented opportunities for greater inclusion and participation - including through the innovative use of remote platforms. Our established and ongoing commitment to transparency and ‘making learning visible’ in our communication with parents has led to a stronger partnership and truly collaborative decision making.
The pandemic thrust us suddenly into having to reimagine how to reach out to our children and families nearly exclusively through technology. It was a huge challenge and opportunity. Prior to March 13th when the entire Bay Area went into lockdown very few of us had heard of Zoom or creating a school exclusive YouTube channel. We again could take our cue from Reggio Emilia, which has a history of using technology to support children’s learning - computers, video cameras and the internet as well as using these same tools to reach out to the world-wide community. In the rest of this piece, we share some of these experiences with children that we have captured in the past few months in our school during the pandemic.
Children are leading the way and giving us inspiration
Figure 2: Caspian, age 5.2 and Lev, age 5.3 at Monteverde school making bubbles to kill coronavirus.
By bringing the children back for in-person education, we could feel life come back into the schools. However schools were not the same as when we left them. While each of our schools chose slightly different paths to reopening, we all (teachers, children, and families) dealt with spaces and routines that were significantly altered from our normal course.
The children showed us the value of being together and the joy in being at school when adults (teachers and parents) had more trepidation and fear about entering into in person interactions during a pandemic. Overcoming the logistics and the custodial, carelike aspect of Covid has humbled the adults while many of the children see this time as new, exciting and different. Teachers had to look at redesigning their environments (for many of us, this meant changing materials in the classroom, working in small groups, and transferring a lot of education outdoors) and most often the teachers report that the children are excited to be together in these new spaces and ways. This gives courage to the adults to move forward.
Many teachers found that the Reggio Emilia values that they have worked on over time in our schools have been crucial to responding to these changes. For example, for some of our schools, being outside for most of the day has created fewer transitions, thereby facilitating the gift of time. The Reggio Emilia emphasis on the value of listening has led us to take in the children’s resilience to change in so many moments. For example, in one of our schools, a teacher overheard this conversation at lunch:
Caspian, age 5: Did you know soap kills coronavirus?
Rio R, age 5: So if we put soap in the air we kill the coronavirus.
Lucy, age 5: Get 168 bottles of soap to kill coronavirus.
Mila, teacher: So maybe, we should do soap bubbles at Monteverde to help kill the coronavirus.
Lev, age 5: We need to tell everybody in the world to blow bubbles to kill coronavirus.
Rio R, age 5: I think we should make a machine that makes bubbles, so it makes bubbles every day.
The next day the teacher who overheard the conversation put out bubbles and the children stopped by on their bikes, picked up a big bubble wand and rode around saying: “Coronavirus away!!!”
Another day at Monteverde, two boys set up a dinosaur museum in the treehouse. Once it was open for business they pointed out a basket full of pinecones:
Rio G., age 5.1: “These are hand-sanitizers. You have to sanitize your hands before you go into the museum. Please stand 6 feet apart.”
Figure 3: The Basket full of pinecones gathered by the children at Monteverde. For the children in their play, the pine cones were hand-sanitizers.
Figure 4: Roxy, age 3.5 helping Milla, age 3.9 to put her mask on. This is one of many scenes of solidarity among children we observed during the pandemic.
Not all moments that children are living in the schools are so obviously about the Coronavirus, but still it seemed to be important to allow the children at this time to feel and explore the power of their problem-solving skills in relation to the pandemic and to reflect about it.
At Monteverde School, two boys worked long and hard to create a system of tubes, gutters and tires which travelled across the playground for “poisoning the monster” - aka a monster that had some relationship with the coronavirus.
Mila, teacher: “What does the monster look like?”
RIo G., age 5.1: “It’s round with spikes on them.”
Mila, teacher: “Oh! This is all about the coronavirus?”
Rio R., age 5.4: “No! It’s about monsters! And it is very, very big! Bigger than coronavirus!”
In addition, several of our schools chose to be mostly outdoors when possible and this, in turn, has meant that they are occupying spaces that are more connected to the larger community. This has felt very reflective of Reggio Emilia principles and the strong school-community connections that they foster. One example of this was a day when the tree-trimmers came at Monteverde school. The children needed no other activity than to watch them at work. The tree-trimmers were friendly and flattered to be the object of such admiration.
Figure 5: Matteo, age 2.11 at Monteverde observing the tree-trimmers in front of the school patio.
As the tree trimmers finished their work, the teachers asked if the children could have the cut branches which were happily gifted to them. The children worked as a team to carry away these huge, heavy branches into our space. They became building material for tepees and forts and are with us still.
Figure 6: Karina, age 3.7, Lucia, age 4.4, Jack, age 4.1, Matthew, age 3.8 and Nuri, age 4.1 all work together to move the gifted branches
Figure 7: Oscar, age 4.5 and Jonah, age 4.6 at Monteverde playing with the branches from the tree cut by the tree-trimmers and using them to build a teepee.
At another one of our schools, Aquatic Park school, we reopened 89 days after we shuttered due to the pandemic, with 6 children at one site and 12 at another. Having the joy of being present to see the children and parents' faces first hand, replaced the fear of contacting the virus or getting sick. The fear faded as we trusted in our new reopening protocols that were put into place, knowing it would keep us safe and ready to be with teachers, children and families once again. The first day back revealed the importance of the relationships we had with the children. Not one child sat away from playing or disengaging from others. Children were fully immersed together and in relationships. One day, children began to climb into the bushes in the courtyard near the fountain. As three children huddled together in the purple (mexican) sage bush they were whispering, giggling and pulling on the branches. Once the branches snapped off, the three of them jumped out of the bushes with a branch in each hand and began to chase each other in the courtyard, running around the fountain, flapping their large branch wings, yelling:
Frieda 4.0: I’m gonna get you, I’m gonna get you.
Esme 3.2: Oh no you are not.
Chrome 3.10: (screaming)
Frieda: Yes I am, you better run. (flapping her branches)
Esme: (laughing) Run, run, the coronavirus is going to get me, run!
Frieda: I am the coronavirus, I’m going to get you. The coronavirus is coming, you will get sick.
What was clearly noticed from observing this interaction and many other children’s interactions after reopening our doors was the fact that the school itself had for the children, as we have learned from Reggio Emilia, a “sense of place”. It was key to our observations, and the idea that the child, the environment, and the school, was the connection the children had when they returned. We learned from Reggio Emilia, it is because the school truly is the children’s context of life, a place of relationships, that the school is so significant in their personal experience and life. Even though we are experiencing an unprecedented pandemic, California wildfires, and national racial reckoning all at the same time, the school remained to be a place of welcoming, a place where the children had a sense of belonging and agency. This reminded us of Carla Rinaldi’s written words from the book Reggio Tutta pg. 10, in relation to the children’s identity with their city.
“The children [...] offer us a precious sentiment, not only for inhabiting the city but for life in general; the sense of wonder. Only wonder makes it possible to look at what is ordinary and everyday and see things that most of us do not see, because we are so accustomed to big spectacles and little trivialities. Only wonder, the primary feeling that generates deep reflection, can lead us to critical thinking, to the moment of judgment to understand and discern. Only wonder, the generative quality of human thought and so present in children’s relationships with the world, can sustain in our imagination that which the contemporary city is not, “city” is the idea of city, but also its negation. ”
This is what occurred as the children made sense of the virus and came back to reclaim their school. Children see the larger pieces of life so differently than adults. They see a tiny insect as a giant creature. They see a small space as a big beautiful home. They become birds with large wings, flying away from the coronavirus, as they make sense of what is happening to their community, their nation, their world, and their school that is not like their school used to be anymore. A “sense of place” - that is a sense of place connected fundamentally to the relationships that they have established in the space of the school - allows the children the freedom to explore the unknown.
Figure 8: At Aquatic Park School (APS) the children happily returned with “a sense of place” during the pandemic.
At a time when we thought we would begin to close our doors forever and schools around us were relinquishing their program due to lack of funds, through the children’s eyes and thanks to the guidance of the Reggio Emilia principles, we began to see the possibilities of succeeding during this pandemic.
Figure 9: The excitement of the children at Escuela Bilingue Internacional (EBI) after hanging their own artworks for the first ever outdoor art exhibition at the school.
As the months went by, therefore, we started to seek to make the learning of children visible to our communities and share with them the hope that children bring for the present and the future to us everyday in the school. Bringing the indoor classroom outside, at Escuela Bilingüe Internacional (EBI), for example, we decided to organize an outdoor art exhibit of students' work. Students, staff and parents expressed their sadness that their families and parents could not enter the school. So children with the help of the teachers created an outdoor art exhibit to share what was happening in the school with the families and the wider community. We selected a number of art works, printed them on large posters and hung them on the walls around the school. Children were so excited, parents too, and for the first time in the history of the school the wider community of neighbors also got to see the work of children. The exhibit became an opportunity for civic engagement with the city of Oakland and its citizens learning reading and experiencing some joy and hope in visiting the outdoor art exhibit of students at a time when many of our museums are closed in the area.
In light of all this, it’s clear to use that the Reggio Emilia values of trusting children, listening to children, and allowing children to construct their knowledge and empowering them to be agents of change has enabled all of us to be more located in the present and to find possibilities for joy through the children’s eyes. This experience and our collaboration as directors and educators during this time has also generated new creative and hopeful ideas for the present and for the future of education for us in our schools, and it has moved us and our institutions towards greater civic engagement during this pandemic.
Conclusions: A deep grounding in the Reggio Emilia principles
For many years our group of Bay Area, ITP educators have been studying and reflecting on the Reggio Emilia Approach. The importance of creating and maintaining this strong and yet flexible foundation in the Reggio Emilia Approach has never been more critical than when confronting a true crisis such as the Covid pandemic. It was the communities that we had previously created and fostered, like our Bay Area Reggio Director’s group, as well as new communities that were forged from adversity, such as the East Bay Director’s group that taught, shared and created these pathways for connection and growth during these difficult and unprecedented times.
While the pandemic has strengthened our connections with our ECE community, it has also revitalized our efforts to create change for the field. The groundwork laid during this crisis, including conversations and collaborations with City, County and Public Health officials seem promising. Having established and nourished a practice of communication, of really listening, and creating a culture of dialogue between children, parents and teachers has allowed for a level of trust that has made the process of difficult decision making richer and more successful, and has strengthened relationships within, and across, our communities.
We see each one of the principles of Reggio Emilia in a new light as we rely on them at this time to help us recreate and reimagine our schools during and post-Covid. The ‘100’ is still there and helps the children to process their changing environments and their new information. The children have led the adults in their resilience in tackling these new circumstances, and the child is as competent as ever. Together we are reimagining early childhood education.
REFERENCES
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Davoli, M. and Ferri G. (2000). Reggio Tutta. A guide to the city by the children. Reggio Children. Carla Rinaldi, (pp.10)
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The Innovative Teacher Project in collaboration with Mills College, Oakland, California.