Opal School Online

I could not be more excited about what I'm doing in October : participate in Opal School's first ever online program!  In the words of Opal School:


"Opal School Online is a new collection of articles and videos designed to promote collaboration and dialogue amongst parents and reachers around the world.  Provocations, reflection protocols, links to additional resources and an online forum moderated by Opal School teacher researchers during the month of October 2012 will be offered to support connections and create new relationships between social constructivist teachers who so often find themselves working in isolation."

The course will be five weeks long, and each week will have a different focus.  The topics included are Supporting the Social and Emotional Intelligences in Children, The Power of Playful Inquiry, Organizing for Playful Inquiry, Making Thinking and Learning Visible, and The Arts as Languages for Learning.  The course is completely online, so no matter how near or far you are from Oregon, you can participate.

The Portland Children's Museum and Opal School have a wonderful relationship, promoting teacher learning through a variety of workshops.  They have a successful Summer Symposium that I have never been able to attend, despite living in the Northwest.  I'm so excited to participate in this course, making connections to people and ideas that can help me further my teaching practice.  I hope that you'll join in, too!

You can learn much more about the course here, and I encourage you all to read more about the Portland Children's Museum and Opal School as well.

You can register online, and if you register by August 31st, you'll be eligible to win a spot at next year's Opal School Summer Symposium in Portland, Oregon from June 20th to 22nd!  The rate for the course is incredibly reasonable for a Professional Development opportunity, and it is an amazing value when you consider the reputation of the Summer Symposium.

Take a peek at the sample curriculum for the first week, and then sign up!  There is also a link in the sidebar that brings you to registration, also.

Italian Study Tour

The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art is hosting a study tour of the schools of Pistoa, Italy. I seem to find things too late - but maybe someone out there would find the time and the funds to go along.

Reflections 1

Where to begin? Logistics? Facts? Assumptions? I'm still not sure how to organize my thoughts and ideas about my week in Reggio Emilia. As a result, my reflections here may be scattered and (not surprisingly) a bit rambling. But stick with me - I hope these posts will be a place for more conversation on the topics.

I'll start by saying that there is a part of me that is relieved. I have read about and seen photos of and listened to people speak about the Reggio Approach so many times since I began teaching. And because of what I saw and heard, I began to consider myself "Reggio-Inspired", which is a pretty safe place to be in. I do not work in a school that uses the Reggio Approach - I am fortunate enough to have a flexible curriculum that allows me to create the environment and the general teaching approach.

I am relieved because it is a real place, with real people. Children attend the school who have Disney/Pixar lunchboxes, the kids play Uno sometimes, they have challenges with parents sometimes, children have behavior problems - it is not a utopia. Or does that make it more of one? I'm not sure. There are things that I saw that I wasn't interested in, or wouldn't use in my classroom.

I guess that point is, I'm now able to stop asking myself "Would They Do This in Reggio?" when I'm planning or changing the environment or thinking about next steps in a project. Because I have seen Reggio, I have listened to their teachers, and it comes down to this : passion and knowledge. Know your community and their needs, and love what you do. This was the most inspirational professional development I have ever done - I still consider myself an advocate of the Reggio Approach. But I really noticed that it has so much to do with your community and their values and priorities, and your own passion for advocating a positive image of the child.

to be continued...

Briefly, from Reggio Emilia

I apologize for my lack of writing while here in Reggio Emilia. Between long, inspirational days of conversation and school visits, and an unfortunate lack of internet at the hotel, I'm a wee bit out of touch.

I am writing quite a bit, but none of it here yet. I'm looking forward to sharing next week.

For those of you who were here in the weeks before me, I am excited about reading your thoughts on the documentation experience, and the staff experience! Being here to learn about continuity has been fascinating, even though I am not a primary school teacher.

Much more to come!

Here I come, Reggio Emilia.

A plane to Pisa and then a train into town will bring me to you, Reggio Emilia. I'll do all of my required reading to get ready (I just checked six Reggio Children books out of the library), and I cannot wait to see your classrooms and talk to your educators and see firsthand what I have been inspired by for years.

I just found out I'm in, and I cannot wait. But I am obligated to wait until Octber 25th. Go figure.

Anyone else going? There's still time to register here.

It's not a bird yet

"Just as infants constantly practice making sounds, so young drawers fill sheets with shapes which may seem very similar. Yet when you compare markings of even only a few days apart, you will notice differences."

-ursula kolbe-

The information in It's Not a Bird Yet: The Drama of Drawing is nothing shocking or new. But Ursula Kolbe takes children's drawing experiences and slows them down, and looks at each time a child draws as a full experience.

After finishing the book, I made it a point to slow myself down a bit this week and watch and listen to drawing experiences in the classroom. At one point in the book, Kolbe talks about children as "pattern makers". That term makes me think of A-B-A-B patterns - lining up colored beads or animals. But to a child, a pattern is the label for something that repeats. So perhaps it is that A-B-A-B pattern that we have in mind, but it might be a sun with lines coming out everywhere, or vertical lines down a page over and over again. Two children were talking about patterns in the classroom on Tuesday - one was tracing flower petals onto a group mural and invited the other one: "Look at my pattern!" Her friend responded, "I love your pattern! Can I help with it?" They traced flower petals together, with a complete understanding of what the pattern was.

A second part that I felt I experienced this week was imaginative play and drawing as one. Kolbe says, "drawing...by many young children -- is about actions and events in time. It's not about making a picture of how things look." On Wednesday, one girl spent ten minutes drawing a curved shape, and then coloring it in with a crayon. While she was filling it in, she talked and sang about princesses, ghosts, parties, animals, sharks, and splashing water. Although her finished drawing was a simple shape, there was so much more to it.

I love reading a book like this. I spent a few evenings looking at the photos, reading the text, and going back to favorite sections. This is a nice book for an experienced teacher or a novice one. She comes from the point of view of an artist who loves to work with very young children, which is quite unique. Plus her work here is concentrated on one- to six-year-olds. In my school, I feel like a lot of attention is put on reading and writing for first and second graders in our center, so we don't get to talk about things like the drawings the children are making throughout the building. I'm talking about this book to the early childhood faculty on Monday, and I'm pretty sure I'll be lending my copy around for a while.

I think I'll be picking up a copy of Rapunzel's Supermarket: All about Young Children and Their Art now - that is Kolbe's first book. She really has a way of slowing down children's experiences and seeing each moment as important. And her work is really about children being children, and us watching and supporting as needed.

What are you reading right now?

More Professional Development

I am heading here on Friday and Sunday. I'm especially looking forward to a talk about the Danish Forest Schools!

I imagine I'll come back with some inspiration to share.

Bon week-end!

Forest Preschool / Experience

In December, I got the go ahead from my director to sign up for a workshop at the Secret Garden Outdoor Nursery in Fife, Scotland. The workshop was entitled "New Year, New Ideas", and it was a really eye-opening experience. I had seen photos of this school and other ones -- most inspirational for me were the ones I found when searching flickr for "waldkindergarten". Take a look at those ones here.

At the beginning of the day, we were given a few minutes to think of three things that we wanted from the day. In the cold and the quiet, and looking at the morning campfire, I decided on inspiration, beauty, and nature through the eyes of the young child.


One thing I found beautiful was the traces of children you could find all over the forest. Scraps of fabric were marking trees and bushes; dens that were carefully built by teachers and children together were hidden throughout the ten-acre forest. The children and staff gather in the morning outside of the forest, and they decide together where they will spend the morning. They refer to locations throughout the forest by landmarks, like the quarry, the yellow tarp, and the fire pit.

I could picture children in these dens -- I can't think of a better place for imaginary play and thinking. For the first time at a teacher workshop, I could picture my students there, moving sticks and branches and balancing them up against fallen trees. I have never gotten that kind of inspiration from a classroom I have visited.

Many people wanted to talk about health and safety - how do you handle those things at an outdoor school? First, the issues are vastly different from an indoor school. We worry about children going up the slide, they worry about children finding the 20 foot cliff. Outdoors, it is all about allowing children to take risks and learn from experience. Children know not to run at full speed towards a cliff. It is more likely that they will climb a little too high in a tree and fall out, get a bruise, and remember that the next time they climb that tree.

In one popular gathering spot, the yellow tarp, there is a space that looks like a natural ampitheatre. My mental picture was of read-alouds and acting out stories, but it is meant to be used how the children want to use it. But they have this rope, attached to a tree at the top of a five foot rock, for the children to support themselves as they climb up. I did not think I had the physical strength, but another woman did, and laughed the whole way up. The things we grown ups are missing out on...

{side note: This woman is a mother of two, and was at the workshop because she never thought she would be an anxious mother and she is. She was hoping to cure her paranoia. Rock on.}


So, these children are outdoors from 8:30 am until 5:00 pm, and the average child attends three days a week. That is quite a long time, especially in the cold and the snow and, in January, the darkness. I thought about that while I packed my long johns and wooly socks and sweaters and waterproof coat and wellies. But that seems so secondary to me now. Children all over the world spend their days outside learning. The mentality that the weather is bad when it is raining or snowing comes from the words and actions of adults who don't like rain.

I've never been interested in getting more plastic toys for my students, watching movies at school, coloring in photocopies, or choosing what children will do all day, every day. So this school made sense to me. I can see how I can implement ideas from this school into my own teaching.

Back to the forest we go!

Forest Preschool

While searching for a teaching position at an international school last winter, I came upon the outdoor preschool at Lakeside School in Zurich. My interest was sparked, and I spent a few hours google translating with my jaw dropped, reading about outdoor schools in Europe. In the states, one might think of outdoor education, but this is different. And so so wonderful.

A Wood Kindergarten (or outdoor preschool / waldkindergarten / forest kindergarten) is a school concept that began in Scandinavia, and, as wonderful ideas do, it travelled. These schools can be found in Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, and now in the UK. I'm sure there are more countries...but I feel so lucky because I get to go to The Secret Garden Outdoor Nursery...the first outdoor preschool in the UK. I'll be attending a workshop there in January.

Working with children in the forest for the past few months has shown me how nature can engage children. When we go into the forest, everyone is happy, cooperative, and focused on the task at hand -- exploring nature. In my work in Seattle, we would walk around the block once a week, or take a field trip to one of the many beautiful parks, but that is not quite the same as spending all day, every day, out of doors. Last spring, I took my class on a field trip to Discovery Park, and the children had an amazing time with their arms in the sand, mud all over their pants, and sea slugs in their hands. I wish that could have been every day. Beach preschool!

I'm incredibly grateful for this opportunity, and I can hardly wait to share what I see and hear.

photo by tillwe