The Reggio Emilia Approach to Early Childhood Education during the COVID pandemic: (THE STORY BEHIND OUR REGGIO KIT 2.0)
Uncategorized Jul 01, 2021
The Reggio Emilia Approach to Early Childhood Education during the COVID pandemic: (THE STORY BEHIND OUR REGGIO KIT 2.0)
Our Reggio Emilia Inspired Kinder school “Lil Pallikkoodam”in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India, , closed abruptly on April 24 th 2020 leaving the educators and families clueless and without a thought that we would be robbed off our time with our little explorers and creators for more than a year now.
With the current Covid 19 pandemic and crisis, this activity of physical schooling, generating exchange and relations with families and learners, has suddenly come to a halt. As a place of education and as an early learning centre catering to the formative- physical, social, emotional development stages of children between 0–6 years, our work has been dramatically altered.
The difficulties of providing educational quality in challenging new conditions are very real, and the opportunities Reggio Children could provide for discussion and debate are of particular value at this moment. The new conditions and the concrete restrictions on people’s freedoms have seriously compromised the possibility of shaping quality educational and pedagogical proposals, as they have been conceived and implemented to date, thus jeopardising the fundamental right of children to discover and research. In these new and difficult conditions, we trust that the opportunities Reggio Children will be able to offer to the international debate are of particular value. With Reggio children working on exploration, creativity, research and inquiry, we could still work on these skills and to make sure this happens we need to provide an environment and tools for engagement in order to enable skill development. It is our responsibility as teachers, educators, and researchers, to reflect and work together, to start new processes of re-signification that make sense of our present conditions and circumstances, continuing to be inspired by children.
We live in extraordinary times. How early learning professionals respond to COVID-19 will be a history in the making. I can only imagine what it must be like to return to teaching after closures due to the pandemic. In times like these, I personally find solace and comfort in returning to revisit, re-read and reflect on this approach to early learning that has come to be a reference point for all of us who work in early childhood education. I am revisiting to reset. To begin the resetting process, I recognize that COVID is a wall. It is a wall, which prevents us from going beyond what we know. Malaguzzi (2001) tells us that, “beyond the wall there is always a beyond” (p. 6). I have turned to these words many times over the year, and wondered on how to reach out to the needs and requirements of our young learners during the pandemic, keeping in mind their developmental stages of foundation and its importance.
While the wall is a metaphor it is a powerful metaphor for challenging times. When the Hundred Languages of Children Exhibit was in its first incarnation, it was called “When the Eye Jumps Over the Wall.”
According to Malaguzzi (2001), inside the original title of the exhibit there was a message “that the eye, when it looks beyond the wall of habit, of custom, of the normal, of the non-surprise, of assumed security” (p. 6), will find the possible. When the wall of old habits and customs is broken down the quest for the possible can begin. Teachers can choose to erect the wall that Malaguzzi (2001) calls the wall of the “finite” (p. 6). If the impetus for change comes from within, teachers instead can have a “sense of the infinite” (Malaguzzi, 2001, p. 6). COVID is like a wall that we must look beyond to what is possible under these extraordinary circumstances. If we hold within each of us the desire to rise to this challenging time, to all that is before us, we can see possibilities rather than limitations and restrictions. After all, the pre-primary schools of Reggio Emilia that have become the touchtone for so many rose from the ashes of World War II. It emerged because of the ability to look beyond.
“OUR GOAL AT Lil PALLIKKOODAM WAS TO CREATE AN AMIABLE SCHOOL, THAT ENABLED LEARNING”
“…THAT IS, A SCHOOL THAT IS ACTIVE, INVENTIVE, LIVABLE, DOCUMENTABLE, AND COMMUNICATIVE.”
A PLACE OF RESEARCH, LEARNING, REVISITING, RETHINKING, RECONSDERATION AND REFLECTION.”
WHERE… CHILDREN, FAMILIES, TEACHERS, FEEL A SENSE OF WELL BEING & BELONGING..”
The goal was to create an amiable school. This is what we want in these challenging times for children, teachers and families. I have re-read the article, For an Education Based on Relationships by Loris Malaguzzi many times in the last year. Each time it has given me pause to reflect and remember. The Reggio Emilia Approach is my touchstone. In my years of heading and working in Lil Pallikkoodam an early childhood education centre in Coimbatore, I was tasked with the responsibility of introducing the approach to my teachers. In that capacity I was instrumental in bringing the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education to my home -town, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu in 2014. Being able to share the philosophy with children and families is an experience that has stayed with me. Yet, it is not enough to just revisit memories. I am revisiting words that I first read when initially engaging with the approach that transformed my practice. I am revisiting now to reset. I am re-reading words that I now find to be extremely profound and prophetic. Malaguzzi (1993) speaks to strategies needing to be modified along the way, to suppress distance between people in support of relationships based on openness and democracy. These words ring as true now as they did then.
In a world where physical distancing and isolation is required, how do we suppress distance between people? How do we support an education based on relationships? How do we work on the social -emotional and different developmental stages of infants and families with early years children at home. According to Malaguzzi (2001), if education is seen as just a service offered to young children, it subjugates the child within a message that their voice need not be heard. The aim of the exhibit for Malaguzzi was to give “shape and vitality to research that vanquishes silence, that affords both children and adults a way to explore, to construct theories and ideas …” (p. 6). COVID has afforded an opportunity to create a redemptive narrative where we can see that beyond that wall there are positives and opportunities to change in response to the pandemic to create a better world. We must find ways to vanquish silence so that we can amplify the voices of children, families and educators. Documentation will help make visible and audible the stories of all.
In this current climate with the extra challenges of screening and cleaning, we must find ways to continue to make learning visible. This was the thought that blossomed into the making of the Reggio Kit 2.0 in June 2020. We the team of facilitators at Lil Pallikkoodam sat down to research, reflect, rethink, relaunch, remember, revisit, keeping in mind the requirements of every child under our fold. This need was the drive behind the Making of REGGIO KIT 2.0.
Swetha Krishnamurthy
Founder, Lil & Raks Pallikkoodam, Coimbatore