The Rhythm of Learning

I have been thinking over the last week or so about how we use philosophy in our work with preschoolers...  the philosophy that we are doing NEEDS to be meaningful, needs to be a part of what we are doing and not a stand alone thing... a space/time for the children to learn to think deeper, reflect as a community, learn to ask each other questions, and challenge in a respectful way... not to learn how to have a philosophical dialogue...

Over the years working at Filosofiska I have been testing out different ways of being philosophical with the children... not learning about Plato, Socrates etc... but more of a sustained shared thinking. There is a structure to support the dialogue, it's a framework to support the children to learn to listen to each other, also to challenge each other's thinking in a respectful way, and to become more precise in explaining your own theories and ideas to others...

the fact that I am Malaguzzi inspired means that I want to explore being philosophical with the children in many different ways... through all our learning and expressive languages. Its also needs to be done with joy and should be a meaningful part of our experience together at preschool.

For some reason there can be an apprehension about "doing" philosophy with children... and maybe it is that word "doing"... the idea that it can be done right or done wrong... and there are methods out there that are VERY specific in how you should be doing philosophy with children... eg Socratic Dialogue method and P4C (Philosophy for Children) - and even within these two methods there seem to be different schools of thought... I have done quite a few courses over the years with various amazing educators, as well as meeting others to talk about philosophy with children... I have seen that there can be quite an enormous span between how one person has interpreted Matthew Lipman and how another person has interpreted it.. 

For me, as a pedagogue inspired by Malaguzzi, I like to take the bits that suit me, the children and my context and mash them together with my own thoughts and theories to create something unique and appropriate to my preschoolers... this means that it is an ever evolving process... as I learn more, not only from research and methods, but also from the children, with the children and about myself....

But that problem about not doing it right... how to get over it?

Well the more that I have reflected over it the more I realise it is about letting go... about daring to test, daring to be wrong and learning from mistakes... it's not about learning through theory (even though that is important) as theory can only take you so far... you have to learn by doing... through practice and reflection and tweaking and more practice.

Its all about daring to communicate with the children, about being ONE with them, about learning to really listen, to reflect on how you ask questions, on your own tone of voice, on your choice of words, on how invested you are in the subject... the willingness to learn more about yourself... and not just do things for the children...

I think when you work WITH children there is always a sense of abandon... you have to accept a different rhythm and learn to dance and sing and express yourself to that... and there are many rhythms to learn... the individual ones and the group one, the project one and the collegial one... and I feel there are too many that are always marching to their own rhythm and not prepared to move to another... if you know what I mean... there are plenty of educators .. that will feel the rhythm and can move to it... its just within most preschools I have ever worked (and schools) there has been a bigger percentage of adults that are not prepared to truly let go..

This does not mean that I am not aware of the power that I hold as an adult in the group... being aware of it helps me to make sure I do not abuse it. Its is about balance... about listening to the many rhythms, being aware of my own rhythm and then creating a musical score... an album... where all these rhythms can feature.

I do not strive to be a friend to my preschoolers (or students when I worked in school) but to be their educator... and to be good at that... to be what they need me to be to be able to learn... yes supportive, but not as a friend, as an educator... I need to be able to direct the music to create a kind of harmony... I need to be able to listen to the children, to the setting, to the learning and ensure that all voices, all rhythms are being heard... not just by me, but by each other too, and also by the parents and society.

I have been reflecting on Play for Peace all year. I feel that using philosophy with children as a natural part of their play and learning gives them the tools to truly listen to each other which makes their play deeper and more meaningful... and also gives the ability to resolve their differences in respectful ways...

Of course children are children/people and things get heated sometimes... but the philosophy with children sessions also enable me as the educator to be better at listening to what is really going on, and to be able to intervene with questions and support, as a facilitator that allows the children to find the answers, rather than coming in as the "all-knowing adult".

I look forward to keep on evolving as an educator.

Professional Development of the Third Teacher. 3

Its been interesting to have been away from the preschool for a couple of weeks and to return to it again with eyes that have been exposed to settings in Canada.

I can very much see our "Swedishness" in the rooms. Which is a good thing. We should reflect our own context.

For me the biggest difference between the Canadian settings and my own setting is the fact the space is used differently in the sense that we have chosen not to have a room for each age group where each room is then divided into areas of rooms within rooms, but that the whole preschool is available to all the children, resulting in a large atelier, a large construction area etc... I feel in this way there is more space to play... especially for space to spread out the play on the floor.

On Monday we visited Ekudden preschool in Uppsala... this was my third visit, but the first time for my colleagues. It also has that Swedish feel... I have sat here paused for a while trying to work out what that means exactly... and realised that in Canada there seemed to be so much on the walls that was not about the children and their learning but all about HAVING to have that stuff there due to regulations. For me it was visual clutter... but of course they have no choice... this is their context.

Third teacher needs to give space for children's play.. like we as teachers 

need to be quiet for the voice of the child to be heard.

Due to sickness this post has been on hold for an extra week, which has meant that I have watched the third teacher interact with the children for a little longer and there have been further reflections... but it also means there is more distance between now and my visits to both Canada and Uppsala. Although the impact of these visits have not diminished in any way. BUT to sit here and write this post, without dipping into my notes from the visit... something I like to do... to let the most prominent memories step forward... I realise that SMELL had an enormous impact on me.

I think preschool's do tend to have a special sort of smell... all those children together... the smell of nappies, the smell of childhood, the smell of play, the smell of cleaning, the smell of food, the smell of activities...

Smell is an important part of our memory trigger... it is also an important part of belonging (social bonding)... after all each home has its own smell too... smell can trigger strong emotional responses - where it is not just a case of a smell being pleasant or unpleasant but the experience connected to a particular smell.

"The one trillion is probably an underestimation of the true number of smells we can detect, said Vosshall, because there are far more than 128 different types of odor molecules in the world. 

No longer should humans be considered poor smellers. In fact, new research suggests that your nose can outperform your eyes and ears, which can discriminate between several million colors and about half a million tones. “It’s time to give our sense of smell the recognition it deserves,” said Vosshall." brainfacts.org

 Over the years I have visited many preschools... some have stood out due to their smell... and I think if we are concerned about creating space for the children we also need to do this with smell... some places I have found the smell to be overpowering... it did not smell like children and play or food. Some places have not worked out how to deal with the nappy changing/potty/toileting situation so that the smell does not over-power the setting.... it simply smells of old nappies/daipers. For me that got in the way, and I can't imagine how that can be an acceptable odour to play in.

In other places they have used artificial smells to make the preschool smell better... for me this was overwhelming too... how are the children to make their connection to each other, through smell, to smell the wood of toys, or the waft of food coming form the kitchen. Sometimes that smell is so strong that it is overwhelming... but that can be just me too... smell is a very sensitive area... people wearing perfume are headache inducing, or can totally throw me off my game/my train of thoughts. But I am positive that I am not alone with my sensitivity with smell... and if we are subjecting strong smells into a preschool how are we making the space inclusive for everyone?

I enjoy adding odours to activities... creating fragrant play-doh, adding spices and scents to paint etc... but only to add odour to the activity... not to fill the room with smell, but to stimulate the more of our senses... so that there is space for the odour stimulation, but also space to move away from it.

Food smells can fill a room... baking is a wonderful smell (although I can understand that maybe for some even this could be connected with negative emotions)... but food is seldom a day long olfactory stimulation... it is there during the food making and the food eating.

Once my sense of smell has returned (after the children have shared their delightful snottiness with me)... I am keen to explore this more at my own setting... how can we enable scent to stimulate the children and their learning without overpowering them?

Here are a few photos and comments from the last few weeks...

the drawing/writing area has a board for the children to attach their work themselves. At the moment I am trying to wrap my head around how can we make this aesthetic as well as handing it over to the children... or do we learn to adapt a new aesthetic through the eyes of the children? That there is beauty in the randomness of how they put up their drawings? I will take images of this space regularly... do the children stop putting up images, do they rotate them... or do we as teachers need to help them out with this more actively?

the fairy house for Pommitt has taken a whole table... and often it looks like a jumble of things that are being re-arranged. Again there might be that need to step back and let the beauty of the children's construction re-new our idea of what is beautiful, but at them same time we need to keep an eye on how this space is allowing children to maintain their creativity. How easy is it to keep adding on and re-designing? Or should we tidy up and sort and let the build start afresh? This has now been here for 2 weeks, adapting slightly over time.

I am all for mess... I think it is not important to keep the preschool immaculate... there needs to be space for a creativity that is not tidy. BUT I do think that at the end of the day we should clean up... not only so that the space is inviting for the children the next day, but also for safety. Sometimes the floor can get slippery with sand, flour, beads etc on the floor.
This is something we have talked about as a team... and we also want the children to be a part of this... not to simply tidy up, but to be a part of the process of preparing the space for play for others...

A relationship with Reggio...

The word "relationship" popped up many times during my week here in Ontario...

a relationship with words
a relationship with the materials
the materials having relationship with each other
a relationship with colleagues
a relationship with the children
and of course a relationship with Reggio... coming to understand what it means for you and how it can be a part of your context.

I visited the "Wonder of Learning" exhibition at the beginning of the week... and of course I had a relationship with the exhibition itself, with the way Reggio was being shared, with the messages being shared etc...

My initial reaction was one of disappointment... this pedagogical philosophy with its hundred languages was not sharing with me in the languages which I communicate best in... my hands-on learning was not there... even the models which I sped and rushed towards as it reminded me of something I had seen in the MIT museum in Boston, which was very hands on, turned out to have a BIG "Do not touch" sign on it. This is the film I took in Boston last month... and I just have to share because I am still fascinated by it.... the model I saw also had wheels... but it was instead about positioning the model to reflect the light and creating a path of light from the outdoors into the indoors with a series of the machines with mirrors on...

The film will come at a later date... having problems at the moment with uploading... I will resolve this when back in Sweden!!!

I needed to spent time with the exhibition on my own at first... to interact with it o my own terms and to re-discover the messages being conveyed....

I found that it would have been good for someone to have "translated" a panel for me, so that I could better understand this language of communication... to have then gone on to interpret the rest of the panels on my own...

It was not clear to me at first that the information that said "3-5 years" was not a description of the fact the children in this project were 3-5 years old working together - which is a VERY probable way of working in my context, but referred to the fact that the children were three years old when they started the project and five years old when they finished... that these few panels (for each area) were selected points of learning from a two year project.

The panels were very much about the children's learning... and about the children... the educators sis not have a big focus... This got me thinking about equality... for me as a Reggio/Malaguzzi inspired educator it is about being co-researcher... we are partners children and educator together (and the parents an the material etc) - so the absence of the teacher in the panels felt like there was an inequality in the relationship as c-researcher. The children were given priority... and thus feeding the idea that we FOLLOW the child. Following the child, to me, means there is inequality... the child is the leader. I am not after this relationship with the children... I want to LISTEN to their ideas, I want to collaborate with them, research with them, discover with them, find theories together that we explore, that my input is valued as much as their input...
This brings me back to Hawkins "I, Thou, It" and the idea we are a triangle... with the educator, the child and the project/idea.  You can read more about this concept of Hawkins here (Hawkins Center). Its is a relationship - child, educator and project with equal status, equal potential and equal value. This idea of equality I want to return to in a later post...

As part of my learning journey I have studied several areas of learning... History, Classics, Ethnology, Sociology, Pedagogy, Epidemics, Museum Studies.... the latter gave me the chance to explore how people use exhibitions... of course I had a family/teacher bias to how I looked at this, but I found it interesting to see how panels were read by the general public...

I found panels with lots of text tended to overwhelm people, and often, even though they were interested found it hard to focus to read everything...
This was very much the case at "The Wonders of Learning" exhibition... so if you do plan to go, maybe think about going many times with the intent of exploring just one set of panels.

We develop a relationship with the panels... and of course the panels are somewhat of a monologue... which could mean you end up in some sort of isolation with your thoughts...
There is great benefit of visiting the exhibition together with others... I value my dialogues with Diane Kashin, Debi Keyte-Hartland and Cindy Green during my visit to the exhibition. It gave me the chance to take a new look, to see with their eyes... to listen to the panels with a new perspective.
This is a valuable relationship to have... friends and colleagues who support you to listen and see with a broader perspective... the gift of understanding deeper, more levels of complexity... or to give you that pedagogical somersault you never knew you needed (or was looking for).

The relationship with materials... what materials are we putting out for the children to interact with... why those materials? What is the intention?
Is there a tendency to put out a whole smörgåsbord of materials... or is time taken to think about the relationship the materials have with each other. Is there intent that the relationship is communicative... ie that the materials work together for children to explore... or maybe they are hostile towards each other and don't work well... and yet there is an intentionality with that thought too... for the children to explore ideas of non-collaboration. Sometimes less is more... especially when it is being thought out and materials are not just being placed there just because they are available. What materials are you putting close to each other? Are you presenting a material on its own... why... what materials could then further enhance the learning and wonder... in the image beloww there were agates on the light table... and further across the room a tower of perspex blocks... by moving the blocks closer to the agates there became a new wonder of seeing the agate through the block... new theories started to form about why things looked bigger and shifted within the block...

this is why we need to think about the materials we use... it is also why it is important we give ourselves time to play with the materials to make some of these discoveries ourselves

This relationship with materials and between materials is something I will no doubt be exploring more in the coming year as I research the Third Teacher in the context of our preschool...

Images to support #Rhythm2016

Links to previous posts....

conker robots
International Fairy Tea Party (2015)
The Best position for listening
Philosophy and pre-philosophy with preschoolers - this one actually has lots of links to other posts...


Other links
History of P4C (Philosophy for Children - Matthew Lipman)
Teaching Children Philosophy - on this website there are lots of children book suggestions with suggested questions to explore various ideas...
P4C UK
University of Washington, philosophy with children
Peter Worley. /Philosophy Foundation
Peter Worley TED Talk
Socratic Method (Critical Thinking Page)
Philosophising with Children... Socratic Method

Hope this gets you going... whether or not you were a part of #Rhythm2016 I hope there is somethig you can take from these images and these links...

I am NOT Reggio Inspired

The last few days have been rich in dialogue with Debi and Diane… exploring our ideas and our thoughts about the pedagogy of Reggio Emilia… and also how it seems to be perceived around the world… since we sit together as Sweden, UK and Canada we bring an international perspective to the dialogue.

I have now come to the conclusion that I am NOT Reggio inspired…

I have realised that I am Malaguzzi inspired…

This has been coming on slowly… I kind of discomfort with calling myself Reggio inspired - a feeling that it was not explaining my relationship with this pedagogical philosophy. As I am one of the admins of the Facebook group Reggio Emilia Approach, I often read descriptions of Reggio that do not reflect my relationship or understanding of this approach… and I feel I do not want to be defined by this either… That the definition of Reggio by others (and yes it should look different everywhere as it should reflect your context) is not something that I want to be defined by… especially this move that Reggio IS natural materials, that Reggio IS beautiful environments with neutral colours etc etc… as for me the approach can be so many things, and is so much more complex…

I want to return to Malaguzzi… to be inspired by this man who took inspiration from many to weave his pedagogical fabric… a fabric that was always shifting and changing to meet the needs of the children, teachers, parents, setting, time…. taking inspiration not just from the pedagogical world but from the whole world… from all sorts of experts… and non-experts, across a great diversity of academic fields…

Brain research has come leaps and bounds… we know and understand so much more about the developing brain than during the time of Malaguzzi… information I am sure he would have been eager to have incorporated into this approach to learning with children.

I am inspired by many.. Malaguzzi, Hawkins etc are obvious ones… but also my husband and all his knowledge in sleep research have expanded my understanding of children's need for sleep, rest and cognitive development and health… of course all the teachers I meet… in real life and online inspire me a great deal… my own childhood inspires me… remember what I liked, what I disliked, what got me all fired up…. these memories help me connect with the children… remembering how I felt as a child… connecting with my childhood allows another perspective of today's children.
Listening to Diane's husband talk about eyes… (this is his area of expertise) and how eyes are being damaged by early reading (requiring glasses)… as eyes were not designed to read… this makes me want to research more into more about the effects learning has on the biology of the child…

Of course I could go on and on here about all the sources of inspiration - but that is not the point of this post…

MY inspiration in Malaguzzi is the fact that there is a willingness to be open to all knowledge… to actively to look for more knowledge to better understand the knowledge you already possess or to send you into a pedagogical somersault… to force you to rediscover what learning is … what teaching is.
His passion for children… the respect… the desire to create something new, not by inventing the wheel but by recycling what already exists. His belief that children are competent and that we are co-researchers. His image of the child.

Having just read Roald Dahl's BFG recently to the children I have vivid memories of the BFG travelling to dreamland and collecting dreams… which he mixed up to create new dreams for (mainly) children. So now I have this image of a teacher collecting ideas - from research, from society, from colleagues, from parents from the children, from the world around us - and mixing them up to create new ideas for the children… with the children.

OK… I need to sleep… to dream…
and the rest of the week… this #Rhythm2016 … a possible "idealand" to collect ideas…?

Professional Development of the Third Teacher. 2

So  week has gone by…

Not so much to report really… as there have not been many children during the week to put things to the test… but the response of those that have been there has been very positive… the play has been rich and the materials have all been used in a wide variety of ways… we have noticed that the stories/books that have been read really influence how the children use the loose parts…

The red room… above… has had the addition of hama beads to the sensory table… and they have been popular… the children have created patterns, spent time feeling them and listening to them… also sorting them…

The use of lots of natural materials does mean that there is more "dirt" on the floor and table tops, but it is nothing too much to wipe/sweep clean at the end of the day…

I have found the children playing shops, playing kitchen with the loose parts… what would have traditionally been called the construction area… but by only having loose parts everywhere we have opened up the potential for all kinds of play to happen everywhere in the preschool… it is no longer one area for one kind of play and another area for other kinds of play…

This feels much more inclusive.

In the yellow room there has been the addition of boards on the wall for children to put their own art work… and also space for us to pin up inspiration.
The art shelf… this being mostly for drawing and writing… represents a little of a problem… it gets disorganised fast… so we might have to rethink this… do we want it beautiful all the time? What is beautiful… Is organised to me the same kind of organised for another? How can we make this art/writing shelf communicate with the children to make it accessible for all and easy for them to find the material/tools they need… or to inspire them to try something new…

There is the art studio with much more materials… so this is not a space for LOTS of things…
It will be something to think of during the month…

If this is the first post you are reading in the series, and you don't understand what I mean by red room and yellow room then I recommend that you read the first post in this series


Now I am in Toronto, Canada… and I won't get the chance to document the third teacher for the next two weeks… so I will be back with more when I get back to Sweden…

Professional Development of the Third Teacher. 1.

This is the very first post I will share of the journey our third teacher will make this year.

For a while now we have been thinking about the idea of taking everything away and just letting the children play with their imaginations… well now we have decided to do that… but we are not taking EVERYTHING away, but we are leaving a great deal more space for the children's imaginations.

What will be left are blocks, stones, sticks, fabrics, books and materials in the art studio…

The idea is that we will add on to what we offer slowly… and each time we add something to the shelves it is considered…

I read a lot of posts about the third teacher… and the beauty of how we present the third teacher is often discussed…

I believe in the 100 languages of children… which means we as teachers have a hundred languages, and  a hundred ways to listen… BUT this must also mean the environment has a hundred languages too… and beauty is ONLY ONE of them.

Over the years I also think beauty is not something we can just use as a description for how a setting should look… as we all have our different perception of what is beautiful… from place to place, culture to culture, from childhood to adulthood… I know my sense of what is beautiful is quite different now than what it was as a child… and yet we tend to set up preschools from an adult sense of beautiful…

What I wish for my Third Teacher this year is develop the other languages (not abandon beauty… I don't want to lose languages, only gain them)… I want the Third Teacher to say welcome, to say explore, to say play, to say feel included etc…
The problem is that is an environment can say these things they can also say not welcome, don't explore, don't play, feel excluded… and I need to find out what my Third teacher needs for professional development to use the right languages… for a diverse, inclusive environment where there are equal opportunities for EVERYONE.

So we will be examining materials we will bring into the environment to see if they are inclusive… that boys and girls feel included, that all races, cultures, languages, religions etc etc feel included and valued.

So after a week of stripping our preschool down to the minimum… this is how it looks…

the art studio. Images have been taken from an adult height as well as a child height, to be able to evaluate the difference… we need to be able to see the rooms through the eyes of the child.

The BLUE ROOM… our rooms are given colour names so that we can change the purpose of the room without confusion. Children will still know where to go regardless of whether the construction area has changed with the library…
At the moment the blue room is a room where we have big motor activities… the is room for running, dancing, climbing, jumping, and louder voices than in other rooms… bigger actions often come with bigger voices…

this is one of the entrances… 30 children hang their clothes here… we have a whole system during the day so that we do not have all thirty coming in and out at the same time. Chldren are dropped off between 6:30 and 9:00 in the morning and picked up between 14:00 and 18:00 in the afternoon so there is seldom crowding problems then. The silver/white cupboard to the left is the drying cupboard… so we can go out in all weathers…

this is the other entrance for 10-11 children
the premises are an old post office… so they are not designed as a preschool… this presents both challenges and opportunities

The green room… for water play… also were the very small toilet is, and also where the nappy changing area is. This is one of the least developed areas.

the orange room… at the moment this is where the very youngest members of the preschool start their day and also where they nap.
The whole preschool is available to ALL the children. The children are aged between 1 and 6 - this also presents challenges and opportunities… more about these in later posts…

The rainbow room… this is where we have our philosophy sessions with the children… it is also where we have our little "library" - we also have a public library right next door to us. This room is our quite room… it is a room where we expect the children to play quietly, to read… and this is so that all children know there is somewhere to go when they need a quiet moment during the day.

The Red Room… this is also where we have a kitchen area and the dishwashers… it is the most central part of the preschool.  Again you can see the difference between photos taken at adult height and photos taken at child height. We have just moved the construction materials from the yellow room into here… they were not being used so much in the yellow room, so we want to observe if there will be a difference by moving them.

The yellow room.
Roll-play is now moved to the left, with a hug mirror there… the writing/drawing table has been moved from the red room to the yellow room.
Before this room was one ENORMOUS room… without the white divider to create the art studio… the room said run… which since we already has a room for running felt like we were not providing enough diversity… the preschool should say more than run… even though I know children LOVE running!

So there it is… the preschool, not quite ready for the children but almost…
Next week there will be a post… and then there will be two weeks break as i will be in Canada meeting up with other ECE teachers - sharing knowledge and inspiring each other… so no doubt I will return from there with more ideas, more languages for my Third Teacher to learn…