Lighting a Fire


First graders went on an “insect safari” at


the beginning of the school year, and the students used sticks and leaves to create natural environments for bugs. The children


came up with the idea of “winged wonders” and drew pictures of


them and each made a winged wonder out of clay. As they


played with them, they created stories that


they then wrote down. The Italian teachers


in Reggio Emilia were influenced by the


work of prominent educators and


scientists John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Jean Piaget, and Lev Vgotsky.


W REGGIO EMILIA


hen the Italian town of Reggio Emilia was liberated from the Nazi occupation at the end of


World War II, teachers and parents needed to re-create their schools. In reaction against the mass indoctrination techniques of the recent Nazi and Italian fascist regimes, the townspeople instead wanted to raise their children to think independently and find out for themselves what is true. With many of the men having died in the war, the grandmothers and young women of the town began creating the schools from the tattered remains of their war-torn village. They started with the premise that children


are capable learners who arrive at school with experiences, interests, and abilities. In contrast to educational philosophies that view a child as a blank slate, they believed children are


4 OES MAGAZINE WINTER 2013 4


capable of observing the world around them and investigating what interests them. The teacher is there to inspire students, to lead them deeper into their interests, and to collaborate with them in learning about the world.


“ Education is not filling a bucket, but


lighting a fire.” —Plutarch, Greek philosopher


The educational ideas developed by the teachers


and parents in Reggio have spread around the world and over the years have found their way into OES, first in the Beginning School and now filtering into the early grades. The Reggio approach meshes well with the inquiry-based program at OES and the dedication to individual attention in small classes. To that mix, Reggio adds a commitment to developing lessons around investigations initiated by students.


USING THE REGGIO EMILIA APPROACH, TEACHERS EXPLORE WITH STUDENTS


I T A L Y


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