Welcome to My Classroom: A Day with K

A bit of the main garden with the playground hidden behind the mango trees

I got to spend the day with a healthy K for the first time in a while. Last week she was sick and we mostly read stories together and napped. Now that she is going to preschool three days a week, the majority of my work on the farm has centered around developing the preschool cooperative. Today, however, K and I spent a solid chunk of time together and most of it was out and about on the farm doing various chores and exploring the landscape. It occurred to me how unfair it is that not all kids have the freedom to self-direct their play in the way that K and I do, since the Reggio Approach is still so new to American education. We are lucky that K’s mom is familiar with and supports the approach’s idea of an emergent curriculum, where knowledge is acquired through interest-led interactions with the environment. We are also lucky that K lives in such a rich and enticing natural environment. The farm has added volumes to our curriculum, making it easy for me weave all sorts of academics into our play because the environment is so naturally stimulating and engaging.

Many critics of the Reggio Approach argue that left to their own direction, kids would never choose to pursue academic endeavors. While this might be initially true for older students who have never had the opportunity to direct their own learning, I can confidently say from experience that this is not the case for students whose education has supported their intellectual curiosities from the very beginning. Because I trust K to show me what she needs and wants to learn, and I trust my own ability to build a flexible and quality curriculum around my observations of her, I know she is always interested and motivated to learn. It is a different kind of teaching in the Reggio Approach and it takes some getting used to for sure, especially considering most of us grew up with traditional education programs. The benefits, however, for both K and I are well-worth the effort it took to transform my approach. Through an emergent curriculum we collaborate on projects more-or-less as equals, though we play our respective roles as teacher and student. We both spend our days learning, having fun together, building our relationship, and challenging one another to grow and roll with the continual ebb and flow of life. 

K and I love to observe the chickens pecking for bugs beneath the mango trees in their pen. We often bring them kale from the garden, peek in on them as they snuggle in to lay, and collect their delicious, fresh eggs, one of K's and my foods.

When I met up with K this morning, she was finishing up her breakfast, quickly stuffing the last few bites of omelette into her mouth when she saw me so that we could get to work. I asked her to please slow down so she didn’t choke on her food and reminded her that we had to wash hands and wipe down the table before moving on to drawing, which is how she decided she wanted to start the day. After taking care of our responsibilities we started to draw with colored pencils. K is all about mastering her fine motor skills and is drawn to just about any task that allows her to work on them, so drawing is a particularly appealing activity. I love creating art with K because when she is so focused on a task that we are able to carry on very natural and genuine conversations as we work on our projects alongside one another, sometimes collaborating, sometimes working individually. I was drawing a pattern with triangles and K asked how to draw one. I paused to show her, hand over-hand. She was more interested in circles and asked to draw those, so we practiced that shape as well. I told her that when I want to do something well, I practice it over and over again so that I can get better and make my shapes look more how I want them to. Then I drew five small circles in a row as she watched intently.

We worked on our art for nearly 30 minutes, K making circles and various lines while I worked on my triangle pattern. She had a color that I wanted to use and so we got in some sharing practice. She didn’t want to give me the red pencil so I politely asked if I could use it when she was all done, explaining that I could keep using the orange and yellow pencils until she was finished using the red. She agreed and after a few minutes she said “here you go” and handed me the pencil. I thanked her and started drawing my triangles and after watching me for a few moments she asked for the pencil back. I told her I needed to draw and color in a few more triangles and then I would return it to her. She continued using the orange, patiently waiting until I was done with the red. Among her scribbles, K noticed a pattern and pointed to her page saying, “mountain” to show me what she had drawn. “You did draw a mountain,” I remarked pointing at her drawing, “I see it right there.” K smiled. I smiled back. Then she asked to listen to “Apples and Banono’s” her current favorite (K prefers the Keith Urban version of this classic Raffi song). We danced around and did some yoga for the rest of the hour, read a few stories and then headed out to the garden.

By 9:15am, we had already worked art, literacy, music, and creative movement into our daily curriculum. We worked on fine motor skills, practiced personal responsibility, patience, and sharing, we got in a little exercise, and we worked on conversational skills, yet we were relaxed, had a great time and allowed our natural motivation and interest tell us when it was time to move onto the next activity. Sure my studies in education and human development have helped me understand children’s attention span for activities at different ages, but more importantly my ability to tune into and participate in K’s educational experience and learning style is what I rely on when we work together. I make our activities as interesting and enjoyable as possible to get the maximum educational benefit from each, but when K loses motivation to continue I follow her lead and we move onto the next activity that draws her in. It is a waste of both our time and energy for me to stick to a prescribed schedule because when she isn’t engaged, she isn’t learning anything except that my agenda is more important than hers and I do not respect her enough to think her capable of playing a role in her own learning process. That is not a message I want K, or any of my students to internalize.

I want K to trust her own instincts, listen to her physical, emotional, social, and intellectual needs. I want her to see how satisfying and meaningful learning can be and much fun she can have practicing her favorite skills and seeking out the answers to her many questions. So when K asked to take our adventures outdoors, I grabbed my water bottle and invited her to pick out a pair of shoes and hat. We started by heading up to the cherry tree to pick ourselves a delicious and healthy snack. We worked on our colors, identifying the darkest red ones because those are the ripest and most delicious. I explained that the darkest ones are the ones that have soaked in the most sun and are therefore the sweetest. “I got one!” K said when she found a dark cherry, holding it up to show me. Instead of telling her “good job,” I said with enthusiasm, “that one is dark, I found a dark one too,” I showed her mine and we both popped the sweet fruit into our mouths. Since I am partial to a Reggio-Inspired teaching style, my objective is not to evaluate her activities or judge her success, but rather to share and participate in her learning process, expose her to new experiences, and invite her to explore alternative possibilities and multiple perspectives.

Once K and I had our fill of cherries, I suggested we check on the tomatoes, since I harvested pounds of them over the weekend and knew there were a ton more that had since ripened. K loves the garden because it means she gets to work her fine motor skills in relation to food, two of her most favorite things right now. K loves to taste the garden, asking first for the name of each plant and then asking for a taste. I love walking through the garden with her because all that naming builds her vocabulary and all that tasting helps enrich her culinary experiences while adding depth to her knowledge and understanding of plant biology and agricultural sciences. Both the naming and the eating help her develop a pleasurable association with healthy food, a deeper connection with the natural world and the possibilities associated with a more self-sufficient lifestyle. Again we had the chance to practice selecting the best fruit for harvest and while just a few weeks ago K was regularly pulling the green “baby” tomatoes and tossing them on the ground, today she identified the reddest ones, pointing and checking to make sure it was a quality selection with a “see me pick it?” This is huge for K, who until very recently, loved to test her boundaries in the garden. She has learned that not all the food is for picking and that there are specific windows for optimal harvesting. I shared with her how impressed I was by the respect and responsibility she showed for the plants in the garden. She smiled.

When I reminded her that it is wasteful to eat only the insides of the tomatoes, K took care to eat the whole thing, rather than tossing it to the ground after a few nibbles. I happily offered her another tomato when she was done, which she gratefully accepted. Today K had my full trust as she perused the garden freely. She proved to me with her care and thoughtfulness, her patience, and restraint that she is ready for the responsibility of being a participatory member of the farm. She earned a notch in her gardener’s belt as we harvested tomatoes, vine-dried lima beans, and a watermelon radish the side of a soft-ball which we promptly and enthusiastically took back to my kitchen to prep and eat. I showed K the nail brush that I use scrub the root vegetables and her whole face beamed with her quiet excitement when I pulled a chair up to the sink and let her scrub to her hearts content. I narrated my actions as I carefully got out the chef’s knife and sliced up the radish, reminding her to keep her fingers safe and away from where I was cutting. K watched as the deep pink of the inner radish became more exposed with each cut. It was an enormous radish though, so I was at it for a while and she quickly lost interest. She was, however, not yet satisfied with her scrubbing work so she began to wash the few forks, spoons, and coffee cups in the sink. I really need to get on that play kitchen for K, I thought to myself as I watched her fall happily into the zone of sensory play and fine motor development.

We listened to Sam Cooke croon as we worked quietly, side-by-side, each deeply focusing on our task. I was practicing my best and safest knife skills, cognizant of how I was modeling this responsibility to K, who is always observing me (later that day I saw her replicating the “safe grip” I demonstrated as she “cut” her velcro play food). Once in awhile she asked for a slice of radish, reveling in its spicy crunch, and together we arranged a plate of the pretty pink and green veggies to offer up to our friends on the farm. K and I spent over two hours soaking up the sunshine and priceless lessons in agriculture, botany, culinary sciences, and biology. We took in a rainbow of sensory experiences, more personal and social responsibility development, and worked our fine motor skills as we twisted, picked, plucked, grabbed, and gripped the various shapes and textures across the farm. We shelled and collected an entire jar full of dried lima beans to store for soup on a rainy day in the future, fed the chickens some dried kale and admired the new baby duckling, observing how the mama protects and cares for her vulnerable little one.

When our time together came to a close, K was exhausted from all the adventures. We packed a ton of lessons in today and far more than usual, spanning a wide variety of subjects, yet we had a great time together without any conflict whatsoever. We had an amazing day together and my faith in the power of an emergent curriculum grew even stronger. Nothing about our day together was planned, except that K’s mom suggested last night that the lima beans were ready for picking. I mentioned it to K when I first arrived during breakfast but although she was interested in the idea, K elected to start our day inside. I didn’t pressure or try to persuade her, trusting that she’d let me know when she was ready to head out and tackle the job. When we stumbled upon the lima beans after feeding the chickens I asked her again if she was interested and this seeing the big green and brown pods hanging above her head was more than enough to entice her. K thoroughly enjoyed opening the crispy, dried pods and collecting the big white beans in the jar.

K and I allowed our interests and motivation to guide our curriculum in true Reggio fashion. It was a beautiful, exciting, and intellectually stimulating day. We did meaningful and enjoyable work, sometimes collaboratively and sometimes independently side-by-side. I don’t believe for one second that it is a coincidence this was one of our best days together. We were fully engaged in the process of learning and we were enjoying ourselves so much that time seemed to fly by. It is days like this that remind me why I love what I do and why I believe so passionately in the Reggio Approach as the most effective way to transform our struggling public school system. Though this approach was designed for early education, the philosophy applies beautifully to learning at any age and paves the way for self-directed, project based, and interdisciplinary learning. This is the kind of education that is meaningful, relevant, gratifying, and leaves teachers and students alike excited to get out of bed every morning and get to work. Just imagine for a moment a world in which this is the norm and perhaps you will understand my enthusiasm for the Reggio Approach.

Behind the Scenes: Developing a Reggio Preschool

The week before last, while K was away with her friends, I got to start designing in earnest the curriculum for the farm preschool cooperative. Heather, K’s mom, came up with 3 core areas of focus for the curriculum outlining what she wanted the kids in her program to learn and emailed it to me. I had previously been working on a document spelling out the features of the Reggio Approach and how to set up a program that embodied this philosophy. While this is bound to be a helpful in training teachers and parents, I needed to understand what Heather wanted out of this program before I could really get down into the details of curriculum design. Her outline gave me exactly what I needed and the past two weeks have left me exploding with inspiration and excitement. So this week I’ve decided to let you in on what’s been keeping me busy here on the farm when I am not with K. Aside from all the crafting that is. 

Painting alphabet stones, capital letters on one side and lower-case on the other, K loves picking a stone and listing off words that start with the sound her chosen letter makes. Knowing I made them invites her to think about what she could make too.

Curriculum design is my favorite part of working in education. I love it. Researching and developing interesting and engaging learning materials, contemplating the various facets of child development and figuring out how to best support student growth is what puts me in my element, as Ken Robinson would say. I could (and often do) spend hours and hours on Pinterest and Google stocking up on ideas for designing quality classrooms that promote powerful and enjoyable learning experiences for both students and teachers. I love reading articles and books on the subject and talking about it with anyone who will listen. This week, while Heather and K have family in town, I get the chance to pull my knowledge and experience together and build a program from the ground up. Now that the foundation work is done, fleshing out the philosophy, mission statement, and approach, and identifying the core focus areas upon which the curriculum will build, I get dive into the nuts and bolts of how to actually support each child’s development in the areas Heather identified.

Now, when I say that I am designing a curriculum, I mean not that I am mapping out every learning experience, experiment, and lesson that these kids will take part in throughout their many days at school. Rather, I mean that I am researching and pulling together resources to design a well-rounded classroom environment that offers students opportunities to develop their skills in the areas that interest them most. In a Reggio-Inspired program, the classrooms themselves are a crucial teaching tool, filled with engaging materials and tools to explore them with so that no matter where each student's curiosity takes him/her a valuable learning experience is bound to take place. So what I am doing is taking the concepts within each of the three core focus areas Heather outlined and finding as many materials and resources as possible that will help support learning and growth in these ares. Then once the classroom is complete, students will have the chance to explore their environment and engage with the materials and activities that speak them as they are inspired to do so. While this is happening, the Reggio teacher observes and collaborates with students and continues to develop new ways to compliment each student's learning by bringing in new resources and activities to build on their existing knowledge and skills. 

Notice all the different learning stations, the purposeful design and careful organization, and the supportive and welcoming atmosphere of this space that just begs to be explored at Bear Park preschool in New Zealand

Each program is unique because the core areas of focus depend on the values of the community and each classroom is designed with it's particular inhabitants in mind. Here I will share the backbone of the curriculum I am designing here on the farm with Heather. She chose three areas of focus that she thought were most important and together we identified the core concepts within these three. The core focus areas are not the lessons the kids will learn, but more like the context or frame in which learning opportunities are presented. Always, however, it is the children who create their own educational experiences, we teachers and administrators simply cultivate a community and classroom through which to support each students' individual learning style and educational pursuits. For the farm preschool cooperative, this is how the curriculum is beginning to take shape:

The first core curriculum focus is on Social & Personal Responsibility. This covers interpersonal skills, mindfulness, self-awareness, empathy and altruism, civic engagement, community service, self-care and caring for others, and other social and emotional skills. Many schools pay very little attention to development in these areas, either valuing it less than the more “academic” skills or assuming that it is the parents’ job to instill values in their children. First of all, there are tons of academic fields devoted to studying these topics and tons of studies demonstrating the importance of developing social and emotional skills from the very beginning of childhood. Second, kids spend almost as much time (sometimes more) with teachers and peers than they do with their parents, especially with so many single parents working extra just to get the bills paid. It is more important than ever for schools to teach these things. To help organize ideas on how to address this core focus of the curriculum and teach the concepts listed above, I have created a new board on Pinterest called, CoreCurriculum: Social & Personal Responsibility. Check it out for inspiration and resources on incorporating social and emotional development in the classroom.

To satisfy her desire to make the world a better place, Miss Rumphius planted flowers all over her neighborhood, this story leads to beautiful and inspiring conversations of how each one of us can help make the world a better place.

 The second core focus is on Agriculture & Sustainability. Being situated on a farm in an agricultural community, it made sense to use agriculture as a means of gathering knowledge about the world and how it works. As far as sustainability goes, Heather and I both recognize that the children of the next generations are not going to be able to rely on the fossil fuels that supported our generation. By helping these kids see our growing world through a lens of sustainability, we aim to prepare them for the future they are likely to inherit. To protect our earth and it’s resources, it is never too early for kids to begin seeking out more creative and sustainable sources of energy and development, not to mention the many intangible rewards of leading a more sustainable lifestyle. Topics making up the bulk of this core focus include the food cycle, the healing power and nutritional benefits of food, ecology, biomimicry, building and design, recycling, self-sufficiency skills, problem-solving, natural and environmental sciences, cooking, harnessing the earth’s natural resources, living in harmony with rather than in opposition to the plant and animal species, and many more. Resources and inspiration for integrating these concepts into the curriculum can be found on my new Pinterest board called Core Curriculum: Agriculture& Sustainability. It is our hope that looking at the world from this perspective will help these kids be prepared to successfully tackle the challenges that lie in wait.

I showed her the new eggplant and now every day K wants to go out to the garden and check its growth. I shared my interest with her, knowing her love of food, her interest is piqued. Now we have countless opportunities to learn about how plants grow, why we cultivate our garden, all the while deepening her respect for the earth that feeds us, and the cycle of life.

The third and final core focus for the farm preschool cooperative is Creativity & the Arts. Problem-solving, innovation, and critical thinking are all highly related to creativity and unfortunately in most public schools, the arts are the first programs to be cut. Art, be it painting, sculpting, dance, interior design, architecture, cake decorating, flower arranging, scrap booking, landscaping, poetry and song writing, acting, and everything else, is a way for people to creatively express their ideas, experiences, and emotions. Art is an engaging and enjoyable way for students to explore every academic inquiry and topic out there. How better to learn the human skeletal structure than to accurately draw or sculpt it, or understand the concepts of geometry by drawing and designing a tree-house and then actually building it? The arts invite students to engage in the creative process, teaching them new ways of thinking and to see the world from multiple perspectives. Art allows students to develop a number of skills and is often the saving grace for many students who struggle to learn via lecture and instruction and would otherwise flounder in traditional programs. For ideas on how to facilitate creativity and the arts in the classroom, check out my new Pinterest board, Core Curriculum: Creativity & the Arts.

Blocks of all shapes and sizes are an excellent way for kids to develop creativity and put their imaginations to work. Not only are the planning and design beneficial and stretch their artistic muscles, but the play that resulting from their creations allows children to try on different roles and work through problems as they speak and act for the characters in their games.

You probably noticed that there are a lot of traditional academic subjects missing from this curriculum. They are there, just not in the way most of us are used to. Rather than separating subjects like history, literacy, math, and others, our curriculum addresses these subjects through the lens of the three core focus areas. For example, exploration of the food we eat lends itself perfectly to talking about the social and cultural aspects of culinary traditions. As students learn to prepare different foods together, they will find out where different kinds of foods grow, how other cultures cook, why they eat the food they do, what the terrain is like, why communities settled where they did, etc. The subjects not listed directly in the core areas are addressed within the context of projects that are born from the core concepts. This is how learning happens in emergent and project-based classrooms, through interdisciplinary projects collaboratively designed between students and teachers that emerge organically from the interests and questions of the students themselves.

This is how learning happens outside of school, and in Reggio-Inspired programs, this is also how it happens within schools. This is why I love the Reggio Approach; learning is synonymous with play, excitement, and adventure, not tests, lectures and boredom. Students follow their innate intellectual curiosities while teachers ask them about their ideas, theories, and hypotheses. Teachers listen to their students and support their interests and pull other students in who have complimentary interests and skills to collaborate as a group to deepen and broaden everyone’s understanding of the concepts being explored. All topics become mysteries that need solving and each child gets the chance to investigate those they are most drawn to alongside peers who are all doing the same. Teachers, in these self-directed classrooms, weave their way between individuals and groups observing, listening, posing new questions and offering different perspectives, joining in their efforts, and continually seek out new ideas to share with their kids. Not only this, but teachers are allowed to be students themselves, not the sole proprietors of information. Alongside their students these teachers pursue the topics that most interest them, modeling how to learn and sharing their enthusiasm with curious students. Together, in a community of equals joined by their desire to learn, knowledge is constructed and celebrated.

Free to Learn and Play

Last week I discovered “The Independent Project,” and it has been consuming my thoughts ever since. I’ll let you watch the video for yourself, but in case you choose not to, I’ll summarize. Students at a high school in Massachusetts wanted to play a larger role in their education and so they created a semester-long self-directed study program. Each week began with a topical question and the students spent the week delving into the issues that interested them presenting what they learned to the group each Friday. They also tackled a larger independent pursuit as well as a group service project based on the needs and problems within their community. Since my time in the Interdisciplinary Master’s of Education program at the University of Vermont, formatted as self-directed study, I have been an advocate for this kind of education. I have practically been jumping out of my skin with excitement since I came across this video last week. The potential this project has to transform education is so enormous that I couldn’t not share it with you.

My work here with K is fully emergent, and though my work at Bella Mente was supposed to be, I was still learning how to employ the idea and struggled to fully understand it while at the same time negotiating the needs of the 18 children in our classroom. My curriculum with K emerges based on her developmental needs and personal interests and I’m finding that with only one child to focus on, I am gaining the mastery over this method that I previously lacked. I hardly do any advanced planning these days, except when it comes to the resource development projects I do during my independent work time here on the farm. While my project time has greatly increased from my days at the preschool, I use it in a very different way. I used to think of planning time by looking ahead, trying to guess at what the kids might take an interest in to keep us moving forward. Now, I use this time to reflect on what K is already working on and how I can add more depth to her play in the areas she shows me she is interested in developing.

Instead of trying to get her interested in the activities I came up with, as I used to, I now let her take the lead completely and play right along with her, taking mental notes on what materials and activities she likes best and how she prefers to develop her skills. During my planning time, I reflect on how we spent our time together and develop new resources and ideas for her to further develop the skills she had been working on. The chalkboard table I painted for K a few weeks ago was a project born out of her desire to draw directly on her nicely finished wood art table. She showed me her need, to stretch and develop her fine motor skills and artistry without the limits of just crayon and paper. I found a way to meet the needs she was communicating through her action without forbidding her from engaging in a behavior that has both developmental benefits and brings her great pleasure. She now uses the chalk table every single day and has since stopped coloring on her other art table, the one she knows she’s not supposed to draw on. It's a win-win. 

When K was struggling with her desire to pull the tomatillos prematurely from the plant, I brought her over to the pigeon pea bush where it didn’t matter how many peas she plucked, allowing her to productively exercise her fine motor skills and her desire to pinch, pluck, peel, squeeze, manipulate, and eventually eat a green vegetable all on her own. A week later we revisited the tomatillos and successfully filled a bucket with only the ripe and ready-to-be-picked fruit. She just wanted practice manipulating smaller objects and to her it didn’t matter that they were not ripe, she saw me preventing her from practicing a skill she felt was important. In this way, K shows me her needs and I make it my job to figure out the most fun and productive way for her to work on her preferred skills safely and within our set boundaries.

This is how our curriculum emerges; we are partners in its creation. K leads the way and I follow with observations, options and challenges to help her develop the skills that she has determined, consciously or not, that she is interested in working on. K is a very sensory-driven learner. The activities that appeal most to her are the ones that involve manipulating objects with her hands, putting things in her mouth, testing smells, listening to the sounds around her, and repeating what she hears. I know this about K because in order to develop our emergent curriculum, I have to constantly observe and reflect. I watch to see what she is drawn to, what catches and holds her attention, how she goes about gathering information, and what methods she most easily uses to successfully solve problems. I notice this about K not just because of my background in personality studies, but because following an emergent curriculum requires me to do so, though understanding the functions of personality according Myers-Briggs makes my job markedly easier. 

Click here for the source of this chart and check out The Myers Brigg Foundation to learn more

If I was pre-planning activities and materials for K, deciding without her what she should learn, then teaching it to her, I would spend so much time talking that I would likely never pick up on all of the nuances of her personality and learning style. We would both likely end up significantly more frustrated and with a far more strained relationship, devoid of much of the fun we have together. Clearly lecture style education is not appropriate for a nearly two year old, but K is a hands-on experience driven learner, lecture is never going to be the most successful way to hold her attention or interest, regardless of age. Through our play together, K expertly guides me toward a curriculum that meets her needs, and keeps her both happy and engaged. She is constantly learning and developing her skills at an optimal pace, making sure she gets the very most out of every experience. If she is capable of doing this before she is even two years old, why would this capacity diminish as she hits elementary school, middle school, high school and beyond?

Kohn's a critical voice in education reform

America’s public education system does not view children as capable or responsible enough to play an active role in what and how they learn. Rather, they are viewed as empty vessels waiting for adults to pour in whatever information they see fit. This model has little regard for students’ interests, personalities, and learning styles, let alone the problems that are most relevant in their communities. We know that all children are unique, we tell them all the time in an attempt to raise self-esteem, yet we contradict ourselves by forcing them to conform to a model of learning that was designed to produce obedient, faceless factory workers who all think and act alike. Sure, this form of standardized education makes it easier to test and rate our children but that doesn’t mean it measures the most important things. I was a terrible test taker; judged by my scores alone you would never know the extent of my skills, knowledge, motivation and love of learning. All standardization has done for our students (and thus our society as a whole) is to teach kids that school is boring and irrelevant, while at the same time making skilled teachers hate their jobs and burn out at alarming rates. How is this helpful?

I have often heard worried and skeptical parents wonder “given the choice, wouldn’t most students pick nothing but recess and snack?” I’ve worked with plenty of “difficult” kids who spend their free time reading books, tending a garden, or memorizing the names and favorite foods of every dinosaur that ever existed. These kids do this because all human beings have an innate desire to learn. So what quashes this quality that helped human beings evolve from apes into who we are today? There are likely many reasons for this but I’m willing to bet that students’ lack of a voice in the process of learning is at or near the top of the list. Students often stop or ignore the pursuit of their natural interests because our current model of education forces them to. Some students give up and suffer through school only to get out and have no idea what they are good at or even interested in. Other times students give up on school entirely, believing it irrelevant and pursue their interests anyway, but without the diplomas they usually end up just as disadvantaged.

I love the Reggio Approach because rather than a “teaching to” style of education, it embraces the ideas of “learning with,” which to me makes so much more sense. An emergent curriculum, which is essentially the precursor of the self-directed study detailed in The Independent Project, invites students to play and active rather than passive role in their education so they develop an inborn love of learning. If students are able to continue in this way, they will never reach the point of mental exhaustion and boredom that leads to recess being the only time they get to have fun at school. Following most current public school curricula, recess is one of the few times during the day when students have complete control over how they spend their time. Instead of seeing their learning as fun, it becomes something they need to escape from. In this approach, recess is the reward for suffering through something that is not enjoyable, perpetuating the myth that learning is in opposition to fun.

K worked at it all week and can now lift herself up on the swing!

In an emergent curriculum, play is acknowledged not only as a necessary component of learning, but the primary means for understanding the world. Interest is what motivates human beings to keep learning and honing our skills. Whether it’s Einstein playing with the ideas of physics to postulate the Theory of Relativity, or Gillian Lynne playing with the movements of her body that led to the choreography of the Broadway classic Cats, play is a crucial part of the process. When I am with K, I let her show me how she likes to play and from there we build our curriculum together. Right now she is most interested in learning to master her physical skills so we spend our time together climbing, swinging, jumping, stretching, and manipulating all kinds of materials in all kinds of new ways. After she has worked her body as much as it can handle, she tells me so and we shift gears. K is also interested in expanding her vocabulary and learning the power of her own voice so we read, sing, talk, rhyme, count, shout and write together. At some point each day K gets hungry and asks me for some blueberries, her current favorite, so we stop for a snack before heading back out for more play. Through our emergent curriculum, K is challenging herself every day and surprising both of us with her rapidly increasing capability.

If a student as young and fiercely independent as K is already capable self-directed study, it seems crazy to me that post-preschool students not be afforded the same right to have a say in what and how they learn. After all, aren’t we each an expert when it comes to ourselves? No one knows better than I do that I learn best when information comes in the form of a story. Though I struggled through and never enjoyed math and science in school, I have picked up countless biology and agriculture lessons from the farm narratives I love to read, and I got my only A in a math class when my high school geometry teacher started each lesson with the story of the philosopher who postulated the theory in question. When framed in a compelling narrative, I could learn almost anything and do so willingly all the time. But K prefers to experience things first-hand, trusting her own senses to teach her about how the world works, her imagination is not the effective learning tool that it always has been for me. We see and interact with the world differently.

An emergent curriculum leaves room for both K and I to learn in the way that is most effective for each of us, while at the same time allowing us to see the world through one another’s eyes. This approach to teaching and learning does not require a separate curriculum for each student, rather it invites all kinds of learners to come together, share ideas, experiences, questions, and perspectives to create a more complete understanding of each topic. In the Independent Project, students pursued the aspects of a problem or topic that most interested them and studied it for the week with the goal of sharing what they learned in a way that would engage and interest their fellow students. Each student walked away from the week with a general knowledge of whatever subject was being explored as well as a deeper understanding of one piece of the puzzle. Isn’t this the very same outcome most teachers hope for when they design their curriculum? The only difference is that in a self-directed study, the students do the design work. This frees teachers to engage and connect with their students, listen to their ideas and ask thought provoking questions, and offer the individual support that every teacher wants to provide but simply doesn’t have the time or energy to give.

More resources like this on my Pinterest page

I can’t speak for all teachers, but for me, and many teachers I have worked with, the passion to teach comes from a love of learning and sharing information with others so that we all can realize our true potential. An emergent curriculum is equally more enjoyable for me as it has been for those I have had the privilege of teaching. I have learned more about math and science and art and literacy from engaging in study alongside my students than I could have imagined and I loved the learning process more than I ever did when I was the student being taught at in grade school. My enthusiasm for learning does not go unnoticed by my students, either. When they see me so genuinely engaged in how the diet of a chicken effects the hue and nutritional content of its eggs yolks, that information gets planted deeper in their memories and leaves them wondering what else might be effected in a similar way, or even just about cause and effect in general. The intense passion I model in the process of engaging with them on a subject that deeply interests me shows them the joy in learning new things and seeking out knowledge. This desire to learn and the know-how to make it happen are the most important things I, or any teacher, could possibly hope to pass on to the next generation and this is the foundation of what I hope to teach K in the short time I am here with her.