CONVERSATION #1:

What is it that we want to make visible?-in the context of a community facing event

We as a group of Reggio-inspired educators, if we want to be more community facing what is it that we stand for?

-Our context is a community that isn’t really into that side of innovation-Baltimore. We want to be the school that can put something out there and be the example. We have lots of Jewish preschools surrounding us, and none of them are really aware of what Reggio is. The importance of learning with the child, what the teacher what’s the children to know verse what the kids want to know. Speak with them, not at them. Kids are capable of so much. Looking at them as people who are capable. Go in with the idea of why don’t we just try it and see where it goes. You can put wire in front of a two year old, and they can make something and use it. We want to shift the image of the child.

-What I understand about Reggio is that it’s a community that began following WWII that was to help repair and help. It could be interesting to bring that voice forward again. The purity and the honesty of childhood and the process of going through that repair. It could be very powerful to bring that back and visible. The joy piece. Going back to the basics, but in an innovative way. Taking out all the things that are pre-done for the children because they are able and capable. Let them get dirty and be in the mud. Get rid of that museum mentality of don’t touch. It’s ok to play and experience things. If they don’t experience it then they won’t internalize. You can be in a place to learn from it too as a teacher and watch, and listen. Things that they say are profound. We focus on what we want them to do instead of how they are doing it. Focus on the process. We struggle with peeling the onion as teachers. Instead of saying that we’re watching the children, and they were curious about this, and we were watching them think. I think I read somewhere that even Malaguzzi himself came out of that time after WWII wanting to treat childhood as precious and joyful again, instead of the preciousness and joy taken away during the war. The goal of this was to bring the joy of childhood back to the children and then they learned what children were so capable because they let them go.

-We always talk about the wonder and the curiosity. Just listening in a twos classroom, the ahhs and oohs over just drawing with chalk pastels on paper. It just gives you that true innocence. The child has the pastel all over his face, and they are experiencing it literally for the first time, uninhibited. If we let them do it, they are engaged and intrigued. That’s real childhood.

-We learn from them. Today we were doing some observational drawings of bugs, and a girl was frustrated because she couldn’t draw the wings the way she wanted, so I suggested that we trace the wings with our fingers to feel what we need to draw and she said she could feel the line and then felt as though she could draw it. We take away everything from when we bring in our expectations. Her face lit up and she was proud. They own it. It becomes a part of them.

-I tell them I never want to hear them say I can’t. You can say I don’t know how, I haven’t learned yet. There’s a power in showing the community what children are capable of. So if you really want to transform what people view of children, you have to put it out there.

5 Small-Group Conversations Exploring and Defining Community

January 17, 2018DCREA monthly meeting

-The theater curtain project in Italy. The children went through the process of creating it and documented. They have bikes in the subway created by the children. These are there city sculptures. This isn’t something that our culture has even touched upon. I think it’s doable.

-Our goal at school is a relationship project. We are connecting as classes with community members/businesses and doing a study of that experience. We’re documenting it and having it our school and then in the business because want people to see what children are capable of. In Italy they wanted to convince their politicians that they wanted to have the funding so they showed them just what children are capable of. They went into businesses and studied, for example there was a bakery and their recreation was an exact replica of all the pastries and then they were displayed in the cases in the bakery alongside the actual pastries and people in the community saw them.

-It’s most important to show the work from the kids’ perspective, through their eyes because people get stuck on well that’s because it worked for you in your school. The kids aren’t different in Italy. The way that we set our classrooms up and how we treat the children allows the children to be. It’s the way in which it’s being done needs to be shown. But, anything is possible. Explaining that it just doesn’t have to be in Italy, there are schools all over that are doing this and to see really what they are learning. Slowing down and being with an idea, a process, whatever it may be and really digging deeper. For example, we’re looking at lines and we’ve been studying lines for months. You can really take something and learn from the kids in a reciprocal relationship. What we are showing them, people at large, is that we’re respecting the kids.

So, what is the community?? You mentioned parents, politicians, kids.

-I don’t think there is a specific community. Everybody needs o hear it. There are parallels to be seen between any group. I find that I end up talking about the same things, really, when I’m talking to my boyfriend but in very different contexts (I’m in early childhood education and he is in network systems). The concepts are broad concepts, not just early childhood concepts.

-I wonder if it’s more of a space than a group. I wonder if there’s a central space that could send a message where many people would cross that path. It if there is something that could move and be a representation in many spaces. When I think about Reggio, I think about their piazza and that’s where they tend to display. Where in a city is a space that is commonly used. Could we do digital? The possibilities that we have that we never have with technology. Social media, technology, I don’t know a blog, or good ol’ television. Something most likely would be tangible, but then could it be sent out further.

-It would also be nice to have an opportunity for dialogue. Technology can help with that or having a showing and a discussion afterwards. But, because Reggio is so reflective, so we don’t want to leave out that reflection. It would almost be interesting to put something out into the community, except reflection, and then alter it.

-Like a case study. I don’t know what it is that everyone’s thinking, but if there was work done and then a place for others to add or change the piece. And then watch that change and alteration. It can keep on, never ending. For example, what if we put something out in a community about weaving or wire, but you put it out in different communities and then have a way to observe how those differ and are the same? Represents that community, but it would be from different perspectives. Looking at something from a different angle, but with a common thread. Someone’s going to do it one way, and another may never even think of it that way.

There’s not a right a wrong, but how are we getting there. You go in with an idea, but it takes a different direction, and you let the kids steer, and at the end you can look back at appreciate the unexpected.

-I’m thinking about those shipping containers that were part of an exhibit- where people could step inside and see someone from another part of the world. It was unsettling for some adults, but children loved it and were not hesitant at all. It would be cool to have something where children are sharing their perspective with people who haven’t seen it.Why are we doing this? Why does it matter?

-Because children are our future. We’re defending children. We take everything away by being like oh, they’re being loud so take my ipad. We inevitably take away innocence. Realizing what children can do, what they can be capable of, and how we’re robbing them of all these abilities because we don’t want to have to do something.

- It’s not always about not wanting to do something, it’s also taking away the fear that parents have. There is access to information constantly. You hear about children being kidnapped and while I’m calm, I think about this all the time. And I get that feeling inside, in here. You are petrified for children. You don’t want them to be outside by themselves. It’s hard to live in this world bombarded by information that makes you fearful. I have to consciously think and allow them to go to the park. What do you do if you’re scared all the time? That’s where the trauma is now. This information age has created very scared people. And then you add on to that the pressures in early childhood, which is based in fear too. Right now success is so measured by these skills, and college degrees, where we forget what is behind those skills are these questions, and that sense of wonder.

-And children become adults who make all their own decisions. We make so many decisions for them when they are young, then they turn an age and we’re like “Decide for yourself”.

-We want to build emotional resilience in children, to acknowledge that you will experience many emotions as humans, but that’s ok. That’s what will be important in their future.

Back to big group, big ideas from each group:

Alex: Focused on relationships, three aspects as we were thinking about some kind of event, an “EVENT” sounds too restricting, reword that- community dialogue, empathy and caring. Relationships are what make us human.

Olivia: Not jaded by all the fear in the worldMeredith: the Parents as community, helping others understand why we do this approach and advertising us and what we do to educate children

Brittany: The stories should be plural, global, before we go out to the community, we should solidify ourselves as a community- RETREAT

Delonna: One of the threads we thought of was the 100 languages, the foundation by which we build off- our values and identity

January 17, 2018

CONVERSATION #2:

In thinking about community, Jen recapped where we started when we were talking about this idea of a community “event” (for lack of a better word). How do we make visible our community? How do we start? What is the community?

A community has a specific identity and you have to go to the next step of what is an identity? What goes into making up an identity? Usually when you have an identity it’s based on shared values. You can’t begin conversation about an event unless we are able to decide what our identity is and what are our values?

Thinking of common threads, one is how we see children… our view of the child… learning as a group… the child has a voice, and we want to hear that voice.

One of the first questions that came up in September was “Whose community?” Is it defined geographically? The geography piece is spreading - What is it that is pulling them? There’s something greater than the fact that we’re so close that’s attracting them to come to our group.

It’s the philosophy - and professionals are looking for people who are asking “how do I get better in my profession?” Parents are looking for how do I do this parenting thing a little bit differently than I grew up with? And the kids are saying, “I like this voice I have.” Everyone comes to it differently in the process, but everyone is invested in the child and that’s where it starts. It’s all child-centered as far as why we are either professionally doing this, why as a parent I’m investing in this. Kids are valued in a unique way and they know they have a voice.

This is centered around the child, but I feel like I’ve gotten so much growth myself. My first thought was that it’s about the child, but in this very moment I realize “but how much I’ve grown myself!” So, how can we share that with other people – how parents, children, and the grown-ups in the classroom, the teachers, are all growing so much within this process. There is so much internal growth as well as watching the growth in the children.

You’re talking about the voice of the child, but you’re saying we can’t hear the voice of the child unless we have our voices. So this is also about our voices. When you have 80 voices as opposed to three voices that voice gets stronger so it’s a matter of the strength of the voices and numbers and people who are all reaching for the same thing. The strength of those multiplying voices, and thinking about the layers in Marc Bradford’s work, you can just pull a thread in one layer and see another layer right underneath of these growth experiences. Growth for the child, the adult educator, the parent.

If we take this back to the values, DCREA has very specific values. Because otherwise we could be any early childhood group. But we’re not any early childhood group.

Everybody who is here wants to be here. Professional development and child development, you can’t have one without the other. It’s important to have as much of it as possible because we never stop learning and we want to show that to kids too. We don’t know all the answers. I have lots of questions, I listen to other people who have questions. It’s part of a social process. This group for me fulfills all of those needs of learning and really getting into things like, who are we?When I was a child learning was not a social process. I see it every day and learning is a social process. I need to hear lots of perspectives and invite others into the process with me. This is really important – inviting other people to be a part of our learning with us and our exploring. Showing the nature of our learning as a group.

What is it that we want to invite people in to explore with us? Going back to our values. Reggio is the groundwork, it has its roots there. We do have the philosophy we all believe in, but it’s more how we use it here. It’s a foundation, but we’re trying to be our own, to figure out what it means to us as people who live in the DC Metro area – and how do we reflect the certain values that they reflect in Reggio, how are they different, how are they the same, how it is part of our culture as educators.

There is an essential set of core values that the RE system is based on. And those values inform how we approach children, how we talk to children, how we work with children, how children are facilitators of their learning. Those are values that spread out from there, like ripples in a pond. Reggio is where it originated. The ripples spread - there’s a branch in the water and that sends them in a different direction, and a pebble in the water, and it goes a new direction. We are the branches and the pebbles, and once those original ripples hit us, they get spread out in a different way based on who we are. We’re not here to “copycat” – this is who we are and this is our approach learning, and we were inspired by this approach that originated in RE.

100 languages is probably the foundation that our community is built upon. It allows us to think, whatever your experience, that a child could have a million ways to communicate. Introducing people or starting from there is a way to show people who we are and what our community is about. It’s the foundation by which all of this was built. When you go off of that foundation, we can make it our own in the DC area.

So we should make visible what 100 Languages actually means to us?That is the pivotal thing that changes the course of the conversation. There are lots of schools who do documentation or tangible pieces of the practice. But for us, it’s the conversations, the deeper thinking. That’s what distinguishes us. Our community has to form that idea and give it identity. Which comes back to Identity and values. There’s what should be made visible in the community. In our community, if this is a weaving and there’s a thread that goes between us, it’s the 100 Languages. That is where we started off in the fall. The 100 languages poem encapsulates where we are coming from. We are the people that believe this.

What would our intention be in making this visible? To spread the word! To share these values. They aren’t just values, they are also basic rights. We feel like it’s the right thing to do and is at the core of being educators and parents. What is the right thing to do? To listen to these people that have voices. That’s where we come in, we are making them visible. It’s important that everybody know that this is the standard we are setting for ourselves. Children deserve this way of being heard, and conversed with, and it’s bigger than just one. It’s a social process. Knowing that no matter what they do it’s okay and they have a voice that it is always heard. If more people really listened, these children would grow up confident adults that won’t question that children are valued and should be listened to.

They have a voice here, in our schools. One of the first things Loris Malaguzzi did was to take children to the public square, and make them visible.Today feels different, how children are not as visible in our community in that way. They are taken from place to place, there is fear..That sparked: What is the equivalent of a public square?The national mall; if there’s one place where so many sections of society cross, it’s the national mall. There is an expectation when you’re there, that you can voice your opinion freely. People come together as well, as their national community - that space naturally leads to “You are no longer hidden.”Monuments bring people to the mall. There should be a monument to the child.

The child does not have the voice we wish the child would have in a larger community. How do we bring that voice, multiply the strength of the voices?Bringing the parents and the kids to the process because they need to be a part of it. They invest in it. It’s one thing to professionally invest in it than to be a parent or kid. Parents have to make a decision about what they want for their child. The parents’ community is stronger than the professional community. Having them at the table at some point in the process is going to be invaluable. They can choose anything that reflects their values. Why choose this. What is it that draws you to it, what makes you stay? Or go? Somewhere in the process they need to be a part of it for it to be a community effort. To take it to the next level, they need to be a part of the conversation. They have the treasure box we need access to. You can guess why they do it. We need the research aspect. The children and parents are with us at every meeting, the silent partners, and the foundation of the work we do. We had a couple of parents that came when DCREA first started, it was open to all parents not just educators. The intention was to have parents be a part of this. They came in the beginning, but maybe they aged out. There are a lot of parents who really would like to see what this is about, how is it important to their child. Parents are a very large part of why we are able to do what we do.

One of the important things about this approach was hearing that this is about nurturing citizens. The children are citizens and these schools, this philosophy, we help boost the volume of their voices as citizens. Referring to notes from Reggio experiences – it is all about citizenship and community. Their focus is on “citizenship,” trying to prepare them for the road ahead as citizens. “One of the missions is to make politicians fall in love with the services in these schools, to make them understand that these services can alleviate and prevent future societal problems. The child is an individual but the child is now entering a community of others. To shift the parents’ focus to include an image of the child as part of a community.”So their focus is citizenship. When they go to Kindergarten, they will be citizens that can ask questions, care for others. Trying to prepare them for the road ahead, by becoming better citizens.This is so different from the experiences in school that many of us and other educators experienced, and also different from the experiences of many parents. To re-frame the conversation is really important – for educators and for parents. How do we help people connect to children in different ways? Control vs. this type of shared responsibility approach. Could we make visible our image of the child, in a society where children are often seen as cute or malleable - elevate the conversation and to be genuinely curious about children and their thoughts, their voices.This whole time I’ve been thinking about politics. It is so important to stress the importance of citizenship. “Teacher as researcher is a political choice.”

CONVERSATION #3:

We have been talking about community, one of the first things that we do now is talk about community, what is that? how can we define it? When we think about community what do we mean?

I was thinking about what Lisa said earlier about acceptance and trust and gaining entry into a community. I was moved by that. Just now, is it necessarily part of the definition of community, not always, but I think it is one important aspect, that feeling of belonging, in a deeper sort of way.

There is a common interest in communities, some more surface than others.

It makes me think of “group of people bound by something, can be positive, religion that they have in common, or experience, but it can also be something negative, whether they are craving for something to do together, fighting for something together, community of people who have all lost children, when a negative experience can drive a community together, but that idea of being bound together in some way.

A negative but with a good intention, getting together fighting for a cause.

A community gathered together pushed by circumstances. 

Sometimes you find yourself in, based on circumstances, not necessarily something that you seek out.

Interesting to think about children and communities, children are often part of communities because their families are part of geographic location, nothing that they chose. In schools, how can we support children in creating their own communities, can choose there.

How do we support them as they start questioning their communities they are born into? What does membership in that community mean? Children are very black and white, if part of this community, I can’t be part of that community.

Communities are like the circles of venn diagram, where you are in that center and all of these different portions are overlapping to you in that center point. What do you do when they contradict each other? They often do, right?

Something that was mentioned before, sometimes you feel like you are on the surface, without a link or connection, you don't have that same sort of sense of belonging. 

I think of a shared set of values, as casual as I’m a vegetarian and that might bring me into more connections in a community within a community. There’s a commonality in that being a vegetarian. Same as dog owner, values there, I can think of people with the passion about rescue, taking in animals from disaster. There’s a shared common value

for the safety of animals, for the care of animals, health. It could overlap, people who are passionate, but they don’t own a dog themselves so can’t be part of that community. 

There are sub communities within communities. 

In school there is always a community of the classroom and then others. Teachers of certain age link together and stay together, like infant teachers and then preschool teachers. 

The leadership of communities and communities that form around a leader, whether that leader rises or starts the community, thinking of communities that are more flat in terms of structure. School leaders in communities and how leader can have a lot of influence in both a positive and negative way.

Culture can help define a community that might be part of it. 

Do all communities have responsibilities? I don’t think so, some are very surface. Or maybe they do, they’re just not defined. If you are part of your community in your neighborhood, nobody says, hey we’re going to look out for each other, but you do anyway. You see what is going on.

Generational community, we grew up as gen x-ers. In my generation, the idea of you are passing on values to those communities below you, so maybe yes, but they’re not always very clear because the community itself is not always formally structured, they are not always clearly defined, you just intuit of what the goal of the community is.

I was thinking about the boundaries of a community and how they can be fluid. It made me think of the book “Bowling Alone”, about how the American’s culture has changed from being a culture of communities to being more individualistic culture. Even if you just focus in the individual family. Has it actually changed or are people just not aware that they are part of these communities. Maybe it is a problem. Maybe we are joiners. We are part of this community, DCREA. From a sociologist viewpoint is very interesting. Sense of alienation is driving it. 

We are in a “mind your own business” right now. See something and don't say anything. I think back in the day, going back to somebody being around somebody house, neighbor says hey, what are you doing? Now, we are more behind the scenes. We are afraid of being wrong or offending somebody else or taking a stand. Society has changed in what is accepting as being part of a community. It’s like there’s a line sometimes that you don't want to cross. There are unspoken norms and expectations. 

Prior, physical presence was a part of community, but now with technology, more connections. Now, we communicate more with online communities, more than physical people. What role does time and space have in creating communities? 

I think the anxiety everybody is feeling in the world right now, is partially due to the fact that they don't feel connections to those around them. 

What role physical space ties with communities?

At the same time, we have more ability and freedom to choose our communities. We may not have natural connections with people close by, incidental circumstantial connections to our physical communities and extended families but you have the ability to connect with people in distant places based on what car you drive or values and interests. Now, you have so many options.

Some are very negative, ISIS recruiting people all over the world, but that is a community.

A lot of people making a decision to form an identity because something about this community speaks to them. It’s fascinating that you can do that. Because you are doing it behind scenes, no physical connection, nobody else in your physical community can save you from that. Communities that are physical are usually connected somehow.

When we talked before about having rights and expectations, there might be communities where you can be born into them and be part of them and you can’t lose your membership very easily. There aren't responsibilities, you can be part of a family that loves you unconditionally. When at the same time, you reach out to an organization that is global and virtual where there are expectations and responsibilities and shared values. 

Maybe our communities are bigger than they used to be, more spread out. More complicated. Connected but not. 

With all that has been said, thinking about the idea of this project of doing this community event, which community or what community are we thinking when planning an event? Who is your audience?

It’s tricky, you can’t just say, all you people we are a community now. A lot of communities are organic. It’s tricky to have an event that arises. We would be a subset of whatever community is going to be part of this. How do you define that? Where are the boundaries? How is it formed? Can it be created, can exist for this event? 

When thinking about an event like that, how we as a community become a community that could be open and welcoming, I am thinking about our responsibility with education, we share a message and assuming that there’s sense of responsibility for that to work, It has to be trust and connection - thinking back to first meeting about our responsibility to education

Maybe come up with a list of the possibilities of which those communities could be

- Early childhood educators- Parents of young children

Maybe think about what is the story that we want to tell with this event?

Are we figuring out audience first and then tailoring audience?

Is this event one experience that exists on its own or is the beginning of a relationship or the start of a series? How the even connect the community or the audience of the event and our community?

What is the purpose? 

How do you experience community? For something like a conference that I’ve been to and it’s been this really big event and people are all over, I don’t necessarily feel part of that community, volumes of people ,and you are trying to listen and people are selling things. It’s almost overload, would have been better off in a smaller experience where i participated, we did something together versus being in the same space. NAEYC community - I would have never written that down. I don’t think of it as a community. How do you experience community? What is the relationship, is it a one time or another ring of people or another layer of community to experience together? Teaching, how are children experiencing concept of community. I only have this year with them, on this time frame. It made me think back about that experience of community.

It might help for us to think about what times we felt most a part of a community. What were those experiences that made us feel really connected to another group of people, and what are some commonalities between those? If the purpose of the event is community building. A lot of professional events I go to, it can maybe meaningful to me but I’m not connected to anyone else, or connect with them again. We are a professional community putting on that event.

I think that’s a great way to think about it, but it’s hard for me to think of a personal experience I've had where I have really felt a strong connection to that community immediately, it came over time. Graduate school, did I feel that way the first day? Or did it come over time? How do you achieve that without some preexisting relationship?

There has to be the personal buy-in or it remains a superficial level. 

Maybe there are people not like me, who can warm to a common interest or values immediately. I haven't had that experience. Part of that depends on your personality.

Communities often times are driven to come together because there is a need. Is there a need that we are sensing that is worthy of bringing all these people together? To address, to respond to?

There is a large need because right now, if you look at what is going on in traditional education. Need is to get out the word that our children are missing out on opportunities they need to have to survive in the world and what we are doing right now is not working for them.

I just thought of a time I felt part of a community right off bat, a political march with my children. I remember having this feeling of joining this group and we have a bond and a common enemy and shared interests and shared values and a sense of urgency and feeling that connection IT was the urgency and emotion that created that. That’s pretty rare. Maybe that’s it, people who feel that urgency.

That’s why we’re here. I remember having a conversation with a parent about changing school and the strong image of child.

Amazing how some people can pinpoint it and some who can spend whole time in a school and not see it until they leave.

Something that can help us to define which community or story I want to tell is finding what is the goal, purpose, or intention.

I like the question, what’s the story you want to tell? It’s important to make it plural, stronger to have more voices. What are the stories we are telling?

Did anyone have a gut idea or vision in your mind of what it would be? 

The only thing that I can come up with that would go for intention of what this group is, I have told this story of my 21 year old daughter many times who went through our program which was much less RE inspired, back in the day, how even into middle-school and high school, she would think back to her teachers in preschool and the opportunities she had to work in groups with materials and the freedom to create. She still reminisced on those kinds of things. Kids should have those opportunities to work and play and not be told. You have gifted and talented programs and they are still micro-managed to a point. You can only be as smart as your teacher. In Reggio you can be as smart as the group and make it together or experience it together. I have a child that’s verbalizing that she is being held back. There have to be other kids out there. 

We are raising children to be conformists and that is terrifying. 

As an administrator you see teacher has a problem that seems so simple and they look to everyone else because their education hasn't taught them how to figure that out. Education has taught them how to follow directions. Maybe, our audience are employers who are struggling. We are hearing this a lot across industries. We have a work force of people who don’t know how to do the basics of what Reggio teaches, problem-solving, multiples solutions, using your resources, working as a group to come up with a solution, all of those amazing things.

It’s fascinating when you think about it, not having those skills is not a problem until you finish school and go into the workforce, and everybody goes, what do you mean you don’t know how. They are stumped by it because they have never had the opportunity to take the risk

How confusing for young adult who has played by the rules and you lack the skills.

College educators and professors are now saying the same thing and are adjusting their teaching and the depth and independence which they are allowing their students. We should be going forward in our world, not backwards. Children today have the world at their fingertips, technology. Maybe there is another possible audience there, if you get people of industry to start to be the mouthpieces. Everything starts in preschool. It’s the most important foundation. We can only build that foundation so tall and after 12 years it can be torn down.

A little shift but I was thinking about the stories and our community and being a new member of this community this year myself. What work does our community have to do to get ready to have this event as a community? How do we built community? What experiences do we have to have to be able to present this event as a community?

I think you have to settle on your community first or audience unless you know what you want to make visible. Unless what you want to make visible and your audience falls into place. There are always more questions than answers.

In thinking about it that way makes what you said earlier important. What is the work we have to do understanding each other? What do we have in common? What are our shared and conflicting interests and points of view? I don’t feel like I know this community very well after a year and a half of meetings. It feels fairly disjointed. I don’t know what’s to be done about that? Happy hours? This has been great, but I feel like  I haven”t had too many opportunities to talk to other members of this group to understand each other.

I don’t know much about any of you as teachers, as people. That’s what makes that community very strong, that depth. IT’s these repeated ongoing relationships that create that depth of community.

Maybe we need to do a retreat.

There are all these subgroups, people who have worked or work at the same schools. I think this year we have more schools groups as members, before it was more individuals.CONVERSATION #4:

We have been talking about community, one of the first things that we do now is talk about community, what is that? how can we define it? When we think about community what do we mean?

I was thinking about what Lisa said earlier about acceptance and trust and gaining entry into a community. I was moved by that. Just now, is it necessarily part of the definition of community, not always, but I think it is one important aspect, that feeling of belonging, in a deeper sort of way.

There is a common interest in communities, some more surface than others.

It makes me think of “group of people bound by something, can be positive, religion that they have in common, or experience, but it can also be something negative, whether they are craving for something to do together, fighting for something together, community of people who have all lost children, when a negative experience can drive a community together, but that idea of being bound together in some way.

A negative but with a good intention, getting together fighting for a cause.

A community gathered together pushed by circumstances. 

Sometimes you find yourself in, based on circumstances, not necessarily something that you seek out.

Interesting to think about children and communities, children are often part of communities because their families are part of geographic location, nothing that they chose. In schools, how can we support children in creating their own communities, can choose there.

How do we support them as they start questioning their communities they are born into? What does membership in that community mean? Children are very black and white, if part of this community, I can’t be part of that community.

Communities are like the circles of venn diagram, where you are in that center and all of these different portions are overlapping to you in that center point. What do you do when they contradict each other? They often do, right?

Something that was mentioned before, sometimes you feel like you are on the surface, without a link or connection, you don't have that same sort of sense of belonging. 

I think of a shared set of values, as casual as I’m a vegetarian and that might bring me into more connections in a community within a community. There’s a commonality in that being a vegetarian. Same as dog owner, values there, I can think of people with the passion about rescue, taking in animals from disaster. There’s a shared common value for the safety of animals, for the care of animals, health. It could overlap, people who

are passionate, but they don’t own a dog themselves so can’t be part of that community. 

There are sub communities within communities. 

In school there is always a community of the classroom and then others. Teachers of certain age link together and stay together, like infant teachers and then preschool teachers. 

The leadership of communities and communities that form around a leader, whether that leader rises or starts the community, thinking of communities that are more flat in terms of structure. School leaders in communities and how leader can have a lot of influence in both a positive and negative way.

Culture can help define a community that might be part of it. 

Do all communities have responsibilities? I don’t think so, some are very surface. Or maybe they do, they’re just not defined. If you are part of your community in your neighborhood, nobody says, hey we’re going to look out for each other, but you do anyway. You see what is going on.

Generational community, we grew up as gen x-ers. In my generation, the idea of you are passing on values to those communities below you, so maybe yes, but they’re not always very clear because the community itself is not always formally structured, they are not always clearly defined, you just intuit of what the goal of the community is.

I was thinking about the boundaries of a community and how they can be fluid. It made me think of the book “Bowling Alone”, about how the American’s culture has changed from being a culture of communities to being more individualistic culture. Even if you just focus in the individual family. Has it actually changed or are people just not aware that they are part of these communities. Maybe it is a problem. Maybe we are joiners. We are part of this community, DCREA. From a sociologist viewpoint is very interesting. Sense of alienation is driving it. 

We are in a “mind your own business” right now. See something and don't say anything. I think back in the day, going back to somebody being around somebody house, neighbor says hey, what are you doing? Now, we are more behind the scenes. We are afraid of being wrong or offending somebody else or taking a stand. Society has changed in what is accepting as being part of a community. It’s like there’s a line sometimes that you don't want to cross. There are unspoken norms and expectations. 

Prior, physical presence was a part of community, but now with technology, more connections. Now, we communicate more with online communities, more than physical people. What role does time and space have in creating communities? 

I think the anxiety everybody is feeling in the world right now, is partially due to the fact that they don't feel connections to those around them. 

What role physical space ties with communities?

At the same time, we have more ability and freedom to choose our communities. We may not have natural connections with people close by, incidental circumstantial connections to our physical communities and extended families but you have the ability to connect with people in distant places based on what car you drive or values and interests. Now, you have so many options.

Some are very negative, ISIS recruiting people all over the world, but that is a community.

A lot of people making a decision to form an identity because something about this community speaks to them. It’s fascinating that you can do that. Because you are doing it behind scenes, no physical connection, nobody else in your physical community can save you from that. Communities that are physical are usually connected somehow.

When we talked before about having rights and expectations, there might be communities where you can be born into them and be part of them and you can’t lose your membership very easily. There aren't responsibilities, you can be part of a family that loves you unconditionally. When at the same time, you reach out to an organization that is global and virtual where there are expectations and responsibilities and shared values. 

Maybe our communities are bigger than they used to be, more spread out. More complicated. Connected but not. 

With all that has been said, thinking about the idea of this project of doing this community event, which community or what community are we thinking when planning an event? Who is your audience?

It’s tricky, you can’t just say, all you people we are a community now. A lot of communities are organic. It’s tricky to have an event that arises. We would be a subset of whatever community is going to be part of this. How do you define that? Where are the boundaries? How is it formed? Can it be created, can exist for this event? 

When thinking about an event like that, how we as a community become a community that could be open and welcoming, I am thinking about our responsibility with education, we share a message and assuming that there’s sense of responsibility for that to work, It has to be trust and connection - thinking back to first meeting about our responsibility to education

Maybe come up with a list of the possibilities of which those communities could be

- Early childhood educators- Parents of young children

Maybe think about what is the story that we want to tell with this event?

Are we figuring out audience first and then tailoring audience?

Is this event one experience that exists on its own or is the beginning of a relationship or the start of a series? How the even connect the community or the audience of the event and our community?

What is the purpose? 

How do you experience community? For something like a conference that I’ve been to and it’s been this really big event and people are all over, I don’t necessarily feel part of that community, volumes of people ,and you are trying to listen and people are selling things. It’s almost overload, would have been better off in a smaller experience where i participated, we did something together versus being in the same space. NAEYC community - I would have never written that down. I don’t think of it as a community. How do you experience community? What is the relationship, is it a one time or another ring of people or another layer of community to experience together? Teaching, how are children experiencing concept of community. I only have this year with them, on this time frame. It made me think back about that experience of community.

It might help for us to think about what times we felt most a part of a community. What were those experiences that made us feel really connected to another group of people, and what are some commonalities between those? If the purpose of the event is community building. A lot of professional events I go to, it can maybe meaningful to me but I’m not connected to anyone else, or connect with them again. We are a professional community putting on that event.

I think that’s a great way to think about it, but it’s hard for me to think of a personal experience I've had where I have really felt a strong connection to that community immediately, it came over time. Graduate school, did I feel that way the first day? Or did it come over time? How do you achieve that without some preexisting relationship?

There has to be the personal buy-in or it remains a superficial level. 

Maybe there are people not like me, who can warm to a common interest or values immediately. I haven't had that experience. Part of that depends on your personality.

Communities often times are driven to come together because there is a need. Is there a need that we are sensing that is worthy of bringing all these people together? To address, to respond to?

There is a large need because right now, if you look at what is going on in traditional education. Need is to get out the word that our children are missing out on opportunities they need to have to survive in the world and what we are doing right now is not working for them.

I just thought of a time I felt part of a community right off bat, a political march with my children. I remember having this feeling of joining this group and we have a bond and a common enemy and shared interests and shared values and a sense of urgency and feeling that connection IT was the urgency and emotion that created that. That’s pretty rare. Maybe that’s it, people who feel that urgency.

That’s why we’re here. I remember having a conversation with a parent about changing school and the strong image of child.

Amazing how some people can pinpoint it and some who can spend whole time in a school and not see it until they leave.

Something that can help us to define which community or story I want to tell is finding what is the goal, purpose, or intention.

I like the question, what’s the story you want to tell? It’s important to make it plural, stronger to have more voices. What are the stories we are telling?

Did anyone have a gut idea or vision in your mind of what it would be? 

The only thing that I can come up with that would go for intention of what this group is, I have told this story of my 21 year old daughter many times who went through our program which was much less RE inspired, back in the day, how even into middle-school and high school, she would think back to her teachers in preschool and the opportunities she had to work in groups with materials and the freedom to create. She still reminisced on those kinds of things. Kids should have those opportunities to work and play and not be told. You have gifted and talented programs and they are still micro-managed to a point. You can only be as smart as your teacher. In Reggio you can be as smart as the group and make it together or experience it together. I have a child that’s verbalizing that she is being held back. There have to be other kids out there. 

We are raising children to be conformists and that is terrifying. 

As an administrator you see teacher has a problem that seems so simple and they look to everyone else because their education hasn't taught them how to figure that out. Education has taught them how to follow directions. Maybe, our audience are employers who are struggling. We are hearing this a lot across industries. We have a work force of people who don’t know how to do the basics of what Reggio teaches, problem-solving, multiples solutions, using your resources, working as a group to come up with a solution, all of those amazing things.

It’s fascinating when you think about it, not having those skills is not a problem until you finish school and go into the workforce, and everybody goes, what do you mean you don’t know how. They are stumped by it because they have never had the opportunity to take the risk

How confusing for young adult who has played by the rules and you lack the skills.

College educators and professors are now saying the same thing and are adjusting their teaching and the depth and independence which they are allowing their students. We should be going forward in our world, not backwards. Children today have the world at their fingertips, technology. Maybe there is another possible audience there, if you get people of industry to start to be the mouthpieces. Everything starts in preschool. It’s the most important foundation. We can only build that foundation so tall and after 12 years it can be torn down.

A little shift but I was thinking about the stories and our community and being a new member of this community this year myself. What work does our community have to do to get ready to have this event as a community? How do we built community? What experiences do we have to have to be able to present this event as a community?

I think you have to settle on your community first or audience unless you know what you want to make visible. Unless what you want to make visible and your audience falls into place. There are always more questions than answers.

In thinking about it that way makes what you said earlier important. What is the work we have to do understanding each other? What do we have in common? What are our shared and conflicting interests and points of view? I don’t feel like I know this community very well after a year and a half of meetings. It feels fairly disjointed. I don’t know what’s to be done about that? Happy hours? This has been great, but I feel like  I haven”t had too many opportunities to talk to other members of this group to understand each other.

I don’t know much about any of you as teachers, as people. That’s what makes that community very strong, that depth. IT’s these repeated ongoing relationships that create that depth of community.

Maybe we need to do a retreat.

There are all these subgroups, people who have worked or work at the same schools. I think this year we have more schools groups as members, before it was more individuals.CONVERSATION #5:

Thinking in general - always in connection with the idea of an event/something public.

When we say community, what do we mean by that? What is the communitywe are talking about?Was there any discussion around this event -who is it for? The public?Educators? Parents? All of those things? Is that is what we are trying to figureout?That is what we are trying to figure out, we didn’t want to decide that, wewanted to have it have it to be a group conversation, and that’s the first thing Ithink people were afraid of-well, I live in MD, I live in PA, what’s mycommunity?Does this event include children? is this an ‘early childhood’ communityevent?What is the purpose? To educate? To introduce people to the type ofeducation that we take part in and feel is so important? Is it just to provide aspace to have the community (whatever that is) to interact in?Clearly all of us have similar threads through our thinking,and we have seena variety of schools out there that we walk into and we are like…my fear iswe all have a way of thinking about not only interacting with children butrelationships in general— I don’t want this to be a marketing campaign for“our community.”Who decides who gets to belong to a community?The question that Jennifer asked made us ask more questions.Chicken and egg situation — what do we mean by community? And whatstory do we want to tell?What is it that we want to do and why do we want to do it? To what effect?What’s the WHY behind whatever it is that we are doing .Do we want to create an experience? Or do we want to educate? You cancreate an experience around education but what is our message?What is our message? What COULD our message be as DCREA?I keep coming back to this idea of relationships. It’s so big, it relates toeverything we do, from the way we think about materials to people tocommunity and coming to these meetings, It is all about relationships.Why would we want to bring other people into our relationships?What aspect of it do we want to share?How do we want to present ourselves as a group?Event — it does not have to be an EVENT. It is a community “something” — It

can end up being an eventWhat about a community dialogue — that provides both, the ability to goback and forth, it can be an event but can be a statement, an exhibit, aninteractive something — can lend itself to being not just a one time thingWonders of Learning exhibit — an experience, educational, how manypeople went to that that hadn’t drunk the Kool-aid? Do we want somethinglarger that more people will have access to? Or something within thecommunity?What’s the purpose? What story do we want to tell?Give visibility to X but what is X?We won’t know what to do until we define that.“Hello! We are this group of diverse educators who come togetheraround….” What? Why should people care?Who is our audience?What’s the more global…what statement do we want to make abouteducation? Not just about this type of education, or education in this area,but as educators we have a larger purpose. As educators we have a largerpurpose. How big do we want it to be? What’s the scope?Where? — is this somewhere where people have to go? Or some placewhere people will be going already-a public place, a park?Is it okay for us to make a political statement? Will be isolate people? Is that abad thing?Who is our audience? Who do we want to speak to? Who do we want tohave a dialogue with?Low hanging fruit — children and families in the DMV areaSchool systemsEducators — educators who are already “indoctrinated” and those whoare not.The understanding and relevance of parents/caregivers. There are lots ofparents who are not involved in education. Especially as children get olderand are funneled into school systems where children move through it withoutmuch thought.Because some school systems are not educated in what we know is goodpractice, its important to inform and educate people in these systemsAre we thinking that we are sharing that we are all educators in the ReggioApproach?Reggio is the thing that brings us all back together — Do we have aresponsibility to explicitly say “Reggio”?

How do we give people an experience (meaningful) with what it means towork with children in this way?Focus on relationships — that as the core theme because that could bring inother people who are unfamiliar with the RE approach. Everyone wants tohave relationships with people and this is one way that you can haverelationships with your kids and with learners.So often when we do an event for parents its often social, this is anopportunity- what does that look like to say that we are having a dialoguethat’s focusing on relationships and not just modeling for the parent. Maybegiving the space for parents/caregivers to have a relationship basedexperiencewith their kids. Providing the space for that.If we are talking about a set of values that we have articulated aroundrelationships (which we haven’t!), if we are talking about a dialogue, that ison going, that could be multi-faceted, is part of that saying things like “hereare some guidelines for meaningful conversations with a 4 year old” Goingback to what can we give, what’s unique about us, and it’s that we have thisway of looking at children and relationships and perhaps we can provide anopportunity for parents, or to give parents information, or provide them a wayto further engage with their children, as well as the educational opportunity,a lot of parents don't have a whole lot of developmental psychologybackground—they know their kids but they don’t necessarily always knowmeaningful ways to engage, at least that’s feedback that we get.By focusing on just parents, are we losing things? People in our communitywho are neither parents nor caregivers. Do we think about politicians,community leaders, other educators not in our schools.Relationships are complicated!I’m looking at our list, a number of us put place —DC, Ingleside Ter— InReggio Emilia, the community is such a part of the schools its so tied andconnected. In general, that is not the case for many schools. Malaguzzialways wanted children to be seen in the community. I am not sure if wehave that where we are?When we think about children in the community it’s a one off experience.Children don’t necessarily have a deep relationship with the physical place,nor do the places have a relationship with children. How do we ensure thatthere is a genuine relationship with the community?Dialogue and Relationships — theme that we keep revisiting.

Bring these themes back to the story we want to tell. What do we want tomake visible? What can we demonstrate? Engage with? Talk about with otherpeople?What is the story we want to tell?Relationships are important — that’s the easy path!What is it about relationships that are important? —It defines who we are aspeople. As people relationships make us human. If we weren’t in relationshipwith other, with each other with the space, even our place…Another thing about relationships make us human—when you make aconcept that big, it is easier for people to relate to, have an opinion about, toconnect to, than thinking of it from the other perspective, the responsibility toeducate people about the type of education we think is important. easier forpeople to movie into, to have opinion about to feel confident in.Vea Vecchi — Art & Creativity in RE — empathy and care as the basis forquality relationships and beauty. We should reread the article. Chapter 2 ofVea’s book, Art and Creativity in RE. That seems like a really good place tostart.The other part of this year, the Hundred languages — gets to the point in adifferent way… when people see the RE approach, what you said gets to thepoint in a different way, when people see about the reggio approach theyoften only see the beauty they often don’t see that that comes from empathyand care and strong relationships. This suggestions brings out something lesssuperficial.The core of what we do is relationships.At another JCC, art hanging up and then a little thing with questions to haveconversations with children. Not saying that we can replicate…. Show howto have deeper relationships with children. A provocation or conversationstarter.Essential Question — Wiggins and McTye … they talk about how you have a

question and something very simple and then you can teach so many thingsfrom this one tiny thing. The why behind the what? Why are we teachingwhat we are teaching? Why do we teach the way that we teach?This reminds me of people who do those spray painting on the street … it is amoment to stop and engage differently with the world. Something like thatthat makes you want to stop and recalibrate. To be intentional in thatmoment.Disequilibrium — that’s when you can take your next step forward.Disequilibrium in relation to relationships. The idea of stopping and engagingdifferently with the world, that’s moving forward.I think about the politics right now. So many pieces that connect.We live in a country right now that is having really hard time holding that,empathy and care , which I think is an American value, with what ishappening in politics right now— and how that’s a message, politics havebrought out some interesting things in people.We are engaged in this process of building and maintaining relationships.Come and be present.If you have a good message, it means a lot, if you can communicate that, youcan change things.Everything that we experience in our community, if the message is good, theneverybody that we touch takes a piece of that.It is so important especially now (elem school don’t have a social curriculum)to show people the importance and the consequences of that —how ourchildren are different because they are taught this way.This shows the value of relationships in social emotional development.This is the stuff that makes them a person.