The Reggio Emilia Approach - Inspiring to Understand, Challenging to Embody

Often times during the continuing education class I teach around the Reggio Emilia Approach, my students are inspired by the strong image of children and all the engaging work they can do with their community.

And then, there comes that moment. That moment of, but what do I do next? How will this work for me? How will I keep this going?

I've never done a survey of what my students end up doing, but my guess is that unless one is working in a very supportive in environment, many of my students struggle to implement the Reggio Emilia Approach in their context. Why is this?

Here are two main challenges to implementing the Reggio Emilia Approach:

1. Struggling to find the time and space to slow down and sit with documentation, values, and plan next steps.

2. Having a hard time sitting with the ambiguity of not knowing what the curriculum will look like well ahead of time.

Each challenge is less so when you are surrounded by support (e.g. time set aside to sit with documentation during the day). So what do you do when you do not have the organizational support that you would want, but strongly believe in implementing the approach anyway?

In terms of challenge number 1, a surprisingly effective way to confront it is to lower one's expectations of how much to accomplish, and focus on doing the process of:

1. Sitting down with documentation

2. Talking about it (with yourself or others)

3. Deciding what it might mean

4. Defining next steps.

In other words, embrace the slowness.

The above could be a conversation, with some notes jotted down. It doesn't have to be extensively written down. What's most important is simply engaging with the steps. Whether you do it over 10 minutes or 30 minutes matters less than doing it everyday.

Engaging with the above process consistently can also help us be more at ease with the ambiguity of curriculum. When we slowly develop confidence in thinking through the steps, we allow possibilities to grow and our little ones to flourish, all while enjoying ourselves more along the way.