Knock, Knock, It’s Lori From Camp Creek!

As a very special supplement to my post on Reggio-Inspired schools (read the post here), I am so pleased to share this interview with you today – Lori Pickert was the director of a Reggio-Inspired school for many years and is currently a project-based homeschooling Mama, educational consultant, and the force behind three blogs – The Camp Creek Blog, In Heywood’s Meadow and Inspiration Boards – whew! Lori is joining us to shed a little more light on the subject of the Reggio approach to education. Welcome, Lori!

{Sketching Outdoors}

Global Mama: Can you share a little bit of your background with us? What got you interested in the Reggio approach?

Lori: I was owner and director of a small private school from 2000-2007. We had a Reggio-inspired, project-based curriculum with multiage classes for children age 3 through third grade. When we had to close our primary program, I started homeschooling my two sons (they were 5 and 8 at the time) using the same approach.

In 1999, when we were building the school and before we had opened, I started reading about the Reggio Emilia approach and immediately began to incorporate its principles and ideas into my plans. By 2005 I was working as an educational consultant training teachers across the country in this approach, including over 100 teachers in my own state.

Global Mama: What excites you the most about seeing the Reggio approach in action?

Lori: Reggio incorporates long-term projects but adds whole other layers of aesthetics and communication. Their ideas about children are inspirational and empowering – for children as well as adults. I love the collaboration among children, adults, and community. Watching children work together in groups, sharing ideas, learning from each other, and extending each other’s ideas is thrilling.

Global Mama: As a teacher in a Reggio-inspired school, I often found it difficult to begin a project when there were so many diverse interests in the class - how do you see the project approach working in a group environment?

Lori: In a group, you need to choose one project topic to feed, and that is difficult for teachers because they feel they are shortchanging some of the children by not supporting all of their different interests. But if all of the children are allowed to work freely each day on whatever interests them, they can still pursue their individual interests. You simply provide focus by creating the opportunity for all of the children to work on one large, shared project.

The key in choosing a project topic is to make sure that two or three students are incredibly interested; they will do the work of drawing in the other children.

{The Studio}

Global Mama: What would you say tend to be parents’ biggest reservations/fears about the Reggio approach, and how do you respond to those concerns?

Lori: Parents’ concerns were always that their children wouldn’t learn the alphabet if we weren’t doing ‘letter of the week’ or that they wouldn’t learn other skills if they weren’t expressly taught. It helped that we had mixed-aged classes (preschool included children age 3 to 5), because the returning parents could assure new parents that their children had learned everything naturally, through project work. We also comforted them by explaining how we did regular assessments, built up student portfolios, collected regular samples of student work, etc.

Parents (as well as visiting teachers!) were also confused as to whether children would produce any work if they weren’t required to do so. The children had complete freedom each day to choose their own activities. We scheduled parent information meetings to explain how the culture of the classroom drew children to work without coercion.

Global Mama: What is your advice for home school parents who want to adopt this approach to education? I know you have spent a lot of time discussing this topic on the Camp Creek Blog, and it seems that home school parents often don’t know where to begin. What are a few simple first steps they can take?

Lori: I think parents need to read about the approach and think about some of the main principles – e.g., that children are strong and capable of constructing their own knowledge, that the environment is the third teacher, etc. – and how they might make changes to their routine to support those values. I recommend that parents try to relax and explore these ideas slowly and thoughtfully, journaling as they go.

Some online Reggio resources are listed on my blog: http://www.whiteoakschool.com/reggio-resources/

{Observational Drawing with Ink}

Global Mama: Could you describe what sets Reggio apart from other approaches?

Lori: Freedom. There isn’t a set curriculum. The children’s ideas and interests are the starting point for long-term investigations. Teachers observe and document what happens in the classroom. They treat the children’s ideas and thought processes seriously and respond to them thoughtfully in order to support and extend their work. Children make many choices – which activities to pursue, how to express their ideas, how to use materials.

Playfulness. Reggio educators say ‘niente senza gioia’ – ‘nothing without joy’. The classroom and materials are beautiful; the art studio is arrayed with gorgeous art supplies. Everything celebrates play and work. Because children are the architects of their own learning, the classroom is suffused with excitement, conversation, ideas, sharing, building.

Collaboration. Children work together in small and large groups. They make plans; they discuss how to solve problems. They show each other what they are doing; they build on each other’s ideas. Teachers work together in teams to share impressions and discuss how best to support the children’s work. They document the work to share with families and work to involve them whenever possible. Each child and adult has something valuable to contribute to the community of the classroom and the school.

{Working with Wire}

Global Mama: I would love to hear about one of your favorite projects.

Lori: It is very difficult to choose a favorite project! I have special memories of the ‘ocean’ project our preschool class did when my younger son was four. Their project lasted a year and some of the highlights included building a child-size boat in their classroom complete with child-made fishing equipment and building a huge aquarium on our stage big enough for the children to ‘swim’ in (wearing the scuba equipment they’d made themselves) and populated with dozens of models of different types of sea life they had made from every type of material.

They painted murals, worked with clay, made costumes and props, build large models, wrote books … and it was all work of their own choosing. Every day they came into the classroom free to play and work however they wished, and every day they chose to explore these ideas and make these fantastic representations. It was truly inspiring.

Lori, thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions, and for all of the inspiring work you do! Niente senza gioia!

You can find Lori writing with passion about the Reggio approach, project-based homeschooling, and other hot topics in education at The Camp Creek Blog

All photos in this article © Lori Pickert, White Oak School, Inc.

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