This post is a continuation of our update after many years:

Over the past few years we have taken some steps back and reconfigured our respective work: Elisha with children and teachers in Brooklyn, and Kristin with children and teachers in New Haven. Through all permutations of this work, we have both stayed grounded in our commitment to listening to children. We have held close the practice of documentation. We use photo and video to capture children’s actions and words, and we refer back to the footage as we move forward into building meaningful curriculum that honors children’s lines of inquiry.

Some highlights of this past decade:

Kristin: I made the pilgrimage to Reggio Emilia, and it was an incredible experience for me as an artist, teacher and learner. I was struck by so many things, but I will highlight a few:
• We were asked not to take photos in any of the classrooms. So I started to draw again. It’s not that I don’t draw, as I’ve always been a visual artist. But needing to follow this rule set by Reggio Children created an unusual boundary for me, and forced me to make other kinds of notations of what I saw around me.
• The children’s work astounded me as it always has, when I have seen it in presentations and books. When in person, both in classrooms and hallways, and in the documentation room of the Malaguzzi Center/main headquarters, I was continually amazed at the capacity of children to make profound and brilliant comments, and to create unimaginable structures and inventions. Why should this come as a shock? Why does their work seem so different from that of children in US schools? I asked those questions close up when in proximity to the work itself.