Wednesday, October 9, 2019
IPS 55 is one of Butler's Lab schools that we had the opportunity to visit. IPS 55 is a school that models the Reggio Emilia approach. The Reggio Emilia Approach is described as "an educational philosophy focused on preschool and primary education. It is a pedagogy described as student-centered and constructivist that uses self-directed, experiential learning in relationship-driven environments." IPS 55 puts the image of the child at the forefront of their education. They work on responding to learner's needs and encourage diverse learners. They value the individuality of each student and they focus a lot of time on nurturing and building up the identity of every student. The teachers believe in teaching to think rather than teaching to produce answers. I fell in love with the fact that the image of the child was at the forefront of all the teaching taking place. |
As I mentioned above, the image of the child is extremely valued at IPS 55. They are hopeful that their teaching style is reflected in the way that each student develops in their school. As you can see in the image to the right, each classroom pushes hard on the opportunity for the students to have a lot of self-reflection. Their self-reflections are often portrayed in self-portraits. This is an awesome way for the students to build up their own sense of self-identity. I also loved the "classroom agreements" that I saw hanging on one of the classroom doors. The use of the word "we" before each agreement really brings in a sense of community within the classroom and all of the agreements encourage a strong, healthy classroom climate. As you can see from the examples above, while observing classrooms at IPS 55, I felt a strong presence of the COE value, "the appreciation of diversity and similarity." These teachers are doing a great job of nurturing and encouraging individuality within each student. Reggio is an amazing avenue for responding to learner's needs and creating pathways for each student.
We had the opportunity to observe four different classrooms at IPS 55; two kindergarten classrooms and two first grade classrooms. This was an amazing way to see the reggio teaching style in action, firsthand. The classrooms had a variety of spaces for students to be in, and to learn in. Whether it was a table with chairs, a couch or carpet squares, the teachers aim to make the students feel comfortable while learning. Reggio-based teaching includes a lot of nature in the classroom that adds a large level of comfort to the students. For example, in the classrooms we observed we saw a lot of natural lighting, wooden structures, tree branches, and one even had a classroom pet bunny! It was awesome to see the teachers including technology in their teaching as well since that is something we have been honing in on in ED199! The students were handling it extremely well and a lot of learning was taking place digitally in the classrooms. |