Reggio Emilia Meltdown

The first weekend of April, my school hosted some teachers from a progressive kindergarten school based in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Two female teachers arrived at the school on Friday and they had some meetings, demonstrations, and talks with the kindergarten dept. I teach second grade, so I didn’t have to go. That night there was a big Reggio Emilia exhibit (sponsored by my school, with their banners plastered everywhere for good advertising) that premiered at the Konak Pier Mall in downtown Izmir. Fortunately, I didn’t have to attend that, either, but from what I heard it was very Izmir- lots of wealthy education and arts patrons parading around an evening gala…in a mall. In 10 years, maybe everyone will realize that malls aren’t the coolest places to spend all your free time.

Our school planned another all-day event around Reggio Emilia on Saturday, and they made a lot of the teachers come and work the event. Somehow, I was able to get out of that, too. I think I got a pardon from the headmaster since it was all going to be in Italian and Turkish. Unfortunately, Jen, who teaches kindergarten and 1st grade, got sucked into all of it- Friday afternoon, Friday night, all day Saturday, and then on Sunday as well.

Yes, Sunday. Our school (I’m no longer using its name in these entries, and I went back and purposefully misspelled its name in archived entries for reasons I’ll go into in a later entry.) made the entire teaching staff come in Sunday morning for another Reggio Emilia lecture, demonstration, and Q+A session.

Now, Reggio Emilia has some very interesting kindergarten education philosophies, but why did people who teach middle school (enter school subject here) have to come in and sit in an auditorium for 6 hours on a Sunday to listen to Italian women speak in broken English (which then has to be translated into Turkish- reminded me a lot of that dreadful court case I juried back in November) about something that doesn’t apply to them in the slightest? And everyone teaching in the younger grades who it did apply to had already OD’d on Reggio Emilia the last 2 days.

So we all sat there for a few hours, and the Italian lady even started out the morning by admitting she had no idea what we wanted her to talk about, since she had already given her spiel several times over during the weekend. Promising start, huh? I spent the morning fighting off falling asleep in my chair. I wasn’t even that tired, but what they were talking about bored me so much, I couldn’t keep my eyelids from closing and my head nodding and bobbing up and down. And when I did actually try paying attention to what this woman was trying to talk about, I couldn’t understand a thing, so I just went back to zoning out and watching the big clock on the wall behind her.

Then for lunch, they had this BBQ outside in the big garden, but they failed to supply utensils or chairs. Plus, it was so windy outside nobody could stay there after they grabbed their food. Nothing like watching a bunch of people standing around the school hallways with paper plates in their hands as they attempt to eat salad with their hands. I looked in people’s eyes and you could tell we were all thinking the same thing, “Get me out of here!”

Maddy and Jen were surreptitiously able to sneak off to the kindergarten during the lunch hour and stay there for the afternoon session. Maddy and james had been out late the night before and Maddy was still feeling the effects of the previous night. Somehow james was able to stay awake and alert. Don’t ask me how, because usually that guy’s semi-narcoleptic. So Maddy and Jen were able to escape, and during the second half they napped on oversized pillows and read about the Pope’s death online. Lucky girls, I thought.

After they called us back into the auditorium, we watched an unnecessarily long and detailed slide show about some project they did with the kids to demonstrate the wonders of Reggio Emilia. I sat on the floor and lean against the wall, thinking that if I nodded off it would be a slightly less noticeable. I turned to my right and I could see the 2nd grade teachers whispering to each other- they were actually discussing lesson plans for the coming month, so at least some substantive work was accomplished that day.

When the presentations mercifully concluded, we limped out of that school. I felt half-dead, and upset that I was robbed of a Sunday where I had to listen about something for 6 hours that didn’t concern me in the least. Don’t get me wrong, I think the Reggio Emilia program is really cool, but it’s not cool on a Sunday afternoon when I can’t use or do anything they’re talking about with my own students.

Afterwards, everyone kept wondering and asking WHY we all had to come in and be subjected to that. Responsibility went to the kindergarten director, who thought it would be a good idea for the entire staff to learn about it, but she made a critical error. It was pure overkill, and even the Reggio Emilia ladies didn’t seem like they wanted to be there, let alone all of us.

Just another example of dysfunction, mismanagement, and ill-advised decision making at school. It seemed ridiculous at the time, and writing about it now 5 weeks after the fact, you know what? My feelings have not changed nor have they faded. It’s still ridiculous.