Mountain Road School To Hold Workshop On Reggio Emilia Approach To Early Childhood Education
NEW LEBANON, NY – Mountain Road School, a leader in progressive education, will present a fundamental workshop on the Reggio Emilia Approach to early childhood education on Wednesday, May 21st from 6:30-8:30pm. Mountain Road School Director Kathleen Bailer, M.S. Ed, will lead the workshop, to be held at the school. Ms. Bailer is also a presenter of the approach for Lesley University in Cambridge, MA.The workshop is open to the public, and costs $25 per person or $40 per couple. To register, call 518-794-8520 or email info@mountainroadschool.org.
In 1991, Newsweek magazine reported on “The Ten Best Schools in the World,” and hailed the Scuola dell'infanzia Diana, at the northern Italian city of Reggio Emilia, as the best preschool in the early childhood education category. Over the decades, the municipality of Reggio Emilia evolved this distinctive and innovative approach to child development that is based on the image of children as capable and as having tremendous potential.
The approach nurtures children's intellectual growth and creativity through the development of their expressive, communicative, symbolic, cognitive, ethical, metaphorical, logical, imaginative, and relational "languages", an emphasis on the visual arts, and the conscious and deliberate utilization of the environment as an essential element in the process of learning. Parents are a vital component of the Reggio Emilia philosophy, and are viewed as partners, collaborators and advocates for their children. Teachers respect parents as each child's first teacher, and involve them in every aspect of the curriculum.
Mountain Road School’s workshop will feature the key elements of Reggio Emilia’s early childhood program, which include the role of the environment as teacher; children’s multiple symbolic languages; documentation as assessment and advocacy; long-term projects; the teacher as researcher; and home-school relationships. The workshop also will incorporate Ms. Bailer’s slide show from her trip to Reggio Emilia in 2007.
"I am thrilled to be able to announce that Mountain Road School will be adopting the Reggio Emilia approach for our early childhood program next year,” says Ms. Bailer. “To my knowledge, we will be the first and only Reggio Emilia early childhood program in the Berkshire/Taconic region. We will begin renovations to the preschool classroom this summer, turning it into a laboratory of artistic expression and hands-on exploration. Children will have opportunities to play, express themselves artistically and use their bodies in the space. One of the tenets of the approach is to create an aesthetically pleasing environment for the child. For next year, there will be a new teacher and a new space for the children and parents to look forward to. And in line with the Reggio Emilia philosophy, we also will be offering a parent/toddler program in the fall one day a week to offer local parents an opportunity to learn alongside and with their child.”
Mountain Road School is located on Darrow/Shaker Road between Pittsfield, New Lebanon and West Stockbridge, on the NY/MA border off of Route 20. The campus includes 400 acres of beautifully terraced organic gardens, fields, woods and streams in a former Shaker Village. Mountain Road School teaches and nurtures children through a heartfelt approach to education, providing individualized attention, academic excellence, small multi-age classes, an innovative curriculum and an emphasis on nature education. For more information, please call 518-794-8520 or visit their website at www.mountainroadschool.org.
