A Provocation on the Teacher's Role

[Jackie]

"The teacher is not removed from her role as an adult, but instead revises it in an attempt to become co-creator, rather than a transmitter, of knowledge and culture. As teachers, we have to carry out this role in the full awareness of our vulnerability, and this means accepting doubts and mistakes as well as allowing for surprise and curiosity, all of which are necessary for true acts of knowledge and creation. This requires a 'powerful' teacher, the only kind of teacher suitable for our equally 'powerful' child. School thus becomes a place of research, where the children, along with the teachers, are the primary researchers."
(Rinaldi, pg. 125, In Dialogue With Reggio Emilia)

[Wendy C]

I love that description Lauren. I think that children come to school with expectations of what school will be like, and 'who' the teacher will be as much as the parents do and that is often the authority figure that Jackie refers to and a room full of commercialised materials.
I find that I struggle not with the teacher within me, but with the teachers around me and the expectations of our administration at school. Our early learning centres are Reggio influenced but the rest of the school isn't - and the formal curriculum goals are beginning to push down toward us which has some effect on how we approach our roles as facilitator, guide and co-constructors of learning.
I think that Jackie is right too, when working in the Reggio inspired way we are always reflecting and thinking about what we have done with the children, where this will lead to and trying to document it so that others can share the journey too, and so that it becomes more clear to us. It's a constant challenge which can be exciting, exhausting, confusing, astounding, remarkable and inspiring which is why we keep doing it. I think the analogy of 'being the author of pedagogical paths and processes' is a legitimate description. I feel like I am following a pathway and inventing new processes along the journey.

[Lauren Meyer]

A teacher is more than a practitioner, she is the author of pedagogical paths and processes. She contributes to overcoming, at least in the field of education, the arrogant idea of the continuing separation between theory and practice. (from "In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia."

As teachers, we fulfill many roles. For me right now, I am drawn most to the idea that, through our dialogue and documentation, we are advocates for young children.

Visit my blog:
bigvoices.wordpress.com

[Jackie]

I think there is something to be said about that style of Amelia's! Something more in the middle between the teacher and the playmate! I hear what you say Marianne about the authority figure that our children tend to look toward. I also see you point Amy about "acting as a teacher" or at least the version of the teacher that children and adults have been socialized to expect; and that the nagging voice that constantly looms behind us seems to call for. I think that where this leads us is the need to reconceptualize that role, reconfigure that understanding and realize not just the children's potentials...but our own as well! In beginning to reflect on that role, we are doing so. So....what is a teacher? AND what is the teacher's role?

[Marianne Cane]

Amy, Do you sometimes find yourself forced into playing the role of the teacher? I have found that some children seem uncomfortable unless there is someone behaving as a recognizable authority figure, rather than simply as someone who organizes the day and then inquires along with them. I've been around Amelia Gambetti, and she is a formidable personality, quite strong, quite curious, and quite demanding in that curiosity. Her force of personality, as much as I admire it, is quite different from my way of being, and I am trying to find the difference between gentleness and weakness. Sonya Shoptaugh has a really beautiful and gentle way with children that is respectful and calm. She is a brilliant listener, who sees and helps me (and children) articulate our ideas and feelings. I'd love to find a way to create the kind of confidence in inquiry that she creates. My energy is very different from hers, alas. I tend to generate excitement and enthusiasm, rather than calm reflection, try as I might.

[Amy Wolfe]

This quote made me consider the contrast between "playing the role" of teacher, acting as teachers act, and authentically being with the children as a real, curious, fallible and genuine person... this makes all the difference in the life of the classroom.

[Jackie]

Marianne,
I think what you bring up here is something that we all fumble with along this Reggio-Inspired journey! When to talk, when to remain silent. When to lead, when to follow, when to run with the children. In taking this perspective as a teacher there are so many things that are foreign to us and so much of our own and the children's identities that we must reorganize, reorient and reconstruct. It is not in the learning or understanding so much as it is in the living, doing and being. YET....the first step is to learn and understand, to challenge and to recognize. These are the key pieces toward moving toward what Carlina speaks of here...at least this is how I have come to view it. I also think that in opening dialogues such as this, this is where we start to associate our learnings and understandings with the doings and beings. I think that this is why dialogue is heavily valued in Reggio classrooms, because it stretches the understanding into doing...it takes the knowledge and places it in practice...and highlights what is shared and agreed but more importantly...what is different and what is not agreed. It stretches thinking, learning, understanding, being and doing! In doing so...everyone grows. I wish more people would participate. More perspectives = more growth for us all.

[Marianne Cane]

I take this as a sanction to learn how to participate in learning along with the child. I need to allow myself to take my best guess about how to proceed, then revise that guess as I see how it works. I am sometimes dismayed about doing something clumsily, or speaking when I should be quiet, but I think that getting my hands dirty by engaging in work alongside the children is a better way to figure out how to do it well than holding back for fear of making a mistake.