New Offerings! Your stories offer an essential corrective to misleading images of who children and educators are and what is happening in our schools and centers. In this intensive short course, we'll work together to develop and share stories that you value. Learn more Over the last year, 19 educators and administrators from around the world have strengthened their capacity to lead with and for playful inquiry. Their enthusiasm for the experience leads us to offer the experience to a small...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
"'Dialogue' comes from the Greek word dialogos. Logos means 'the word' or in our case we would think of the 'meaning of the word'. And dia means 'through' - it doesn't mean two. A dialogue can be among any number of people, not just two. Even one person can have a sense of dialogue within himself, if the spirit of the dialogue is present. The picture of image that this derivation suggests is of a stream of meaning flowing among and through us and between us. This will make possible a flow of...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Dear Reader, It is clear that if we are to live in harmony with ourselves and with nature, we need to be able to communicate freely in a creative movement in which no one permanently holds to or otherwise defends his own ideas. Why then is it so difficult actually to bring about such communication? David Bohm, On Dialogue This month we've been thinking about dialogue as we've been finishing our reading of See No Stranger - we've asked: What is love without dialogue? Below is an excerpt from a...
3 months ago • 4 min read
In today's newsletter, we center voices from colleagues we deeply respect who are offering guidance we find essential. First, a public letter written by Ann Pelo and Margie Carter. Sometimes my imagination is a bird. It flies around in the blue sky, looking for some ideas. Ideas are like tiny seeds; my birds are looking for them. If the birds get them and drop them somewhere, the seeds will grow into some beautiful plants or flowers. Then they are no longer tiny ideas; they are big, beautiful...
3 months ago • 5 min read
Several years ago, Susan and I were leading a workshop in Vancouver, BC. We asked the teachers to engage in a thought experiment: What is the nature of teaching for democracy - and how might that be different than teaching for autocracy? One of the common threads in the response was in the nature of relationships between adults and children: Teaching for democracy would be filled with warmth and caring; teaching for autocracy, cold and harsh. After hearing this response multiple times, two...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Dear Reader, We invite you to click over to Substack to view my new (10 minute) video essay. Here is an excerpt: The arts invite us to think in metaphor, to play with ideas, to seek connection, and so it is that a love ethic is expressed through metaphor. Barry Lopez writes that “Abandoning metaphor entirely only paves the way to the rigidity of fundamentalism..” Which is a meaningful adjunct to hooks’ assertion: “An overall cultural embrace of a love ethic would mean that we would all oppose...
4 months ago • 2 min read
Dear Reader, A banner hanging outside the Diana School in Reggio Emilia - and in so many other schools inspired by the Reggio Approach - reads “Nothing without joy.” And yet, joy can feel distant from practice. This week, Susan and I met with a group of teachers in the American Midwest, some of whom expressed sadness in the gap between their vision of a joyful experience for children rich with play, the arts, and meaning, and the mandates that dim the lights and narrow the possibilities -...
4 months ago • 3 min read
Dear Reader, As we’ve been thinking about resilience in the Studio this month, neighborhoods have burned to the ground. Families have been exiled. Early childhood program directors have found turned on their computers to find access to their daily funding portals dismantled. What does it mean to practice and grow resilience in a time of massive destabilization? What we’ve been reading and discussing together offers some insightful lessons. Daniel Hunter encourages us to trust ourselves while...
4 months ago • 3 min read
Dear Reader, “The imagination is an essential tool of the mind, a fundamental way of thinking, an indispensable means of becoming and remaining human.” Ursula LeGuin In Story Workshop: New Possibilities for Young Writers, I borrow author Rene Denfeld’s words about the reason resilience requires imagination. In an interview, she remarked, "I wanted to explore the role of imagination in what we call resiliency. I think we don’t pay enough attention to the power of imagination as a survival...
5 months ago • 7 min read