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 short essay I wrote this week that marks a moment in my own thought process about these ideas. The remainder of the essay is on Substack and there is a link below to take you there if you'd like to continue reading.
Thinking about our work in The Studio, and the practice of dialogue, leads me to a connection with something Ann Pelo and Margie Carter write in From Teaching to Thinking,
“Educators don’t consider children’s play only as ‘educators.’ We come together in community as straight women and men, and lesbians, and gay men, and transgender people. We’re feminists. We’re socially conservative. We’re people from working class backgrounds or from wealthy backgrounds. We’re white people and people of color, insiders and outsiders, people who feel they belong and people who feel they don’t belong. We’re people, with deeply held values and beliefs, informed by our many-faceted cultural and social identities - not generic or anonymous ‘teachers,’ but real people living alongside children and families and colleagues.”
We’re real people who are all so very different from one another who come together in community because, ultimately, we all want the same things: to live, to love and be loved, to act freely on our dreams, to thrive in good health, to care for our children. Most of the ground we stand on is common and we don’t have to worry (as we so often do) about sharing because we already are. We all breathe the same air. We are creative enough to make enough of what we need to go around, equitably and sustainably, for everyone.
Continue Reading on Substack...
To be in dialogue is to be in a state of play - which is why we're going to dig into the meaning of that state to our work with children, and the flourishing of our own lives, next month. In The Role of the Pedagogista in Reggio Emilia - the text we've been reading alongside From Teaching to Thinking in our yearlong Leading for Playful Inquiry Program, the authors write, "... we engage with the concept of 'an amateur scholarship that is both practically activist and potentially transformative' (Ingold), which in our view bears a strong relationship to the Italian notion of mettersi in gioco: literally to 'put oneself into play'. No such term exists in English to convey this activist, experimental, transformative, and rigorous attitude to life and work." We hope you'll join us in April for an exploration of your own "state of play".
We'd love to see you in The Studio - but we also appreciate your ongoing thought partnership through the reading and sharing of this newsletter. Please don't hesitate to reply if you've got responses of any kind - or any programs you'd like to see us offer. We are here to support you.
In playful solidarity from Matt and me,
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Up next in the Studio
State of PLAY
This attitude requires "openness to challenges, tensions towards bravery" and stands in opposition to the "predictability and linearity of development". (The Role of the Pedagogista in Reggio Emilia) What kind of attitude could be more important as we face the uncertainties around us now?
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We'll be guided by Bron Reed and Jenna Close
Fresh off their participation in this years Inspire Conference in Sydney, Bron and Jenna who are researchers with Semann and Slattery and participants in this year's Leading for Playful Inquiry Group, will share their thoughts on play as disruption.
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The Language of
CARDBOARD
In April, Transform and Inspire members will have access to provocations for play with abstract sculpture design using cardboard. Let's use this material to find and reflect on the feeling of play!
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New Course Coming Soon!
Next month we'll open the doors on a short, new course we're calling: Our Stories Matter: Documentation to support Agency, Inquiry, and Advocacy. We hope this course will help you to find and craft the story you want to tell about an experience you've had this year that you know is important to you, to your community, and to the world. We'll open registration later in April and hope to see you there!
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WATCHING, LISTENING, READING
Good things:
Matt and I are happy to be supporting a variety of individuals and organizations right now. We're coaching school leaders and people with vision for new schools, teaching a course about Story Workshop through Chapters International, planning our first retreat on the Oregon Coast for this year's Leadership cohort, leading customized professional development workshops for school districts, and preparing to participate in conferences with P.E.R. (Reggio Children/Lego Foundation project), and Wunderled this spring. If you have ideas for collaborating, we're booking now for the 25-26 school year, and we'd love to hear from you!
In case you missed it - this story about what happened recently in an Idaho middle school classroom is worth paying attention to.
If anyone needs an explainer for what's going on over at (what's left of) the US Department of Education, here's a really good one.
Have you watched Adolescence on Netflix? Read any of the commentary? What are your thoughts on it all?
Science Friday has a good 15 minute update on what we know about the impacts of childhood trauma, and an article on the power of positive childhood experience.
“The image proposed is that of a teacher as intellectual, a lively, curious, inventive and knowledgeable researcher and radical activist intent on transformation of self and system, desirous to continuously mettersi in gioco.”
— Stephania Giamminuti