After 13 years at Sabot at Stony Point, I am excited to begin a new stage, working as Studio Teacher, or, as it is called in Italy “atelierista.” My whole life has been preparation for this position, from my training as an artist through my study of education and art education, both on my own and on the job at Sabot at Stony Point.

So, you may wonder what an atelierista does? In all honesty, I am wondering the same thing. No part of the Reggio Emilia approach can simply be picked up and set down in a new context. The atelierista position has to be developed to serve our own unique school community.

Loris Malaguzzi, founder of the Reggio Schools, described the atelier as a laboratory: “a place for researching motivations and theories of children from scribbles on up, a place for exploring variations in tools, techniques and materials with which to work.” In other words, the studio is a place for children to explore media and ideas and a place for teachers to try to understand children’s intentions, thinking and learning. For Malaguzzi, it was very important to respect the “plurality and connections” in all of the expressive media that children might use, an idea that he expressed more fully in his “Hundred Languages of Children.” My goal is to expand both children’s and grown-ups’ understanding of the media (which become languages) that children can use to communicate.

I am especially interested in expanding on the work we did at the Preschool last year on “beautiful stuff.” Every classroom collected piles of materials recycled from everyday use. Then, the parents and children “messed about” with these materials. It became evident after a while that the bits of ribbon, bottles and boxes and other things we collected didn’t work easily as a language for creative thinking. I hope that this year I can help the staff and parents learn the differences between materials which are “intelligent” (good for creative thinking), and those which aren’t. My challenge is to find the child who can discover the true expressive quality of milk caps and plastic bottles!

Another thing I hope to do is to support teachers in following children’s theories and motivations. This past week, I was able to work with two groups of Meadow Room children who are exploring light and darkness. They wanted to make lights, or “light sabers,” that would shine in their darkened room. Their motivation seems to come both from a desire to play a Star Wars game and from a wish to have portable lights they could hold safely in the dark. When I asked at circle why they might like a dark classroom, I was fascinated to hear Jake and Kali talk about when they close their eyes and pictures and colors appear. Could it be that a dark empty classroom is a blank palette for the creative work of a child’s imagination?

One of the unique opportunities that I will have this year is that of documenting the process of teachers learning to work with an atelierista, as well as Marty Gravett’s position of “pedagogista,” or teaching advisor. This is a process that teachers in other programs will be interested in as they begin to adapt the Reggio approach, and I hope to be able to write about this for one of the publications that serves our educational population. That is another of my goals in this new position – to share Sabot at Stony Point with the world through our documentation and website, and through publications.

Along those lines, I am nervously preparing for the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) conference in Dallas in November, where I have been asked to join a group in presenting on a piece I wrote about the beginnings of our exploration of children in wild places. My research and writing will be the focus of a panel on action research, where educators and authors Gail Perry, Lella Gandini, Barbara Henderson, Carol Anne Wien, Andy Stremmel and Daniel Meier will discuss my work and how other teachers might begin to publish research from their classrooms.