JILL’S PROFESSIONAL OBJECTIVE:  My aim is to create optimum learning environments for children, staff members, and parents in my community.  I am looking for reliable sources of practical ideas about how to create a school where children learn to build a more stable and humane world.  That is why I went to study the world renown preschools and infant/toddler centers in Reggio Emilia, Italy in 2007. Curiously, it was in Italy that I learned about Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero which is headquartered on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.  The dedicated people of Reggio Emilia and Project Zero have collaborated on projects and approach education in the same way:  the goal is not to search for the perfect educational philosophy, but instead, to help schools provide dynamic educational environments, current with the ever-changing world.  Communities do not need to reinvent the wheel to improve schools.  Dr. Howard Gardner and his colleagues at Project Zero have been thoroughly researching a vast range of areas for more than forty years to provide optimum learning environments all over the world.

1. 1. CHALLENGES OF PARENTING
   

Parenting is the most difficult job in the world, perhaps only equaled in stress levels by airport tower control.  Unlike paid professions, like airport tower controlling, there are no prerequisites, certificates, or diplomas that one must earn before becoming a parent.  In addition, every child is different and every parent is unique.  Nonetheless, relevant and up-to-date information helps people be the best parents they can be.  This workshop aims to provide participants with theoretical and practical advice.

2.  THE IMPORTANCE OF PLAY

“It’s not so much what children learn through play, but what they won’t learn if we don’t give them the chance to play. Many functional skills like literacy and arithmetic can be learned either through play or through instruction—the issue is the amount of stress on the child. However, many coping skills like compassion, self-regulation, self-confidence, the habit of active engagement, and the motivation to learn and be literate cannot be instructed. They can only be learned through self-directed experience (i.e. play).” - Susan J. Oliver, Playing for Keeps

“Play for young children is not recreation activity. It is not leisure time activity nor escape activity. Play is thinking time for young children. It is language time. Problem-solving time. It is memory time, planning time, investigating time. It is organization-of-ideas time, when the young child uses his mind and body and his social skills and all his powers in response to the stimuli he has met.”

- James L. Hymes, Jr., child development specialist, author

We all want our children to become successful and happy adults.  Play is too often considered ‘lost time’ rather than a fundamental part of life.  This workshop aims to provide participants with information illustrating the importance of play in our lives, and especially during childhood.

3.  REGGIO EMILIA

In a Northern Italian town, the community has invested heavily in their youngest citizens since the end of the second World War.  The result of that commitment has impacted not only the lives of their community’s youngsters, but the rest of the world.  In 1991, an article in Newsweek suggested that the preschools in Reggio Emilia were the best in the world, and, having been there to see for myself, I have to agree.  This workshop aims to provide participants with an overview of the principle aspects of the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood.

4.  MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES

Dr. Howard Gardner’s book entitled Frames of Mind was published in 1983.  It details the theory he developed about Multiple Intelligences.  Since its publication, teachers and school administrators have adapted his theory to practicalities in the classroom and assessment.  This workshop aims to provide participants with an idea of each of the eight intelligences and how the theory affects teaching and our children.