Origins and Inspirations
“Serendipity. When the unexpected happens in the classroom, the community, the natural world, teachers have choices. They can try to ignore it, or join in briefly, or invent ways of incorporating it into their plans.”
— Elizabeth Jones & John Nimmo
The schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy
My first and most impactful introduction to the notion of a responsive curriculum was learning about the Municipal Preschools and Infant-Toddler Centers in the city of Reggio Emilia, Italy. The Reggio Emilia Approach asserts that children should be “protagonists” in their own learning:
“Children are equipped with extraordinary potentials for learning that are made manifest in an unceasing exchange with the cultural and social context. Every child is the subject of rights. Every child, individually and in their relations with the group, is a constructor of experiences to which they are capable of attributing sense and meaning.”
This notion of children as active, primary participants in setting the course of their own studies is at the heart of a responsive curriculum. This commitment to fore-fronting children’s own questions and ideas plays out in the progettazione (projections) undertaken by children and educators in the Reggio schools, which served as a model for my own understanding and practice of student-driven curriculum projects and investigations.
I had the good fortune to visit the schools in Reggio Emilia, in the summer of 1993, and since then I have continued to read and study about the Reggio Approach, and attend conferences through the North American Reggio Emilia Alliance (NAREA).
Emergent Curriculum by Elizabeth Jones and John Nimmo
This book was my primary guide, as I took early steps away from the comfort of pre-planned, teacher-directed curriculum. I had the good fortune to work with both Betty and John as part of my Master’s coursework through Pacific Oaks College.
My copy of this book is feathered with sticky-notes highlighting favorite pages and passages, and it is still my “go-to” when I need a quick injection of reassurance or inspiration. The quote about “serendipity” at the header of this page helped me learn to trust that the children would show me what mattered to them, and to trust my own instincts for how to begin following their lead,
Culturally Responsive Pedagogy
One of the gifts of Responsive Curriculum is that it fosters an educator’s disposition to focus on actual children, classrooms, and communities, building our capacity to respond meaningfully and intentionally. This outlook can help support our commitment to be culturally responsive, as well as responsive in our curriculum.
In her research “Toward a Theory of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy” Gloria Ladson-Billings examines the theoretical underpinnings of effective culturally responsive teaching and learning, including: Conceptions of Self and Others, Social Relations, and Conceptions of Knowledge. She describes her research as “a beginning look at ways that teachers might systematically include student knowledge in the classroom as authorized or official knowledge.” This trust in students’ ways of being and knowing pairs well with and supports a commitment to seeing children as protagonists.
Geneva Gay underlines the importance of preparing educators for culturally responsive teaching, noting that “ethnically diverse students…have been expected to divorce themselves from their cultures and learn according to European American cultural norms…having to master the academic tasks while functioning under cultural conditions unnatural (and often unfamiliar) to them.”
I think that exercising the “muscle” of responsive curriculum planning can help educators striving to be culturally responsive. My friend and longtime Hilltop pal Nick Terrones puts this idea beautifully in his book A Can of Worms: Fearless Conversations with Toddlers.
“I believe that educators have a responsibility to take up children’s questions and observations about identity, about self and others, no matter how fast our pulse races. Authentic and responsive education, like authentic and responsive democracy, requires real conversations with real people, in real relationships, and in real time!”
The Runaway Bunny
I was early in my teaching career - recently out of college and partway through my third year as a full-time teacher - when one specific classroom experience solidified my commitment to Responsive Curriculum.
I was teaching at Bing Nursery School, along with Roberta Immordino, Diane Guthrie, Kitty Pecka, and Kirsten Wright. Our classroom had a pet rabbit named Rikki Tikki, who lived in an outdoor hutch on our gorgeously landscaped playground. We arrived one morning to find the door of the hutch ajar, and Rikki Tikki missing. The children took up a search for him that lasted not minutes, hours, or days, but literally weeks. As time went on, their interest in his disappearance both deepened and broadened. None of the curriculum we teachers had planned for that month mattered…we dropped it, and instead followed the children in their drive to make signs, draw maps, track animal prints, and create stories and artwork about Rikki Tikki’s mysterious disappearance. This was my first vivid lesson in young children’s capacity to focus on work that they care about, and become empowered researchers in their own investigations.
I won’t spoil the story for you (read about it in my chapter of the book Reflecting Children’s Lives by Deb Curtis and Margie Carter), but suffice it to say that I was permanently converted to a life of Responsive Curriculum.