Back In Kathmandu: Blocks in the Classroom

I am very fortunate to be spending time once again at the Rato Bangala School in Kathmandu, Nepal. As I’ve written in earlier blog entries, I’ve been involved with this school for over twenty years now and so have had the privilege of observing an educational institution develop from nothing more than an idea into a fully functioning school serving grades 1-12. On this trip I’ve been especially lucky. My own mentor from my early years of teaching at the Bank Street School for Children is here, invited to do an assessment and revision of social studies curriculum in grades 1-8. Judith Gold has had many years of experience working in schools in the US and around the world. She has an extraordinary ability to zero in on key curriculum areas that need improvement and then to lead teachers and school leaders through the process of reflection and revision. With Judith on site, there’s a lot of change in the air at Rato Bangala. The most ambitious of these changes has been the return of blocks to grades one and two.

Blocks have long been a staple in many primary grade classrooms. Most use the classic “unit blocks” developed by Caroline Pratt in the early 20^th century. Ms. Pratt was firmly convinced that through work with blocks children are able to recreate and build on their experience, providing opportunities for deep and meaningful learning. A basic set of such blocks features fifteen shapes, all designed to be mathematically proportional with the simple rectangular “unit” (1 3/8” x 2 3/4” x 5 1/2”) that is the core of the collection.

Using blocks as part of regular classroom practice requires real understanding of the possibilities of this rich material and a commitment to significant time for block work. An adequately sized block corner takes up a lot of space, it requires regular periods of open-ended time that is not devoted to more traditional instructional methods, and teachers need to be able to tolerate the sometimes noisy hum generated by children busy with blocks. For these and other reasons, blocks have disappeared from many classrooms over the years. The same has been true at Rato Bangala, where the unit blocks that were built by local carpenters over fifteen years ago had been relegated to a tiny separate storage area, not connected to the life of the classroom. When Judith toured the school just after her arrival in Nepal, she decided to take on the challenge of “bringing back the blocks”.

More on the details of this adventure in my next post …

Building A Foundation

For almost a year now I've been working my way through the various steps involved in forming a non-profit corporation. For someone like me who's not familiar with the bureaucratic and legal issues involved the process has been complicated, at times tedious and extremely enlightening throughout. From the beginning I've been forced to think carefully about just what it is I want to do and just how I want to go about doing it, starting with the most basic question of all. Why form a non-profit? Why not simply pursue work as an independent consultant without the trappings of an incorporated organization that involves bylaws, a Board of Directors, etc.? The answer has three parts:

(1) I want to be able to support schools and educational institutions that need help by accepting tax-deductible contributions from interested donors here in the U.S.;

(2) I want to be able to fund projects through grants available to non-profit corporations;

(3) I want to be part of an organization, even if in its beginning stages (i.e. now) that organization is very small. I want to collaborate with my professional peers and I want to have access to the opinions and feedback of a community of like-minded educators. Creating a formal organization is one way of beginning to create such a community.

Like this blog, the non-profit is called Educational Alternatives Worldwide. Our mission is to provide support for schools that want to offer something other than test-driven curriculum based on memorization and competition. We believe in child-centered classrooms that encourage students to question, to think critically, to work together at solving problems and to use the tools they gain in school to make meaning from the world around them. We believe it is critical not simply that children learn but how they learn and that this is of the utmost importance to the future.

If these ideas make sense to you, please do be in touch. Let's build a community to make schools better for all children.

Reggio Emilia and The Child's Right to Beauty

Loris Malaguzzi, mentioned in my previous blog post as the guiding force of the Reggio movement, is famous for articulating the idea that learning is nurtured through multiple channels, using many materials and techniques. As he stated in his poem, The Hundred Languages of Childhood:

… The child has
A hundred languages
(and a hundred hundred hundred more)
But they steal ninety-nine.
The school and the culture
Separate the head from the body …

(see http://www.reggiokids.com/about/hundred_languages.php)

Development of the “hundred languages” is the guiding pedagogical principle in the infant/toddler and pre-primary centers of Reggio Emilia, which serve children from infancy through age five and their families.

To a first-time visitor, perhaps the most striking feature of these schools is their visual impact. The classrooms are lovely and engaging and teachers clearly put much energy into the use of color, shape and design to create inspiring environments for children. (Rights to images of the Reggio classrooms are copyrighted. For pictures, visit the Reggio Children website at http://zerosei.comune.re.it/inter/nidiescuole.htm). There’s much emphasis on work with light and almost every room features an overhead projector equipped with a sampling of shapes and colors for children to manipulate. Each center features an “atelier”: a space devoted to art and staffed by an “atelierista”. There is space and openness and an inviting sense of creative possibility. A broad variety of materials are used: paint, cloth, wire, paper, plastic, wood, feathers, leaves … almost anything from the surrounding environment can (and frequently is) incorporated into the experience of Reggio learners. (The municipality has established the most incredible center for collection/distribution of recyclable materials I have ever seen: (http://zerosei.comune.re.it/inter/remida.htm). Reggio planners have long understood the importance of careful architectural thinking in school design and the buildings they have created (or adapted) over the years are a sophisticated mix of large and small group spaces flooded with natural light and furnished with materials and structures that are playful, beautiful and functional.

There is much more to the Reggio philosophy and I encourage you to explore their practice more completely through via the internet, the many print publications available or even by visiting. In the meantime, I’d like to acknowledge once more the really inspiring example of this movement in underscoring the child’s “right to beauty” (and so much more). I may decide to write again about Reggio in future, but for my next few posts I plan to introduce Educational Alternatives Worldwide, the non-profit foundation I have created to promote teacher training and progressive curriculum development in South Asia (and hopefully beyond).

Reggio Emilia: Celebrating The Rights of Children

Back in November of last year, I traveled to the city of Reggio Emilia, Italy to take part in a study group for North American educators. The event was sponsored by Reggio Children, an organization responsible for one of the most successful experiments in early childhood education ever undertaken.

The story of this city's commitment to its children begins in 1945, just after the end of World War II. Faced with inconceivable devastation, with nothing but the shells amid rubble of bombed-out buildings, the townspeople decided to make schools the focus of their first rebuilding efforts - a very concrete investment in the future of a place whose past had been so deeply impacted. In the book Brick by Brick, by Renzo Barazzoni (published by Reggio Children, 2005), educator Loris Malaguzzi (who would become the guiding force behind the movement) described his first encounter with a remarkably visionary group of citizens:

Word had it that at Villa Cella the people had gotten together to put up a school for the young children; they had pulled out the bricks from the bombed-out houses and had used them to build the walls of the school. Only a few days had passed since the Liberation and everything was still violently topsy-turvy ... Behind a curtain made of rags to shield them from the sun two women were hammering the old mortar off the bricks. ..The news was true, and the truth was there, for all to see ... in the uneven but stubborn hammering of these two women. One of them looked up at me ... We're not crazy! If you really want to see, come on Saturday or Sunday, when we're all here. 'Al forn da boun l'asilo' ('We're really going to make this school!')

What makes the schools of Reggio Emilio so fascinating? Stay tuned for future posts...

-Beth

Education in Pakistan: Hoshyar and al-Hamd

For the past year, I have been working with The Hoshyar Foundation, an American non-profit whose mission statement asserts:

The organization's primary mandate is increasing women's and girls' access to education in historically underserved localities, particularly South Asia and Afghanistan. We are keenly aware that the cultural politics of development work are best navigated when grantors work together with--rather than initiate or direct--local initiatives. The organization seeks to work with communities that have already identified a need to promote female education, and to make its grants of resources according to articulated needs of those communities.

Carla Petievich, the founder and executive director of Hoshyar, is a South Asian Studies scholar and professor whose years of research in Pakistan have made her keenly aware of the need to support education in the region. One of Hoshyar's most ambitious projects to date has been a collaboration with the al-Hamd Educational Girls High School. The al-Hamd School is located in Baagarian Village, just outside the city of Lahore, Pakistan. Founded by a remarkable woman with a dream to provide education to girls and young women, it serves more than 150 students in nursery through grade ten. Students contribute a nominal tuition fee - with books, materials and uniforms provided. The school serves an impoverished semi-rural community of families eager to educate their children and enthusiastic about the opportunities that al-Hamd is providing. In May, with financial assistance from Hoshyar, al-Hamd completed construction on a brand-new building, setting the stage for an exciting future in the village.

My own work with Hoshyar and al-Hamd involves curriculum and pedagogy - the teaching practices that go on within the walls of the new building. I visited Pakistan last September to observe the school and to interview faculty and students. I also had the opportunity to meet other educators in Lahore, an introduction to the professional community working for school reform in the area. My next visit will be in January, 2010 when I'll be overseeing a training workshop for al-Hamd's teachers and administrators. Upcoming posts will describe this project in more detail as well as my hopes for al-Hamd and other Hoshyar projects that fuel my excitement about working in Pakistan.

-Beth

RBPOP: Rato Bangala Partnership in Outreach Programme

I've already written much about the achievements of the Rato Bangala School and Foundation throughout Nepal ... but there's more. Funded by a percentage of the school fees paid by parents of Rato Bangala Kathmandu, the Partnership in Outreach Programme (RBPOP) was formed in 2002 to provide leadership training, teacher training and scholarships to needy students from fifty schools in five rural districts throughout the country. There are training modules for administrators, a two-and-a-half month residential Skill Development Training for teachers and provision of school fees, uniforms, stationery, book bags and extra reading material for scholarship students. In addition, a select number of children are offered the opportunity to enroll at Rato Bangala Kathmandu, with full tuition and boarding fees covered by RBPOP.

One of my favorite pieces of RBPOP's work is the "tin trunk" program. Partner schools in rural areas are provided with a simple trunk filled with transformative teaching materials. There are books, hands-on math materials, maps and (as pictured above) hand puppets, carefully designed by RBPOP staff to complement the cultures of the region. I quote:

The set contains six puppets each from the Himalayan, Mountain and Tarai regions. People are represented in their local costumes on one side of the puppet, and, on the other side are animals found in that region. The grandparents wear the most traditional and ornate costumes, (Sherpa, Bahun/Chhetri and Tharu), the parents wear less traditional ones, and the children's clothes are modern. These puppets inspire children to know the traditional costumes, the joint family structure, and about animals found in these areas.

The tin trunks contain further treasures: magnets, balloons, globes, blocks, paints and brushes, skipping ropes ... a truly magical collection for the chronically under-equipped schools of rural Nepal. But there is more to educational reform than the concrete, quantifiable tools-of-the-trade. What makes Rato Bangala so unique and so revolutionary is powerful and considered pedagogy - a basic philosophy and set of educational principles that underlie and inform everything they do. The educators of Rato Bangala believe that children construct meaning from the experiences and environments around them. They believe in empowering teachers as valued and competent professionals. And they believe that the kind of schooling that truly supports open-ended thinking and questioning will bring about real change in Nepal. I am honored to continue to be a part of this visionary organization.

If you would like to make a donation to support the work of the Rato Bangala Foundation, please contact me: bnorford@mac.com. Your contribution will make a difference to the children and teachers of Nepal. (Note: Contributions are not yet tax-deductible in the US, but we're working on it.)

-Beth

Teacher Training at Rato Bangala - An International Collaboration for Excellence

From the literature of the Rato Bangala Foundation:

The Primary Teaching Training Programme is a unique teacher training programme in Nepal that has been inspired by the work of three educational institutions: Rato Bangala Foundation, Kathmandu University and Bank Street College of Education (in New York).

This one simple sentence sums up a remarkable endeavor to change the face of early education in Nepal. The Rato Bangala Foundation's teacher training course offers two "tracks": one aimed at those who have completed a highschool education and the other leading to a bachelor's degree from Kathmandu University. Each offers classwork in educational philosophy, social studies, language arts, mathematics, science/environmental education, the arts and physical education. Supervised fieldwork is a critical component of students' experience and each is mentored by an advisor and assigned to a small group of fellow trainees for ongoing discussion, feedback and sharing of experience. The curriculum is based in the principles of progressive education and classwork involves not simply lectures and reading but hands-on experiences which model those practiced with children. Prospective teachers learn to observe children closely, to document their observations and to use this knowledge to devise effective teaching strategies. Language arts students take part in a writer's workshop, composing and "publishing" literature of their own. Math training involves creation of charts, use of manipulatives and group problem-solving exercises. Social studies is based in the idea of the "community as classroom" and focuses on the creation of meaning in a complex and changing world.

To quote once more from Rato Bangala's promotional material:

The strength of this programme lies in the integration of theory and practice: lessons learnt in the classrooms are practiced in the field and new knowledge is built on the experience.

Seventeen years into the Rato Bangala "experiment", their work is generating ever greater international attention and acclaim. Teacher training is a key component of the Foundation's vision for change.

If you would like to make a donation to support the work of the Rato Bangala Foundation, please contact me: bnorford@mac.com. Your contribution will make a difference to the children and teachers of Nepal.
-Beth