Real Samba'ing!
Crazy International dancers!
Talking in front of the group, yikes!
Paola one of my favorite facilitators said tonight was farewell even though we have class tomorrow. She said the Italians like to do many farewells!
Today's topic was Intercultural experiences. Reggio Emilia is experiencing what we have worked with for many years, huge immigration. the countries from which people are coming to Reggio are listed in order from highest numbers to lowest. Albania, Morocco, China, Ghana, Ukraine and Romania. They have the second largest immigrant population in Italy, second only to Brescia. Not only is the immigration making an impact on just about everything, they are having increasing numbers of Italians moving to this area as well. The Municipality is forwarding money to local businesses to support the families of immigrants and have assumed responsibility for them. A little different attitude I would say! They encourage them to work together with cohesion and cooperation. The Italians use the term "accolienza" receiving and welcoming in their schools and the Municipality which they view as an "active dialogue and intelligency including active concepts of recognition and reciprocity not only declared, but acted." They feel schools are one of the best places to work toward cohesion because of the commom element it provides to build upon. Interesting.....
There were lots of statistics about schools, costs, numbers etc, way too much to blog. We all were a little surprised to learn that Reggio teachers make a pay rate somewhat comparable to ours, one of the main differences being there is little variation for increased education of years in.
A quote from a little guy in the school, " the world is round and sooner or later roads meet up and people change countries." Out of the mouths of babes!
Like I said, tons of data and stats on this as well as how they handle this is school. Very interesting. In some ways I think we have more experience in this regard but they are handling it with much more grace!
The afternoon was a time to divide into groups and we were given the chance to make three comments about the our experience and ask one question. Somehow, I think because I had paper to write, I ended up facilitating for our group. I told the group if I had to go up there, someone better take a picture......
The evening ended with an outdoor dinner at a social club in the city, live music, lots of Lambrusco (local) and dancing. Carly even broke her flip flop!!
Bill and Alison you would have been green with envy at the Brazilians dancing the Samba!!!
They have it down!
I sat watching, all of you know how I love to dance.......thinking, I am here in Reggio Emilia, Italy with 150 educators from all over the world. Columbia, Brazil, Mexico, Iceland, China, Norway, Germany, Austria, USA, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Korea, Greece, Italy, UK, Turkey, India and about 12 more. I got slightly choked up about what an experience this has been and the unification that presented itself over the past two weeks. How lucky am I?
Maybe Reggio and school (that dialogue due to the common element) and children is the place to begin to create world peace.........
One more day of farewells!
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