Essays about Children, Learning, and Teaching
Edited by Matt Glover and Ellin Olvier Keene
Foreward by Alfie Kohn
Dennie Palmer Wolf’s essay is one of 15 essays published in The Teacher You Want to Be: Essays about Children, Learning, and Teaching. This collection of essays explores questions about education stimulated by the remarkable pre-schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy. At the heart of those schools is the premise that all children deserve to learn “100 languages” — drawing, dance, sculpture, song, numbers, and many more.
At a moment when local and state governments throughout the USA are realizing the importance of early childhood education, there is no more powerful reminder about the role of arts and culture in the earliest moments of teaching and learning. Dennie Wolf’s essay, “Of Questions and Canyons”, uses examples from the arts and humanities to explore the central role of inquiry in becoming human.
More about the book:
This book is about bringing the education we want for our own children to all. It is focused on a set of strongly held beliefs that drive the actions of educators every day. Each of the 15 essays, centered around one of these beliefs, invites readers to consider what they can do to help children attend schools based on the true, authentic expressions of their teachers’ beliefs.
In 2012, a diverse group of American educators made a pilgrimage to Italy to observe instruction at a Reggio Emilia school. Their observations resulted in a desire to articulate a set of belief statements about education. This book is based on those beliefs. With this collection, the authors and editors hope to create a space in the current education conversation for teachers to know that they can teach in a way that is aligned to their beliefs.
