The Courage to Listen with Mara Krechevsky

[Music] Carlyna Ranaldi said, "Behind each act of listening there is desire, emotion, openness to differences, to different values and points of view. We therefore have to listen and give value to differences, listening therefore means giving value to the other. I am Sandy Lanez and my guest today has spent a lifetime wondering about learning. In this conversation we explore how learning lives within relationships and how courage is often found in truly listening, as she helps us all become awakened to radio. Mara Krashevsky is a renowned researcher, author and pioneer in the field of education. For over 40 years, Mara has been a leading force at Harvard's Project Zero where her work has reshaped the way we think about teaching, learning, and documentation. She directed the groundbreaking Making Learning Visible Project, a collaboration with educators from Regio Amilia. Mara has worked with hundreds of educators across the U.S. and around the world to help create more powerful participatory learning environments for both children and adults. She's the author and co-author of nine books and over 40 articles and chapters. Her recent projects, a pedagogy of play, supporting playful learning in classrooms in schools, and visible learners, promoting Regio-inspired approaches in all schools, continue to inform thinking and practice in classrooms everywhere. Mara's work has had a profound influence on me personally and on so many others who are passionate about the Regio approach. I am so honored and thrilled to have you join me, Mara. Thank you so much. Welcome. Thank you very much. I'm happy to be here. Your connection to the Regio approach is so deep. And when we think about your name, really, it's so much connected to what it means to think about Regio-inspired work in the United States in particular. You've worked so closely with many of the Italians that we all know about. And I would love you to just tell us about your journey, your stories. Well, actually, I first met Carla Renaldi in the 1980s when she came to Project Zero. So just a little bit about Project Zero, we're a research center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. And we've been around for almost 60 years. Our mission is very broad to support and understand learning, thinking, creativity in the arts, but over the years also other disciplines for children, for adults, for individuals, and institutions. So it's very broad, but we have a number of separately funded research projects like the Pedagogy of Play that you mentioned. And regardless of what the focus is, we are always asking the same three questions. So the first question is what does learning look like? The second question is how and where do you think in learning thrive? And the third question, which my colleague David Perkins says is the hardest question in education is what is worth learning today and tomorrow? I feel very fortunate to have landed at Project Zero. It was sort of serendipitous, but the way that I became connected to Red Joe was Karolina came and visited and clearly there were some connections between the 100 languages of children and Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. And we thought it might be interesting to try to collaborate with them. And Carla, again, suggested as the first step that I fly to Red Joe and spend a week there to see if we could identify a topic of shared interest. But she was very clear from the very beginning of the project that this was not going to be a case of Harvard researchers coming in to study what they do in Red Joe, but two organizations with separate areas of expertise investigating a shared problem. And so we came up with various possibilities during that week, but the one that we landed on is what ultimately became making learning visible. And the question was about assessment for learning in groups, because a lot of people talk about the importance of cooperative learning, collaborative learning, project-based learning, peer learning, but still when it comes time for assessment, we almost always revert back to the individual. So even alternative assessments like portfolios are still focused on the individual. So that was our question. What would it mean for a group to learn? Is it something besides what you and I might have taken away from being part of a group? And could it be something larger than what anyone person knows? This is pretty groundbreaking kind of stuff. Really, I think about your quote, groups are not just a context for learning. There are primary resource for thinking and knowing. And I know in my own work, I am constantly encouraging educators to work with children in small groups and to think about the individual's impact on the group and the group's impact on the individual. And it's so very connected to this. Could you talk about what it would look like for a classroom that really embraced that kind of thinking? One of the teachers we worked with Melissa Tonishel in the Boston area, she felt like you needed to start with language. For example, if a child says, oh, he's copying me, she would try to reframe that as you were so inspired by what so-and-so did that you wanted to do it yourself. And she would post in the classroom ways that you could phrase things so that it would support learning from and with each other, like things that were conditional, like would you or I don't agree with that. So I think there is something to that, that the language carries messages that we should look at. Another thing that she and many other teachers did is she started looking at everything she did and questioning, is this something where the quality of learning would be different and perhaps deeper if instead of asking children to do it individually, we did it as a group. Just a small example, which you may already know about, but for example, a lot of times kids are asked to estimate how many marvels are in the jar. So think about that if you ask an individual child, that question versus asking two children together to come up with an answer. And so one thinks 17, one thinks 44, but they have to negotiate and support why they said what they said. And it's just the quality of learning that is, it's not necessarily better, but it is different from individuals learning on their own. And I think it's not either or, but the question is the balance of group and individual. Again, one other example is in early childhood, often children start by all about me learning about themselves and then their families and then the school or their neighborhood. And we would say you don't have to, from the very beginning, children are both individuals and part of a larger community and you don't need to wait until after they've understood themselves in order to have them feel like they are members of a larger group. Wow, that's such a traditional way of thinking that you have to start here and work out, but really it's just this constant in and out all the time. Yeah, that also reminds me of a lot of early childhood educators have jobs for the children and their classrooms. And I've just been encouraging people to never just have one child doing a job have multiple children working together on it because there's always something to dialogue about and figure out. That's a perfect example. Yeah. So go back to that week in radio. What was that like? And how did the relationship that you have with them evolved from there? So what we did was to send them questions that we had come up with and then in a group the educators would talk about it in Italian. This is before email even and cell phones. So they'd have a translator who translated that into English and they would send it back to us and we would look at it. So it was a lot of our asking them questions. We were especially interested in what goes on in the Regio preschools. Later with the Visible Learners project, we wanted to see how can we take these ideas back across the ocean and use them not just in early childhood but through high school and we also work with teacher educators. But for that first part, I think we were just astonished at what we found. I think many people talk about the aesthetic dimension to what they do and of course Italy is a different culture from the US and the aesthetic realm is perhaps more valued but Jerome Bruner once went into a preschool classroom when he said he felt like he was walking into a graduate seminar. They talk about the pedagogy of listening and the pedagogy of relationships and those are really the two areas that we were interested in and we were so struck by the quality of the listening that teachers did, children did to each other and I think one other big thing that struck us and Laura Smoliguzzi says the purpose of teaching is not learning. The purpose of teaching is setting up the conditions for learning and I think in particular he means setting up the conditions for children learning from and with each other and so the degree of respect that the teachers had for children's ideas and going with children's ideas didn't matter whether it reflected a more scientific understanding of reality but nonetheless holding children accountable to their own ideas and whether the different things they were talking about reflected their own model and if not well what else could we do and referring to children's ideas as theories and so in the making learning visible book there's a like then this was back in the day facts machines were more of a thing and so how do facts machines work and the kids in a school and regio had a relationship maybe you know this with actually the Capitol Children's Museum in Washington DC and it's not like individual or group but it's about how do you choreograph when to ask children to learn individually and when you ask them to learn in a group so again it's a balancing question. So thinking about this idea of what does it mean to really listen to children can you share with us about your seminal book making learning visible you emphasize the essential role of documentation in the classroom I think you've said documentation is not just an end in itself yes this idea that it's meant to create dialogue new thinking to open new windows how can teachers shift their view of documentation what does it look like in a classroom where documentation is really driving the process forward and is not just a report of what happened so you're right we've thought a lot about this even we when we first were working with them when learning about documentation we would say oh yes we we get it we get it documentation makes learning visible and they would constantly say no I mean yes it makes learning visible and it shapes the nature of the learning that takes place and we would say oh we understand we understand documentation makes learning visible and they would say yes and it changes the nature of the learning that takes place and so holding those two parts of it in mind at the same time is challenging and I agree with you that many people at least initially think of documentation as an end in itself or you might see like beautiful photographs around the room but there are a few things one is well it took us ten years to come up with a definition of documentation that I don't know actually if read your educators would say yes this is what it's about but we thought really long and hard about every word and I'm sure we didn't get it right but at least we made some progress so you may know this definition it's the practice of four verbs observing recording interpreting and sharing or making public ideally through different media so it's not just language it's not just images but some of each the processes and products of learning and here I think our colleagues are making a big claim that you do not need to wait until the end of a learning experience in order to know that learning is taking place you can see learning happening during the process as well as the product and so you're looking at both and then the big question which is what many people forget is why why are you documenting to begin with and what we say is in order to deepen learning often I'll work with teachers and ask them just what's your own working definition of documentation and people you know they might forget the observing part or interpreting but that piece about in order to deepen learning I think is key and not all documentation makes learning visible some of it is about strengthening the identity of the group and one thing that may be helpful is to think about documentation not just as sharing what you or the children did but what you learned it has to have some aspect of learning and that's hard for people maybe it's because the visual and the beauty of it can be so compelling that you feel like oh that's a wonderful piece but Ben Mardel who you've interviewed he has a maxim which I just love which is only collect as much documentation as you have time to revisit so if you are not looking back at what you gathered to make sense of it to see how can this support where children go next or how can I share this with parents or the community you then you should focus in and I think when you have a question about learning like what is it about children's learning that you are especially interested in finding out about that helps guide your documentation so you don't need to be documenting everything that every child is doing often you can learn a lot and perhaps more by following the trajectory of a small group but the idea is the kind of learning that that small group does will be reflective of what children in general in the classroom are getting so it relates to this group learning piece as well and it makes me think about the image of learning really I think that the bridge between what is learning and how does documentation actually contribute to learning or it is an essential element of learning I think that we need to strengthen that message I think there's a lot of confusion around it and it becomes kind of just a strategy or a task for people because they don't see the impact I'm wondering how you have helped teachers really embrace this practice this way of being with children and how have you seen it change the way learning exists the conditions as Bruno would say the conditions for learning well in so many ways and like I was talking about this teacher who when children said things that supported learning from and with each other she would put it up as a reference not just for the children but also for the adults here's an example of documentation that really gets at how do you inform the learning that takes place and again I don't know if Ben talked about this but he has a video you may know learning as a team sport kindergartner studied both the marathon and in that video at one point when Ben is introducing the idea of a big study group around the marathon he thought kids would be interested in various aspects of the marathon and so he recorded he videotaped the conversation that night he went back and looked at what the kids were interested in and it turned out it was not these other aspects of the marathon but it was how long is 26.2 miles because kids were saying oh we could get to China if you do that and kindergartners can run the Boston marathon and so the next day he was like a lot of you were talking about how long 26.2 miles is and you think kindergartners could run it so let's try this out and he took them to a field and they ran around a track and of course they're exhausted if you look up the video if you haven't seen it because you'll see that exact moment of them running around the field so I think that's a very powerful example of a teacher using documentation to inform what is the children's current understanding and where might we go next as a teacher is getting ready to document what do you suggest to them as preparation or documenting an experience that's a really good question and I would say the most important thing is to ask yourself what do you want to learn from this documentation and there's a difference between documentation that supports learning within the group or documentation where you want to share learning outside of the group so we have a tool maybe it's in the visible learners book about documentation to support your own reflection when does that make learning visible documentation to share back with the learners in the group and documentation to share with the community more widely and once you leave the group there's a question of context which needs to be provided you know what is it you want to learn about with regard to children's learning and that really helps to direct what you choose to focus on and maybe you would choose well I'm especially interested when children are in the blocks area and how the girls and the boys play similarly and differently okay that's going to focus you in and another key part which isn't always available is once you gather the documentation which should be in its raw form not already interpreted of course it's valuable that you have your perspective you have a lot of experience and skills to draw on but you're still just one perspective and so this is very challenging for teachers in our country and probably many countries ideally you would be looking at that documentation to make sense of it with others and so giving teachers time to look together at examples of children's thinking and learning outside of the classroom in order to inform what happens next that doesn't just enrich your own learning but it also enriches the learning of your colleagues I think some of these barriers that are happening in schools are the things that we really need to work on the importance of teachers having time with others and that interpreting stage I think then saying that don't take more documentation than you can look at is really really important because the whole idea is to then look back interpret and think forward I think there are a lot of teachers who teach children that are very young that don't have words yet or the verbal language as much and I think that they often are asking how do I document when I don't have children saying things so there you're looking at the hundred languages of children you're looking at other ways that children choose to express themselves or communicate like there's a beautiful video that Tiziana Filipini once sent me of a young child who had just started to learn to walk and so they caught this moment when he made a few steps and the teacher's response was not just you know excited yeah but wow you just took a few steps go go back and get your friend who's still just crawling why don't you see if you can go back and get your friend that's another example of how in Rejo and in a classroom where group learning is really important learning as Carlyna used to say is not just about expression but about communication and so they are always thinking about how can we connect what this child is learning to what that child so there were no words here nonetheless they're saying and they didn't even know if this was possible for that child but here's the hope here's the goal can you go get your friend and bring him along so even that social competence from birth really that a child absolutely well Carlyna Rinaldi talks about a six month old as a researcher with a hypothesis right but I also think it might be interesting I remembered what I was going to say before about some other ways besides that definition I gave to think about documentation and so one way is visible listening and so if teachers say I don't have time to document which totally get yeah but if you say do you have time to listen most people even if they didn't they would still see the value of listening to children so sometimes they're you know teach like I'm like well what about listening do you feel like it's important to listen and then for example you're doing something with the kids one day is there something that stood out to you doesn't have to be words but that you would like to share back with the children the next day just to inform and build on what they did previously and another teacher we worked with saw documentation as sharing children's work back with them for re-examination that's also something that is probably not done as much as it could be and we would say yes sure absolutely their own work for re-examination but also in regio they are completely comfortable with giving and getting feedback among children in public it's not a private thing between teacher and child so the children are trying to represent ring around the rosy and they have draw individually and then they look at each other's drawings and say well which one of these really looks like ring around the rosy so sharing children's work back with them for re-examination I think is is helpful and pat tar and canada talks about using the walls to support learning and again that's another way you're not just using walls to put pretty pictures up but to support learning and where do we see evidence of the child's thinking I always think of using the walls as really an inspiration for dialogue yes and so I think that's so powerful to think about the walls have that amazing power to inspire learning. Mara first of all you have just opened so many windows for people and you have spent so many years researching and thinking about the kinds of schools that children deserve that they have a right to what keeps you inspired these are hard times for educators for everyone so one thing that keeps me inspired I don't know if you're familiar with the Opal School but we had a collaboration with Matt Carlson and Susan McKay called inspiring agents of change because what they did at the Opal School was so deep visible listening and understanding the quality of learning that is different from individual to group so we have about 24 tools for example they would do something called partner explore I don't know if you're familiar with that activity where they would choose two children to work together and they would have their reasons for why they might choose these children and then they would set up the room and the two would have to agree okay where do we want to go it's like the only rule was they would have to stay with each other the whole time and that I think is such a creative way to introduce children to others who think differently and valuing that togetherness along with the learning they also have they used to have a practice called a doover right where we all make mistakes so teachers and kids you can ask for a doover if something you do maybe hurt somebody's feelings or whatever also they have something called snapping ideas together so when you have different ideas how can we snap these ideas together so that environment was so inspiring to me and also both their mission and how they described playful inquiry and they defined that as and I just love this definition an approach to learning in a community that courageously and collaboratively relies on the unique gifts of childhood to question what it means to be a citizen worldmaker in the midst of uncertainty I just found that so powerful and I think about Harvard and all the problems it's having and wow what it means to be a citizen worldmaker in the midst of uncertainty we need that now more than ever absolutely and the word courageous just feels like something that I know you are as you have walked this path and I think hopefully we can encourage educators to be courageous it is in the classrooms even in the earliest years that this is where we can change the world yeah and I think one thing that a teacher that we worked with said is learning groups give you courage so I think yes to be courageous and one of the biggest supports for that is doing something with others thank you so much Mara I'm gonna really sit today and think about this idea do you have time to listen that really says it all yes and so who would say no to this exactly exactly thank you for being with us this was just such an inspirational hour for me and I know for others as well well thank you I really enjoyed this conversation so thanks so much for asking me if you want to know more about the regio approach or any of my guests please go to sandielainst.com or the Awakened to Regio Facebook page you