Tufenkian Pre-School participants in the Reggio Emilia conference in West LA
BY EMIL TATEVOSIAN
The Richard Tufenkian Pre-School sponsored a group of teachers to attend a two-day workshop organized by five Reggio Emilia-inspired schools located in the West Los Angeles.
This uplifting gathering was entitled Provoking Empathy, Kindness and Community through Observation, Documentation and Reflection. For years, the Tufenkian Pre-School director, Arsine Aghazarian, has shared with her School Board her vision and ideas which were rooted in the Reggio Emilia teaching philosophy.
Reggio Emilia is a small village in Italy. After World War II the name became synonymous with a teaching philosophy. This decades-tested approach is student-centric. Each child is allowed to learn and explore through developing relationships with other children, the teacher, and the curriculum. In this environment, the teacher is not an instructor but a collaborator and parents are vital in creating the learning village. This philosophy isn’t novel to our culture as we generally embrace the role of the teacher and parent very differently than the typical non-Armenian school. However, for any educational philosophy to be successful it must first become organic to the school’s cultural values and community priorities; as such, no two schools will ever have identical programs. And our school will be unique in its ability to weave the key elements of the Reggio Emilia philosophy into our community and school culture.
Aghazarian’s steadfast commitment to these ideas inspired me to do my own research and the culmination of that effort was spending two days with her and twelve teachers and experiencing their excitement about getting creative in ways to practice their inspiration at our school. As I listened to one particular speaker say that “childrenâ€
