Trainee Atelierista/ Artist working with children required at Award-winning Nursery

We are recruiting a Trainee Atelierista/ Artist working with children responsible for supporting work in Reflections Pre-school, reporting to the Atelierista.

The role will include learning alongside the Atelierista, supporting children’s creative work. You would run the Atelier (studio/ workshop/ laboratory) in the Atelierista’s absence and support the children’s lines of enquiry and project work.    

The role could be full-time or part-time. 

You will be enthusiastic about children’s creativity and have a creative background yourself.  Ideally you will have experience of working with children in the early years and have some understanding of the Reggio Approach.  Training and support will be provided. 

Salary to be agreed, depending upon experience.

Please contact martin@reflectionsnurseries.co.uk in the first instance. 

Reflections is recruiting for a Forest School Leader

We are recruiting a Forest School Leader responsible for leading Reflections’ woodland sessions.

The role could be either full-time; or part time (from 8.30am until 2.30pm, 44 weeks-a-year). 

The role includes: getting the children ready and taking them to the forest by minibus. Taking full responsibility for children’s welfare and documenting their experiences including a 4-page diary, e-mailed to parents after each session. You would also be responsible for managing the forest school staff team, made up of Reflections’ educators. 

Ideally you will have a deep understanding of the Reggio approach and have worked in an early years setting.  Experience of working in the woodland with children and a Forest School qualification are required. A full driving license will also be necessary.

Salary to be agreed, depending upon experience. Training could be provided for the right candidate.

Please contact martin@reflectionsnurseries.co.uk in the first instance. 

Closing date for applications is: Wednesday 29th October 2014
 

 

Reflections Professional Development Day: October 2014

Forest School & Risky Play

A Professional Development Day focussing on Reflections’ Forest School programme and the significance of risky play; featuring guest speaker, Tim Gill.

Date:               Saturday 18th October 2014, from 9.00am until 3.30pm

Venue:             Reflections Nursery & Forest School, Worthing, UK

Cost:                £125 including refreshments & lunch

What are the benefits of Forest School and how can Forest School transform environments and practice in an early years setting? Is childhood being undermined by risk aversion? How should we deal with risk in the early years and how can we ensure that we are giving children challenging experiences.? What are the benefits of ‘risky’ play?  

Speakers:

Tim Gill is one of the UK’s leading thinkers on childhood and an advocate for positive change in children’s everyday lives. Tim’s book No Fear: Growing up in a risk averse society was published in 2007 and is now in its third reprint. Tim appears regularly on radio and television and has given talks in Europe, North America, Australasia and Japan. For more details see: http://rethinkingchildhood.com/

Martin Pace has worked in the childcare sector for over 20 years. He is Director of Reflections Nursery and has attended nine study tours of the infant-toddler centres and pre-schools of Reggio Emilia since 2003. Martin was until recently the Forest School Leader at Reflections and is author of I love Forest School due to be published by Bloomsbury in August 2014. http://www.reflectionsnurseries.co.uk

Participants:

We welcome registrations from all those working in the area of early childhood and primary education and in outdoor education with young children.

Programme

- A tour of Reflections Nursery with a Reflections’ educator and forest skills discussion

- Tim Gill - Presentation & Discussion: Is childhood being undermined by risk aversion?

- Lunch and an opportunity to walk round Reflections Nursery and meet with Reflections’ educators

- Martin Pace - Presentation & Discussion: How Forest School has influenced environments and practice at Reflections and informed our approach to risky play.

Please contact susan@reflectionsnurseries.co.uk for further details.

Thanks to our intern - Laura Magnavacchi

Laura Magnavacchi – Intern at Reflections Nursery & Forest School, Autumn Term 2013 

In Summer 2013, Robin Duckett of Sightlines Initiative kindly suggested that we might be interested in an intern joining Reflections.  He explained that Laura Magnavacchi was coming from Reggio Emilia to study and work in the UK for three months commencing September 2013 through a study programme with European Training Services, based in Cardiff. 

As soon as we received Laura’s CV we contacted her immediately to express how keen we were to have her join Reflections.  Laura has two degrees, one in Education and the other in the arts and has studied and worked abroad in Spain and Belgium. She had a brief internship in Sole, a pre-school in the Reggio Children network, and the remainder of her employment has been in pre-schools near her hometown of Castelnovo ne’Monti in the province of Reggio Emilia. These pre-schools are significantly influenced by proximity to the Reggio Children network of schools and share many aspects of the Reggio approach (for example, they frequently access Remida[i]), but do not form part of the network. 

From Reflections’ perspective, we saw the opportunity engage in dialogue with someone who had first-hand experience of working in a Reggio Children pre-school, and someone who had a different pedagogical experience and cultural heritage to our own. Reflections Nursery & Forest School was founded in 2006 and draws much inspiration from the Reggio Approach; alongside other influences, in particular the forest nurseries of Denmark. In our short history we have received many inspiring visitors at the nursery and we recognise the value of their influence on our evolving pedagogy.  We believe that the more we have the opportunity to reflect on our approach, the more we can develop staff, enhance our environments & resources and deepen our understanding of how children learn. 

Laura agreed to conduct her internship with Reflections and as soon as she arrived she brought a deep natural curiosity to her work and staff and children immediately warmed to her. Laura has a gentle way of working with the children and quickly proved to be a great asset in the Atelier, working alongside Teresa Grimaldi, our Atelierista who had herself visited Reggio Emilia on study tour in 2008. 

We were keen to respect the fact that Laura was in the UK to engage with our pedagogy and she joined Reflections at a time when we had planned a nursery-wide focus on sculpture. We provoked children’s interest with a visit to four sculptural heads in Worthing Town centre by Dame Elisabeth Frink, entitled The Desert Quartet.  These works are walked past daily by local families who use the nursery and we saw them as a useful starting point to provoke children’s interest. This focus was led by Teresa and it was Laura’s role to support children’s investigations and alongside Teresa, co-ordinate regular pedagogical meetings with sculpture ‘representatives’ from each section in the nursery. Laura’s brought her enthusiasm for working with children and her interest in all things creative to this task; in addition her photographic skills were particularly useful in supporting our documentation of children’s work.  When we had an ice sculpting demonstration in the garden for the children, it was Laura’s photography which really captured the spirit of the day.   

Laura was also keen to get into the outdoors with children and attended a number of Forest School sessions (we run five forest sessions a week, every week of the year).  Laura particularly enjoyed the opportunity of working with the children in the woodland and recognised the significance of outdoor learning in our approach.  She was keen to point out that the ‘bridge’ in our garden (a climbing area made from a fallen tree and woodland ladders) was something she felt they would be unable to replicate in schools where she had worked in Reggio owing to legislative issues. Laura recognised too the value that forest experiences had brought to the nursery in terms of developing our understanding of how to handle risk with children. 

At Reflections we run two Professional Development Days every year and Laura was keen to attend the day in October 2013 with a theme of, Forest School & Outdoor Learning. She had the opportunity to meet 85 delegates from 10 countries who were visiting the nursery and share thoughts, observations and values, and she assisted Teresa with her presentation to visitors. At this point Laura had already become an established and valued member of team and we were already trying to find ways of persuading her to stay with us after her internship.     

In order to deepen our questioning with children, we asked Sara Stanley, author of Why Think? and Philosophy for Children (P4C) trainer to come to Reflections, working with staff and children for a few days’ consultancy. Laura expressly wished to share in this experience but Sara was unavailable until January 2014.  However, as we had found Laura to be a real asset and someone who shared our values and high expectations when working with young children, we invited her back to work with us on a paid basis from January to April 2014. We were delighted when she accepted and Laura has taken the opportunity to extend the sculpture work with the children, a project she remains deeply involved in.

Martin Pace, Reflections Nursery Director.

February 2014     

---

[i] Remida is a creative recycling centre in the centre of Reggio Emilia and forms part of Reggio Children.  Remida promotes the idea that waste materials can be resources and collects, displays, and distributes alternative and reclaimed materials obtained from the unsold stock and scrap materials of industrial production.

Intern from Reggio Emilia at Reflections Nursery

Laura Magnavacchi joined Reflections Nursery on an internship for three months, from September to December 2013.  Read below her insightful observations of the experience. 

Observations of three months of work placement

When I arrived at Reflections, I had a welcoming visit around all the building and I was surprised by the rich environment that I could see outside.  The nursery extends across a big garden where the nature has top priority.

You can see the importance of the outdoor learning walking between an asymmetrical bridge and a natural tunnel, journeys on mixed materials and creative buildings, trees, plants and a massive edible garden.

In my first two days at Reflections I could enjoy the forest school experience, knowing in this way a new educational approach that I had never met before. I learnt how forest school originated in Denmark with the idea of encouraging and inspiring children through positive outdoor experiences.

I found that these experiences give children an understanding of the natural environment and a problem-solving competence, and handling risks; very difficult to reach by an indoor learning. I also saw how the wild environment could facilitate co-operation with peers.

One of the most interesting things is how the ideas can travel between the indoor and outdoor environments, finding nourishment in both and growing up, materialising in the place that they prefer.

I understand how constrictive indoor spaces can be when outdoor a child could express himself using a massive space, in horizontal and vertical ways, from his hands to the horizon, from a deep hole in the earth to the sky, using a big range of natural suggestions as inspiration.

 I think about what H. de Balzac said “What is Art but Nature concentrated!”

I realized that in Reflections the outdoor learning and environment has probably an importance that it doesn’t have in the schools which I experienced in Reggio Emilia.

Speaking about environments and spaces, I found some other differences from my Italian experience also indoors.

There are more smaller rooms compared to a few large rooms and I first saw that the building lacked a square (piazza) as place where to share ideas and experiences with the others during group discussion times. I thought this structure maybe could be also a mirror of the city structures, I mean that in England is more difficult to find cities with big squares, whereas in Italy everywhere has one. In this way it's also interesting to see how each place has its own identity and how the same values could be modelled around different cultural and historical models.

I also saw few differences regarding the management of the time (I mean year's inscriptions and some of the day's routine). However, apart from these more technical issues I really could feel how there are many similarities between Reggio Emilia and Reflections' approach.  I could see the same educational philosophy based on the image of the child, as human beings possessing strong potentials for development, made with the hundred languages mentioned by Malaguzzi, co-protagonists in his knowledge-building process.

In both approaches the role of Atelierista is highly valued and I found how the atelier is not just a physical space, but an idea to work with children who walked the borders of the room and wander around all the indoor and outdoor spaces.

The thing that probably I appreciate more in Reflections’ approach is the way that they really have to ask continually questions to themselves about what they are doing, which could be the best way to work at, how could they improve their skill, how it could be modified for developing in the best way and following own ideals.

I think it's interesting to see how people from so different and distant places decided to share values and work across geographical borders for a shared project. I thought what C. Rinaldi said about “A new cultural geography that goes beyond the traditional geographical borders and creates a network among people who has common sensibilities and ideals.” and I could see also in this period, during the international meetings and conferences where I was involved, a dialogue between different countries all committed in this same project that is the early childhood education.

Laura Magnavacchi January 2014

All photos by Laura Magnavacchi