This was the traumatizing thought Medis had leaving the bush to head for South Africa for the Reggio Emilia Conference...how can I survive without nshima for a week?? Medis has never really left the comforts of her village life here near Mukamba...I must say, she was extremely brave leaving her family, her home, her village, and her country with someone she only met a few months ago to a place she has never been before. Well Medis and I made it to South Africa for our training conference a few weeks ago. God arranged everything perfectly for us to get there and what a blessing this week and conference were to us.
The conference was held at a private school in Johannesburg and it was the first International Africa Reggio Emilia Alliance Conference, one they hope to have again next year. They had arranged speakers from all over the world to come and share how their educational programs have been inspired by the philosophy of Reggio Emilia. The two main speakers came from Reggio Emilia, Italy and shared many amazing stories about their schools and the learning that takes place among children of all ages. They gave many practical ways on how to expand our thinking as educators, so that we can become more flexible in our thinking when it comes to children and their environment. Medis was very receptive to all the speakers had to say and she learned a lot about how this philosophy really values to individuality of each child and helps them each reach their own potential inside the classroom learning together. I was also inspired to challenge the children more in areas of interest to them in order to enhance their learning experience at our school here in the village. The other speakers from Singapore, Sweden, Ireland, and South Africa showed great examples at how the Reggio philosophy has been implemented into their programs and how rich the process of learning is for the individual children who are impacted by it. We greatly enjoyed hearing from everyone and we both left feeling very challenged to try and make our program better for the children who are attending it.
That being said…I have decided to take some of the personal money I have to build a couple additions onto the school. The space I have for the children is quite small and I would love to give them more space to use in their learning time at the school. We have just begun the building process of two smaller rooms on the back of the school. In the smaller room, we are planning on putting in a light/shadow room, where it will be dark and hopefully build a light table for the children to use to explore light and all its properties. By doing this, we will also have to put in solar power and we are trusting God will provide as we need for this project!! The other room is a bit bigger and we are going to transform it into a permanent art studio where we can have all our art supplies on display and shelves for the children’s art work to dry and be put on display. These two rooms will open up the main area and create ore space for the children to use the materials we have out for them.
Please be in prayer as we are trying a new builder who is giving us a very fair price, but we are unsure of his building quality. Also pray for the process as we are hoping to start at the end of this term (a couple weeks) and complete it before we open back up in September…that supplies come in, we have finances for it all, and that God is the center of motivation for it all!!
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