With the support of SFCAC’s board, I was fortunate to attend the North American Reggio Emilia Alliance conference at Asilomar in Pacific Grove in mid-June. This year’s summer conference, Valuing Early Childhood: An Invitation for Community Dialogue, hosts a confluence of educators and administrators, meeting to share educational context. Highlights of this experience, involved interacting with fellow educators from North America, who are passionate about their work with young children, and the presentations made by two Italian educators from Reggio Emilia were inspiring. We attended the exhibition, “The Wonder of Learning” in collaboration with First Five, Monterey and Reggio Children, in downtown Salinas at the National Steinbeck Center and visited two schools for migrant and agricultural families in the Salinas Valley, King City Child Development Center and Alegria Head Start. To further develop program quality, each school worked with First 5 Monterey County, to integrate a more creative curriculum into their teaching practice.

The Wonder of Learning: Narrating the Possible, will be on tour throughout North America, changing locations every 6 months. It is well worth the trip to Salinas, and can be viewed until November 15, 2011. This expanded and updated version of the “Hundred Languages of Children”, is an exhibition of the infant-toddler centers and preschools in the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, Italy. The exhibition is a wonder! Go see it.

Gail Tarantino

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