ESP provides your children with an Emergent Curriculum based on the highly acclaimed Reggio Emilia philosophy. The philosophy that inspired our program design and learning environment that truly focuses on the children's learning and development based on their own interests. At ESP the children have the freedom to express themselves, be who they are, and share their ideas on what they like to learn. We believe that children are capable of constructing their own learning. They are considered as active citizens with rights to contribute to build their learning community with their own creativity and experiences they bring and share in the ESP classrooms.
ESP curriculum draws on the values of Reggio Emelia. This approach requires teachers to thoughtfully attend to the interests of the children, believing that student driven curiosity and reflection strengthens the capacity of children to be life-long learners. Children are encouraged to represent their learning in art, and words, as well as through their play, and conversations. This learning process is carefully documented by teachers and used to guide the curriculum. A primary focus of teacher reflection and documentation continuously returns to questions related to culturally responsive teaching and learning.
Reggio Emilia Approach is well fitted for ESP multicultural and inclusive learning program. Our educational approach centers around the child's various modes of expression, the teacher's role, fostering strong relationships, teaching through listening, and the environment as a crucial element in learning. It is based on the belief that children have immense potential for development and are entitled to certain rights, and that they learn through the many languages that are part of human culture and grow through their interactions with others.
Reggio Emilia Philosophy
Values and Principles of the Reggio Emilia Approach
Children are capable
At ESP we acknowledge that every child is competent, resourceful, curious, imaginative, and inventive. They are capable of constructing their own learning. They will be treated as active collaborators in their education as opposed to passive observers.
Environment as a teacher
ESP environment is set to motivate the children's learning and engaging in the activities. It's also to promote exploration, play, and build skills. ESP environments is designed to suite children's learning and appropriate for their developmental stages.
We see parent as an essential resource to their child's learning. Programs are family centered and focus on each child’s relation to others. Engagement and relationships with families are considered to be essential.
Parent Involvement
ESP teachers have complex role in children's learning and development. Thier role as a co-constructor as they are listening, observing and engaging in a dialogue with the children to understand their interests and guide their learning.
Teacher as a Co-Constructor
The 100 Languages: At ESP we believe that children have ability to express themselves in more than one way. These hundred languages of children are symbolic and are open to the endless potential in children.
Children's Multiple Symbolic Languages
Project-Based learning is a big part of ESP curriculum. In this approach the children have control of how the project will be designed and created using their own interest and curiosity. The teachers will observe and document through the learning process.
Documentation as Assessment and Advocacy: Project work is documented and displayed, allowing the children to express, revisit, construct and reconstruct their feelings, ideas and understandings.
Project-Based Learning and Documentation
100 Languages of Childhood
The child
is made of one hundred.
The child has
a hundred languages
a hundred hands
a hundred thoughts
a hundred ways of thinking
of playing, of speaking.
A hundred always a hundred
ways of listening
of marveling of loving
a hundred joys
for singing and understanding
a hundred worlds
to discover
a hundred worlds
to invent
a hundred worlds
to dream.
The child has
a hundred languages
(and a hundred hundred hundred more)
but they steal ninety-nine.
The school and the culture
separate the head from the body.
They tell the child:
to think without hands
to do without head
to listen and not to speak
to understand without joy
to love and to marvel
only at Easter and Christmas.
They tell the child:
to discover the world already there
and of the hundred
they steal ninety-nine.
They tell the child:
that work and play
reality and fantasy
science and imagination
sky and earth
reason and dream
are things
that do not belong together.
And thus they tell the child
that the hundred is not there.
The child says:
No way. The hundred is there.
Loris Malaguzzi (translated by Lella Gandini)
