The Seneca ECE students in the Fall 2020 semester showed us their passion, their fire, their willingness to question. Each and every student has a story to tell, ideas to share, and questions to bring to the table; and every single one is worth listening to.
The students in the first semester Creative Arts course, thinking with the works on Material Encounters (written by Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, Sylvia Kind and Laurie L. M. Kocher) alongside their professor Louise Jupp, shared with us some of their writing of documentation panels and learning stories about children’s encounters with fabrics at the Lab School and our former sister school KOLTS. We are so proud of and inspired by the work they shared, the insights and reflections, and the poetry of their words. In their pieces, we see the possibilities that arise as we place development aside and hold space for other types of stories to emerge. There is a beauty revealed in this way of seeing children and our relationships to them as more than just a cultivation of a series of skills.
We hope you enjoy and are inspired by reading these examples of work by some of these first semester students. We wonder what these stories tell you, how these pieces of writing about these moments make you feel? We invite you to leave a comment and share your reflections with us.
(If you click on each story, you will be able to zoom in for a closer read.)
How different may these writings read if the focus was on the skills being developed, on the teaching outcomes being met?
What worlds may we open up if we hold space to truly view the Environment (and each material we encounter) as a living organism that we can be in relationship to and relationship with?
Once again, we invite you to leave a comment and share your reflections with us as we too continue to think with these ideas.
(If you would like to think more with Material Encounters, please visit http://encounterswithmaterials.com/)
Amazing how a simple material like fabric becomes the Atelier of 100 languages of interactions, feelings, emotions, etc. Materials like fabric invite children to do the unthinkable. Children discover and become the teachers to all of us and the creators of amazing experiences. Job well done!
Thank you Patricia for such a thoughtful comment… children and fabric offer a hundred and a hundred more to think, be and learn with. Seeing the complexity in simplicity!