Playgroup on Nick Wang

Montessori Vs. Reggio Emilia Approach in Hong Kong

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 16:46:00 +0000

Montessori is a popular education system developed by Maria Montessori in 1897. It seems to be gaining popularity here in Hong Kong, many parents know about it but very few know about the Reggio Emilia approach. Recently, the Montessori playgroup L goes to started to have troubles with him, and it made me think more about the difference between Montessori and Reggio. I thought I’d share a bit of my own experience in the two in this post.

My son has been going to a small Montessori playgroup since he was 1 and ½. I used to like it there with their specially designed toys that train toddlers’ motor skills. Now that he is 2 however, I begin to think that some of the materials and their ways of teaching are not so appropriate.

First of all, because L is old enough and “ready”, we agreed to move him up to the big kids group, (L was really starting to get bored with the little kids group anyway,) but problem with the big kids one is that parents are supposed to leave the kids by themselves. L isn’t ready for this and he cries. The teachers would hug him and tell him to stop crying because “he’s a big boy and everything is OK”. Well, obviously everything is not OK. What’s even worse is that when they see that my boy won’t stop crying, they’ll use me as a condition / threat, “if you stop crying, I’ll ask Daddy to come in, but if you cry again, I’ll have to send Daddy away!” Through RIE, I’ve learned that we shouldn’t stop toddlers from crying. Crying is how they express their feelings, and we shouldn’t prevent them from doing that! And from Reggio Emilia’s Diary of Laura, I’ve learned that separation is an extremely sensitive matter for toddlers that must not be taken lightly! We adults don’t think twice about it, but for a 2 year old, separating from his parents to stay at a relatively unfamiliar environment, e.g. school, is a big fucking deal!! (Sorry!) It’s not something to be forced onto them!!

Next, they’re teaching the Toddlers to eat and drink by themselves by providing food and water with small size plates and utensils. This part I like, but I just heard about an ever better example from Sarah, which is to provide a day’s worth of snacks in a place accessible to them, not only can we provide good, healthy fruits and snacks, but it can also teach them to save their food for later. I feel this is a good way to introduce deferred gratifications.

Finally, my biggest gripe is about the structure of putting kids into age groups and designing tasks for each group. For example, the toys at my son’s Montessori place are designed in Korea and are meant to teach math & logic through games. I guess they’re good but I don’t really like them. They also have a set time to different activities, like at the end of each class, they’ll have singing time. It disturbed L’s concentration as he was testing his hypothesis on some new discoveries!

If you look at the key points of Montessori education, you see that last point – Specialized educational materials developed by Montessori and her collaborators… back in 1897!! Once again, I’m sure she did a marvelous job studying the children, but at the end of the day, it’s still giving kids a “choice of activity from within a prescribed range of options”, based on an adult structured curriculum, which means it’s still getting kids ready for the adults’ view of the world.

In contrast, Reggio Emilia Approach allows children to construct their own understanding of the world. Their own hypothesis. Their own interpretation. There’s no “One Right Answer” at the end of an activity. The children speak and see a hundred, and in Reggio Emilia, we adults do not take away ninety-nine! We learn to observe, appreciate and make apparent each child’s unique learning stories to their parents (and other adults)! The more Reggio “documentations” or “learning stories” you read, the more you’ll see how much your childhood sucked! :P You’ll realize children are far more capable than we give them credits for, and if you provide them with a good, open environment and respectful guidance, they’ll amaze you with things you didn’t think were possible! Honestly, once you learn to see your child in Reggio’s eyes, you cannot turn back to any other way, stuffing knowledge into their minds.

In short, Montessori’s categorized and prescribed approach is pretty good, definitely much better than the regular, traditional education system out there. Toddlers can learn from older kids and everyone “live” in a highly disciplined classroom, doing semi-free activities that have hidden agendas to teach them things we adults prescribed. Meanwhile, Reggio Emilia’s completely child initiated approach, where adults care deeply about the children’s relationships with their peers, their parents, teachers, and their environments, we may provide “seeds of knowledge” based on our limited knowledge, but what the kids make of them, how their path of learning goes, we do not limit at all! It’s a subtle difference but it means the world!

Or, to use The Matrix as an example again, you will raise a Morpheus with Montessori, but you may raise a Neo with Reggio Emilia! ;–)

Diary - July 30th - Discovered a female classmate

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 15:41:00 +0000

This morning we went to play at the park again. It seems like it was only a few weeks ago that L wasn’t able to reach these steering wheels machines, or at least wasn’t able to turn them, thus losing interests in them fast. Today, not only was he able to turn them, he discovered a new way to play with it, by hanging off of them like they’re monkey bars. With his feet clear off the ground, he looked at me triumphantly! As if telling me: “Look! I conquered gravity!”

Later on, L spotted the boot washing water tap and wanted to play . I told him I need to take off his socks and shoes first and then he’s off! I think because I had learned to be more hands off and just let him play by himself, he’s a little calmer and doesn’t rush through things as much as before. This time, he slowly observed the water, I only butt in to tell him to turn off one tap before turning on another. When he tried to tell me something, I walked over and he pointed to the stone surface where the water was flowing and said to me “Water! Fall down!” I was expecting him to be inspecting the hose or how the brush and the water interact, this once again reminded me that we never really know what toddlers are observing and thinking! If I had talked to him about the hose or the brush, I would’ve just disturbed him observing nature – water, flows, down!

In the middle of this, we got another old lady coming over to offer her advice, saying how he got everything wet and this is how you wash your hands! (by turning the water down.)

L only goes to 1 playgroup a week and it’s a Montessori one. Today, toward the end of the class, L took 2 bamboo oval balls over to play on his favorite wooden train rack. He had started doing that a long time ago but didn’t have much success due to the fact that they’re not round. Today, the balls stopped midway on the tracks as usual but then he put the train through and it pushed the balls along! It was a breakthrough! He immediately saw the connection and repeated the process many times, and then he tested something new – putting the balls at the tail end of the train! It didn’t work. Hypothesis broken, back to balls at the front.

One bad thing about the Montessori playgroup is that there’s still a little bit of singing and “learning” at the end of each class. The singing broke L’s concentration on the new train / balls discovery. But a funny first time happened here when he moved toward the singing group. He suddenly realized there exists a classmate! He stood behind a little girl and started touching her hair with both hands. Didn’t pay any attention to the other 2 classmates still. The girl wasn’t visibly annoyed but moved away after a little while nevertheless, turning around to look at L. L was really amazed at this point and moved in to touch her mouth and cheek at this point! The girl was really annoyed now and looked a little taken aback by little baby L’s actions. Unfortunately, I was laughing too hard and missed how the incident ended. :P

2 more joined our playgroup - July 21st

Sat, 21 Jul 2012 15:05:00 +0000

My wife posted our playgroup info on one of the local Chinese baby forums and got like 5 moms interested in joining us! So we’re happy to report that today we welcomed 2 new families joining the fun!

Sarah brought many different kinds of balls for L to explore

First came YY with his mom Alice a bit earlier than 10 am, YY was immediately friendly and sat right in front of me, looking at the toy trains and cars. I asked him if he liked cars and trains but he didn’t respond. L quietly observed YY and then both of then went on to play with the trains and cars separately. I think this is probably very normal, toddlers at this age recognize people and places, this is the first time YY has been here so both the place and the people were strange to him. I’m glad we provided some good toys that he could feel safe and happy with.

Playing with balls, trains, cars, crayons and containers

When the doorbell rang the next time, it was C and Sarah. L was simply ecstatic to see his good friend and jumped in joy. Reminds me the (only) best thing about school for me was being with my friends :) C was also happy to find the new toy trains on the floor. Sarah then opened her “magic backpack” and pulled out many different kinds of balls, fabric and cars! L just stood there and watched Sarah blew up the big beach ball! His looks of anticipation was intense!

Checking himself out in front of 2 mirrors

The other mom and child arrived late because my wife gave them the wrong address :P (Sorry!) Overall, the play date went very well, the kids all played naturally together, the parents had time to share their habits at home and we shared the philosophies of the Reggio Emilia and RIE’s way of early childhood education. As “incidents” occurred, for example when YY wanted C’s car and Alice tried to ask him to share, or when YY fell and started crying and Alice asked him to stop, we were able to show Alice how to let the child deal with his own emotions.

The newcomers are learning about uninterrupted play

Watching Alice and YY, I could see myself and L in them. I had the right ideas but had questions about how to deal with certain behaviors. It’s reassuring to see that my relationship with L has improved, and I’m looking forward to seeing other parents experience the same changes as they learn more about Reggio Emilia. I’m still new to this but I really need to get better at observing and capturing the children’s learning moments and put them into these diaries. I hope that by showing stories like that of “Diary of Laura”, I can persuade help more parents to connect with their children and help them break out of the legacy educational system!

Drive the cars through the “tunnel”

July 7th & 14th Playgroup Updates

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 15:44:00 +0000

Last weekend, we went to the Kadoorie farm for our playgroup, the place takes up an entire hill side, with lots of trees and homegrown vegetables, animals and even a river to supply its drinking water! It was awesome! But since it was the first time L has been there, he was keen on running around exploring the whole place, so that didn’t leave him and C much “uninterrupted play time”. As a result, I couldn’t observe any breakthrough in his learning, hence no diary was written. (Diary entries are only written when “events are considered to have new significance, when it arouses surprise in its characters and is likely to increase knowledge.”)

Today, we had another excellent playgroup at my apartment. I didn’t see a lot of new learning, but there were a lot social, interpersonal dynamics between C and L that were interesting. Since they were still very much into the books, I brought out some extra books I had bought from the Montessori playgroup L has been going to. It’s from a Korean company, and we discussed about how the Koreans love the structured, categorized methods, that’s why they love the Montessori method. And how Montessori is different from Reggio Emilia. (Good topic for another blog post.)

After snack time, we went to the park and the kids had fun re-exploring the exercise machines. We talked about how some Reggio are chaos - no scaffolding, no boundaries! Most parents nowadays want to provide the opposite for their children - controlled, structured teaching. Both are extremes. Meanwhile, the two of us are doing Reggio inspired learning but often worried about if we are still directing too much of the play. I think it’s good we have that in back of our minds.

Not a moment later, we went to wash L’s feet and C happily played with the water, drenching himself from head to toe and spraying water everywhere! If it was my son doing this and I’m alone with him, I would be quite conscious about how other people would say my son is naughty or even tell me that I should stop him! (I’ve had these unrequested advices from random old ladies before, may be they see a guy and think I must have no clue how to take care of my child?!) I ignore all those people, but it goes to show again the kinds of pressure you’ll get from people around you simply by giving your child the freedom to pursue learning on their own!

Diary - The First Reggio Parents Playgroup

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 02:38:00 +0000

Sorry about this late blog post, I just came back from Cambodia for the first Startup Weekend SE Asia Organizer Summit.

Before I left for Cambodia, we had our first parent organized Reggio playgroup in my apartment in Prince Edward on the 23rd of June. I was lucky enough to have found a Reggio Emilia educator, Sarah, who is also a mother and has been teaching with the Reggio Emilia Approach for over 6 years. Like me, Sarah worries about her own 2.5 yr old boy C’s education, so we both have good reasons to do the “parent organized playgroups”. This post is my first “diary” post for documenting the “relationships” in the playgroup.

We didn’t have anything planned out. Sarah said she could bring some watercolor and clay. The plan was to just let them play, go to the park and have lunch together.

We started off with painting on wet paper, L had never tried painting with watercolor before, we could see he was completely absorbed in it, following what C and Sarah demonstrate! We also had the clay out, which C tore into pieces and L tried painting on. This was a behavior Sarah had never seen before, perhaps because L has never had hands on play with clay or soil before, he is afraid to touch it with his bare hands, hence he used the paint brush to interact with it.

C went around to explore our apartment and found some books he’s like to see, he signaled his mom to see if it was ok to take a book out. I gave him the permission and he took one out and started to read. L is normally not too interested in the books but he followed C’s lead and picked out a few books himself.

After clean up, we went to a nearby restaurant to have lunch, one incident taught me the biggest lesson of the day. C tipped over a flower arrangement and caused the waitresses to come over and tell him “No!”, while Sarah expressed her frustrations at what happened. C felt sad and went underneath the table to cry. Rather than “fixing the problem” to get the child to stop crying, Sarah acknowledged C’s feelings, that he was sad he couldn’t play with the flowers, and asked if he needed to cuddle. C came back up to hug his mom and then he was all fine again!

After lunch, we walked to a soccer field. L ran to show C the flags, they collaborated to play with the exercise machines in the playground designed for seniors. They also got a soccer ball which L threw into the bush and couldn’t get it back, he tried to get C to help him pick up the ball but C was busy playing with the exercise machines. It was interesting to see that L got distracted and played with C on the machines, but the ball remained on the back of his mind and he tried several times to get C to follow him to where the ball was. Finally, C noticed L was signaling to him about “Ball!” (L’s favorite word) C was tall enough to see the ball, he was hesitant for a second there but decided to plunge into the bush! After he got one foot in and knew it was safe, he took another step and retrieved the ball.

When the owner of the ball took it back and left, both C and L chased after it. While I explained to L that the ball belonged to the other girl and tried to “fix the problem” by telling L that we’ll bring our own ball next time, Sarah once again just acknowledged C’s feelings, “yes, I like that ball too…” This was the biggest lesson for me – don’t solve their problems! Just acknowledge their feelings and let them deal with the problems themselves. I’ve heard and read about this before, but this was the first time I saw someone put it into action. As a Dad / guy, we tend to want to just “solve the problems” and move on! Seeing Sarah acknowledges C’s feelings taught me to allow L to deal with and internalize his problems himself.

What is the Reggio Emilia Approach?

Thu, 17 May 2012 04:16:00 +0000

Hailed as the best pre-schools in the world by Newsweek magazine in 1991, the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education has attracted the worldwide attention of educators, researchers and just about anyone interested in early childhood education best practices.

Loris Malaguzzi (1920-1994) founded the ‘Reggio Emilia’ approach at a city in northern Italy called Reggio Emilia. The ‘Reggio’ approach was developed for municipal child-care and education programs serving children below six. The approach requires children to be seen as competent, resourceful, curious, imaginative, inventive and possess a desire to interact and communicate with others.

The Reggio Emilia philosophy is based upon the following set of principles:

Children must have some control over the direction of their learning;
Children must be able to learn through experiences of touching, moving, listening, seeing, and hearing;
Children have a relationship with other children and with material items in the world that children must be allowed to explore and
Children must have endless ways and opportunities to express themselves.

But enough official mumble jumble, what does Reggio Emilia mean to me?

To me, first and foremost, Reggio Emilia is a culture that values children, and that culture is created by parents. The parents of Reggio Emilia (the city) built the first school themselves after the war! It’s a community effort! At the time, a lot of the families had both parents working, but because they truly value their children, they created this system to raise their children together, literally “takes a whole village to raise a child”! Nowadays, most parents are too busy with work and with their own lives, they simply send their kids to school and expect the school make them learn. I think that’s the wrong way to do it. I actually imagine a new way of work / life adjustment for the whole society, scaling back work to 4 days a week, then 5 ~ 6 families together can take turns taking care of each others’ kids!

Secondly, REA means we as teachers don’t directly “teach” the kids. Loris Malaguzzi wrote “The Hundred Languages of Childhood” (http://www.reggiokids.com/about/hundred_languages.php)), a beautiful poem that reminds me everyday not to take 99 away from my kids, because as adults, we’re used to giving that “one definite answer”. In REA, we don’t teach kids “there’s only one correct answer”! Instead, we simply provide “seeds of ideas” for the children to construct their own knowledge with! We setup the environment, put them in conditions for discovery and learning, give them a hand or “scaffold” them when they are stuck and are about to get frustrated. Finally, we document! Documentation is one of the key things teachers do in REA.

So… “The Reggio Emilia approach to education is committed to the creation of conditions for learning that will enhance and facilitate children’s construction of ‘his or her own powers of thinking through the synthesis of all the expressive, communicative and cognitive language’” - Edwards and Forman, 1993.

Finally, REA is about culture and nature to me. It’s important to pass on your own cultural identity, your family’s culture, but also to be cross cultural, allowing the kids to grow up in a “world’s environment”, because we are all shackled by our language, a broader cultural upbringing means a broader mind. REA also emphasize outdoor play, which is something that is sorely missed in Hong Kong. I think it’s obvious that human’s removal from nature in the industrialized age is creating what may become the biggest disaster in human history! Our ways of life simply isn’t sustainable and we’re beginning to see the nature’s food chains collapsing in the eco-system. Our children are going face this unprecedented crisis, and I believe we need to put them back in nature’s environment and let their intuition teach them how to rise up to it when they grow up.

I first learned of the Reggio Emilia Approach from Sir Ken Robinson’s RSA talk on education reform, I highly encourage you to watch it as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

Why I think the education system is harmful for our children

Fri, 11 May 2012 10:03:00 +0000

I cannot say it any better than Sir Ken Robinson, if you haven’t watched his TED talks, please watch them here:

The current system of education was conceived during the intellectual culture of the enlightenment, and in economic circumstances, the Industrial Revolution. It’s modeled on the interests of Industrialization, based on a social structure of “a few elites at the top of the pyramid and a majority of low class laborers at the bottom”. Hence schools are all about conformity and standardization, getting children ready to be a slave in the system.

This used to work, in my father’s generation, it used to be that if you did well in school, you would have a job, and if you went to college, you would become management! This model is now broken. Now, civil engineers are waiting tables, masters of psychology are also waiting tables! People who have jobs are disgruntled about their dead end jobs, and young people are completely disenfranchised! As a parent, we need to open our eyes and see that schools are doing our children a disservice by herding them into this linear, overloaded system.

Here’s one frightening example on “Divergent Thinking”.

“Divergent Thinking” is an essential capacity for creativity. It’s the ability to see lots of possible answers to a question, lots of ways to interpret a question, to think laterally and not just in linear or convergent ways.

In the book “Break Point & Beyond”, scientists did a longitudinal studies of divergent thinking. A test was given to 1500 kindergartners 3 - 5 years, 98% scored above “genius” level. They retested the same children 5 years later, at the age of 8 - 10, now it’s down to 32% at or above genius level. And again, 5 years later at the age of 13 - 15, only 10% scored above genius level. Finally they did a control test to 200,000 adults, 25 years or older, only 2% scored at genius level.

We all had this capacity to think divergently, but the education system systematically educates children out of their capacity of creativity and imagination. What I hope to accomplish is to build tools that will allow us parents to more easily take charge of our children’s education, so that we can ensure their young minds can remain inquisitive and they themselves filled with confidence to explore and solve the world’s problems!

Who am I?

Fri, 11 May 2012 09:45:00 +0000

My name is Nicholas Wang. I was born in Hong Kong and went through its dreadful education system until I was 15, when I moved to Washington State in the US of A. I attended high school in a small town called Issaquah, and then went on to study at the University of Washington. For 8 years, I worked at 2 of the largest internet companies in the world, MSN.com and Yahoo.com, until 2007 when I successfully outsourced my own position to India and I was laid off. This marked the end of my corporate life, working as a “gear” in the grinding machine.

While living and working in New York, I grew more and more discontent with the inequality placed upon us “commoners” by the super rich, top 1% of our society. I wanted to challenge the incumbents and help shift the power back into the hands of the people. When I was laid off in 2007, I decided I will no longer work for corporate America and began to create a web community that will allow people to collaboratively share information about evil businesses. By chance, I met the founder of CUUSOO, Mr. Kohei Nishiyama. He started CUUSOO.com back in 1997 to let people collaborate and submit their own product designs, and if enough people want to buy that product, then factories can make it for the people! It was a revolutionary idea! And I thought if I could help bring this system out of Japan, it has the potential to change the world! Flipping the “mass-manufactured in China” business model around and giving the power back to the independent designers and makers! I moved to Japan to led the creation of the awesome “LEGO models by everyone” site, so now if 10,000 people like your model, LEGO will make it into a real, official product!

While working at CUUSOO in Japan, I created an open source project called “Open Hippel”. My idea was that if we could provide the CUUSOO system free of charge for anyone to use, then people can use it for their own communities. Users can submit issues and ideas, the top ones will get voted up so that resources can be distributed more intelligently. Then, if one of those ideas is a product, it can be sourced back to CUUSOO to be manufactured. I contacted one of my friends in Hong Kong who is a products engineer, we started Makible.com with the idea that it’ll receive product designs sourced from CUUSOO. In 2011, Makible was launched as a startup business and I moved (back) to Hong Kong to join full time as co-founder.

Here’s a talk a gave at Pecha Kucha Tokyo about “Changing the World with User Innovations”:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTqlA3I86lQ?wmode=transparent]

We also used our own system to crowdfund the “MakiBox” 3D printer project (which gathered USD $150,000+ in funds!). Our idea with the 3D printer is that currently, all the 3D printers out there are hobbyists projects that are too expensive and too intimidating for the average consumer. There hasn’t been any groundbreaking objected made with a 3D printer because only hardcore engineers are using it. What we need is to make a 3D printer for the masses. Something that is cheap like a Nintendo or Playstation, and well designed so it doesn’t look like a scary pile of metal bars bolted together! By doing these, I believe we can get our 3D printer into the hands of the gamers, the kids, the dads, the average Joe who has lots of ideas! I believe we can jump start innovations once I put this tool in their hands!

I’ve also been helping my friends at Peer-2-Peer University early on, participating and leading courses, improving its overal community’s user experience.

As you can see, I’m passionate about the “collaborative economy”, enabling users to innovate and solve problems together. I’m now starting this weekend playgroup that emphasize on “child initiated, parents framed” learning, because I think this is one of the most important thing (if not THE most important thing) we can do to change the future! You can read more about my ways of learning in the Reggio Emilia Approach page.

A Child Initiated, Parents Organized Playgroup in Hong Kong

Wed, 09 May 2012 09:05:00 +0000

The world’s population surpassed 7 billion last year, with 50% of that living in cities. Across the world, people are losing their jobs and college graduates can’t even find jobs. The system we live in is breaking at its seams, it can no longer employ and sustain the rapid expansion of human population.

So, are you satisfied with just sending your children to school to get “educated”, and hope that they’ll do OK when they grow up?

How do we educate our children to take their place in the economies and ecologies of the 21st century, when millions of people have already been marginalized by the system right now?!

I share these same concerns with you because I’m a new dad of a 21 months old boy and a 2 months old girl. Even though I’m not an educator by profession, I’ve been learning a lot about Early Childhood Education methodologies like Montessori and the Reggio Emilia Approach, and using it in my own home! So much so that my wife and I have earned a Reggio Emilia educator certificate. (My wife and I are the only 2 in Hong Kong as far as we know!)

As a concerned parent who have been working at the forefront of online collaboration, creating systems that enable user innovations like the official LEGO crowdsource model creation site, and my own internet startup Makible that sells the most user friendly 3D printer in the world, (You can find out more about me and my experience in “User Collaborative Innovations” here.) I’m now starting a parents organized playgroup on the weekends. Besides wanting to provide the best for my own children, my goal is to create a simple system for parents around the world to collaborate and form their own parents led playgroups for children from 1 to 6.

This is an effort that requires parents to be highly involved, if you share the same values as I do, and have a child of similar age as my son (~2 yrs old, “trouble 2” beginning to emerge), then let’s do this together! We can meet at my apartment in Prince Edward, where I’ll provide an environment with “seeds” for exploration. Throughout the sessions, I’ll be taking pictures and documenting the children’s every discovery, trouble and growth. Parents will receive their kids’ documentations after each session.

If you’re interested in it please tell me a little bit about yourself on this form.

Looking forward to meeting other amazing parents and kids in Hong Kong!