The 6th NAREA Winter Conference

The North American Reggio Emilia Alliance Board would like to welcome you to the 6^th NAREA Winter Conference – Exploring Possibilities: Viewing All Children as Citizens, Researchers and Innovators of the World, a NAREA initiative in partnership with and hosted by NYC Encounters with Reggio, Teaching Beyond the Square, Beginnings Nursery, and Williamsburg Northside School. This is NAREA’s largest-ever conference due to all of you who wanted to be here together. In fact, to make it possible for so many, we have two separate conferences happening simultaneously at two venues!

Since our founding in 2002, the NAREA board has traveled to different parts of North America for its winter board meeting. Last year, we had the privilege of experiencing our fifth winter conference in Greenville, SC, and we are excited to continue to bring together educators to support and strengthen all those interested in the experiences and ongoing research of Reggio Emilia, Italy. We hope this these next days offer a rich and meaningful contribution to your ongoing professional development.

It is with special gratitude that we welcome our colleagues from Reggio Emilia, Italy; Claudia Giudici, Marina Mori, Chiara Spaggiari, and Vea Vecchi, and Emanuela Vercalli. We also welcome with appreciation our colleague from Sweden, Harold GothsÖn and from the US, Mara Krechevsky. We further extend our appreciation to the educators and families from Beginnings Nursery School

and Williamsburg Northside School for all they have done to organize and host the conference.

We wish to highlight our belief in and commitment to the value of diversity and differences as essential aspects of personal and professional development. Recognizing the ever-increasing number of programs for young children inspired by Reggio’s approach to life and education, we honor and encourage each program and every group of colleagues to invest in an ongoing approach that includes permanent study, research, collaboration, innovation, transparency, and exchange. Through our professional development projects, we encounter a host of schools at varying points of their own journey, willing to open their doors, expose their work, and welcome the participation of visitors. This style of development has been introduced to all of us by the only “Reggio schools” of Reggio Emilia, Italy. To be continually encouraged to find our own unique identities as schools in different communities worthy in our own identity is to see how much the message of Reggio Emilia is based on attitudes of research and invention, rather than prescriptive dogma. For this, we are also grateful.

Please enjoy the pleasure of thinking and wondering as we work together to construct a better future for our children, our communities, and ourselves.