I love the phrase  there’s no “I” in team!  It’s a pretty accurate description of the way we do things at Sabot.  All of our good thinking- both from children and adults- is a team effort. It’s part of ourReggio-Emilia philosophy to share our individual points of view with each other, and to work toward a collaborative conclusion. We refer to this process as co-construction , a creation of new knowledge together. Possibilities that aren’t readily clear to us as individuals, start to crystallize as we listen to the ideas of our peers, and as they listen to us.

One way in which we as classroom teachers engage in the co-construction process is during our weekly Oak Room pedagogical meetings. During these conversations Shannon and I share observations and documentation (traces of children’s work, audio/video recordings, or teacher notes) with Anna (our atelierista ) and Marty (our pedagogista ). Usually we have a knotty question about something happening in our classroom, or aren’t sure how to deepen an exploration of a developing interest. Anna and Marty don’t tell us what to do, but rather tap into their fresh perspectives and unique expertise, and draw from their rich past experiences to lend their thinking to Shannon’s and my own points of view. Slowly a new way of thinking about our questions emerges during these dialogues.

Here’s the system we organized: Each week a team of three students meets for three consecutive days in our block area. One child is selected by the group to be the architect- the person in chargeof what gets built that day. The remaining team members are the engineers (or builders- early on we used both terms). The architect maps out a plan on paper and presents it to the group. Before building commences, the onus is on group members to ask the architect questions about their plan.

Many common threads have become clear over time with our reflections. I could write about persistence, flexibility, agency, intersubjectivity, communication, resilience – every possible buzzwordin education comes to mind when thinking about these groups. And these concepts are all there- embedded in our documentation of these groups in action.

Digging a little deeper, the listening we observe in these groups is not “polite” or “forced” listening, but instead feels like an openness toward each other, a caring about the other’s needs and wants.Perhaps relationship and community underpin this small group experience. Perhaps relationship and community underpin everything that happens in the Oak Room. I hope so. That sounds genius.