Dear Nursery Families,
Managing Uncertainty & Finding Nostalgia for the Future
The Way It Is
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
~William Stafford
It is a long standing understanding in psychology that having a sense of control over one’s life and environment is critical to both emotional and physical wellbeing. It is also true that the intensity with which we feel a desire for control varies across temperament and life circumstances; having too overpowering a need for control can lead to strain on all aspects of our health, just as not having any opportunity for control can. A hierarchy of need plays a role as well—the more we feel is in our control, the more we tend to focus our desire for choice on increasingly fine grained aspects of life. Determining what to hold onto and what to let go of is a central human task, and it is one that educators often speak of in understanding child development. Children’s behavioral regulation often rests on having choices, while also feeling that those choices are limited and manageable. It is both frustrating to have no control and scary to have too much.
Times of crisis and uncertainty are destabilizing precisely because they rob us of our sense of manageable control. Trying to hold onto control when we have so little can fill us with anxiety, but letting go completely can drain us of motivation and lead to depression. It feels like an impossible tightrope, and our desire to be able to see the future clearly reflects our need to at least know when we will have some of our sense of agency back.
As we consider how to bring a meaningful close to the school year, when so many of the concrete experiences that usually bolster us through transitions are absent, we are thinking about how to help children process change in a virtual space and how to support them in moving on to the next step, when the next step for many is unknown. In a typical year, we advise parents to focus on the immediate future for children, and not to look too far ahead—to remember that the summer comes before the fall, and for kids a few months feels very far away. Now we are in a moment when even that immediate next step is uncertain, as both the summer and the fall feel filled with more questions than answers. This is a hard message to deliver to our children, for whom we are accustomed to being in the role of experts and knowledge keepers. The Reggio Emilia philosophy teaches us to try to let go of that job and allow children to explore uncertainties and to trust their capacity to grapple with questions and problems. It is a strange truth that this process of letting go of our adult authority feels easier when we are more secure in that authority. Our knowledge and our control of so many things suddenly feels equalized with our children’s. We are all living in the moment and wondering what might be ahead right alongside them, and this feels particularly scary when we long to be their bastions of safety and certitude.
Yet, the most deeply rooted power of the Reggio approach lies at the core of its history, which is one of profound resilience and hope. The first Reggio school was built out of the ashes of World War II, paid for by the sale of a tank, three trucks, and six war horses. Its foundation was a strong belief in the power of education and in the process of envisioning children’s futures as a means to lead us into a better time. Loris Malaguzzi said, “Observe and listen to children, because when they ask, ‘why?’ they are not simply asking for the answer from you. They are requesting the courage to find a collection of possible answers.”
This is what we must all do now. We must help our children find the courage to move forward within a multiplicity of possible answers. And we must attend to these lessons ourselves, as we build the same patience and inquisitiveness within our own hearts and minds.
Image from Reggio Children, https://www.reggiochildren.it/en/reggio-emilia-approach/
This is our work at home and at school. As teachers, we are looking ahead and helping each other to imagine not one but many possible ways forward from the current moment. The view ahead is filled with questions, but we know from our work with children that the beauty of uncertainty lies in the possibility of imagination. This is the spirit with which the first stones of the first Reggio school were laid, and it is the spirit we are working to embrace as we envision what school could look like on the variety of possible paths that lie ahead for us now.
There are many critical logistical, financial, and safety challenges inherent in this process, and we are thinking deeply and carefully about how we will navigate them. But, as educators, committed to the fundamental belief that a new world always grows out of what we imagine for our children—”a nostalgia for the future,” to use Malaguzzi’s words—we are rooting ourselves in envisioning a future that may be radically different in some ways, but that springs from a belief in what children are capable of and what they deserve, not from what they can endure. The Reggio schools, which educators around the world look to today as guideposts, did not grow out of a resignation to make due among the ruins; they grew from a passion for a better life ahead, even amidst crumbling buildings, and a firm belief that the key to that life could be found in our relationships with children.
We will be sharing more in the coming days, weeks, and months, about the many possible futures we are beginning to imagine for our children and our school. We will need your help as we shape that vision and begin the work of laying new bricks. But for now, know that our starting point, as always, is our dedication to the rights of children, our deep belief in their capacities, and our enduring commitment to a hopeful future for them:
“We should think that we have more need of being nostalgic, not so much about the past but more nostalgic about the future. The children expect us in the future where our nostalgia now sees them, and I wish we will all be there.” (Loris Malaguzzi, 1993)
Shabbat shalom,
Alicia