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Chicago Exhibit Opening

10/5/2014

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What an amazing evening with great people and in such a beautiful place. The Chicago Opening of the exhibit Cultivate the Scientist in Every Child took place at the North Park Village Nature Center. We felt this was a perfect place for the exhibit to start its Midwest tour. The NPV Nature Center is the oldest in the city of Chicago and simply beautiful with a wooded area and a pond fitting of a pond study. The building is also historic and used to be one of the city's Tuberculosis Sanatoriums, but has been transformed into a gateway to the beautiful wooded area beyond.
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As one of the Nature Center Educators noted “the exhibit seemed to place itself in the nature center”. As we enter the historic building, the exhibit panels drew us in.  They tucked nicely into corners and rooms, giving visitors to the building a reason to stop and ponder awhile. Each panel seemed to flow with the space it occupied. The panel questioning “How Can You Sustain Wonder, Curiosity, and Engagement”  found a home in the discovery room, where visitors explore all manor of materials found in the woods.
The opening event also seemed to come together in a natural way. Carolyn Edwards, coeditor of the Hundred Languages of Children spoke about the influence of the Hawkins on Loris Malaguzzi and the schools in Reggio Emilia. Ellen Hall, the Co-Founder and Board Chair of Hawkins Centers of Learning, talked about her and Boulder Journey School’s connection to David and Francis Hawkins. 




More than 100 attendees engaged in the discussion and asked questions about the Hawkins’ work and their connection to the Reggio Approach.  It was truly an inspiring night. Carolyn and Ellen sat by the big stone fireplace at the Nature Center with a roaring fire and David and Francis’ photograph on the fireplace mantel. As Ellen noted she felt like she was doing a “fireside chat”.  It all felt very right and something that David and Francis would have enjoyed themselves.
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Though the evening seemed magical and the exhibit like it was meant for this place, it took many months of planning and collaboration to pull it off. Cultivating Early Years, the coordinators of the exhibit in the Midwest, brought together an amazing group of collaborating organizations. These organizations donated time, money and resources to bring this event to Chicago and the surrounding area and deserve a huge amount of the credit.

 
The exhibit will be in 3-4 places while in the Midwest. It is at the Nature Center until February and then moves to the Milwaukee area. It will be back to Chicago for a closing in April, before moving on to Tennessee. For more information about its location in the Midwest you can go to culitvatingey.com.

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Reflecting on Turning a Moment into a Movement

9/30/2014

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After hosting our workshop, and then serendipitously discovering the #cardboardchallenge, we naturally have a buzz of excitement going on here.

Not only do we have the opportunity to engage our own learning in addition to the children's learning, we also are finding ourselves immersed in a wider community of advocacy. Advocacy for honoring creativity. Advocacy for recognizing the capabilities and competencies of children. Advocacy for the participation in our world. 

Maureen, one of the Boulder Journey School teachers who attended the workshop and interacts with us on social media, found the following article on Nirvan Mullick, the videographer who sparked this movement:
The Perfect Moment Goes Perfectly Viral

The article sparked a lot of questions for Maureen, who shared her curiosity: 

I thought you would be particularly intrigued by the last paragraph, Mullick talks about "getting lost in something" and "perfect moments" and if we can create those moments for others...made me think about how we started our dialogue on the Hawkins Workshop night. 

I am curious about Mullick's childhood and history. What have been the experiences that led him to advocating for children's inventiveness, creativity, play, etc.? Personally, I believe Mullick highlighted the genius/creativity present in ALL children. So how did Mullick get to where he is; to be an adult who chooses to put a spotlight on and advocate for this genius? It makes me curious how we can foster and develop this kind of advocacy in adults..what skills do adults need to be able to do what Mullick did(not necessarily using the same mediums)? What skills or prior experiences did Mullick have that led him to be able to "see" and cultivate this perfect moment with Caine and his Arcade? What made it a "perfect moment"? Was it only a perfect moment because it was shared? 
David Hawkins referred to the times in the classroom when "discoveries are made, noted, lost, and made again". As Maureen reflected, there are so many perfect moments with children; how do we choose? How do we know which ones will ignite? 

We see this in classrooms which engage an emergent curriculum as well, as we move through the three phases of Messing About, sometimes the paths from the triangle phase take off, and sometimes they quietly fade out.

Tell us about your processes: how do you decide which moments to highlight, to follow? Which media do you use as your platform for advocacy? 
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Messing About with Teaching: The Pilot Workshop - #Cardboardchallenge

9/26/2014

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What does it mean to engage? to learn? to play?

In partnership with Boulder Journey School, we offered cardboard to a group of teachers to play with. Inspired by the three-phase cycle of messing about, we took time to openly explore, to declare our intentions, and to reflect. 

We chose cardboard as a material to mess about with because it is an eolithic find - it is easily accessible and often thrown away. All they had to do was ask and Boulder Journey School was flooded with cardboard of all shapes and sizes. We also chose cardboard because it is such a friendly material - it is lightweight, transformable, and its possibilities are endless. 

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One teacher began the evening with a big burst of gross motor - she invited the participants to play hide-and-seek. Once she’d explored the room this way, she crawled inside a box and drew representations of the evening. We wondered whether children have this same need - to own the space physically before settling in. 
One teacher went large. She built and constructed and worked on her own. When asked about her creation, she said she preferred not to share - until the end when she felt comfortable explaining both her vision and her process. We wondered how many children have this similar need to focus without explaining.
One teacher created a 3d representational collage. She didn’t intend to - she just started making and watched where it went. 

Another teacher created a 3d non-representational collage. She did mean to. She remarked she had long been drawn to the texture of the a cross-cut of cardboard and wanted to play with that. Another teacher, drawn from her own construction, joined in the texture exploration.
One teacher found interactive games to create in the cardboard. She worked on different pieces and saw the possibilities for engaging her work with others. 


One teacher engaged with the cardboard in a fluid kinetic-sculpture type of way while traveling around the room to dialogue with other teachers. Her cardboard changed shapes and configurations as she moved. 
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We wondered at the individual projects we encountered. Was there a necessary piece to the parallel play that we engaged in? What would it have taken for us to engage in collaborative play? Was it safer to be engaged separately with the same material while we are still getting to know each other?


We wondered how the children would engage with the cardboard the following day?

The following day we discovered the Imagination Foundation's Global Cardboard Challenge. In collaboration with Boulder Journey School, we are hosting our own #cardboardchallenge to celebrate every day as a day for play! Click here to visit our challenge page. Follow us on twitter (@hawkinscol) to keep track of our adventures as well!



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Gathering in Chicago

7/3/2014

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A participant messes about with magnification in Chicago
Our dear friends at Cultivating the Early Years Professional Network, based in Chicago, have just finished hosting a gathering in preparation of the arrival of the Hawkins exhibit (scheduled Fall 2014)! 


Educators gathered to mess about with materials and ideas. They worked with materials and had great conversations!


Check out their facebook page to see some enchanting pictures of their time together. 


Check out their website to join their network and get updates.
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What have you taught your parents: Reflections on the Boulder Journey School Summer Conference

6/30/2014

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#Galactickeys made by Boulder Artist Sai. Sai worked with an infant class at Boulder Journey School in their investigation in mathematics.
This past Thursday and Friday, June 26 and June 27, Boulder Journey School hosted their annual Summer Conference. 

Over the course of these two days, we messed about with materials, engaged in exciting conversations with participants from 15 states and 4 different countries, and were invited to share in the journeys taken by children and teachers steeped in inspiration from Frances and David Hawkins and Reggio Emilia, Italy. 


We were sent home with multiple questions to explore, engage with, reflect on, and Mess About with:


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We heard from Jen, an infant teacher, who in the face of a colder-than-usual winter, found a way to offer nature through the window. By adding ribbons to the playground, the invisible wind became visible.

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A New Adventure...

4/6/2014

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This past fall, we offered a four-part workshop series to accompany the exhibit's Denver stay. Each Saturday focused on a different big idea from the exhibit. We had seven core members who attended each workshop, and a few people who attended one or two. 


Each workshop allowed us time to participate in all three phases of messing about... 
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And time to collaborate, find shared interests, and develop an It for our I's and Thou's....
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And as we grew and learned as teachers, we laughed together, and sometimes cried together. We challenged each other and complemented each other. 
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Each workshop offered us time to explore the resources around us - materials and interests (eolithism)....
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And when the workshops were all done we realized we missed each other. 

So we decided to do it again...


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Exhibit Opening, Santa Fe Children’s Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1/10/2014

3/5/2014

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"There was one kind of development I must mention, a subjective one, which took place in parallel with the technical work of weapon development.... Everyone's life was being changed, changed radically I think, and irreversibly.... We all did know we were involved in something which would alter the nature of the world." 
David Hawkins, qtd in Inventing Los Alamos: The Growth of an Atomic Community, Jon Hunner

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"MESSING ABOUT WITH TEACHING" - SANTA FE CHILDREN'S MUSEUM

1/13/2014

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What is the role of this type of 
teaching and learning 
in 
today's educational culture?

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Set in the stimulating and rich environment of the Santa Fe Children's Museum, workshop participants from schools in and around Santa Fe, as well as members of the Santa Fe Science Initiative, took part in a day of messing about with materials and ideas inspired by the philosophy of Frances and David Hawkins.


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Happy New Year

1/1/2014

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As a new year begins, resolutions are made! It is a trend around the internet to set blogging goals for anew year. At Hawkins Centers of Learning, one of our New Year's Resolutions is to utilize the power and potential of social media. To helps us with this goal, we are planning to find one piece of eolithism, one asset we have at our fingertips, to recognize every day.  We hope you will join us too!

Day 1:

We have a large network of educators who are dedicated and passionate 365 days a year!
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Exhibit Opening, Richland Academy, Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada, 10/25/2013

10/25/2013

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    Hawkins Centers of Learning (HCoL), a 501C3 chartered in 2005, serves the educational community by preserving, articulating, and translating into practice the ideas of Frances and David Hawkins.

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