A couple of months ago, I found myself sitting in the late Carla Rinaldi’s office at the Fondazione Reggio Children. Her office. The room where so much thinking about children, democracy and possibility has unfolded over decades. I met her twice a few years ago and it was genuinely moving.
Behind me, pinned to her board, was an original photograph of Loris Malaguzzi. On the wall, her LEGO Prize for Innovation. The air carried a weight of intellectual courage and gentleness all at once.
Carla spoke often about listening as an ethical act. About observation as responsibility. About “why” as an invitation, not a demand.
This photograph, taken by our brilliant Atelierista Chloe De Tomasso, who worked in a municipal preschool in Reggio Emilia before she came to work with us, holds that spirit for me. It is simple. Paper, pencils, magnifying glasses, leaves, lines looping across a page. No rush. No adult agenda shouting from the margins. Just children thinking with materials and nature.
And that question quietly sitting at the top: “Is it growing?”
There is something profoundly radical in slowing down long enough to let that question breathe.
We live in a time where acceleration is mistaken for progress. Where outcomes are chased before wonder has had time to stretch its legs. But when I look at this documentation, I am reminded of Carla’s insistence that education is not about supplying answers. It is about standing beside children as they construct a constellation of possibilities.
To “lay about in learning” for a while is not laziness. It is intellectual patience. It is trusting that meaning emerges when children are given time, materials and a listening adult. It is resisting the urge to tidy up thinking too quickly.
Sitting in that office, with Loris watching over my shoulder and Carla’s legacy in the room, I felt the continuity of the work. Not imitation. Not nostalgia. Continuity. The responsibility to carry forward an approach that treats children as citizens, as thinkers, as authors of their own theories.
Chloe’s documentation captures something of that lineage. The humility of observation. The beauty of unfinished lines. The invitation to ask better questions.
Perhaps that is what Carla leaves us with. Not a method. Not a checklist. But a stance.
Observe. Listen. Slow down.
And when children ask why, have the courage not to answer too quickly.
