THE EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY
In 2023 Moncler Industries Yield completed building a school for the children of employees in its Bacau production headquarters, Romania, in collaboration with Reggio Children, a renowned international centre for the defence and promotion of children’s rights and potential that focuses on the quality of relations between children, families, environments and community.
Reggio Children has worked since 1994 to support and develop the central importance of education and internationalise it through dialogue with different cultures, research with leading international universities, professional learning, publications, exhibitions, workshop activities, consultancy and research.
All the spaces of the preschool make up a large atelier of knowledge, an environment of life and future, a place of dialogue, participation, responsibility and reciprocity that is capable of offering educational opportunities to all those inhabiting it: not only a place in which children are educated but in which we all educate each other together.
CHILDREN AT THE CENTER OF THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS
The pedagogical orientation proposed in the school values organising an experience of daily life that support children’s psychological and physical wellbeing, and play in its various forms.
Starting from observations of children and their potentials, and with opportunities offered by spaces and environments, teachers prepare contexts in which children can interact with each other, share their hypotheses (theories) and participate in processes of discovery, the creation of projects, and defining the meanings of their experiences. The school’s main characteristic is the centrality of children, together with a creative approach to knowledge.
THE VALUE OF EDUCATION
One of the elements that gives a structure to education is human communication understood as a process of reciprocity, of reciprocal otherness. Education is the right of every child and a creative act, and as such it is a responsibility of the community, which must consider education a right rather than a generalised need.
Working within this concept, and with the central importance of children’s rights as its starting point, the Moncler preschool will acknowledge and recognise the complementary rights of children, families and teachers, and work to construct an educational unit that is an educational community, a form of community, and a place, that is capable of holding the social and educational together, a place in which collegial relations – the co-presence of several adult figures and professionals, a significantly numerous peer group, and family participation – all offer a guarantee of educational quality.
SCHOOL AS AN EDUCATING COMMUNITY
The preschool becomes a laboratory of democracy in which our sense of belonging can grow. While experiencing daily life and its routines children learn how every context and space includes rules to be respected, and that these also give each individual a guarantee of respecting others, living, and freely expressing their own identity; agreements that, through reciprocal listening, sharing and respect, offer children opportunities in which to build their social learning day by day.
THE PARTNERSHIP WITH FAMILIES
Parents are essential partners in the process of education, and must have possibilities for living their parental role in contexts that extend beyond family. It is useful to play an active part in the life of the school community, exchange opinions, observe different models of support for children’s development, and reinforce our confidence in our own ability to ‘grow’ our children. For this reason the Moncler school will organise ongoing regular times for listening and exchange with families, atelier workshops on preparing new play tools for children that are in continuity with parents’ working materials (threads, fabrics, coloured materials and so on), theme evenings on children’s well-being and nutrition and parties.
THE PRESCHOOL KITCHEN
Together with families and the community, the preschool has important responsibilities for building children’s eating habits. All children, even when very young, have a capacity for self-regulating with food but it is the adults’ task to provide opportunities to encounter a wide variety of flavours, textures and aromas so that they can also learn about taste and appropriate quantities and quality, so that each child has the opportunity to build healthy eating habits.
The Moncler school kitchen and the presence of the chef are an essential condition for educational quality. When children are attentive to the origin of their food, its seasonal nature and how it is produced, in a dialogue with their local food culture, they learn that food is health, pleasure, culture, play and discovery.
DIGITALLY CONNECTING
Digital technologies can be an integral part of the spaces and contexts children live and learn in, enhancing their development of sensory perceptions, offering new tools for play, and expanding and investigating aesthetic and expressive qualities in the stories and representations they use to give shape to knowledge. As educators we believe it is important to work with great sense of continuity and integrate digital technology meaningfully with other languages of knowledge, such as mark-making and drawing, music, body language, writing, and the sciences.