Fostering Citizenship: A Reggio Emilia Approach to Truth and Reconciliation

This week (September 23 – 27th, 2024) is Truth and Reconciliation week in Canada. It is a time to honour the history, cultures, and languages of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples, and to acknowledge the profound and enduring impact of the residential school system on Survivors, their families, and communities.

Truth and Reconciliation Week leads up to the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation (September 30, 2024) and Orange Shirt Day (September 30, 2024) in schools. Usually, I would be photocopying activity sheets and planning lessons to teach the children in our class about Orange Shirt Day. This year, things are different!

I originally created a blog post sharing some ECE-friendly resources about truth and reconciliation, but as I began editing my post, I realized that, although well-intentioned, I had fallen into ‘fast-teaching.’ This approach missed the deeper complexities of truth and reconciliation—not only as an educator but also as a citizen.

In writing this post, I recognize that I am a settler and educator living and teaching on Indigenous lands. This blog post explores my reflections on these complexities, particularly in relation to my own citizenship (what does it mean to engage in truth and reconciliation work?) and my role as an early childhood educator (acknowledging that I am teaching about truth and reconciliation as a settler).

So, where do we start? I believe one of the first steps towards truth and reconciliation, both as citizens and educators, is to inform ourselves about the Calls to Action related to education. Taking the time to read the Calls to Action affirms a commitment to listening to the voices of the communities that contributed to the Truth and Reconciliation Report. Here are the two recommendations for education (including early years) found in the Truth and Reconciliation Report:

The Reggio Emilia philosophy emphasizes children’s rights to citizenship and agency. As educators, we strive to ensure that young children experience these rights in our learning environments.

Carlina Rinaldi (2013, p. 17), in Reimagining Childhood, describes the importance of recognizing citizenship in young children:

“Recognizing the child as a citizen makes it necessary to re-examine the very concept of citizenship, but especially to revisit the organization of all the social and educational places in children’s lives—not only early childhood centers and schools, but also hospitals, theatres, swimming pools, town squares and streets, and the architecture of our homes. We must reconceptualize participation, and democracy itself. What is the relationship between rights and duties? A citizen, citizenship, and therefore the concept of democracy, is defined and expressed beyond traditional boundaries.”

The Reggio Emilia philosophy also emphasizes that “education must be constructed within its local context” (Rinaldi, 2013, p. 13). To truly engage in a Reggio Emilia-inspired approach to truth and reconciliation, we must shape learning experiences for young children that reflect their unique local contexts—the societies in which they are citizens.

Ways to support learning around truth and reconciliation can include nature walks, learning common words in the local Indigenous language, listening to Indigenous stories, and making personal or cultural connections to them. These activities are meaningful because, beyond simply ‘learning about’ truth and reconciliation, we are fostering young children’s rights and responsibilities of citizenship within their local contexts.