In 2008-2009, starting its tenth year of business, the Panta Rei cooperative was involved in a new project, an exchange experience abroad for nine months between the Panta Rei cooperative, Reggio Children and the Bishop Strachan School, one of the oldest private girls schools in Toronto.
It was created from talks, meetings and relations with a different educational institution, identifying appropriate strategies and opportunities for interaction with the culture and differences of the other partners.
The experience of one of the teachers from the Panta Rei cooperative involved training and research about the founding values of the Reggio Emilia educational project: such as creative, relational, multicultural and supportive thought, cultural objectives that are shared by the nurseries and pre-schools of Reggio Emilia and Reggio Children.
“Understanding new educational institutions means understanding a new culture, studying its history and politics, breathing in its air and its everyday goings-on, understanding and seeing the places of the city where it lives, studying its language and making a sort of socio-political map.
My work objective was to put these two educational institutions in contact and build a relationship between them to expand my personal and cultural skills, increasing my professional knowledge and expertise, creating new synergies and new, future working areas.
It was the incredibly rich environment I found that allowed me to ask the teachers to look at their situation in a new, different way, to see and find sense and value in the experiences they have” – Francesca Giorgioni, a teacher trainer posted at the Bishop Strachan School.
