The Room To Grow
Preschools for San Francisco and Oakland
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OUR MISSION:
To cultivate a community rich with diverse possibilities, in which every child can discover their voice, value, and purpose, while recognizing the right of others to the same opportunities.
We seek to create confident, caring, competent learners,
one individual at a time.
We are a mixed-age, emergent curriculum, inclusive preschool for 3-5 year old children.
Our schools are located in Bernal Heights, San Francisco and Rockridge, Oakland, with a maximum enrollment of 24 families per location.
Based on the Reggio Emilia approach, we provide the nurturing, encouraging framework children need, gaining confidence to wonder, explore and construct personal knowledge.
Teachers act as guides, learning alongside children as they support new experiences and relationships within a logical, meaningful context.
Project work always starts with the questions:
"What do you know about that, and what do you wonder?"
These inquiries encourage kids to notice, wonder, collaborate, and resource the community. Children use many different ways of making their ideas visible, including via visual arts, construction, movement, storytelling, and dramatic play.
Equally important is the opportunity to build strong relationships, practice collaboration, compromise and resolving differences. It is the adult's job to create a climate that makes space for every child's story, background, and experiences.
Social justice and social responsibility are emphasized in these early experiences of understanding and respect.
The foundation we build our community upon is the practice of a democratic classroom, making agreements and decisions as a group after sharing concerns, ideas, and solutions.
THE REGGIO EMILIA APPROACH
COMMUNITY - CREATIVITY - IMAGE OF THE CHILD - JOY - THE ENVIRONMENT
The Reggio Emilia approach is an educational philosophy and pedagogy focused on preschool and primary education. It is a student-centered and constructivist curriculum that uses experiential learning in relationship-driven environments. The program is based on the principles of respect, responsibility and community through exploration, discovery and play.
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We know relationships are what sit at the foundation of our school. Children form natural and immediate and messy and powerful relationships with one another. This is some of their most important learning, and those hard friendships are the most valuable. Teachers relationships with children, each other and the families. We love families so much, we see you, and know how much you are doing - we are here for you and here for your child. Bring their uneaten breakfast. Call us when the baby is crying in the car seat. We know it takes a village, and the small things we do for each other builds the trust for when the big things require it.
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We are mixed age and welcome children with unique developmental profiles. An inclusive learning community is good for everyone, even if it can feel challenging at times. We lean on the expertise of one another, our professional development experts, our determination to understand every child and our commitment to our community. We know that we are all learning something, what are you learning?
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COMMUNITY
Developing social-emotional health and awareness that are the foundation of an inclusive, responsive and joyful space.
The door at The Room To Grow is always open and there is a constant exchange of information, ideas and questions between the children, teachers, and parents. Every effort is made to maintain a dialogue around community awareness, responsibility and involvement. Our organization values collaboration and makes it visible in the way the teaching teams organize and share responsibilities, through the use of the democratic process to create agreements and pro-social solutions and by accessing our surrounding community to enrich and extend inquiry in an intentional and meaningful way.
CREATIVITY
“Children need the freedom to appreciate the infinite resources of their hands, their eyes, and their ears – the resources of forms, materials, sounds and colors.” -Loris Malaguzzi
The studio and it’s materials and tools inspire and support the expression of ideas and foster individual and collaborative creativity. Learning and wondering can be expressed in countless ways and children have near limitless access to experiment with a variety of materials in the well-equipped space. Materials that range from paper, pens, chalk and paint to wire, wood, shells and any manner of repurposed and found objects. The act of sourcing materials can sometimes become a project unto itself as children and teachers find loose parts in unexpected places. The studio teachers are also keen to share the work of other artists, observing techniques in story illustrations and offering hands on explorations of their methods. Visiting outdoor sculpture, museums, local artist displays at the library and inviting parent artists to share their process exposes children to art as part of daily life, and a limitless source of joy.
IMAGE OF THE CHILD
Children have the right to be regarded as competent, to learn by having a voice in the community and the time to construct their own knowledge in their own way.
By first reflecting on our personal experiences as children, then on our journey as teachers and parents, we can begin to embrace an image of the child that recognizes and values the inherent competence of the individual. By approaching learning from a strength-based approach, we can empower the earliest learners to take risks, pursue ideas and express themselves confidently. Teachers present themselves as co-researchers, ready to share in the children’s inquiry through discussion and documentation to honor the work, deepen understanding and celebrate process. Children are seen as competent, unique and welcome. We believe that accommodations become possibilities, waiting for someone who's smaller or slower is the right thing to do, and we try to always remember that we are all learning something. By seeing children as community members, they believe that they are. That they are citizens of the world.
JOY
By developing the joy of connection, self-expression and curiosity, children become lifelong learners with a strong sense of competence and a growth mindset.
Education, at its best, is a joyful and possibility-filled experience. Children and teachers are generating questions and ideas that fuel an environment where all participants are engaged in robust and challenging exploration. Learning through play and inquiry provides infinite opportunities for communication, problem solving and creative self-expression, while making meaning and connecting today's discoveries to what is already known (expanding the zone of proximal development). Even when things are super hard, or you think you can't, when you have friends cheering you on or a teacher who stays with you while you work to figure it out - the kind of joy you feel when you finally "get it" is a very special joy indeed. So is the joy when you love the color you mixed, or your block tower has never been so tall because you were so patient. Joy in learning and discovering is a wonderful feeling, especially when it is shared.
