Piazza

 I’ve been thinking a lot about Westland’s Patio, our central courtyard. It is alive, brimming, and vital. Group One parents congregate among the cubbies, high off the sweet final hugs and exchanges with their five-year-olds. There are sometimes one or two visibly sad Group One parents, perhaps a rough morning which included a rough goodbye. There’s a buzz in the Patio, a volume of conversation that varies: a promise to text both a treasured recipe and a thought-provoking op-ed, a reminder about a committee google doc, a play-by-play of the previous night’s parent-ed speaker’s keen insights accompanied by a, “Of course it’s okay that you couldn’t make it,” a compliment on a cool pair of leggings, with the subsequent “Target, $12 clearance rack!” On the periphery, there are three or so parents who gather, ready to hit the back trail and solve life’s problems along their hour-long hike, hoping not to encounter any of the rattlesnakes that the half dozen signs warn of. There are the parents in their work attire, transitioning to their game face, checking their phones before hitting a different kind of trail, the 405. The lingering folks express their final goodbyes. Hugs (Oh, hugs!) abound. It gets a little quiet before the next wave of buzzing emerges. 

 
Morning meetings close, and small groups of children of a variety of ages next emerge. The children are immediately busy. One group rolls out their mural and places vintage Pollack-esque blocks around the corners and edges before the p.m. wind picks up. Their fellow committee members fetch the necessary water and paints. These children convene around the mural in progress, on their knees or squatting, analyzing their previous day’s progress, debating on which images and symbols best convey the key learnings of their study. A teacher helps them plan before they paint, inviting them into reflection on process and product. Down the way, westward, safety goggles materialize and hammering follows – the familiar bang of metal on wood, the sliding swoosh of saws, intermittent high-pitched drilling. It’s rhythmic enough for a passerby to want to at least tap their foot to the beat. If you look, you can spot one child assiduously sanding a piece of wood with their tongue partially out, the Michael Jordan of Westland woodworking. Each group has one. Five 10-year-olds appear out of the School Store with clipboards. They’ve got research and data to gather for a survey, today it’s whether I prefer gel, ink, or ballpoint. (Black ink, extra fine.) Before you know it, the strum and cadence of an acoustic guitar starts up, then sweet, loud, mostly in-tune singing starts, typically an accompanying message we can all get behind, a guide for the day: “Lean on Me, when you’re not strong, I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on.” Goodness me, all we need is chickens to wander in.
 
And there they are, a mix of beauty and hilarity.
 
I always intuited that Westland’s Patio was its lifeline of sorts. The school’s interstitial, spiritual pulmonary and cardiological epicenter. Breathing, heartbeat, flow, passage.
 
In the spring of 2019, I had the gift of being invited to travel to Reggio Emilia, Italy, an early childhood educator’s pilgrimage. (Think bucket list.) My sense of the Westland’s Patio thingified into theory. In multiple lectures over the course of my week in Reggio, brilliant pedagogistas, teachers, and directors lectured on the Piazza, and the essential role the center courtyard serves in every Reggio School. Each school in Reggio has a piazza, a square, a place where all community members meet up and “form relations.” These Italian progressive educators described the piazzas as the place for encounter, dialogue, debate ­where different points of view are welcomed and evaluated, where decisions are made, where protest even manifests, where community members offer new ideas. They enthusiastically expressed, “Exchange is something that feeds learning. School is a space of life…an organism.” 
 
These places of encounter are where adults meet up (just like a city’s piazza) for “ferment” and “socialization.” A piazza was described as a system of the reciprocal: adults listen to each other, and they restore each other. Piazzas are not finite but flexible places of growth. They are “living systems of relationships that support connections.” Loris Malaguzzi, the father of the Reggio Emilia approach, once wrote that spaces are relationships. He viewed the system of relationships that get activated as real. At the end of our week, an atelierista lectured that a piazza is an architectural and a cultural construction, “anthropology of social and political identity with relationship at its center.” She added that the piazza even signifies a movement towards beauty.
 
We listened to the educators describe how children engage with the piazzas, physically testing their learning processes. Children are invited to see the piazza as not only a place where they can walk across every day, but also a place of special transit ­– to have the opportunity to meet up with children of different ages and internalize the fact that not one of us does anything alone. The piazza is essential to each and every school community. Yes, a thing of beauty.
 
And here we are, 2020. In our current COVID-19 context, away from the Patio, our piazza. It’s invited me to take a good hard look at what our Westland Patio signifies. How does Westland’s piazza communicate our identity? An identity of place. What will our piazza symbolize when we return? What does an identity of place mean now, as we embark upon the school year remotely in all sorts of different places across Los Angeles?
 
I have more questions as I explore the “before and after” of our context. If our Patio is a space where children of different ages can be together, what does it mean for the Group Six children to not be in proximity with their puzzle partners on a regular basis? I wonder, are they remembering enough what it was like to be in Group One? Are they seeing their past teachers enough? And what about Group Oners not seeing our leaders of the school on a daily basis?
 
School isn’t just about the curriculum, the classroom. We know this. Learning is social. School is about being around each other. It’s watching the Group Five children tend to the recycling and it’s thanking the Group Oners for emptying out the trash cans with their small garden-gloved hands...and thanking them for remembering to knock this time. We watch the Group Two children watering the Patio’s potted trees, a Group Four student running to open up the Library door for Sara to push in the cumbersome cart. Watching one particular teacher sneak the chickens a secret stash of blueberries on a fairly ongoing basis. This is the essence of school. Encounter.
 
In Reggio, one school director shared that the piazza created conditions for encounters, agreements, meditations among children possible, adding: “Where intellectualism, scholarship, and ‘depthful’ conversations mingle.” Observation and service mingle, too, I’d add. In our Patio we watch each other and take in the good acts of our community, small and big.
 
I’ve not let myself get sentimental much during the last five months. No time for that. I’m letting myself get properly sad, though, here. While I must pose the question: “What can our virtual piazza be?” I don’t really want to right now. I just want to miss it. Can’t we simply eagerly await an emotional return to our Patio? My God, I miss it.
 
I want to look at you looking at the children’s work artfully posted on bulletin boards by the teachers. I want to encounter you all encountering each other’s ideas on how to parent through the upcoming contentious presidential election. I want to join you in grappling with how we are talking about the issues and the candidates with our children. Yes, I want to talk about institutional racism. We must keep on leaning in. I want to talk about the Black Lives Matter movement and black lives mattering. I want the in-person book rec, the Netflix rec too, the Sam Harris link, and the gardening project update. I want to watch a handful of Group Three children editing each other’s writing, tucked under a table. I want to watch two friends accompany one friend to the Office to get a band-aid.
 
But let’s face it. If the piazza is also a welcoming place for children and adults, we must, though, make sure we are relentlessly and conscientiously welcoming new families to and even welcoming each other back this school year. Yes, we are indeed tasked with creating a virtual piazza this fall. A child in Reggio was quoted as having said, “In our piazza ‘us’ is born.”
 
So, how do we give birth to the 2020-2021 us?
 
With as much determination of that child sanding their woodworking project, we must determinedly keep asking this question, smoothing and shaping our understanding of community building done physically apart. We must create community connection. Yes, we must Zoom. We must reach out. We must engage. We must ferment. We must be generous with each other and keep in mind that we are all doing our best. We must write each other words of thanks and appreciation, rooting ourselves in gratitude for what we have. Gratitude will root us in the present. We must keep on welcoming. We must find ways to laugh at ourselves. We must find virtual outlets of service. I think we must keep dancing, too.
 
And, let’s hold onto the image of Friday mornings on campus, the pinnacle of our Patio’s glory, where hot coffee or hot tea (your choice) is poured, where adults and children drift in conversation towards the Auditorium for the sharing of work and song, where Group Two children smile over their farm fresh egg stand, and where we sing out: “And look towards a brighter day.”  Here’s to us and giving birth to us. And here’s towards brighter days, which we mustn’t forget are ahead, together in our piazza.