Seen and Heard

Using examples from a Reggio-inspired school with children from ages 6 weeks to 6 years, the authors emphasize the importance of children’s rights and our responsibility as adults to hear their voices. Seen and Heard summarizes research and theory pertaining to young children’s rights in the United States, and offers strategies educators can use to ensure the inclusion of children’s perspectives in everyday decisions. Real-life classroom vignettes illustrate how young children perceive the idea of rights through observation and discussion. The authors’ work is based on three essential ideas: (1) the “one hundred languages” children use for exploring, discovering, constructing, representing, and conveying their ideas; (2) the “pedagogy of listening,” in which children and adults carefully attend to the world and to one another; (3) the notion that all children have the right to participate in the communities in which they reside. This vivid portrait of emergent curriculum includes: Classroom experiences, including building a city for the classroom hamster and authoring a school charter on children’s rights. Provocative discussion questions for professional development. Photographs of children at play and examples of children’s work.