Meeting Individual Needs: One Hundred Languages of Children

The majority of my career has been spent in early childhood education. As an educator inspired by Reggio Emilia, I think Loris Malaguzzi’s poem “100 languages” (see Resource) perfectly captures the essence and importance of the arts in education, especially as it relates to early childhood contexts. Malaguzzi is known for his work in establishing the early childhood centers and the world-renowned Reggio Emilia approach to education.

Our students have diversity in experience, culture, language, and play. Knowing that there are a hundred or more languages that children use for expression and learning has guided my teaching, whether I am working with preschoolers or college students.

A New Educational Journey
This year, I started a new adventure as the visual art teacher at the Rhode Island School for the Deaf, working with students in grades pre-K to 12. Going into this experience, I was absolutely terrified. My American Sign Language (ASL) was below rudimentary, and I only knew a handful of signs.

I want to clarify that Deafness is not a disability; it is a cultural marker, much like race or gender. There are people in the Deaf community who identify as Deaf Disabled, which means that they have a need besides being Deaf that may require support. I was lucky to have grown up with parents who were teachers of the Deaf, as well as family members and friends who are Deaf.

Growing up understanding the Deaf community helped, but I didn’t want to disappoint my students with my lack of ASL. After eight months of signing and ASL classes, my skills have gradually improved, but I am still nowhere near proficient.

The Challenge of Communication
Perhaps the greatest challenge this year was learning how to best communicate with my students. How could I inspire them to be creative and think outside the box when we weren’t even communicating in the same language?
I had to rely on my experience as an early childhood teacher to provide playful yet independent activities that allow for exploration while creating a mutual method of communication through play.

Mutually Constructed Languages
One of my favorite classes to teach is kindergarten, which meets three days a week. The class size has fluctuated throughout the year, and two of the students had one-on-one assistance. For much of the year, they satisfied their craving for sensory experiences with marble painting, shaving cream prints, and ice painting.

Because of the small class size, I could focus on each student’s specific needs, and we’ve been able to explore nontraditional forms of communication.

One student is obsessed with thinking maps, as our school uses them often. The concept was new to me, but this student decided to construct a map of anything he could find in the art room that was blue. He has continued in this vein, making maps of objects with additional colors and showcasing them in the hallway.

In this class, I’ve been able to be my most emergent self and adjust to students’ divergent needs and interests by communicating in whatever language we mutually construct.

Sensory Solutions
Our school also serves students who have additional needs. In our preschool class, I have a student who is functioning at the level of a toddler. She has picked up a few signs over the course of the year, including those for “more” and “eat,” but her main method of communication has been pointing, crying, and smiling. For her, art is about providing meaningful and engaging sensory experiences, not about creating a picture to hang on a wall. I am a firm believer in anti-bias education, and I try not to use food as a plaything, recalling times when I knew that my students’ basic nutritional needs were not being met. This was a challenge for me, as this particular student wanted to put everything in her mouth, so I needed to come up with alternatives.

The student really took to water play and activities with ice and frozen paint. It was invigorating to watch, and became a great way to introduce color mixing through play and experimentation.

As I look forward to next year, I’m still working on my ASL, but I am also remembering those hundred languages. Sometimes it’s the listening, observing, and playing that allows us to communicate.