Concordia Journal Home > Archives > April 3, 2008 issue >

A child’s view of Concordia 

Three-year-old Rohaan Hussain-Vadavia and his classmates took some shots on campus recently. He took the photograph at right.

Their teachers in Concordia’s observation nursery in the McConnell Building had talked to the preschoolers about how artists view the world from their own perspective. They took them to the Ellen Gallery on the ground floor of the building, where the children watched the installation of the current show with great interest.

Then the teachers gave them digital cameras, and suggested that they take pictures of the things around them. The children were fascinated by the variety of door handles and the facilities for recycling, which they already know a lot about. Teachers resisted the impulse to lift them up to adult level.

The observation nursery is a living laboratory for students in the Early Childhood Education program, who watch experienced teachers work with children and their parents and learn from their techniques.

“We call our approach unstructured structure,” explained head teacher Fiona Rowlands. “I think our society undervalues play. Our society undervalues children, too.” Rowlands feels so strongly about this that she sometimes gets her students to get down on their knees and crawl around to see the world as a child would.

One of the teachers, Andrea Bruno, has a particular interest in art. She brought in a book about a child’s perspective on the French Impressionist Claude Monet, and the discussion it provoked led to this activity.