What is Reggio Emilia? A City in Northern Italy that has developed an approach to early learning that sees all children, families and educators as strong, capable and powerful.

Who are we? We are a group of New Mexico educators and families who are inspired by the principles and practices of the Reggio Emilia approach and who are determined to create conditions so that all children have access to excellent learning experiences.

Vision:

The New Mexico Reggio Emilia Exchange (NMREX) advances a future where children of all cultures and identities have equitable access to experience educational approaches that honor the rights, inherent abilities, and voices of all people.

Mission:

NMREX works to strengthen the presence and practice of the Reggio Emilia Approach in New Mexican communities in ways that are authentic to local people and contexts.

Aims:

• Facilitating learning opportunities aligned with the Reggio Emilia Approach;

• Advocating at state and local policy levels to make space for the Reggio Emilia Approach in New Mexico; 

• Providing support for aspiring and practicing educators; and 

• Serving as a resource for networking.

Guiding Values:

Within all of our values, lives a genuine celebration of diversity, equity, and inclusion coupled with ongoing vigilance to end the oppression experienced by historically marginalized communities, including Black and Indigenous People and People of Color. 

We recognize that historic and contemporary systemic barriers keep the vision of NMREX more out of reach for some communities. We believe that moving closer to our vision requires us to focus additional attention and efforts on the removal of these barriers, especially as they pertain to early childhood education. 

• An image of all children, and thus families, educators, and community members, as strong, competent, and capable; 

• A pedagogy of listening and relationships; 

• Respect for the unlimited languages, literacies, and ways of knowing and learning;

• Children, families, educators, and communities together as partners in learning;

• Conversations and critical reflection based on thoughtful documentation of learning;

• Negotiated curriculum based on a process of invitation, provocation, and shared inquiry;

• The rights and freedoms of all children to holistic child development and well-being; and

• The importance of joy, play, and aesthetic beauty.

Solidarity Statement on Racism:

The New Mexico Reggio Emilia Exchange (NMREX) joins other organizations around the country who are outraged at the racial injustices that have been and continue to occur in our society. We stand in solidarity with Black, indigenous, AAPI, and all people of color who have for far too long been subject to rampant racism and unfair application of the law. To put this position in action, we commit to: 

• Learning from Black, indigenous, AAPI, and all leaders of color through meaningful listening, conversation, and collaboration; 

• Making visible the expertise of early childhood professionals--for example by hosting exhibits where they can showcase their work and by creating and sharing written records of their work such as through the NMREX journal--because early childhood professionals are disproportionately women of color whose value has long been exploited and whose expertise has long been ignored; 

• Ongoing review and revision of our organizational statements to align with anti-racist work; 

• Seeking permission from Zia Pueblo to use the child-drawn Zia symbol in our logo and offering a contribution to the pueblo’s education fund for the use of that symbol;

• Creating our by-laws and organizational governance structure using sociocracy, thereby ensuring our organization will be flat and round with no person sitting above another and making the value of hearing all voices central to our organization, particularly through the use of circles, which have been employed across cultures around the world for thousands of years; 

• Collectively engaging in sharing our individual, active, anti-racism plans as to how we are working to lessen and mitigate the harm perpetuated by white supremacy and white people, including by those of us who are white; and 

• Making ourselves available as a fiscal agent for smaller organizations that get left out of the racist/classist structure that is the nonprofit world. 

We would like to give credit to Lace Watkins and the Lace on Race community for inspiring many of these ideas and some of the wording in our commitments to take action against racism. For more info, visit laceonrace.com.

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