As a newcomer to nursery work and Reggio Emilia, I was at first apprehensive toward the notion of planning in the moment. Having previously come from Secondary School teaching, the lack of a formal lesson plan felt alien to me. To use a theatrical metaphor, it wasn’t unlike mine and other practitioners’ discomfort with improvisation, feeling too much afloat without a script. Yet in both instances, one can surprise themselves when given even a little push.
Personally, as I have found with improvisation, planning in the moment is a question of balance. Yes, a degree of focus and maybe even a certain excited tension can boost creativity, but at the same time you have to allow yourself to breathe, relax and take a moment to consider the resources surrounding you. Also as with certain cases of theatrical improvisation, one must be conscious to build. Say you are improvising with a scene partner, creating a scenario from scratch in front of an audience. A basic principle is to always accept what the other performer gives you and vice versa. Denial of even the most outlandish sounding offering (within given parameters) stops the scene cold, failing the desire to engage and entertain. The creativity, therefore, does not rest solely on you, thus relieving some of that (at times necessary) pressure.
Thankfully, in this particular nursery setting, you have scene partners all around you, not only in the children but your fellow practitioners. The children offer up their interests and together you are able to build upon those interests alongside their learning needs over an extended period of time, nursing and teasing out the possibilities of a single set or category of resources for optimal learning potential. Likewise, going off your adult scene partners saves you from needing to reinvent the wheel. A wealth of experience and daily inspirations mutually informs the practice of practitioners daily, which has made planning in the moment an increasingly comfortable practice.
