When my husband and I married, his maternal grandparents were not able to come to our wedding. The trip to Newfoundland was just too far from their Texan home for them to consider coming from away. When my husband's cousin called them from our wedding, we promised his beloved grandmother that we would come to them to celebrate together. We did, we brought our wedding garb across the miles and found ourselves a few months later standing in their pretty pink living room sharing our vows. Earlier that day, I walked up to their local grocery store and bought sunflowers to hold during our recreated ceremony. I remember holding their thick, sticky green prickly stems as we celebrated together. I remember feeling their sunny weight and the warmth of that afternoon. I remember my husband's grandfather's deep laugh and his warm hug. I remember his grandmother's joy and the tears in her eyes when she whispered in my ear, "finally." Those sunflowers were the perfect addition to that carefree day. Known as the happy flower, sunflowers represent adoration, loyalty and longevity. In retrospect their addition to that special day was serendipitous.

Serendipity is the gift of finding good things without really looking for them. It is that unexpected luck that leads you to finding valuable things unintentionally. My pragmatic friends and colleagues would call me on this post, pushing sensible and realistic interpretations of where this moment in time has positioned me. As usual, I'm going to push back and launch into the mystery and serendipity as I try to unpack life of late.

Seven days ago, I travelled at the speed of 250km/h by train from Rome to Reggio Emilia, Italy for my second study tour. I found myself flashing through time, space and memories. My last trip to Reggio Emilia was before the pandemic when my children were very young and I remember trying to balance the glass globes of parental anxiety as I juggled life to embark on that international trip. I remember leaving wondering if this costly trip would reciprocate its value personally and professionally. Just shy of 10 years later, I realize how deeply that first trip has influenced my professional life. I realize now that my mind regularly returns to Reggio when I walk into classrooms across my school district, primary and secondary spaces alike. I look for Reggio in our child care and early learning spaces. Sometimes I find her inspirations and affirmations, sometimes I hope for more.

The intensity of that first study week surpassed all expectations of time and place. While the aesthetics of the experience were breath taking, there was something deeper that changed me that week. I recall one of the educators sharing the work in her nido e scuola dell'infanzia, her preschool class, and her story of decomposition. She showed images of tables of decomposing materials, of seeds, including sunflower seeds, in various states of decomposition. She talked about her students using their little hands to explore the seeds, their use of magnification and illumination to discover the many different faucets of each tiny seed. She described the children's use of high power magnification tools and not once did she go into the 'what if' weeds because the materials were composed of 'real' glass and small parts. She didn't talk about safety precautions or worries about materials getting damaged. Instead she talked about life, death, renewal and possibilities. As she spoke I was mesmerized by the powerful image of the child as a competent and capable researcher, her pedagogy of listening spoke to my soul. There was such simplicity and beauty in the seed study, the materials were raw and natural, complimented by play with light and shadows. The children were the constructors of their learning, with the adults in her school playing a supportive role. It sounded lovely and while I was inspired by the story telling, it wasn't until I began visiting the schools that I realized the depth and complexity of the Reggio Emilia approach to education.

As I travelled back to Reggio Emilia seven days ago, I found myself wondering if I had made the right choice. It was a choice to make this trip again which required a week of careful planning, and the juggling of precious personal and professional glass balls. I also wondered whether you could go back to something that you once found monumental and return without some disappointment. What I discovered this time did not disappoint, once again it was raw, real and relational. Reggio pushed the transformative edges of my thinking about the current integration of child care into our K-12 system. It stirred my soul, provoked my mind and fed my creative spirit.

While I could see the old Reggio Emilia from my previous trip, I could also see a new Reggio emerging where conversations about digital tools and the opportunities of AI were juxtaposed beautifully alongside of history, poetry, sculpture and movement. I realized that I was finding something new on this trip as I found myself thinking about micro and macro levels of system change in the early years. I found myself thinking deeply about my day to day work, my research, and the educators, children and families that I serve. I felt my heart soar with hope as I learned how they continue to ensure that their children with learning differences and/or physical disabilities are not labelled or segregated in any way. These are the children welcomed first with priority access for registration and supports in recognition that they are "children with special rights." I was able to ask specific questions about systematization of this in their schools and I was impressed with the consistency of answers I received.

Now alongside of emptying my suitcase, I am in the midst of cognitively unpacking this trip. I am haunted by Maddalena Tedeschi's day one question, "how do we make school so joyful, so beautiful that children fall in love with the beauty in a school?" Tedeschi's provocations and her references to the Italian psychoanalyst Massimo Recalcati's belief that young people have the right to a relationship with school that is similar to falling in love intrigues me. Tedeschi spoke repeatedly about the need for schools to concern themselves with offering bonds and ties of affectivity and cognitivity. As I begin the adventure of unpacking my learning in Reggio, two questions swirl through my soul. How do we build schools where research and great discoveries guide the work of the children, their parents and the educators every day? How do we establish concrete and imaginative designs of schools so that they are spaces for critical, democratic and passionately intentional learning for all?

I am thinking that serendipity is not just a happy accident, sometimes when you go looking for something you are surprised by what you discover. I didn't expect to buy sunflowers on that special day almost two decades ago. I didn't expect that every time I now touch the thick stem of a sunflower that I would be propelled back to a very happy moment in my life. I didn't expect to go back to Reggio for a second study tour. Nor did I expect the juxtaposition between something old and something new to be a running mind-theme as I experienced this study tour. This surprised me, as I had structured a plan in my mind for my learning on this trip. I returned to Reggio with strategic intention and complex questions. There were certain things that I expected to see such as beautiful pedagogical documentation and narration, the infusion of cultural aesthetics and artistry into the schools, the creative work of the atelieristas, and the image of the child as competent and capable at the centre of all learning experiences. I was not disappointed, I saw and felt Reggio's magic in real time. What I did not expect upon my return was the transposition of feeling affirmed and incredibly unsettled much to the consternation of my noisy mind.

The plurality of the old and the new in Reggio Emilia weave together intricate patterns of unexpected connectivity in my mind. As I think about what the schools in Reggio Emilia do, I am considering how the dynamic tension of the past and the present guides the web of relations in our lives and classrooms. How we grow and change involves consternation and struggle side by side with beauty and hope. We need to bring our life stories into the educational plan and ensure that our relations with others guide the journey. We cannot duplicate Reggio's magic in our educational system. This magic belongs to the people of Reggio Emilia. It is a unique system where theory and practice about working with young children and their families has been produced from a very specific cultural, historical and political context. What we can do is commit to doing better for our youngest learners, their families and our educators. We can commit to position the educational experiences of each young child at the highest level possible and dare to make the choice of understanding the child as an individual with infinite capabilities.

As I travelled back to Rome yesterday for my flight home, I passed through beautiful rolling, lush, green, Tuscan fields where the seeds of the sunflowers had not yet woken up. I thought about how stunning these fields will soon be as the sunflowers emerge in the months ahead. I thought about possibility, beauty and growth. I thought about my family and the gift of caring relations that have surrounded me in my life. I thought about the messy thoughts tumbling through my mind and how to make meaning of all of this past week. The Reggio Emilia experience is one that embraces "a belief in the world" (Gilles Deleuze) and offers hope for a renewed culture of childhood where all children are recognized for their richness. This past week I found something old and something new in the schools of Reggio Emilia. I am bringing home with me something old, continuity, and something new, optimism for the future.