With Child’s Eyes

There are moments in our careers when something — or someone — shifts our path forever. For me, one of those people was Francesco Tonucci.

I remember the first time I came across his vignettes. These small drawings, often simple in style, carried deep truths about childhood. They opened a window into the world as seen by children — a world full of wonder, logic that defies adult norms, and wisdom that often goes unnoticed. I found myself drawn to them, captivated by how differently children experience the world, and how Tonucci was able to capture that so clearly and beautifully.

At the time, I was working in a constructivist school and diving headfirst into epistemology and the works of Piaget, Gattegno, and other great thinkers. It was a time of intense learning, but also of struggle. My director — a visionary educator — would often ask me to revise my lesson plans. Not just to adjust activities, but to fundamentally shift how I was thinking: What are the children bringing into the pedagogical interaction? Start from there.

At first, I didn’t know how. I was stuck in planning from outcomes, in trying to “teach” rather than to co-construct meaning. But little by little, something began to shift. The questions she posed — paired with Tonucci’s insights and images — began to crack open a new way of seeing.

Teaching and learning started to feel like two sides of the same coin. The classroom was no longer a place where knowledge was delivered, but a space where meaning was co-created. I became hungry for more: How do human beings really learn? What is cognition, really, if not embodied, social, emotional, and deeply relational?

Years later, when finishing the requirements for my California Child Development Teacher Permit, I proposed writing a paper based on one of Tonucci’s articles, “Citizen Child: Play as Welfare Parameter for Urban Life.” In it, he challenged modern society’s assumptions about urban planning and invited us to redesign cities from children’s perspectives. I was inspired. But when I shared my idea with my professor, she quickly dismissed it with a shrug: “Who cares about what happens in Italy?”

Despite her response, I wrote the essay — and got an A. But the irony of that moment stayed with me.

Years later, I found myself working in a Reggio-inspired school, visiting Italy, and attending a conference where educators from over 40 countries gathered, all inspired by the same philosophies, the same values, the same dreams of a more human, child-centered way of living and learning.

It turns out, a lot of people care about what happens in Italy — and in any place where the rights, voices, and perspectives of children are truly valued.

Tonucci taught me, early on, to take children seriously. To see the world not just for them, but with them. And most importantly, to never let adult certainty cloud our view of wonder. Because often, the things that matter most — the questions worth asking, the paths worth following — only become visible when we look with a child’s heart and eyes.