This reader's theater manuscript engages with a meltdown and reconstruction during the collection of my dissertation research. Seeking meaning in the experience of the studio teacher in an early childhood school, I co-participated in events that led me though an experience which deepened my awareness of what it means to teach and learn in the atelier. My experience in the studio becomes about the beauty of courage, time, and deep listening, as examined through the experiences of fear of the new and of my reconstruction into something more. Through active listening and engagement, I collide with predicament, learn to 'keep on living' and come to a new sense of how to live and work in an early childhood studio, aware that life eats entropy.

The project described here aimed at piloting an intercultural early learning program that was genuinely responsive to the unique circumstances and early learning needs of refugee and immigrant children and parents in Edmonton, Canada. The project was based on a unique partnership among government and non-government stakeholders. Because the pilot program used a grass-roots or generative approach to program development, it provides an example of how community and families’ cultural needs as well as their high aspirations for the education of their children could be addressed in a sensitive and comprehensive manner.