Maria Montessori

From Creeping to Leaping the Kindergarten Year – A Montessori Parent’s Perspective

Sarah Richards — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:29:09 +0000

As April approached during our daughter’s last year before Kindergarten, my husband and I began the same process many Montessori preschool parents engage in every Spring: making the decision about where she would go for Kindergarten. We loved the Montessori preschool, and had really seen our daughter thrive there for the past two years. And we knew the mantra about kids in the program ‘leaping’ in their learning during their third year. On the other hand, when we moved to Redding, we researched potential schools for our kids, and chose our house based upon where we intended them to attend school – a wonderful charter school that really seemed to cater to our daughter’s personality and to specific curricular offerings that were important to me and my husband.

When we thought about our daughter’s progress at Montessori in particular, we discussed how much progress she had already made – we were amazed by her burgeoning math skills, her beginning writing, her ability to select work and focus…we thought perhaps the ‘third year leap’ was something she was already experiencing. She had been so prolific and learned so many new and diverse things, how much more could she grow in the following year?

We decided to go through the lottery process at the charter school and make a decision later, if we were successful in securing her a spot. As it turned out, we were not successful. I was surprised at what a relief that was! We were please that she could continue to hone her skills and talents in her own time, according to when she was ready, both in terms of interest and development. We appreciated that she would be able to develop more ability to concentrate on her work over ever longer periods of time, and that she would learn to be responsible for progressing through her own education – that she would learn that her rewards (learning new information, skills, etc.) would be a direct result of the effort she decided to invest.

Fast forwarding to the beginning of her Kindergarten year at Shady Oaks, my husband and I were blown away at the changes we observed in her. We thought she had been ‘leaping’ in her learning the year before – she hadn’t even begun!! She went from writing her name and the names of a few items around to developing whole sentences, and then stories, in a matter of a couple of months. From reading a handful of words in beginning reader books and signs around town, she suddenly (within a period of a few weeks) moved on to reading whole stories by herself – and within a couple of months, again, she progressed to books several levels above what we have expected from a traditional 1^st grader! She’s moved from adding single digits together to delving into large addition, subtraction, and multiplication – we’re not even sure what work she’s doing in the classroom that relates to this (she doesn’t tell us a whole lot about what she does); it just comes up at the dinner table or while we’re baking together. And, being a Kindergartner this year, she is really getting the opportunity to explore her leadership skills. It’s been wonderful to watch her give lessons to the ‘new friends’ in the classroom, or hear about things the younger children are working on that she can sit near and watch, while she does her own work, and help with if they’re struggling with something. A great side-benefit to that, she’s become extraordinarily helpful in the same way with her little brother at home as well.

In November of her Kindergarten year, we received a phone call from the charter school that there was an opening for her for immediate placement. My husband and I struggled with the thought at that point. We were really starting to see our daughter leap at Montessori, and we knew how much we and she both valued her self- direction, independence in learning, and the benefits of the multi-age classroom. Still, we had been invested in the idea of this charter school, and it was difficult to just let go of that. We decided to observe the classroom she would be placed to make the best-informed decision we could.

That morning, we talked to our daughter briefly about the task before us. We wanted to know what her thoughts and opinions about this were and let her know we valued her input, though we were careful to explain that this was a decision that we were ultimately going to be making based on our assessment of the options. She asked what some of the differences would be. We talked about the whole class doing the same work at the same time. We explained that she would be required to stay in her seat, and raise her hand if she wanted to ask a question or needed to get up for a drink or to go to the bathroom. She looked at us like we had sprouted horns.

What if I want to do reading and someone else wants to do writing? Well, that’s not how other classrooms work – you’ll have to read when the class is reading, and write when the class is writing. What if I’m not done reading and it’s time to write? You’ll have to save your place in what you’re reading and come back to it next time, or maybe do it on your own after school. What if I haven’t had the lesson the class is working on yet? Well, everyone gets the same lesson all together at the same time, so when it’s time to work, everyone’s had the lesson for that work. And I can’t get up to go to the bathroom without raising my hand and asking? That’s right – but they’ll let you go, we promise!

The more we talked it over, the more ludicrous it seemed to us also, given the environment that Montessori provides. Still, we went to our observation with open minds. The children seemed happy enough. The teacher was kind and engaging. They were working on a math set while we were there, counting sides of a hexagon, drawing the shape repeatedly in columns on a worksheet, coloring it yellow (the hexagon tangrams they used were all yellow), and writing six in the next column showing the number of sides for each hexagon they drew. About five minutes after we got there, the teacher stopped that lesson and had the class move to a story rug to work on some reading comprehension. This consisted of her holding up flashcards with common words (cat, hat, it, I, we, can, etc.) for the kids to say in unison three times, then the next card three times, and so on. This lasted another 10 minutes, maybe, before they moved back to their desks for a new lesson.

The teacher had explained to us that the children needed a break from the math exercise, because they really couldn’t concentrate on it for more than about 15 or 20 minutes at a time. This was the beginning of the end for us. We knew from our experience at Montessori, our daughter (and many others children in our classroom) had no problem working on a project for long periods of time, because they chose work they wanted to do and were interested in. They didn’t have to stop working because other students (who weren’t really interested in the work at hand) got restless.

In fact, this classroom’s whole day was scheduled out in 30-minute increments (or less) for various subjects. Then they lost about 4-5 minutes each time they moved from one lesson to the next as they waited for the entire class to simultaneously finish one project, move, and settle in to the next. While this allowed the children to move a little between tasks, it seems strange, having the Montessori experience to relate to, that kids who need to move aren’t allowed until it is time for the whole class to do so. And that kids that might not be ready to finish the task at hand are required to because others are, or the schedule says it’s time.

We made our decision as we walked out the classroom door from our observation that this was simply not an environment that was best for our daughter. She was clearly thriving with the Montessori method, and we didn’t see anything that seemed it would provide her with a greater educational benefit. We were happy to have the opportunity to make this decision ourselves, and know now that it really is the best choice for our family. It means we will be driving out to Middle Creek Montessori twice a day every school day for nearly the next decade, between our two children. (The charter school is less than a mile from our house – an easy walking or biking distance.) Still, the opportunity this affords them is clearly worth it for us.

On a side note, my husband and I come from the polar opposite ends of the public education spectrum: one of us easily excelled in that environment, and the other struggled to make it through. We’re both intelligent, curious individuals who love to read and have taken many opportunities to further our education outside school. But the system we grew up with, and which seems to have gone to further extremes, catered to good test-takers who don’t necessarily “learn” the information as much as memorize it for quick regurgitation on tests, while punishing those who do not test well by grading them on how they take the test, rather than how well they actually know the subject matter. Both of us have seen how the Montessori method would have made a world of difference for our own educations – for one providing a more engaging, less punitive environment that actually promotes learning, and for the other an environment that promotes actual and intentional learning, rather than simple memorization of facts without actually connecting the facts with long-term knowledge that builds upon itself. I relish the opportunity for our children to be in control of their education; to explore and learn because it’s something that they want to know, rather than something they will need to know for a test; to know that their learning, and not some arbitrary test, is both an objective in itself and a door to their future.

Sincerely,

Sarah Richards

When a Loved One Dies

John Snyder — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:41:27 +0000

It is often during the elementary years that a child first experiences the death of a loved one – frequently a grandparent or great-grandparent, but sometimes and aunt, uncle, parent or sibling. These times can be very difficult and confusing for us as adults caring for elementary children. Younger children also suffer loss, but they may have an easier time accepting that this is just the way things are. It may be only much later that they revisit and truly comprehend the loss through a process of reflection.

As someone fully engaged with the great work of understanding how the world works, the elementary child is keenly interested in all aspects of death: how it happens, why it happens, what happens after death, in what way the family will commemorate the death, how the various family members will be affected, and much more. The reasoning mind of the second plane wants to understand all this, even as the child may be also suffering emotionally. For the grieving adult, the barrage of questions may be hard to take, and it may even seem that the child cares more about the factual details than about honoring the deceased or appreciating the emotional stress of the adults.

Maria Montessori wrote of a Montessori school in which first and second plane children were together in the same classroom. (She and her collaborators tried many different arrangements before settling on the one that is now our standard practice.) One morning the children arrived at school to find that all the fish in the classroom’s aquarium had mysteriously died. All the children were interested in what had happened, but the younger children would run to tell each new child that arrived at school, “The fish have died!” and then return to their work. The second plane children stood around in hushed groups asking each other, “What happened? Why did the fish die?” and debating the possible causes.

The point is that for the second plane child, understanding how to think about the death is an important part of beginning the emotional process of acceptance, grief and recovery.

Montessori teachers lay a foundation in the classroom for the second plane children’s conversations about death with each other and their parents. In the children’s study of living things, death is presented as a natural process, an inevitable part of each individual organism’s life, without which the larger world of life could not go on. The children become aware of lifecycles appropriate to each kind of living thing. Dead insects and small animals found on the school grounds are marked off and left to return to nature, so that the children can both show respect for and observe nature’s ways. Religious beliefs and customs around the world are a part of the children’s study of society, including beliefs and customs related to death.

Books read together with the child or read alone by the child and discussed with the parent can be very helpful when one is at a loss for words. Three of my favorites are Leo Buscaglia’s The Fall of Freddie the Leaf, Bryan Mellonie’s Lifetimes, and Chuck Thurman’s A Time for Remembering. The Buscaglia and Mellonie books beautifully depict the lifecycle and the great wheel of life and death. Thurman’s book is particularly suitable for discussing the death of a grandparent. In it, a boy finds a beautiful, symbolic way of remembering his grandfather.

John Snyder is an administrator at Austin Montessori School. Follow him onTwitter @jrs1231.

Being Present

Charlotte Kroger — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 20:31:27 +0000

It’s the close of another busy day at school and I head the car into the endless stream of homeward bound commuters. It is about a twenty-minute drive from the school to home. Suddenly I realize that I have only about 5 miles to go and cannot remember at all having driven the middle portion of the route. The effect is startling and sobering. I force my full attention to my driving and continue on my route.

Has this happened to you? Perhaps some similar situation has occurred in which you could not recall having processed a necessary activity or step in your day? It is usually an activity or step that occurs with regularity, one that is performed daily. Instead of focusing on the task at hand, instead of being mindful, we have allowed ourselves to be distracted. Often it is not unlike sleepwalking.

In his book Awakening to the Sacred, Lama Surya Das addresses the underlying principle of the awakened being, that of living in awareness, of knowing what is going on around oneself moment to moment. He then suggests 10 simple cues within one’s day that can serve to remind us “to pay attention by creating moments of mindfulness.” These are not exotic rituals but everyday activities, such as brushing teeth or walking through a doorway.

This very same principle can be applied in our daily lives with our children. To be fully present, to be fully on cue, to be fully there when encountering your child can serve as one of the greatest gifts your child can receive. How often do we let the cares of the day distract us from these little people? How focused are we, really, in our contacts with them? With a nod to Lama Suyra Das, I would like to suggest 10 mindful moments drawn from your daily routine that you, as a parent, can use to bring your awareness and focus totally into the present moment while being with your child. You can establish each moment or activity as a call to focus, to mindfulness.

Mindful waking

Be fully awake yourself, ready to awaken and greet your child with a happy, fresh attitude. Perhaps establish a simple breathing or stretching exercise routine that you can do together each morning. Encourage your child to be someone who greets each new day eagerly as the gift it is. Of course, you can only do this authentically if you have practiced it yourself.

Mindful dressing

This requires preparation. The child, with your assistance as needed, can select clothes the night before and place them in readiness. If your child can dress herself, build in ample time to allow her to do so at a child’s pace. (Many disagreeable moments centered on the child’s selection of clothing can be alleviated if the closet and drawers contain only clothes that are acceptable and seasonally appropriate. This way, she is free to select from any items in the closet or drawers.) A mindful portion of dressing is recognizing the body’s response to room temperature. Is it cold, warm, chilly? Perhaps there is an opportunity to luxuriate in the feel of velvet on skin, or the warmth of cotton tights on chilled legs. The focus is not fashion but the awakening of the senses to the moment.

Mindful eating

Sit and enjoy breakfast together. Pay attention to the smells, textures, and colors, of what is eaten. Savor each bite. Express gratitude for food that nourishes and for the opportunity to commune together. Create a moment for sharing a meal and conversation. Assure that no television, radio or newspaper is distracting you from this time together. Place all work concerns on hold for these few precious minutes.

Mindful tooth brushing

Do this alongside your child. Ritualize it. Once the brushes are loaded, pay full attention to the task at hand. Brush with care and with focus. After rinsing, look at each other in the mirror and smile broadly. It’s a new day!

Mindful departure

Careful preplanning is needed to do this with calm and focus. In great Montessori style, establish a time for departure and adhere to it; establish a storage place for all items needed at departure time – lunchboxes, keys, jackets, hats, mittens, and tote bags. Remain completely focused on closing up the home, on having all items in hand, on walking out of the door and on entering the car. Do not allow your mind to jump ahead to traffic or work concerns. Pause for a brief moment and consider the start of a new day with preparedness. Share these thoughts with your child.

Mindful arrival at school

Stay completely alert and focused during the commute. While parked and waiting for your child to be greeted, be present for him. Enjoy this moment together. Observe what is happening about you: who do you see, what do you see, what is the weather like? Have the cell phone and the radio turned off. Engage in light conversation. Some children enjoy playing an “I Spy” game. Perhaps read a portion of a book that “can be continued.” Stay alert, upbeat, and positive.

Mindful departure from school

Be on time. Greet your child cheerfully, authentically. Put your office mates, friends, and cell phone on hold. You have not seen or spoken to your child for much of the day. This is the moment to reconnect. Relish in the warmth of her smile and her delight in being with you again. Be ready to listen. I often recommend to parents that they park a good walking distance away (completely out of the departure areas) and walk to the classroom to meet their child. A jaunty walk back to the car, fully absorbed in one another, is a great way to reconnect. It also builds in downtime for the children as they move from the classroom environment to home, much as adults often need downtime between work and home.

Mindful recreation

Build in a small portion of time in the evening for you and your child to play together. It can be a jog around the block, a short bike ride together, building with Lego’s, or coloring together. Whatever the choice, clear your mind of any other thought and concern and totally focus on your child and the activity. Laugh and smile together. Relish the moment. Observe your child and delight in his delight.

Mindful bath time

Establish a time and routine. Enjoy the child’s pleasure in the water, the bubbles, and the play. Sing together. Enjoy conversation together. Recognize the washing away of cares and residue of the day and marvel in the perfection of a small child.

Mindful bedtime

Once again, establish a time and routine. Indulge in cuddling and inhale the fresh, sweet smell of your child; enjoy the warmth of her small presence. Be fully present as you process your routine, paying full attention to how you are saying goodnight. Are you irritable, rushed, impatient? Or are you soft, warm, attentive? Recognize that this moment is all there really is.

These are activities we encounter daily. It is how we do them which matters. The essence of mindful living is captured in the following story from Awakening to the Sacred: “The Buddha was once asked ‘What do you and your disciples practice?’ The Buddha answered, ‘We sit, we talk, and we eat.’ The questioner was confused. ‘But,’ he continued, ‘doesn’t everyone sit, walk, and eat?’ ‘Yes,’ said the Buddha, ‘but when we sit, we know we are sitting. When we walk, we know we are walking. When we eat, we know we are eating.” This is the practice of being present!

Charlotte Kroger is the Consultant/Mentor for Children’s House Level at Austin Montessori School, Austin, Texas. Following her 14 years of leading Children’s House communities in both Oregon and Texas, she retired, only to return shortly after to her current role.

Reading Aloud: a Gift That Keeps on Giving

Donna Bryant Goertz — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:26:28 +0000

We know that one of the very best things any parent can do for their child’s development in reading is to read aloud to the child. Over the years, many parents and former students have told us stories of their experience reading and being read to. What these stories tell us is that reading aloud together is far more than just a support for reading development; it can be a vital and deeply cherished time in which parents and children explore the world together through books and conversation. Here are a few of the stories we have heard.

She was twenty and she told us that her mom had read aloud to her every night till she went off to university. The first time she came home for a visit her mom kissed her and said goodnight. “Wait,” she said to her mom, “we can’t go to bed till you read to me!” And so their custom continued, but over time it evolved into each of them alternating to read to the other from their current book.

A mom told us she went to visit her son in the large house he shared with a couple of other college students. Her son had told her to be sure to bring along the book she was reading so they could sit together in the evenings and read as they had always done in their family.

A mom of three children, five, eight and eleven years old, told me she read aloud to each of them every evening for half hour from their own book. I wondered that she could squeeze out an hour and a half a day for reading aloud. She said, “Are you kidding? Looking forward to that hour and a half devoted to reading and to devoting time to each child is what keeps me going!”

Keeping reading aloud going all through the years at home gives parents a strong connection with their child in relation to all aspects of life. One mom told me that, to her eleven year-old’s delight, she had just finished reading aloud Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, which had provoked from her child a constant stream of questions on the history and lifestyles of the period, to say nothing of the vigorous vocabulary and the long and complex sentence structures. Her child had requested that they next delve into the Bible and Shakespeare to see how far they could get. Reading aloud is a powerful foundation for the study of art, history, current events and literature for middle school years and beyond.

One dad, a doctor, told us he continued reading aloud to his daughter through middle school. He said he couldn’t imagine how else he could have comfortably held the long, complicated discussions with her about life and character, love and relationships, that meant so much to their father daughter bond and her future as an independent adult making her way in the world. All those literary characters, situations and plots made it possible for him to broach subjects with her objectively and openly and made it possible for her to listen comfortably and take in just what she needed, when she needed it. He said reading aloud is much more valuable and more deeply meaningful in a parent child relationship than simple support for a child’s reading level and love of books.

One last benefit of regular read-aloud at home: it supports the child’s work at school. When parents continue reading aloud to their child two years above the child’s own reading level, not only is family time filled with rich companionship and fine discussions, but also the child’s mind is filled with appropriate subject matter for research and projects at school with work partners.

Donna Bryant Goertz, founder of Austin Montessori School in Austin, Texas, acts as a resource to schools around the world. Donna’s book,Children Who Are Not Yet Peaceful: Preventing Exclusion in the Early Elementary Classroom draws on her thirty years of experience guiding a community of thirty-five six-to-nine year-olds. She received her Montessori elementary diploma from the Fondazione Centro Internazionale Studi Montessoriani in Bergamo, Italy, and her assistants to infancy diploma from The Montessori Institute of Denver, Colorado.

Work in Montessori

Ana Amiguet — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 21:33:26 +0000

For most of us, the word “work” carries the heavy connotation of all the things we are supposed to do—but really want to avoid. It brings visions of stress and ulcers, of late nights and stale coffee. But if you are one of the lucky few who truly loves what you do, then “work” means something completely different. “Work” then means doing something that brings satisfaction and gratification, it means gladly giving of yourself to complete a task, and it means knowing that you will be rewarded with something more than material gain—joy in the process itself. It is this positive experience—of undertaking an activity that fulfills your mind, body and heart—that a child experiences in a Montessori environment. It is this that we mean by “work.”

But what is the difference between the kind of work which is an obligation and a chore, and the work that fulfills the spirit and the mind? First, it is important to realize that work in a Montessori environment is not forced on a child, but is instead freely chosen. A Montessori environment offers the child the liberty of choosing their own activities, and they have consistently, and independently, chosen work that serves a developmental purpose. Through this work, children show an ability to concentrate for long periods of time, a propensity for repeating an activity until a certain skill is mastered, and the urge to make the maximum effort on any task. Additionally, children demonstrate a great sense of joy while performing their work, and indicate that they want to learn how to be a help to their family or community, and contribute with the skills and the knowledge they have acquired.

In order for work to be an enjoyable experience, however, it needs to engage the whole personality, as it is then that the child can experience, “… the kind of pleasure and satisfaction that results only when basic needs are gratified,” (Mario Montessori, Jr., Clio, 1992). Differently from adults, a child performs a task not for the end result, but for the process itself. For example, in working with the Dressing Frames, and in learning how to tie bows, the child concentrates on a task that is helping him refine his fine motor skills, giving him independence from having to ask an adult to tie his shoes, and challenging both his fingers and his mind to complete the task at hand. In this simple activity, the child is able to integrate his personality, as the work addresses the development of his physical, emotional, and intellectual self.

Also, work in a Montessori environment always has multiple purposes, as one activity will indirectly prepare the child, and set him up for success, in other areas (of both the classroom and of life!). For instance, the child does not learn to wash a table merely so that it will be clean, but because learning to follow a complicated series of steps will help organize his mind, leading to the logical and ordered thinking required in the more advanced mathematics materials. Later, having a mind that can bring order out of chaos will help the future adult become an engineer, manage a company, or do his taxes! And it is imperative that the child is exposed to this kind of work before he is 6 years old, since this is when he is still forming his personality, and his mind. In this way, the child has the chance to be an organized person, as opposed to someone who realizes they need to be organized, and forces themselves to learn.

All in all, Montessori strives to erase the negative connotations imposed on the word “work” and replace it with what it should mean:

work (verb) to carry out a purposeful activity that fulfills an inner purpose, and helps the person integrate his mind, body and soul.

Ana Amiguet is an AMI Primary trained teacher, who is now a full time mom.

Easy as Pi

Peter Davidson — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 18:24:48 +0000

I was recently invited to present leadership training to a group of private and parochial school principals. I attempted to get them beyond an intellectual understanding of a different way of educating children and coaching teachers, to a more experiential one. I wanted to open their minds to the possibility that their jobs were more about inspiring teachers than managing them. I further hoped that they might try to open the minds of their teachers to the possibility that their jobs were also more about inspiring students than managing them, as well. I set out to give them a short but inspiring educational experience, and what could be better than a Montessori lesson?

I asked this group of well-educated professionals what they remembered from their own education about pi. Someone responded, “3.14159.” “You’re right,” I said, “that is the value of pi, but does anyone remember what pi means?” At once they seemed to adopt the sheepish demeanor of students in a traditional math class, each of whom is saying to him or herself: “I should know this but am afraid to answer because I might get it wrong. I hope the teacher doesn’t call on me!” To relieve their discomfort, I supplied the answer: “It is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.”

I invited them to gather around me. On the table I had a sheet of plain white paper, a pencil, a ruler and a circle. I proceeded to draw a straight line almost the length of the piece of paper with the pencil and ruler. Next, I made a mark at one point of the circle’s circumference. Holding the circle vertically, I matched that mark with the beginning of the line on the piece of paper, and carefully rolled the circle along the line. I asked the principals to let me know when the mark had made one revolution and returned to touch the paper, which they did. I made a mark at that point on the line also. “Do you agree with me that the distance between the beginning of the line and this mark measures the circumference of this circle?” They agreed that it did.

Now I compared the diameter to the circumference. I laid the circle flat down on the paper, its edge even with the beginning of the circumference line and made a mark at its other edge, thus denoting the width of the circle, its diameter. I moved the circle along the line to this new mark and again marked the diameter. Then, a third time. This only left a tiny bit of the circumference line. “So, we just found that we could measure the diameter of our circle along the circumference line – how many times? 1, 2, 3 and a little bit. We have just proved pi, haven’t we?”

I invited each of the principals to take their own piece of paper, ruler, pencil and circle, and prove pi for themselves. They raced back to their tables and did so. Then I asked, “How do you feel?” “Excited,” said one. “I feel like I have just accomplished something!” offered another. “I’ll never forget pi now!” said a third. “Can we do it again?” asked yet another.

I suggested to the principals that what they had just experienced was a small example of the kind of education that would lead their students to fulfill the skills and characteristics necessary for the 21^st Century. I further suggested that they take this activity back to school with them and share it with their teachers at the next staff meeting. It’s not their jobs necessarily to discover all of the better ways to teach Geometry, or English, or Botany; but perhaps it is their job to inspire and empower their teachers by this example to discover better methods of teaching for themselves.

Any Montessori elementary teacher (or student) will recognize this lesson on pi. I have watched Montessori teachers give this lesson any number of times. I remember the look of excitement and discovery on the faces of the children. I can also recall teachers giving this lesson to the students’ parents at an evening event at the school. Parents invariably respond with the same delight as their children. “Oh, so that’s what pi means! It makes so much sense. It’s so simple and elegant. Why didn’t I learn this way?”

Sadly, we can’t take parents back to childhood to re-do their education. But, isn’t it nice to know that children are receiving these kinds of experiences every day and in all areas of the Montessori classroom? When done in this way, school is not only more enjoyable but empowering and inspiring, and the learning stays with them for the rest of their lives. And it’s easy as pi.

Peter Davidson was the founding Head at the Montessori School of Beaverton, an AMI school in Portland and currently serves as consultant for Montessori in Redlands, an AMI school in Southern California.

I Thought I Was a Montessori Teacher

Jim Fitzpatrick — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 20:45:46 +0000

I’m a quick study, but a slow learner. That is, given a new situation, or a new experience, I’ll quickly think I know how to do what’s new, or at least I’ll pretend to others that I know. And I believe it, too, that I know…and then the task comes to hand I realize, “What’s the deal with this?”

I was like that as a young Montessori teacher, for sure, a long time ago. Which was more or less the result of my experience as a teacher-in-training. Bergamo, Italy. Camillo Grazzini…Mario Montessori…Mrs. Honneger reaching across the table and whacking me on the forehead. “Que cosa?” she’d ask. I drove her nuts with my questions. We had to ask her, what, I was going to ask Mario? “Uh, Signor Montessori, I don’t really get this…” That wasn’t happening, he was the one giving us the lesson! “That lesson you gave us was great, but I don’t get it…what am I supposed to do?”

With lesson after lesson cascading upon us, especially at the end of the year shortly before exams, when it was vitally important to remember every nuance of where the decimal point went, or which cube preceded what cube, my particular style of learning became incredibly helpful. I mean, I could recall all the little details, I still can, BUT the child…the children who would receive those lessons? Where were they, and how would I present these lessons to those children?

So, the children in my first classroom, those receiving the lessons, ended up way over on the other side of the bell curve of the learning cycle. I knew the material, every detail. I knew how to present the material, upside and down. But the children? Where were the children in my lessons, they were as mystified by my lessons as I had been by those given to me by Mario Montessori.

That first class? San Francisco. Diamond Heights. Team-teaching a 9-12 class with Linda County. We had Joe DiMaggio’s niece in my class. Francesca DiMaggio Topper. I recall asking her, “Were you born in May?” “Why do you ask me that?” “DiMaggio, it means ‘of May’ or ‘in May.’ “It does?” “Yes.” “No, I wasn’t born in May, it’s my mother’s maiden name.” “DiMaggio? Like Joe DiMaggio?” “Yes, he’s my uncle…my great uncle.” This to a lifetime baseball player. I could hardly breathe. “Joe DiMaggio is your uncle…”

So, where was Joe DiMaggio’s niece in my lessons? She’d watch me. She’d listen. I’d explain. I’d move along. I presented square root from start to finish, with every nuance and every detail, in about 11 minutes. From introduction, to working with the material, to abstraction, to binomials, to trinomials. 11 minutes. Maybe less. I could dazzle. Square root takes up more than two dozen pages in my album, and in those days I could remember every detail I’d typed. I’d get started on those lessons and just “GO.”

Finishing up, I asked Francesca, “Any questions?” Her glazed eyes were a clear indication of my inability to reach over and around to her side of the bell curve. I knew what I was doing, that’s for sure. “So, what am I supposed to do?” she asked with a deep-seated bleariness. “Here,” I said, “start by building a square with these pegs…” and I went back to the beginning of the lesson, and eventually, step by step, we began to rebuild the lesson I’d just presented.

This was my pattern during those first months as a first-year teacher. I’d determine a lesson needed to be given. I’d make the presentation. The kids would look at me, “What are we supposed to do?” “I just showed you…” Eventually I realized there was something missing. It was Mrs. Honneger who had said to me, “If the children aren’t doing the work it means you made a mistake.” “Me?” “Yes, you! Not them, not the material, you are the mistake!” Well, I never.

My wife, Frances, pregnant at the time and working gleefully in her 6-9 classroom, which was in another facility out on the avenues, explained, “You’re giving them everything at once…they don’t know what to do. Present the lesson in bits and pieces, let them understand each step of the way…You’re just showing them how well you understand the material, you’re not giving them a chance to figure anything out!” I looked for this suggestion in my album. It wasn’t there.

So, I began to figure out that Frances’ guidance was a key to the children’s success. Eventually, I mean, like I said, I’m a slow learner. Just last week, 40 years later, I found myself explaining too much in a brief moment as a substitute. But I caught myself, and smiled.

Maybe I should poke around and see if I can find Francesca. Where’s Joe DiMaggio’s niece, today? She was a wonderful girl. Geez, she’d be in her 50s, now. I bet I could give her a much better square root lesson than I did when I was slowly learning what it actually means to be a Montessori teacher.

Jim Fitzpatrick is the founder and Head of School at Santa Barbara Montessori School, an AMI school on the beautiful California coast.

Children Centered Learning – Learning Centered Children

Seth Webb — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 22:33:40 +0000

Sebastian was a very particular child. Prone to believing he was right and making his opinions known to all, he was a student for whom daily struggles were common: arriving on time, staying on task, choosing challenging work, doing work that was not always his choice, sticking to a schedule, etc. For a teacher still relatively new to the field of elementary education, Sebastian was a challenge for me amongst a Montessori classroom of able, driven and disciplined upper elementary students.

There came a day when Sebastian began working on a grand castle construction, with cardboard and paint and construction paper. It was a project not directly linked to a unit of study which I had introduced, but seemed to engage him and keep him happy. This went on for days, then a couple of weeks – to the exclusion of most of his other work. From my, then, myopic perspective Sebastian was falling behind. I became worried and resentful, and began to react to his intransigence from that ungrounded place of fear.

Teachers are masters at being able to adapt to their immediate environment. In training, a student teacher gets one version of what is right and just and good for children – and works to justify this vision with one’s own. Then, in his first posting, he receives the principal’s version of what is best, and again works to adapt his beliefs to this. Parents, too, offer their perspectives, desires and needs – which one also factors in to his teaching practice. Lastly, but most importantly, the children demonstrate to the teacher their needs for real and deep and purposeful learning.

The teacher is, therefore, asked to wear multiple filters of perception that are often at odds with one another. Or, if not directly opposite, contradictory enough that the teacher can feel stymied and cautious, rather than joyous and alive for his students.

Slowly, a change happens. A teacher, so wanting to do right by all of the multiple stakeholders at the door, will resolve the competing interests to form a vector that forges the truest path between: doing a little of each to move forward with a new definition of authenticity.

And so it was with me and Sebastian: me placing demands upon him to do and achieve; he resisting and acting out with daily bouts of defiance. There were good days, weeks even, when a balance could be won where both he and I felt like we were doing our jobs – learning and teaching.

What I did not expect was that, all along, he was teaching me.

Nearly a month into his work, I came to tell Sebastian that it was time to wrap up the project – that it had gone on too long and that the other works that he was responsible for were going unaccomplished. Despite previous attempts at bargaining, and trading the completion of my list of to-dos for time on his castle, Sebastian remained determined and undaunted.

When I said it was the end – time to put the castle away for good, to take it home and move on – Sebastian became protective and angry. Unbelievably, in retrospect, I thought this was just another example of Sebastian being determined to do work only on his terms. He and I were equally frustrated. I felt that my authority was being undermined and, as a new teacher to this classroom and school, I believed that it was important that I make a stand.

Finally, with tears welling in his eyes, Sebastian looked up at me and said:

“But this is my work… It’s for me!”

A that moment everything changed, both for me as a teacher and as a person living in the world. That’s when I got it. That is wasn’t about the curriculum, benchmarks, standards, mandated testing, or the concerns of the parents; it was about Sebastian at that moment, in that space, with that work. That’s when Montessori’s vision and hope for the world all made sense.

I grew more in that instant than in any seminar, more than any mentor could have taught me. It was about Sebastian having ownership of what he was learning. Without my oversight he was masterfully delving deeply into personally relevant work. Through that work, he grew in ways that I could have never hoped for through prescribing lesson material for him to practice. Once I could see that, and accept it as the way forward, everything was transformed for Sebastian and me. We had a deeper connection, and that connection was our mutual love of work.

Many years distant now from that experience, I often reflect on that moment. In training and coaching teachers, so much of what I speak of today is learning to let go; that is, letting the children show you where to go with them and how. Naturally, there is a balance. We have to be mindful to not let the pedagogical pendulum swing to the opposite extreme – where freedom to learn is mistaken for the end in itself. But it is the essence of what we do. Children have an untapped awareness and understanding that has the power to transform their connection to schooling, education and to life – if we only listen.

Seth D. Webb is the Instructional Leader for the Upper Elementary Department at Free Horizon Montessori, a charter public school in Golden, Colorado. Read more at his blog, Finding Our Center – Reaching Out.

Montessori Birthday Celebrations

Marcy Hogan — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:20:47 +0000

The first time I saw a Montessori birthday celebration was when I observed at a school during my training. I immediately fell in love with the idea. I loved the simplicity of it, along with the introduction to a bit of science and history. I witnessed several birthday celebrations while working in the classroom, but recently I experienced the event in a whole new way – my son turned four years old, and had his very first Montessori school birthday celebration.

What is a Montessori birthday celebration? Each school has its own slight variation, but basically it goes like this:

A candle, representing the sun, is lit in the middle of the room. Labels with each month of the year are laid out in a circle radiating out from the “sun.” The children and teachers sit in a wide circle around the sun and months of the year, while the birthday child stands next to the month of his or her birth holding a globe to represent the Earth (this is not shown in the pictures, though, because my son chose not to hold the globe…). The child then walks around the sun one time for each year of his or her life. As the child walks, the teacher talks about what the child was doing when he or she was that age. Parents usually write a sentence or two or send in pictures of the child). At our current school, the teacher also hands the child one flower each time he goes by for him to put in a vase, providing a visual representation of his new age. At the end the child may extinguish the candle and the class sings “Happy Birthday”.

It really is a lovely ceremony.

Marcy Hogan holds a Primary diploma from AMI. She lives in Sacramento, CA, along with her husband and two sons. She also writes about parenting and life in general on her blog, Life is Good.

Too Young, Too New to Mediate

Donna Bryant Goertz — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 20:39:02 +0000

She’s too young, I thought, and too new to the community. What’s she doing stepping into the rage between these two older boys? But there she was, Marcy, all wide-eyed and eager to practice the mediation skills the new children were learning and the older children took for granted.

“You both seem red-hot,” she said to the two angry older boys, “so first let’s just sit down together and take a deep breath.”

“Oh, no,” I thought, “they’re too angry to listen to her. What will they say? What will they do? It’s true, we do just sit down together at a time like this and take a deep breath before we try to speak, but they are not going to listen to her.”

Fortunately, I had enough years of experience and enough ability to willingly suspend disbelief and open myself to the possibilities. I watched and waited, unseen and in the wings, yet in safe proximity. I prepared my face, body, and voice for light but firm intervention, just in case.

To my glad amazement, the two boys sat down. “Now,” she said, “you two have to agree on who will speak first to tell the story from your own point of view.” They took a breath. They decided who would tell his perspective first. Step by step the peer-led mediation unfolded, according to our customary practice. They told their story in turn, as passionately as they felt the need, but with respectful demeanor; with strong words, but respectful ones, and without repetition.

Each in turn listened to the other, even if he disagreed, even if he saw it differently, until the other was complete. Then each in turn described to the other how he thought he could better handle a similar situation in the future. Finally each one in turn asked the other for a consideration that would be supportive in a similar situation in the future.

It was a model peer intervention and I was in ecstasy that I had stopped my negative thinking and opened myself to the possibility of this shining moment, while still staying prepared to intervene if necessary. I had been able to allow this young and new child to break the barrier of my doubtfulness, to practice the skills she was learning, and to make a real contribution to her community members.

I had allowed two older and larger boys to remain within the community structure with its refusal to bow to the rankism of the society at large beyond our school, to be true to our community values by practicing the customs regardless of difficulty of the situation or the expertise of the members.

I had modeled for the community, no small number of who were watching from the corners of their eyes, that standing strong in silent knowledge and soulful support to bear witness for non violence in action, to trust passionately and patiently in the very best in each prepared person to act from his prepared environment within. It had been worth the excruciating self discipline, the bated breath, and the skipped heartbeat. One more lesson in values, in the social emotional curriculum, had been given to the community, and, because they had lived it, they had taken it in.

Failure – A Better Teacher Than Success

John Long — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 21:03:48 +0000

One hundred years ago, Dr. Montessori did not anticipate computers or the Internet, though she was certainly attuned to technological development and the impact it had on the culture. Post Oak and most other Montessori schools do not introduce computers into the classroom until the child is nine years old, not because Montessori was a technophobe (she most definitely was not!), but because the young child learns best through experience in the concrete, tactile reality of the three-dimensional world rather than through two-dimensional simulation of an electronic, virtual reality.

Consider the child’s experience of a cube. Does she learn more by seeing a flat, screen image of a cube (actually a two-dimensional hexagon), or by lifting a polished wooden block that measures 10 cm on each side and weighs 50 grams? After observing the way young children learn, Dr. Montessori told us, “Never give more to the mind than you give to the hand.”

Furthermore, contemporary brain research demonstrates the truth in Dr. Montessori’s dictum that a child constructs himself through his experiences in the environment. Dr. Bruce Perry, an internationally renowned neuroscientist and psychiatrist working in Houston, describes how this self-construction works: a child’s experiences change the biology of the brain, reinforcing and strengthening certain neurons through usage while pruning others through disuse. In her book Failure to Connect, Dr. Jane Healy discusses the impact of “screen time” on the developing brain and recommends that we delay computer use until children are 9 or 10 years old, a recommendation consistent with our practice here at Post Oak and at many other Montessori schools.

And so it is perfectly understandable to me, though at the same time ironic, that Montessori graduates have been instrumental in the development of landmark Internet resources that have helped to transform our culture.

In the past we have mentioned:

Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon.com, one of the first major companies to sell goods over the Internet, shaping the face of American commerce;
Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who founded Google, the search engine that made the Internet more accessible and therefore more useful to a broader public;
Jimmy Wales, who created Wikipedia, the multilingual, Web-based encyclopedia that is written by reader-contributors and challenges many of the traditional assumptions about authorship, ownership, and information itself.

The November 6th issue of The New Yorker offers a profile of Will Wright, another former Montessori student and the developer of SimCity, which changed the concept of video games. SimCity is a computer simulation game of city-building. The game sparked a new paradigm in computer gaming by creating a game that could neither be won nor lost.

The New Yorker reports, “SimCity was slow to catch on, but seventeen years later the game has earned the company two hundred and thirty million dollars. A sizable number of players who first became interested in urban design as a result of the game have gone on to become architects and designers, making SimCity arguably the single most influential work of urban-design theory ever created.”

The article describes the impact of Montessori education on Will Wright:

“Wright flourished in the local Montessori school, with its emphasis on creativity, problem-solving, and self-motivation. ‘Montessori taught me the joy of discovery… It showed you can become interested in pretty complex theories, like Pythagorean theory, say, by playing with blocks. It’s all about learning on your terms, rather than a teacher explaining stuff to you. SimCity comes right out of Montessori—if you give people this model for building cities, they will abstract from it principles of urban design.’”

Wright then compares his experience in Montessori to traditional education: “The problem with our education system is we’ve taken this kind of narrow, reductionist, Aristotelian approach to what learning is…. It’s not designed for experimenting with complex systems and navigating your way through them in an intuitive way, which is what games teach. It’s not really designed for failure, which is also something games teach. I mean, I think that failure is a better teacher than success. Trial and error, reverse-engineering stuff in your mind—all the ways that kids interact with games—that’s the kind of thinking schools should be teaching. And I would argue that as the world becomes more complex, and as outcomes become less about success or failure, games are better at preparing you. The education system is going to realize this sooner or later.”

I am sometimes asked if, after a hundred years, Montessori education has kept up with the times. What I see is far more dynamic than simply “keeping up.” I see Montessori adults who are shaping our times, transforming the way we do business, the way we play, the way we seek information. They are transforming the very media that are reshaping our culture—proof that Montessori prepares children for a lifetime of creative engagement.

John Long is the Head of School at the Post Oak School, an AMI school in Bellaire, Texas.

A Closer Look

John Snyder — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:57:36 +0000

I look up from my desk work to see two Early Elementary children – a boy and a girl – entering my office. They enter quietly, but body language speaks of a certain excitement; one of them is clutching a book.

“We would like to read two poems, if you are available,” one of them says. I come from behind my desk to sit and listen. One of the poems is about dolphins; the other is about insects. The children read aloud, taking turns with the verses. Clearly, they have made a plan and practiced how they will work together as readers.

After the readings, I ask the children how they had come to choose those particular poems. As it happens, each child chose a poem they really liked and the other one agreed to help them recite it.

In this very simple scenario, there is so much that is deeply, positively “Montessori elementary.” Here are a few of things I see. The children are working from joy, not from coercion or a sense of duty. Working together they have attempted more and accomplished more than they would have done working alone.

Because they have been shown what it means to be fully prepared and how to practice, they have been able to prepare themselves. Because they are prepared, they have the self-confidence to risk offering the poems to me.

Although the children are friendly with each other, their relationship in this case is based on their working together – on their shared love of poems. The boy, in particular, has not had to overcome cultural messages about poetry being a “girl thing,” because he is growing up in a closely aligned family and school culture that doesn’t carry those messages (just as it does not carry messages about math and geometry being “boy things”). There has been some give and take in the relationship – each child following and leading at different times during the process.

As Second Plane children, they are driven to explore language and its various powers, and they are being supported in that by being given positive avenues for exploration and opportunities at just the right level of difficulty to be challenging but not daunting. And, because they are working from personal choice, these explorations still feel like explorations to them, not like things they are being dragged into. When they are older they will not have to deconstruct the discomfort they have around poetry, disentangling feelings that are actually about poetry from feelings that are actually vestiges of fear, anger or humiliation associated with the way educators heavy-handedly staged their early experiences of poetry.

As the children take their leave and I return to my work, I feel blessed for the ten-thousandth time to have been alive at just this time in just this place and to have had the opportunity to see the child through Montessori’s eyes.

John Snyder is an administrator at Austin Montessori School. Follow him onTwitter @jrs1231.

A Classroom Without Walls – Deepening Children’s Connections With Nature

Seth Webb — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:13:24 +0000

We each have an incredible gift: the ability to engage children with the world – indeed, the universe, that surrounds them and, of which, they are an integral part.

Working with children, our job is one of setting the kindling for the wonderful sparks of curiosity and deep interest to spring forth. While there may be a linear progression of lesson delivery in our albums, we don’t always teach that way, nor do we make overt and obvious the connections between the seemingly disparate ideas and materials across the curriculum that we share.

We wait for the “ah-has.” It is up to the students, alone or collectively, to do the work of the synapses – to make those links, to leap the gaps between ideas towards a holistic understanding of everything around and within them.

There is a way of knowing that comes from being genuinely part of what you are attempting to understand. That is, an authentic knowledge rooted in sensorial experiences that tickle and surprise. Through slowing down and taking our time, looking at the familiar from different perspectives, we can deeply explore the wild spaces around us. So it can be with the natural world outside the classroom.

When we venture forth into nature with children our intention is to make connections, becoming so familiar with the natural world that we receive it as a source of deep insight and practical wisdom.

Do we teach in a spontaneous way?

Is the time we spend with the children of ‘full value’ and authentic?

What role does nature play in our days?

Does it appear as trips out-and-about or as an integrated and seamless part of the children’s learning environment? Both?

What pedagogical value has the experience of wild places?

Finding the Wildness Within
As a classroom teacher, I remember fondly our studies in Human History: first examining and classifying the human animal; then drawing connections between our closest living relatives, and most recently to the epic stories of the earliest of humans and how they changed with and adapted to their dynamic living environments to suit their needs.

This part of the cultural curriculum is comprised of a series of presentations, discussions and activities that highlight, at their roots, the unavoidable and startling idea for many of the children that we are of part of the animal kingdom – in fact, from and part of the natural world.

Through our own evolution humans have developed incredible technologies to use in the act of making our lives more comfortable and efficient. From the hand axe to the microprocessor, we have created incredibly complex tools and systems to better our collective lives.

Today, I wonder what has been subjugated; what primordial internal rhythms have taken a back seat through this process of discovery and creation. Not purposefully – just due to the ease and convenience of innovation. I would argue that for people living in the ‘developed’ world it is our instinctual knowledge that has been buried.

“To Touch and Feel is to Experience. Many people live out their entire lives without really Touching or being Touched by anything. These people live in a world of mind and imagination that may move them sometimes to joy, tears, happiness or sorrow. But these people never really Touch. They do not live and become one with life.” - Hymeneyohsts Storm, in Seven Arrows (1972)

Perhaps, for many of us, the most readily accessible instinctual knowledge comes in the form of the oft-quoted ‘freeze, fight or flight’ response; that is, in times of sudden stress, the rush of adrenaline that our bodies feel prior to wishing invisibility, throwing a punch or turning and escaping.

This is the visceral pull of our animal ancestry, the survival skill of our ancestors that kept them (and us) alive. It’s the surging feeling in our body when we narrowly avoid a car accident, for example. The rush is overpowering and memorable – a taste of what it felt like to be a wild predator or prey.

The instinctual skill set, of course, also includes a more subtle way of knowing: knowledge of the seasons, local and regional geography and weather patterns, the flora and fauna common to your home-ground, etc.

Through our lives are we searching, questing for intimacy?

Can a profound connection to the natural – as the ‘other’ animals experience it – deepen, enrich and inform your life and way of living?

I believe so. I believe that there is a thirst within us all to regain the original knowledge of the Earth. Look at children as they play in the natural spaces around them. There is an intensity and exuberance expressed that appears so wonderfully organic. They appear to distil joy from their experience of the world.

“What a joy it is to feel the soft, springy earth under my feet once more, to follow the grassy roads that lead to ferny brooks where I can bathe my fingers in a cataract of rippling notes, or to clamber over a stone wall into green fields that tumble and roll and climb in riotous gladness!” - Helen Keller, in The Story of my Life (1903)

When was the last time you, as an adult, experienced such grounded elation and connection? Let us go out with our students and experience the world through the heightened and unencumbered senses of childhood.

Walking in the World
The traditional view is that there are two ways of interacting with the natural world, and with anything outside of yourself, I suppose: first, recognizing it as something similar to you, perhaps near enough to be considered part of you; and, second, as an ‘other’, outside and perceived as ‘distant’ from yourself.

The two views are not necessarily mutually exclusive. There is an overlap wherein resides the zone of integrating new ideas that inform one’s true self.

“I would like to learn, or remember, how to live…not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it. That is, I don’t think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular–shall I suck warm blood, hold my tail high, walk with my footprints precisely over the prints of my hands? But I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical sense and the dignity of living without bias or motive.” - Annie Dillard, in “Living Like Weasels” from The Annie Dillard Reader (1994)

Sometimes when we venture outdoors with children we do so with a finite goal in mind, one big take home message. When this agenda overrides the ‘draw of the wild and the will of the child’ we find ourselves frustrated, struggling to keep the students listening and focused on the guide or program.

When given the chance to explore a nature-space many children can barely contain themselves – the urge to run, jump, sneak, creep, climb, crawl, sit quietly, sing madly resonates within them so strongly. Let’s all remember to have fun out there – maybe even for the sake of pure joy itself!

“ I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil. Once the emotions have been aroused – a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and the unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love – then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning. It is more important to pave the way for the child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts he is not ready to assimilate.” - Rachel Carson, in Sense of Wonder (1965)

Begin by just going out, exploring and experiencing – trying hard not to put limits on the form of exploration chosen. Hold too tight the reins, and you immediately suffocate the potential and possibility inherent to the child’s internal momentum and the game is up, lost. Just go out and see what happens. Then gather and share what the children discovered.

The next time that you venture forth, return to the same place (for there is comfort in the familiar) and change the format a bit: invite the children to sit quietly for five minutes, thinking, writing, drawing. Then offer a chance for open sharing and cooperate reflection on the collective experiences.

“Don’t do something. Just sit there.” – Crazy Creek Company motto, Red Lodge, Montana USA

In the days and weeks that follow, extend the period of solitude and quiet until – when you call everyone back together it begins to take them longer and longer to pull themselves away. Then you know that the connections that they are making are from the heart and that the children have formed a dynamic friendship with nature that is very personal.

You can vary how you wrap-up these experiences: sometimes with a period of sharing; at others, just a mellow gathering and return to the classroom. Often the quiet space following such a personal encounter serves as the fixer for a very memorable time out.

In time, the ecological literacy and emotional comfort that the children have developed transfers nicely to a deepening of more formal scientific studies and conservation service projects. Their newfound sense of belonging extends to a feeling of responsibility: not just do the children enjoy going out, for themselves – they are called to do it.

When we mindfully explore nature with children we facilitate a conversation between the child and the wildness of which s/he is a part. Let it take over.

The Late Bloomer

Marcy Hogan — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:25:55 +0000

My husband, Zach, is a Montessori alumnus. He attended Montessori starting at age 3 through 6th grade, then transitioned into the local public school system. I’d like to use him as an anecdotal example in this post.

Zach is a bit of an anomaly. He is incredibly smart in many areas, but was a late bloomer, at least when it came to reading. He didn’t read well until the 2nd or 3rd grade. But, as Montessorians often know to expect, at some point in that year something “clicked on” and he began reading voraciously– his sensitive period for reading was just a bit later than most children. He was soon reading chapter books, and by 5th grade was reading at a high school level. In high school he probably learned more from his independent reading than from school. He continues to read everything from science fiction to science journals and everything in between, and is one of the best-read people I know.

Let’s contrast this with another learned skill – handwriting. Zach never had very good handwriting. In Montessori, where little is ever “assigned,” he was assigned calligraphy work, most likely because his handwriting was near illegible. He hated calligraphy and handwriting in general. To this day he still dislikes having to write anything by hand, and rejoices in the fact that almost everything can instead be typed on an electronic device.

Compare these two scenarios: he was a late bloomer with reading, but allowed to develop the skill at his own pace and eventually blossomed into a life-long voracious reader. But he was forced to work on handwriting against his will, and even today still holds a deep disdain for writing by hand.

Does this sound familiar? How many of us who attended traditional schooling disliked reading since school had turned it into a boring chore? The idea of reading “for fun” was laughable. I fear many children are turned off the joys of reading because of the way it is assigned. I realize Zach’s example is a bit extreme, but the underlying principle holds true for most of us. Assigning a child to work on a particular subject when she is neither interested nor ready for it may result in a superficial learning of that subject, which will be quickly forgotten (unlike the deeper lesson that the subject itself was “boring” and “hard”). If we wait until the child develops an interest for that subject, however, she will likely devote hours to it without being asked simply because it is fun, and the learning that takes place will be deeper and much more meaningful.

The magic of Montessori lies in having every option available to the child, while waiting for them to become interested in it. If we push too early, we risk damaging their interest in that particular skill or subject. But allow them to follow their own interest, and it may blossom and grow.

Marcy Hogan holds a Primary diploma from AMI. She lives in Sacramento, CA, along with her husband and two sons. She also writes about parenting and life in general on her blog, Life is Good.

Skipping Stones

Peter Davidson — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 19:23:26 +0000

On a recent Saturday, I attended a parent event at a Montessori school called “Journey and Discovery.” During the “discovery” portion, I noticed one parent who was drawn irresistibly to the fraction insets in a Children’s House (3-6-year old) classroom. It happens that she teaches fifth grade in a local public school.

Since you are probably not familiar with the fraction insets, I will describe them for you. They consist of 10 green frames, each with a red circular inset 10 cm in diameter. The first inset is a complete circle with a knob for lifting and removing it from the frame. The other insets are divided into 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 equal parts each.

The fraction work in the Children’s House classroom begins with sensorial exploration. Children can also use the insets in colorful design work, as they do with the geometric shapes of the metal insets. They can even trace the insets onto colored paper and cut them out for use in collage.

It is only after much exploration of the fractions as shapes, that we move on to defining, naming and writing them. “When we break a unit into pieces of the same size we call those fractions. When we divide the whole unit into two parts, we call each part a half. This is the family name. We write the family name ‘half’ as a 2 under a line. The number under the line, that tells us which family we are talking about, is called the denominator.” In this way we proceed, slowly and with much repetition, to teach the names of the fractions, three at a time.

Once the child can name and write all of the fractions through tenths, we move on to the key exercise with fractions in the Children’s House — substitution. We would remove one of the halves from its frame, and experiment with what combination of other fractions would fit the space. We would find that no combinations of thirds will work, but that two fourths exactly fit the same space as a half, as do three sixths, four eighths and five tenths. The child is then free to experiment with the other fraction insets and discover for himself which combinations of fraction pieces are equivalent and which are not.

If the child wishes, he could write and record his discoveries as 1/3 = 2/6 = 3/9, for instance. Again he could also trace the fraction insets onto paper and cut them out, this time making a poster of the equivalencies he has discovered.

It is only after a great deal of this exploration and discovery, when we judge that the child has internalized a basic understanding of the equivalent relationships of fractions based upon extended experience, that we would take him on to other fraction work. Whenever we move a child on to the mathematical operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division with fractions, we can be sure that this new understanding will be built upon a firm foundation of experience, exploration, and discovery with his own two hands.

By this point in my explanation, I noticed that my listener was becoming more and more agitated. Finally, she could contain herself no longer. “I need these tools in my classroom,” she said, “so that my students have an opportunity to understand fractions. Right now, I’m just skipping stones!”

I must have given her a puzzled look, for she went on to explain her metaphor. “No matter how carefully I try to explain fractions to my fifth graders, I can see by their blank looks that it just skips off their brains, with no real comprehension or understanding.”

I was awestruck by her sincerity and frustration, and also by the power of her metaphor. But more than anything I was grateful for the tools at my disposal like the fraction insets, to help children pass from experience to understanding to abstraction. There’s no skipping stones in Montessori!