Month: May 2022

“ ‘Courage, my dear, courage! … Go on triumphantly. I am here to help you.’ This kind of encouragement is instinctive in those who love children. ”

Maria Montessori, The 1946 London Lectures, p. 131

A lot of Dr. Montessori’s writings, in fact most of them, focus on the potential of the child…a potential that many adults have trouble seeing and believing. How many of us are driven by a need to “make sure” that the child accomplishes, learns, or demonstrates some bit of wisdom: tying shoes, reading, or fixing a snack independently? 

When we adults are driven by our own agendas, what do we do; what actions do we take with the children on a day-to-day basis? Many times what we do is try to take control of the situation; to make sure that all the bases are being covered. For example, If I’m concerned a child isn’t learning to read fast enough, I might make practicing flashcards a daily requirement. I might prod or coax a child through a book they “should” be able to read, asking them to sound out a word, to recognize a sight word, or try to read a complete sentence. I might constantly remind the child to pick up a book and give it a try. Sound familiar? 

Letting go of our fear response

While desire can impact our actions in a variety of ways, one thing is certain: if we are taking action that pushes or coerces the child into an activity they resist, then we are not trusting the child. That lack of trust could come from some fear of failure,  a negative assessment of the child’s abilities, or a worry that the student won’t meet some benchmark or answer a question correctly on a high-stakes test. It might simply come from a lack of faith that the child really wants to be successful or competent. 

In The Absorbent Mind, Dr. Montessori tells us, “The teacher, when she begins work in our schools, must have a kind of faith that the child will reveal himself through work.” (P. 252)

But how do we develop the discipline, the courage and the security in our method to find that faith, to get the children to “success” as reflected in this well-known quote: “The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, “The children are now working as if I did not exist.” The Absorbent Mind by Maria Montessori, Ch. 27, (p. 283), 1949.

The teacher, when she begins work in our schools, must have a kind of faith that the child will reveal himself through work. She must free herself from all preconceived ideas concerning the levels at which the children may be.

Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind, p. 252

The answer lies right in that “faith” quote…”through work.” In fact, Dr. M gives us even more instruction if we continue the quote through the next sentence: “She must free herself from all preconceived ideas concerning the levels at which the children may be.”

Guiding Principles for Building Trust

In thinking about the practical application of trust-building in my classrooms over the years, I maintained a few guiding principles. Here they are, in brief. 

1. Know yourself and your students…deeply. Then use that awareness to inspire curiosity, by cultivating your own sense of wonder and awe and sharing it with the children.
2. Observe…while keeping in mind that the activity chosen by the student may seem aimless on the outside, but may be providing a great service in preparing the student for a future endeavor. Observe with curiosity, instead of assessment or judgment. 
3. Engage the lively elementary imagination. Use movement, art, music, poetry, and construction to excite their creative juices. Play!
4. Create regular opportunities for children to share their discoveries with their peers and their parents through visual, verbal and written expressions. Daily or weekly in-class opportunities build a “learning” community in which students get excited to be leaders and teachers.

5. Embed skill-developing activities into the cultural studies where they will be perceived as purposeful in mastering the subject of interest. There are so many ways this can be accomplished. For example, when you offer subject-related vocabulary, make note of the word construction (ex: “in-conceiv-able” would allow a discussion of roots and affixes.) There’s no place this works better than in your timeline work: Paleontology, Precambrian, Neozoic…so many! Another timeline example: all sorts of math operations around the study of geologic periods, even having the students make their own to see if they can stump their classmates.  

6. Provide lots of “practical life learning” to connect to the natural world while developing confidence and competence. For example, attach a micro business to botany that would allow application of long-term planning, prediction, budgeting, sales, promotion, and all the reading, writing, and calculating associated with it. 

Introduce, Stand Back, and Take it ALL in!

Whenever I shared some new theme or subject with a story, a possibility, or an opportunity to discover, design, and share, my students rarely responded in any way that was less than amazing. 

Of course, there were those students whose hesitations required some extra support or effort on my part, but the rewards were totally worth it! Watching my elementary students take leadership and teaching roles with their peers and their parents never failed to raise them up, bring them confidence, and spur them on to the next project that would move the needle just a little closer to mastery. 

Even when the struggles were big and scary, like dyslexia or dysgraphia, or the fragile self-confidence that caused procrastination or flat-out refusal, the desire to participate with the group, to find their own unique way of joining in, usually won out over time, until even the most challenged found their way to building the skills that would take them into adolescence and adulthood with a growing “can do” attitude. 

It was sometimes after years of work, when I sent them on to the next level or got to witness their success through the years, that I knew I was seeing Dr. Montessori’s teachings in action. Yes, I had to exercise a great deal of faith during my early years. I had to rely on what often seemed like tiny, tiny glimmers of the potential held within the child, but now that I can look back with the gift of 30 years and dozens of students, I know that the faith I was able to muster was not in vain. 

“These things may seem useless to us, but the child is preparing himself and preparing the coordination of his movements. One consequence of this is that he wants to climb.”

Maria Montessori, The 1946 London Lectures, p. 124

“It is therefore necessary that the environment should contain the means of auto-education”

Dr. Maria Montessori, The Advanced Montessori Method – I (1918/1991) p. 57

It invariably comes up in workshops with non-Montessorians or parents: “Don’t they have to be able to take tests for when they go to middle and high school? Will so much choice assure they will be able to get into a good college? (ie: when they go to real school that matters for their future?)

I suppose it’s taken for granted that families want what’s “best” for their children. They want to make sure that the education their children receive will give them plenty of opportunities and choices for their future. But when it comes down to the “how-to’s” the many different opinions about what works get into the weeds…if not into open conflict!

So how do teachers and parents confidently support their children to receive the kind of education that will help them be successful in adulthood?

Step 1: Define “success”

As a product of the 1960’s and 70’s, my college years were filled with education classes that encouraged new systems of education. The examples were perfect for our carefree spirits: Summerhill and free-schooling appealed to those of us who were frustrated by the establishment, whether in school, government, or politics. Like many “revolutions” however, the vision of an education that also offered personal freedoms appeared to lack both outer and inner discipline. It felt like “throwing out the baby with the bathwater” and the outcome wasn’t a better education.

In those days, and even in those since, education continues to struggle with what successful education really is, or what “successful education” even means.

Success is personal. For some families, success means following a prescribed path to an adulthood that offers “riches and fame,” not necessarily in the literal sense, but certainly in the security that specific professions provide. As a result, well-meaning parents may push their child along a path of accelerated goals. When their child struggles to meet the goals, they may even be labeled in negative terms that the child might internalize for a lifetime of feeling inadequate to the task or, if not explicitly, somehow simply deficient.

In the eyes of “no child left behind,” schools have even said that a child who doesn’t read at a certain level by a certain time will never be able to succeed. This kind of thinking limits not only the individual, but also all those around the child who may fail to see their genuine potential, even failing to continue to fully support the child’s growth and development.

Step 2: See the Child Before You

Maria Montessori encouraged adults not only to meet all the physical and emotional needs of children, but to learn to see the humanity in them; to see the “man who exists as a silhouette around the child, a duty towards this man of tomorrow.”*

Montessori school, once I delved into it, offered both the freedom to pursue one’s passions and interests while providing the structure and systems for learning that appealed to the human spirit. Children in Montessori appeared to be truly engaged in pursuing their own learning path, and, once established, had the discipline and understanding of how to go about acquiring the knowledge they needed so
they could move forward in life.

It didn’t happen without careful preparation of a learning environment that went well-beyond the practical set-up of the classroom. The preparation included preparation of the spirit. Dr. Montessori called it the psychic growth of the individual. It didn’t’ happen without a guide who understood how to connect students to their inner purpose. It required teaching ideas and concepts that were often left out of traditional curricula.

Clearly, we have a social duty towards this future man, this man who exists as a silhouette around the child, a duty towards this man of tomorrow. Perhaps a great future leader or a great genius is with us and his power will come from the power of the child he is today. This is the vision which we must have.

Step 3: Teach Goal-setting and Support Students in Making Their Own Goals

Prioritizing is a skill that requires learning about prioritization, discerning how to make prioritizing decisions, and then practicing making those decisions and seeing if they work. Determining what one wants and needs to do, making sure progress in taking place, and enjoying the journey takes time, reflection, and discernment. Mostly it takes time, along with a lot of patience on the part of the adult!

• Give mini lessons and have short discussions about what it means to want to learn
  something, gain a skill, or meet a requirement.
• Ask students about the difference between wanting to know something (like everything
  you could know about cats) or needing to know something (like being able to read).
• Help them to identify the difference between practicing a skill for mastery and being
  engaged in learning something new…while learning the value of both.
• Revisit goals that are set, taking stock, revising, and staying the course!

Step 4: Help Students See Their Learning: Make it Visible

Making Thinking Visible** changed my thinking about teaching. The ideas and exercises designed to create student awareness of how they think, as well as what they think about their thinking sparked an idea for me: How can I help my students better perceive their learning…make their learning more visible?”

I knew that my elementary students were well-beyond the absorbent mind period when they learned through osmosis, and they talked incessantly throughout the day because of their growing sociability and innate desire to be part of the group. I knew I wanted to allow them to be who they were, but I also wanted to have them talking about their learning projects and their growing knowledge base.

I knew that I needed to teach students ways to work together that would bring obvious learning results.

For example: I taught students how to do math work together. First, I taught how to record their process and check the answer; then, how to correct their mistakes. This could be a multi-step set of mini lessons that could be given to the entire class. My older students, who’d already successfully learned this also gave the lessons and worked with the newer, younger students in our class. In time, teaching this method paid off not only in math accuracy and acquisition of growing skills, but it also saved me time because the students were independently in charge of making sure they were learning. Their conversations began to be more focused on those subjects that were occupying their thinking throughout the working/learning period, and they were excited about that!

I say “YES!”

After seeing all the success in learning that came about through these processes, I whole-heartedly believe that all children can become successful in their learning for now and in the future if given the opportunity, support, and trust to do so.

And that’s where the hard part for adults comes in: Letting go and Letting Come. This concept, put forth as Theory U by Otto Scharmer*** , requires the adult to have faith in the children, allowing them to reveal their authentic selves by letting go of prescriptive definitions of success that look a certain way by a specific time. Teasing out the difference between progress and deficits can be a real challenge. We must keep in mind that our adult job is to continually support the child with an eye to the silhouette of the man that surrounds him.

*Maria Montessori, The 1946 London Lectures, p. 140

**(Ritchhart, 2011) Making Things Visible, by Ron Ritchhart, et al.

***(Scharmer, 2009; 2016) Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges

Next Week: Learning to Trust While Making Steady Progress

 “…when the cycle is completed…refreshed and satisfied, he experiences the higher social impulses…”

-Dr. Maria Montessori, The Advanced Montessori Method – I (1918/1991)  pg. 76

Is the 3-hour work cycle challenging you or your students? From time management to task management, sorting out how to effectively get through the 3-hour work cycle can be a SUPER challenge! When I first started teaching, I couldn’t quite imagine orchestrating the work cycle so my students stayed on task, while I accomplished the lessons that would help all of us meet the goals I had for the students.

That italicized “I” is on purpose…my goals for them! I didn’t realize, when I was a new Montessori guide, that it was their goals for themselves that truly mattered. My work was to prepare the circumstances that would hold the students securely while they discovered what those goals really were.

Focus on Order

Order is the primary influence on student self-management of the 3-hour work cycle. Dr. Montessori’s discoveries about focus and psychic development are the keys to a work cycle that unlocks the child’s potential. It’s not difficult to create an environment that establishes this order. It takes awareness of the students, an intention to implement a routine, consistent observation to determine how the routines are working (or not), and a commitment to stay with it until the routines and culture of the classroom are established. One must exercise prudence and patience throughout the process. It won’t happen overnight and even once established, can slip unexpectedly into something chaotic for no “apparent” reason.

In chapter III of The Advanced Montessori Method- I, Dr. Montessori writes about her contribution to experimental science. It’s a lot to read and I know you’re busy…so here’s a suggestion to try:

Create an order to the daily schedule and watch how it works

• Teach children how to start the day in quiet. My class had a choice of silent reading or sketching. “Teaching” meant to provide the materials (a choice book and a sketch book) and hold them accountable to the quiet by being quiet myself. I didn’t call to children who were talking, I quietly walked to them and gently touched them on the shoulder and put my finger to my lips indicating quiet. Try to remember that the social elementary child will not necessarily start their day this way naturally, so be patient as you stay firm. NOTE: On pages 75 to 85 Dr. Montessori writes about the activity cycle that takes place during the 3-hour work cycle for a variety of student personalities. EVERY one of them starts in quiet. 
• Create the next part of the day that works best for you or your students. Many teachers like to bring the class together for a short class meeting (15 minutes or less!) to review the upcoming events and expectations of the day. Teach the students how to lead this meeting using a consistent agenda that is easy to follow. You can have a part to play: “Teacher Time” can be an item on the agenda for you to make announcements, give a mini lesson, or share a technique for managing a current classroom concern. (You could also have Current Classroom Concern as an agenda item:  a time when students can bring up something they need to discuss.) 
• Plan lesson times for minimal interruption to student work. I liked to get a lesson in right after a class meeting, so those students had a single lesson and then no further interruptions to their morning. I planned another lesson midway through the morning for those students who could manage their time well enough to get something done before and after, or I made the lesson for those students who had trouble returning to work after false fatigue. For those students, I would make sure the lesson was lively with a compelling follow-up opportunity that they would be dying to do. This helped them get into that second, deeper-focused work period. I’d plan a third lesson for the end of the morning so that students went to the midday routine after. Once the classroom was more “normalized” to the 3-hour work cycle and students could manage their time and tasks fairly well, I might add in an additional lesson or two, but that didn’t usually happen until later in the year…and some years, not at all! 
• Keep myself quiet in voice, conversation, movement, and activity throughout the morning. Be a “guide on the side”, available for student questions, needs, etc. Don’t plan too much to do so that you can be available to your students while you teach the “3 Before Me” guideline*.
• End the morning at the same time and with the same routine every day. Teach the children where and how to put their work away for later, how to clear and clean tables, how to tidy shelves, how to clean up anything that is on the floor, and how to come to the circle when their responsibilities are complete. Spend a few minutes in the circle visually checking through the prepared environment to make sure the jobs are done. If they aren’t, make sure they are done before moving into the next part of the day…usually a lunch and recess routine.

Always take notes throughout the period of establishing these routines. Observation is the heart of our method! Give every new procedure some time to take root, then watch the impact before deciding something is or isn’t working or the students or yourself. 

*3 Before Me: Ask Yourself (Can I answer this question or solve this on my own?), Ask a friend (Have you done this work? Can you help me figure it out?), Ask a person you don’t know…maybe someone older. (Have you done this work? Can you help me figure it out?) FYI: this one can be the hardest path to take, so giving students an opportunity to role play it in class meeting is a GREAT plan for support.

Next Week: Part 2 – Acquiring the Knowledge Desired and NEEDED