Student-Engagement: It’s one of the most common issues, worries, or frustrations (You can fill in the blank with whatever emotion fits for you!) posed by Montessori teachers, and which I have experienced myself, is lack of engagement.
You know the ones I mean:
the social butterflies who seem to flit from table to table getting into conversation and after conversation and seeming not to accomplish anything on their To Do list (ie. work plan)
the self-distractors who sit alone and bother no one, but who also put projects away before finishing, to put it off for later which never seems to come
the slam-bam-thank-you-ma’m student who breezes through part of an assignment (like one or two of ten math problems for the day or one sentence strip of five for the week or a set of matching cards without really reading, then checking the assignment off as DONE!
There are probably other “types” I could come up with, but you get the picture.
Where do you go to find help defining the student-engagement problem? To address the “problem”? To fix it?
Student-Engagement Montessori-Style
For us Montessorians, we’ve been taught to observe the student; to look deeply into what may be the child’s underlying motivation (or missing motivation) so we can help ease that challenge.
Or we might look at the environment that we have carefully prepared, but which may not be calling to the child and sparking their interest.
But how often do you look at yourself? What unspoken message might you be giving regarding the subject, the learning opportunity, the follow-up? The unspoken message that says, “Meh!”
Here’s the opportunity: to look deeply into yourself to discover that which you are passionate to share with children. The subject that lights you up. The activity that causes you to pursue ever more knowledge.
What sparks you? What would you do for 24 hours a day if you only could?
Then, how can you use your spark to ignite not only your best example of a learner, but also to spark those children in front of you?
Of course, all of these responses work together to form a whole student-engagement opportunity: the child, the environment, and the guide. (I’m SURE you’ve seen that triangle relationship before!) But how do you look at yourself as part of that diagram?
For me, the adult’s enthusiasm (your level of engagement) is the most important key to student-engagement and to the delivery of Cosmic Education! That the teacher, on fire with her own joy of learning, finds a way to share that with her students, inspiring them to find their own spark of connection to all the possible learnings that lay before them!
Want some help to discover your passions? Take this quick survey to find a place to begin your journey of engaged teaching.
“We can make the human race better by assisting the child in building his character and acquiring his moral freedom.
One of the means to this end is a cosmic education, which gives the child an orientation and a guidance in life. For this education wants to prepare the growing child for the task awaiting him in adult life, so that he will feel at ease in his own environment, in which he will later have to live as an independent being.”
Montessori wrote often and ardently about the need for an education that would be an aid to life. Her entire life’s work focused on developing an approach to working with children that was less about “educating” than to learning from them so well-meaning adults wouldn’t get in the way of their natural growth into adulthood.
By the later years of her life, especially during the period of exile in India, Montessori referred to this approach as cosmic education.
Dr. Montessori in Amsterdam, April 1950 Courtesy: Sid Mohandas & Jana Morgan Herman of Montistory
What really IS Cosmic Education?
Perhaps it is because Dr. Montessori used the term in widely different contexts that the definition of cosmic education can be a little tough to pin down. Ask any Montessorian; likely all will know “cosmic education”, acknowledge it as a concept unique to Montessori pedagogy, and speak about it with conviction. Yet, surprisingly, you’ll get a variety of responses:
‘Cosmic Education is the study of the Universe.
‘It’s part of the elementary Montessori curriculum.’
‘It’s the cultural subjects.’
‘Cosmic Education is interdependence and interrelationship.’
In this quote from the unpublished proceedings of the International Montessori Congress held in Amsterdam, April, 1950, we get one of Montessori’s descriptions:
“Thus the way leads from the whole via the parts back to the whole. In this way the child learns to appreciate the unity and regularity of cosmic events. When this vision is opened up he will be fascinated to such an extent that he will value the cosmic laws and their correlation more than any simple fact. Thus the child will develop a kind of philosophy, which teaches him the unity of the universe. This the very thing to organize his intelligence and to give him a better insight into his own place and task in the world, at the same time presenting a chance for the development of his creative energy.”
Montessori, M. (1950) International Montessori Conference, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, April 1950, unpublished proceedings.
On Cosmic Curriculum and Materials
In David Kahn’s interviews with Ms. Lena Wikramaratne and Mario Montessori, Sr. there is much discussion about this big cosmic vision and how to impart it to the children. Both Mario and Ms. Lena talk about how they spent days in nature, discovering the plants and animals, building models and terrariums for closer study, all before the creation of actual materials. Mr. Kahn reflects with Mario on the current practice of providing materials before experience:
KAHN: “Another part of Cosmic Education is the charts and the timelines. Doesn’t your original work in Kodaikanal run the risk of banalization of Cosmic Education in the packaging of these charts and timelines? What do you think?
MONTESSORI: We tried then to work with the child in nature, to show the erosion of land, the sedimentary formation—we would try to help the imagination of the child with real experiences. If you take all the charts and timelines and call it Cosmic Education, that is ridiculous. It goes much further than that.
Dr. Montessori shares the sentiment this way:
“We must study the correlation between life and its environment. In nature everything correlates. This is the method of nature. Nature is not concerned with the conservation of individual life: it is a harmony, a plan of construction. Everything fits into the plan: winds, rocks, earth, water, plants, man, etc.”
Maria Montessori, Citizen of the World, pg. 22
This sounds like an endless curriculum to follow; a bottomless pit of topics to cover or information to provide. So wouldn’t a set curriculum be helpful, especially to those of us who aren’t steeped in the natural sciences? Mario gives further instruction on this point:
MONTESSORI: Well, they do get an illustration of the facts (referring to teachers in Montessori training), and if they don’t have this kind of sentiment, they should develop them with the children and through the children, using real natural materials. People always say that nature education is too expensive or that it would frighten the children. But when we worked with the children, we simply showed them what’s there. You could always demonstrate and give proof to the children as to what’s happening. For instance, I would build a sandbox. If you wet sand, it stands up. If it is contained by a cylinder, it pushes together. When you take the sides of the cylinder off, it pushes together. Then you sprinkle the sand with water, and the sand crumbles. All that took place on the earth, in the oceans. There are certain things that stay up for a long time—those are the mountains. Their material is hardened. Even then some mountains were washed away. I used to build extensive models outdoors, using natural materials.
Must You Follow a Set Curriculum and Have Shelves of Materials?
When Mario says “they should develop them with the children”, the them are all the lessons that may have been given to you in your training or that exist in your albums. I think he’s saying that you don’t need to know everything (in fact, you can’t) and you don’t need to have a strictly planned progression to follow. You just need to be curious and learn right along with the children.
So what about all those albums filled with lessons and the recommended progressions? Let’s think about it in big picture terms. In To Educate the Human Potential (pg. 2), Dr. Montessori says this: “…the Cosmic Plan can be presented to the child, as a thrilling tale of the earth we live in…”
I ask you, “What’s so thrilling about a series of carefully executed lessons that are delivered day after day according to a plan that doesn’t take into account the interests, wonderment, curiosities, and passions of the children?”
Yes, when I was teaching, I had general plans for each year and those albums were my library of ideas. But they were not generally my lockstep through the curriculum. How’d I manage then?
I’d start by thinking about the children who were going to join me and what I already knew about their interests. Then, based on those interests, I’d think about the hooks I’d use to inspire wonder and engage their curiosity. Next, I’d look for the connections that exist in nature to help tie it all together into a Cosmic vision…a mindset that would plant the seeds of belonging to the whole and feeling a potential purpose.
Finally, I’d begin to pull together the first lessons. It could be one of the Great Lessons or Key Lessons. Then I’d consider the academic skills the children would need to embrace their studies. That’s when I’d make decisions about what materials would enhance the students’ independence and encourage ongoing motivation.
A Brief Overview of Responsive Materials Management
My shelves would consist of a few “start-up” materials that I’d use to observe how the children would approach their learning. There’d be a few language-centered activities to support not only learning the associated vocabulary, but also to help with word-level reading skills, focused grammar box material for sentence level reading, and a couple sets of three- or four-part cards for paragraph reading experience and research.
I’d have a row of books with guidance/command cards that students would use to connect to the reading, with encouragement to do this work with a partner. This acknowledged their social nature, encouraged collaborative learning, and gave added support to develop independent learning. I’d include “maker spaces” where materials for experiments could be had and children could design projects.
Yes, I had areas of the classroom with traditional Montessori, skill-focused materials: math and geometry shelves, language shelves for grammar, and the supply shelves with learning tools. I might have a few specialized materials that could be pulled out any time by any child, like this learning tower of the timeline of life based on the booklets my husband and I have written and filled with activities to spark the imagination and guide deeper investigation.
But I found that I didn’t need every possible material. In fact, I think that all the materials, while enticing, actually work against the vision of cosmic education that Dr. Montessori believed was possible. This little interchange with David Kahn and Ms. Lena not only promotes making materials on an “as needed” basis but insists that is preferable to teaching already-made materials:
WIKRAMARATNE: So I went to Dr. Montessori: What do we do with these older children? I won’t have books to teach them. She said, “You have the best book, the book of the world, which is the book of nature. Don’t worry, take them. You can find English material. English is fine for doing reading, writing and all kinds of literature.
And a little further on in the interview (which you really should look up and read in its entirely) Ms. Lena says this:
KAHN: So you were making real materials and creating real experiences in nature. This is somewhat of a contrast to the approach to Cosmic Education in our present training. We were not trained in this manner.
WIKRAMARATNE: Yes, it is wrong the way the natural sciences are given in training now. I have to say it: Because of what trainees are getting in how to present classified terms to the child. But they themselves do not know that much about nature. They must go out into the natural world or else they won’t be able to show anything to the child. And that’s where it begins.
KAHN: Then they really don’t have enough experience. So the children learn the classifications before they learn the lore and the common names.
WIKRAMARATNE: This is unfortunate. The orientation of the world must come first before you begin to classify. So what is going to happen, unfortunately, will be that the elementary classes will be limited to the knowledge that they have gained in the junior course and that knowledge will be like textbooks.
No you don’t have to make everything on the spot. I’d keep previously made materials organized and labeled in my storage area so I could make note of a child’s interest or question and be able to respond with, “I have something special just for you…” Then off I’d go to pull out that material, give a quick lesson on its use, discuss what might be learned from it and help the student make a plan for how they’d let me know what they discovered.
But if I found that a student would benefit from a new material or something I didn’t have, my series of templates allowed me to quickly create and print a “Goldilocks material”* almost on the spot.
Putting It All Together
With these descriptions, you can see that I didn’t treat the contents of my albums like a scope and sequence or series of not-to-be-missed lessons. I chose based on the students’ interests and desires. Materials were pulled from storage or made as needed for giving an impressionistic introduction. Often the follow-up was materials made by the children so they could share their learning with others.
My focus was primarily on three goals: first, keeping the curiosity alive while secondly connecting their many interests to developing skills in reading, math and writing. My third goal, the most important, was for the children to be alive with their sense awe and wonder for the amazing world in which we live, so that the seeds that were planted would spout, take root, rise up a blossom into whatever place their cosmic adventure takes them.
*Goldilocks material: a material that is “just right” for the student’s need in the moment
The secret of success is found to lie in the right use of imagination in awakening interest, and the stimulation of seeds of interest already sown by attractive literary and pictorial material, but all correlated to a central idea, of greatly ennobling inspiration – the Cosmic Plan in which all, consciously or unconsciously, serve the great Purpose of Life.”
Maria Montessori’s great gift to humanity is, for me, Cosmic Education. Her big vision of interdependence, how the natural world fits together in service to all, is both a mindset worth developing and a commitment to bringing disparate groups and ideologies together in peace. I believe it can also guide us Montessorians in managing our work, our approach to learning and guiding, and to finding joy in every aspect of our personal and professional lives.
Montessori guides, both fresh out of training and those with years of experience, often find the curriculum contained in our massive albums too daunting to tackle. How many times have I responded to questions about how to get all the lessons covered or how to spend our precious dollars when choosing materials? Too many to count!
In short, I don’t believe you have to follow a specific curriculum OR have shelves full of every material that’s ever been created by the many brilliant Montessori devotees who’ve shared their work through entrepreneurial means…including myself.
What you do need to do is adopt a mindset that makes the huge amount of potential curriculum responsive to the children who arrive in your classroom or homeschool each year. Remember that famous quote about the scientist and the saint? It just about sums it up for me:
“The vision of the teacher should be at once precise like that of the scientist, and spiritual like that of the saint.”
The Advanced Montessori Method – I, Clio Press Ltd, 107)
Maria and Mario Montessori’s Kodaikanal Experiment
It helps me to think about and remember that Cosmic Education and the concept of interdependence really became public in Maria Montessori’s writings during the years she was exiled in India. Education for a New World (1946), From Childhood to Adolescence (1948) and To Educate the Human Potential (1948) all emphasize her perspective on the importance of introducing children to the interdependence and interconnectedness of the natural world.
During the years with Mario in India (1939-1949), the elementary curriculum began to come together. Mario describes those years in an interview with David Kahn (Kahn, 1979, Fall). It’s worth a read.
Mario described their days, building terrariums to study the animals and plants, discussing the challenges with his mother in the evening, and the discoveries they made, often by chance, like what happened after days of desperately trying to keep lizards alive by feeding them dead insects. The children discovered their lizards would only eat live and moving bugs! The cosmic dance in action!
In this passage, Mario describes how this discovery led to the vision of Cosmic Education:
MONTESSORI:….This was a great cosmic mechanism, because their eating would consume the living surplus. Eating only that which moved meant that the consumers would eliminate the living over-population.
That began to give us an idea. Dr. Montessori and I would talk. For everything that exists, there must be some force to calibrate the surplus. This seems to be the underlying characteristic: to render service without being conscious of doing so. The carnivores which feed on other animals help to keep fit the kind of animals upon which they feed. They eliminate the weak and the unhealthy and keep the rest alert, so that the ones which survive are the best of the race. The service they render is shown by what happens when they, as eliminating agents, have limited the species. Dr. Montessori used to say—God knows if the fish eggs all hatched and survived, the sea would become crowded. It is very simple. If every fish survived, there would be no water and we would all drink the fishes.
KAHN: So the realization of the Cosmic Education ideal worked something like this. You and Miss Lena would work in nature and with the children. And then you would come back each day and talk to your mother and she would make comment.
MONTESSORI: Yes, the idea would grow. Animals and plants were attached to nature in all sorts of ways. The animals depend on water, on plants and also nowadays, they depend on man, who creates possibilities for certain types of animals to develop and evolve. Plants depend on sunshine, water, earth, men, and animals. This is a real aspect of the world’s functioning. We saw purpose in everything that existed; nature’s equilibrium would be maintained. The mountains, the rain, why didn’t it rain here, and why did it rain there—the atmosphere, the sun—each had its role to play.
Cosmic Education: Cosmic Task
Sharing ideas, experimenting along with the children, making observations (like that scientist, remember?) and wondering, always wondering, while trying new things and making discoveries: THIS is the essence of Cosmic Education.
Where do we humans fit into this scheme? Dr. Montessori’s thoughts about how humans take their place in the natural order of the planet are illustrated in the Chart of Interdependency. Each of us, drawn to our own unique calling, gets to follow that voice and make our contribution.
For the Montessori guide, our version of cosmic task is creating our classrooms to be places where our students can wonder, experiment, and make discoveries. She may not have been speaking specifically about humans, but there’s advice in these words for us, too:
Every creature has a task; a task not just for its own benefit, but for the benefit of the environment as well. Each species’ adaptation to the environment shows us what the purpose and useful work of each is, the work which each contributes towards universal harmony. Because each animal is adapted to the environment, the environment is kept beautiful.
Maria Montessori, The 1946 London Lectures, pg. 9
As you strive to embrace this mindset, two questions arise: Must I Follow a Set Curriculum and Have Shelves of Materials in order to provide an authentic Cosmic Education?
I’ll tackle those questions in Part 2, next week. In the meantime, get hold of that interview with Mario as well as the Chapter I interview with Ms. Lena Wikramaratne. You’ll find them both online through ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) EJ1078110 and EJ1078126 as reprinted from The NAMTA Quarterly 5,1 (1979, Fall): 44-54 and 56-59
All teachers want their students to be engaged in learning, inspired to go deep into a subject, and, when everything works well, filled with WONDER! Even for Montessori teachers, in today’s world of high-stakes testing, much of the focus is on drilling academic skills using beads and cards, leaving the wonder behind.
Teaching to the test was never a thing for me. That could be because I spent the bulk of my teaching career long before the introduction of No Child Left Behind (or No Child Left Untested, as I liked to quip!) Or it could have been because I often taught in schools whose funding was not directly tied to the achievement of some level of academic standard.
But let’s be realistic…if my students weren’t achieving well within the standards of learning their parents expected, funding would be lost through lost enrollments. So, I never really bought into the notion that it was only public schools that were burdened with the academic achievement/funding connection.
Throughout my career, tying high-level interest to achieving academic skills came naturally. I used the conceptual basis of the Montessori materials as my guide, but, as often as not, I designed materials that were directly tied to the topics or subjects my particular class of students were interested in learning while addressing those skills that particular group needed to develop.
As a result, I regularly created unique subject-based sentences for analysis, history-based math problems, or little cards for grammar-box-like activities to go along with student-created dioramas…which I saw as miniature environments that kids really cared about.
In this process, my students were simultaneously learning about a particular subject, while using Montessori-style learning tools like grammar box cards, sentence analysis, or math manipulatives. Their language and math skills were being developed at the exact level for which the students were ready, while being driven forward by a desire to learn about something they wondered about.
And that’s ALWAYS what it is about: wonder, curiosity, and a desire to know. Elementary children are naturally driven in this way, and secondary students, armed with this sort of early learning as a foundation, take that knowledge and use it to construct their particular place in the world through the valorization work that happens in their Montessori classrooms.
“The child will develop a kind of philosophy which teaches this unity of the universe; this is the very thing to motivate his interest and to give him a better insight into his own place and task in the world and at the same time presenting a chance for the development of his creative energy.”
-Maria Montessori
Now that my work lies in coaching teachers, I strive to share examples that will spark the teachers’ thoughts. Just a week ago, I shared the diorama/grammar process I used in my classroom with a teacher who saw a way to use the same process as she and her students embark on the study of different biomes. Perfect!
There are countless ways to connect the brilliance of the Montessori materials to subjects that matter to the children. For me, this is the essence of Cosmic Education: keeping wonder, awe, and curiosity alive, while maintaining connections to skill-development. In the process, skills are taught, practiced, applied and embedded into the students thinking far more deeply than by simply moving beads or cards on a rug or teaching to succeed on a test.
Imagine yourself floating to the top of the nearest hill or mountaintop.
Scan the horizon and gaze across the landscape before you.
Note the boundaries or lack of them.
Now float up into the sky…so far that you see the hilltop or mountain peak as a tiny dot in the distance.
Your vision, broadly expanded now, takes in valleys, rivers, perhaps a coastline or mountain range.
Again, note the boundaries or lack of them.
Now, allow yourself to float further out so you gaze upon the Earth like the orb that it is.
Covered with swirling clouds, seas of blue and landforms of brown.
Yet the Earth is separate from the surrounding cosmos…floating in the sea of darkness.
The boundaries, delineated by color, reflect the nature of their substance: water, earth, air and the Universe.
As you sit, imagining the whole in all its simplicity and clarity, consider your task of sharing it with children. When Maria Montessori envisioned our connected Universe, there had yet to be photos of the Earth from space. Somehow, in her brilliance, she knew that children would be deeply touched and inspired by connection with the grandness of it all. She knew that their imaginations were ready to take it all in; to wonder and touch and connect to it, each in their own way. She knew that their passions would drive them to know, and that out of their desire to understand would come the drive for mastery of concepts and skills that would later be put to use in ever unfolding wisdom.
Montessori recognized the spirit of the child and knew that their souls would be touched when the stories ignited their imaginations. In more than one instance, she compelled us to teach the mystery of the Cosmos, keeping our focus on the child who would lead the way.
Return to your closed eyes, your floating in space and feel the calm that envelops you. Imagine sharing this reverie with the children before you tell the story of the Universe or as a moment of reflection before you share the vast timeline of life. Spark their imaginations by leading them into the peace of the whole.
Now, to finding YOUR calm within the chaos and overwhelm of teaching. Yes, there is preparation. Yes, there are pre-requisites to learning about the whole of the universe. Yes, it takes time and focus. Let me give you a glimpse into the roadmap.
Your second-year students have been studying the analog clock for some days. You notice that the interest is waning a bit. At the same time, your first-year students have been working with timelines and the long black line has been laid out regularly, with a few second- and third-year students joining in the conversation about the millions of years represented by the line. Your third-year students are enjoying deeper research with the timeline of life, preparing to give presentations for the rest of the class on the various periods.
You bring out the Clock of Eons and Eras and begin to talk with the entire class about what the clock represents. You review the parts and take observations from the students about the clock. The first-year students are reminded of the names they’ve been working with on the long black line. The second-year students are making connections to the analog clock and the passage of hours. The third-year students, who have been working with the timeline of life, are puzzling over how the long timeline of life can be compressed into a 12-hour time period.
You are ready with a variety of activities that will encourage deeper understanding of required skills.
To support a variety of math skills, you have prepared some math story problems to do with the Clock:
Simple addition and subtraction problems for the first year students will rehearse their understanding of key language related to the math functions based on the years of the Eons and Eras on the Clock. Manipulation of a variety of materials can be used to solve the problem, while connecting their concrete understanding of liner time to analog time for their future work with clocks.
For the second graders, you have cards with statements to read that connect the qualities of the various time periods with specific analog clocks to match, further practicing their telling of time, but also rehearsing their reading. Recording a key fact that goes with the matching clock enhances their written skills, supports them to summarize or pull out the most significant information, solidifies a connection to the various geologic time periods, and rehearses reading the analog clock.
For the third-year students, you have provided a matching work using fractions and slivers of the circle to demonstrate each period using fractions. You expand the traditional fraction lesson by comparing the fractions on the clock to the lengths on the timeline of life. For those who are ready, you may begin to show comparisons of the years in the various periods (like ordovician) to the total number of years in the Paleozoic sliver on the timeline.
Taking a 30,000-foot view of what truly needs to be done each day can free you of the minutia and allow your students the freedom to be inspired and curious. My advice: connect skills to whatever your children are interested in, make up their problems or spelling lists or vocabulary development or reading exercises as you are presented with their interests. And then sit back, observe, and wait for the magic of Montessori.
“It should be realized that genuine interest cannot be forced. Therefore, all methods of education, based on centres of interest, which have been chosen by adults, are wrong. Moreover, these centres of interest are superfluous, for the child is interested in everything… A global vision of cosmic events fascinates the child and his interest will soon remain fixed on one particular part, as a starting point for more intensive studies.”
Cosmic Education is the heart and soul of Montessori…especially for elementary, but really for all ages. Since I’ve been standing on my Cosmic Education soapbox for so many years, I get asked this question a lot: “How do I start?”
I imagine most who pose this question are looking for the scope and sequence of a curriculum; a logical or step-by-step list of lessons to give and follow-up work to prepare. Some of that preparation will definitely help. Especially once you have a good understanding of your child’s interests.
So here’s the good news: No RUSH!
While you’re reading From Childhood to Adolescence, Dr. Montessori’s guidance for how to educate the elementary child through the methods of Cosmic Education (BTW: Don’t skip Chapter 6…it lays out the thought process for you perfectly!), I recommend you take daily, or at least weekly, walks to a variety of different natural settings in your area.
Each time choose a focus item to observe. I’ve widely published and given away my lesson plan for Take a Rock Walk (Don’t have it? You’ll find it at https://www.inspired-learning-montessori-education.com/WalkinNRockin.html) In this lesson plan, I share a process that can be applied to any number of items: fallen leaves, fallen seeds, photos of living fungi, moss, tree bark, groundcover plants or even animals (but those are definitely more challenging!)
Each time you go, help your child take notice of the unique qualities of the items you are discovering. As you and your child compare the features, choose to “bring home” only two matching examples. This goes for photos, too! (I’ll save a discussion about what to DO with all of this once you get home for another lesson blog…this observation and gathering is just the beginning!)
While all of this is taking place, make some mental notes about how your child is engaged. Where do their eyes take them? What do they seem most curious about? These are the clues that will help you plan your lesson connections to Cosmic Education.
Once you have enough “data” about your child’s interests, you can begin to plan your lessons. Yes, if possible, it is great to tell the Great Lesson stories.* When I was in my classroom, I started every year with the first GL within the first couple of weeks…once I thought the children had developed some skill for sitting in the circle. This is a lesson filled with moments of great excitement and even the most disciplined students can barely contain their delight! But you can do Cosmic Education without them, so don’t sweat it if you don’t know them or are intimidated by them at your early moments.
Getting back to your lesson planning: Once you have a topic to begin, then think about how you can connect their interest with skills. Always beginning with observation of the “real” item, make observations and write them down, even writing for your child in large letters they can trace or copy later. Make lists of vocabulary words that relate to the item for both spelling, writing, and subject-based learning; read poetry about the item; make up math work related to the item…always with an eye toward genuine, authentic discovery-learning based on your child’s curiosity points.
This should get you started with a great deal of inspiration and engagement…along with the joy of spending time together, walking, talking, observing, and simply learning to love our Earth and our Universe. That’s the real substance of Cosmic Education!
Teacher-perspective matters, of course, but the distinctions can be subtle. Check out this example:
I received a question from a teacher who had removed the math cards containing answers on the back from her shelves. Why? She said the students were “cheating” and she couldn’t get the students to change their behavior. They had talked about honesty, etc. but the cheating continued. The following is my response to her…which is followed by a brief reflection…
In my classes, we taught the students how to record their process which was most easily accomplished with just one problem per day. When the students brought their work to “check” I slowly worked through the problem out loud to see if what they had written worked out…not to catch them, but to demonstrate the process. It was my goal to communicate a teacher-perspective that was encouraging. (EX: Let’s see what you’ve got here….It looks like you multiplied 3 X 4. Is that what you did? What is 3 taken 4 times? Looks like you wrote a 4? What did you mean? …) When something didn’t add up, then it became the teachable moment. I sent them back to the drawing board, so to speak, to see if they could figure out the challenge.
Getting the answer wasn’t the point, so in time, the students stopped doing that. (“cheating”) Yes, we had students who tried to take a short-cut, but that was usually because they didn’t understand something. My job was to unearth where the disconnect was so I could help them through it. For some students it took longer than others to realize that the answer really didn’t matter as much as how they arrived at AN answer. If my teacher-perspective had been “cheating,” maintaining that curiosity would have been much more difficult for me, and the student would likely have failed to feel like trying.
IMHO (and I hope you will not take offense), when we remove the works from the shelf, it can be perceived as taking control or holding the power. I felt like my primary role in the classroom was to be a model for handing over power to the child. Children will freely give you the power or do their best to force you to take it by their mischievousness.
Setting limits, I felt, were to give the student the power to control themselves…not so much as punishment. How you frame it makes all the difference! I hope this makes sense…
An “Accepting” Teacher-Perspective Aids Growth
The gift of Montessori education is helping the child to grow through a particular period of development so they will be best prepared for what is to come. Learning math processes is only important as a tool for solving some sort of problem: learning to reason, think through, gain understanding. Isolated problems on a page don’t really inspire that sort of learning.
When the short-cuts are taken, perceiving them as cheating bears shame. When we punish or take away the source of the “crime,” we help children to internalize their “wrongness” or inability to self-regulate. We hold them in a place of guilt.
To combat my own inclination to punish, I did my best to connect error to positive experiences. Sometimes I thanked a student out loud for showing me a new way to think about a problem, or for showing me what they didn’t understand because it made my work as a teacher easier when I understood them. I tried, not always successfully, to accept the behavior as a clue to something deep inside that needed to be worked out. It took patience (with myself as well as with the child) and curiosity, rather than quick judgment. Judgment always needed to be there to analyze, but assuming my judgments were correct after only an instant of contemplation kept me from seeing deeply into the situation. It took a commitment to changing my ingrained perspectives: a commitment to transformation that is continual and never-ending…REALLY!
How do you get math practice to connect to real world math problems? This is a challenge for another musing, but I’ll leave you with this: Opportunities are around us every day…building a bird house or a tree house; baking a cake or a half a cake or five cakes to share; sewing a shirt from start to finish; or growing your food. Math was an invention of humans to solve real problems…somewhere along the lines we humans decided to take a short-cut and make it about memorization and getting right answers.
Who can say where and when inspiration may strike? More significantly, why does it matter? I believe, as a teacher and guide for children, it may be the only thing that matters.
Let me share a little story…
Surfing the internet I came across the video of a stage show I’d never heard of, “In Your Face New York.” It’s what one might expect from the title: clever, contemporary, cutting edge, cheeky. That’s what made me stay long enough for the first guest: a female curator from MOMA whose purpose for being on the show was to share three acquired paintings, fulfilling a long-overdue shift in the museum’s values to create more visibility of women artist’s works.
The last painting was this one: Die. #20 from Faith Ringgold’s series of murals entitled American People. The painting immediately grabbed at my heart. Here was an American version of Guernica, a painting that so moved me in 1972 during my very first visit to NYC, that I returned to sit in its presence countless times over the next decades. I was so moved by Ms. Ringgold’s mural, that I nearly missed hearing the curator tell the story of Ms. Ringgold’s struggle to be accepted into MOMA’s male-dominated artistic circle, her never-ending efforts to protest the practices, if not the policies, of the MOMA of the 1960’s and beyond, but also her steadfast support of the museum for what it could be.
It was Faith Ringgold’s connection to Guernica that had inspired her work and it was our common connection to that painting that sent me on a quest to learn whatever I could about this woman who shared my fascination: I looked her up. I read her bio. I fell in love with her paintings and her story. I re-discovered her stories for children, stories I’d once read to my classes, in that moment failing to make the connection between the painter and the writer.
This chance moment became today’s inspiration. Creative juices began to flow in my veins. I’m filled with ideas for a classroom study, for adding to a historical study I championed a long time ago.
Before this morning’s moment, my environment had been prepared by a week of watching, listening, and discussing #BlackLivesMatter. Before this morning’s moment, I’d read James Baldwin’s “A Message to Teachers” (Baldwin, 1963) and been brought to tears. Before this moment, my environment had been prepared literally and figuratively by years of doing my best to share a vision of equality and unity with children, while striving to learn and internalize a new way of facing my inherent racism brought on by being white in a society whose systems are skewed on my behalf.
So, my dear teaching friends, never underestimate the possibility of sudden inspiration! Prepare your environments to be rich places where your students may be surrounded by all manner of experience. Prepare your lessons to be a cloud of wonder and fascination that will touch your students’ hearts, souls, and minds. Prepare your schedules with openness and freedom so your students have space to let their imaginations blossom.
For when you prepare in this way, you are paving the way for inspiration that just may last a lifetime.
I still remember the warm May afternoon when I completed my elementary training. I sat with my 10 or 11 fellow trainees, knowing I was about to take on the leadership of a well-established classroom. I was filled with thoughts of “Am I ready?”
We’d had incredible training. My guides through Montessori elementary had been mostly Bergamo-trained. They had imparted the details of the curriculum, how to carefully present the lessons, to anticipate the challenges of managing follow-up and errant students, and the value of inspiration. I felt our philosophy courses had been interwoven into the curriculum presentations, so I thought I had a pretty good idea of why we did things the way we did in Montessori.
I’d apprenticed at the school where I’d be leading a class of 9-12-year-olds, starting nearly five years before, first as a “specials” teacher, then as an assistant for a few years while I was in training. I’d been given positive feedback about my ability to relate to the students and my mentors felt that being a parent had prepared me for understanding the realities of child development.
But was I really ready to step into the role of lead teacher, responsible for the education of nearly 50 students, with a new co-teacher who’d been out of the classroom for a few years?
Truthfully, I can’t say. But I did it; we did it. Through trial and error…lots of those…we grew our program to meet the needs of the students who came before us.
Reflecting on the journey from “fresh-out-of-training” to “I’ve got this!”, I can see that the steps I took throughout those 30+ years had two key ingredients: A passion to learn and the resilience to keep learning, exactly the “thing” we want to impart to our students.
I can honestly say that even after all these years, I wake up with a fervor about this work that may be even stronger than it was in 1989 when I sat in our “graduation.” I know that, just like the students in my classes, the flames of learning have been fanned by a host of mentors, guides, inspired speakers, and children who have accompanied me on this journey.
Now, my work is to be a helpmate for you…the Montessorian who can use a bit of advice, a story to keep you going when times are tough (and goodness knows pandemic times have been unspeakably tough) or providing a community of like-minded Montessorians who want to contribute to the future of humanity by guiding the children of the present.
Are you ready? I suspect so. I know what you’ve been through to finish that certification and I’ve probably experienced something like what you’ll go through.
Now I offer you the practical application of bringing it all together while managing your time, your energy and your students! With courses, workshops, this blog, materials, group and private mentorship options, and free webinars, there are literally dozens of ways you can get the support you need in difficult or challenging moments.
Join me in practicing and celebrating the opportunities for changing the world that exist in Montessori!
