Category: Working With Children

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. 

 

Unknown Preparation for the Spark that Ignites

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. 

When I was in the classroom, I loved returning to school after the winter break.

We had ended the previous semester with warm, loving celebrations of light. The month of December brought closure on a semester of learning and projects. The final week was spent giving and receiving Secret Friend notes and tiny expressions of love and caring, culminating in a great mass gift-giving in which children demonstrated how very well they knew their classmates by the simple offerings they gave. We said goodbye, looking forward to time with our families and a break from our normal routines.

All those good feelings came back to school with us and January was a time when everything about our classroom felt familiar and calm. Happy to return to the order of the space, with just a few new items on the shelves to pique their curiosity, the children settled quickly into new inquiries with a focused attention born out of familiarity, competence, and confidence. Those first few weeks were idyllic: calm, peaceful, and focused.

After the challenges of 2020, I wonder what this period will be like for many of you. Will students be returning to familiar classrooms, will this be the first time they are seeing each other this school year, or will distance learning remain the norm in the midst of this turbulent pandemic that has rocked our world? 

As a result of the pandemic, 2020 brought an almost frantic pivot for us all…and now, in 2021, I am seeking peace, determined to create greater space for calm in every corner of my life.

Achieving peace will require intention and commitment. It will insist upon self-discipline. It will demand new habits, actions, and activities.  I’ll be called upon to be creative, courageous and strong.

Dr. Montessori’s vision for a peaceful revolution is carried out in Cosmic Education. Through her Cosmic vision, Montessori sought to develop awareness of the natural flow of the Universe: a flow based on a dance of giving and receiving, each entity playing its part and making its unique contribution.

I trust you’ll find ways to bring peace into your life and into the lives of your children. Teaching Peace is a noble goal, a satisfying aim, and the true work of Montessori Cosmic Education. 

“Peace is a practical principle of human civilization and social organization that is based on the very nature of man. Peace does not enslave him; rather, it exalts him…. And because it is based on man’s nature, it is a constant, a universal principle that applies to all human beings. This principle must be our guide in building a science of peace and educating men for peace.”