Day 2 - Montessori

Today I am soooo very grateful for Montessori. 

(Warning – this has turned out to be a very long post – sorry!)

Montessori re-entered my life when Amy was just 18 months old and a Mum from our Mother’s group was talking about it.  I went to a Montessori school myself for my first few years of schooling and talking about it awakened something inside me.

Jeremy and I went to check out the Parent Toddler group and were immediately sold.  To see children as young as 18 months old preparing their own morning tea snack with so much pride – cutting pieces of fruit and apply spread to crackers, to see them eat on china crockery and use glasses instead of plastic cups, it was so refreshing.  The order in the classroom was also very appealing and to be witness to the fact that it was the children who kept the order was quite an eye opener.

We had no intention then to send Amy to a Montessori primary school but when the Open Day arrived we went along to check it out.  Wow!  How amazing was this system of learning.  I did an observation in a Montessori classroom for about an hour (the best way to see what it is really about) and I was blown away.  To see children as young as 3 years of age directing their own learning was awesome - they weren’t being told what to do, they were CHOOSING to learn.  They were engaged and focused and taking so much pride in their work.

Now, I’m no Montessori expert and definitely not a perfect parent but this is my experience of Montessori…

The classroom is almost always immaculate with trays of activities set out in different areas – practical life, literacy, numeracy, botany, geography, etc.  Each and every activity set out on the trays has a defined purpose – whether it is to develop fine motor skills or just to develop concentration or balance or control or a new skill, whatever it is – it is defined.  The classroom director takes time to show each child how to complete the activity successfully the first time and then they are left to choose it at will and perfect it.  The children aren’t just put in the room and left to their own devices to find imaginative ways to use all the materials.  When they start in the classroom, at just 3 years of age, it’s all about practical life work – pouring, spooning, polishing, cleaning and so much more… because this is what they are capable of, successful at and take pride in. 

As their skills develop they are drawn to the other areas of the classroom – the numeracy or literacy or geography or botany, and the amazing thing is that they are drawn there because their brain is ready to learn about that area and so they absorb the information easily and readily.  Some children are drawn to the maps before they are drawn to writing, some are drawn to botany first, they are all individual and I would be very surprised if anyone two children followed exactly the same path.

The classroom director and assistant are amazing.  They have the ability to just stand back and observe and gently guide each child to their next job – something just challenging enough to engage them but easy enough for them to complete it successfully.  This is one area in life where I fail dismally as a mother – I am still developing the ability to stand back and watch and allow my child to struggle a bit until they finally achieve that sense of success “all by themselves”.  I keep intervening, to do it for them, to make life easier for them – but… I am aware and I am learning.

I believe that it is this continual sense of success in the classroom that develops the child’s intrinsic love of learning.  There is no-one saying “No, not like that”… the material is designed in such a way that if the activity is not completed in the way that is intended then the material will allow the child to self-correct.

The other big thing I love about Montessori is that because the children are all learning at his own pace there is no concept of one child being smarter than another or not as capable.  With the 3 year age range in each classroom the children are free to do a variety of activities that span that 3 year age range and the director is confident and ensures that by the end of the 3 year cycle each student leaving that classroom will have covered every task required for building the foundation for their next 3 years of learning.

The lessons of grace, courtesy and respect are so evident in a Montessori classroom.  At a birthday celebration we had for Charlotte last week, all the children sat in a circle while they were served their birthday treat (2 cupcakes) and not one of them commenced eating until every single child had been served.  Each lunch time they sit at a table to eat their lunch – they have their own placemat and plate and glass and they set their place, unpack their lunch, eat and then clean up after themselves.

If a child wants the classroom director’s attention they place their hand on her shoulder and she gently touches their hand, whilst completing her conversation, so that they know that she is aware that they are waiting.  The child then lowers her hand and waits patiently by the director’s side until she is ready to speak to them.  There is never any sense of urgency in any of these actions, it is just beautiful.

When the director wants the attention of every child in the classroom, she picks up a tiny bell on her desk and makes the softest sound with it and movement in the classroom stops almost immediately and all eyes are focused on her within a minute.  This has happened many times whilst I have been volunteering in the classroom and I don’t even hear the bell, I just notice the hush.  It is amazing.  The classroom is always so serene.  Now children will be children and there are exceptions to this rule, but they are so rare that when it happens everyone notices and comments ;-)

Another thing that keeps us (Jeremy and I) at Montessori is seeing what comes out at the other end.  The children who graduate from this school are extraordinarily mature, respectful and polite.  I don’t know if it is because of their parents or because of their education – I have a sense that it is both because I believe that parents who choose to send their children to a Montessori must hold the same values that are taught at the school.

I have been accused of molly-coddling my children because I teach them to respect other people and their personal space – apparently I’m not teaching them to cope in the real world, where people push you around, and step on you, if they have to, to get where they are going.  This is yet another reason why we stay at Montessori.  The children are taught to respect each other’s space and work and belongings, they are taught to help each other if they can instead of just leaving the slow ones behind, they are encouraged to be role models and take pride in that job and so much more.  If every child in the world were taught these “age old” values then maybe the world would be a better place for everyone.

There are so many people out there who think that Montessori is just an elitist, private system for parents who have money to throw around, looking for an alternative style of teaching.  Well, we are Montessori parents and we struggle each term to find the money for the school fees (and at our school we are definitely not alone in this struggle), not because we want our children to attend a private school but because we feel that Montessori will give them the best grounding for their future.

Once upon a time it was easy to find the money but in the last few years it has become increasingly more difficult for one reason or another.  As parents we have made a commitment to their Montessori education and if our only option was to sell our home to fund it then that’s what we will do – that is how strongly we believe in Montessori.

We received our children’s portfolios this evening and, as I was reading Amy’s with her, she told me proudly that she could do addition, subtraction and multiplication in her head and that her teacher was going to teach her how to do long division in her head and (in her own words) “I’m soooo excited!” 

My children love to learn and I believe I have Montessori and their classroom directors to thank for that.  Amy, at 9 years of age, will sit at the computer at home and start a research project – just for fun.  Charlotte, at just 5 years of age, will sit and read her reader and practice her new chart of words just because she wants to achieve success.  I never push my children to do “homework”, it has just become part of their lives because they want to learn.  They are both normal children – they are not geniuses or nerds or “brainiacs”.  They are just children that love learning.

If I start going into what Jeremy and I have learned as parents through Montessori you’ll be reading for another 10 pages, so suffice to say we believe Montessori has helped us to be the best parents that we can be.  It has and continues to provide the tools and knowledge that we have required to develop independence, confidence, resilience, caring, compassion and so much more in our children, and we believe that their Montessori education is one of the greatest gifts we can give them in life.

So, today I am ever so grateful to the Montessori system of education… thank you to my Mum and Dad who introduced me to it, to my grand-aunt who lived it, and all the people who continue to teach me each and every day of my life – At Canberra Montessori – Christy, Daja and Christine and at PVMS - Greg, Lynn, Grace, Bri, Annette, Kerryn, Glenn, Roisin, Shelly, Jeanette and soooo many more.