The Joyful Primary - a lasting, sustainable foundation for learning

“Education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual and is acquired not through listening to words but experiences in the environment.“  - Dr. Maria Montessori

This week I spent time observing in five primary classrooms that each provide students with a supportive learning environment where developmentally appropriate materials and positive learning experiences are clearly contributing to the growth of self-motivated and independent learners.  Each class is a multi-age grouping, balancing gender and developmental stages.  It is evident that the child teacher ratio assures each child maximum interaction with the teachers, and allows the teachers to observe and guide children individually.

Watching many of the youngest children seek help from an adult or older child as they learn to accomplish the task independently affirmed the marvelous outcomes of freedom and confidence that accompany the journey to self-sufficiency and… the ability to help a friend.  At the heart of this process is the notion that we take what we need and we give back what we are able – a quintessential Montessori value.

I observed class circle and the ensuing “work cycle” where children 'assimilate to the environment'.  All of the classrooms were demonstrably operating on the Montessori principle of freedom within limits. The children freely worked at their own pace with materials of their choice.  The teachers worked with children individually and in small groups, giving lessons and guidance on the prepared Montessori materials.  It was common to see a teacher giving a lesson to a few students while the rest of the children focused on work in different areas of the classroom. 

The shelves each held materials that children can explore to experience the full breadth of the curriculum through an open process of discovery. Individuality is balanced with an equal sense of responsibility and respect for the classroom community. Students investigated their own interests and chose activities exerting a sense of control over his or her life.

These joyful Montessori classrooms provide freely chosen learning materials to students, which are carefully and thoughtfully designed to offer a solid foundation for reading, writing, creativity, critical thinking, as well as, active participation in a community of others. As a child completes three years in Primary s/he becomes a self-composed, confident, and compassionate leader for the younger children. S/he learns to think independently, learns to learn with joy, and to self-regulate for social harmony - the common good.

*Research at the Universities of Virginia and Wisconsin has recently confirmed what Dr. Montessori observed long ago:

• "Movement optimizes learning. Active bodies create active minds. Montessori learning materials offer challenging work requiring both the body and the mind.
• Interest is key. Children learn best when they are interested. Children in Montessori classrooms choose their work, so they are able to pursue their interests.
• Motivation comes from intrinsic satisfaction. Montessori teachers avoid extrinsic rewards and competition since motivation is reduced when the rewards are removed. The Montessori method nurtures a child’s love of learning and desire to contribute and help others without rewards and punishments.
• Choice and control help children progress.  Montessori students choose their activities and manage their time. Students who have control over their educational experience make better decisions, exercise good judgment, and are more deeply engaged in their work.
• Order, beauty and routine are important. Montessori environments are aesthetically beautiful, tidy and organized. An attractive and dependable environment allows children to easily select and complete work and participate in maintaining the classroom.
• Collaboration inspires learning. Children in a multi-age environment learn from each other. Young children benefit from the example and guidance of older children. Up to age 6, children often prefer to work individually or in pairs. Montessori classrooms for young children are designed to accommodate this characteristic. After age 6, children are more likely to work in groups, collaborating on projects. Montessori classrooms for older children allow them to learn this way. Students solve problems by interacting with each other and listening to multiple perspectives. Montessori students have a strong sense of self, and are cooperative and supportive of each other. “

Each stage of Montessori education builds on the preceding one to form a lasting foundation. An authentic and complete Montessori education is truly a value added for life!

*www.curry.virginia.edu/research/centers; www.waisman.wisc.edu/

Toddler Classroom – Space to Learn

"An interesting piece of work, freely chosen, which has the virtue of inducing concentration rather than fatigue, adds to the child’s energies and mental capacities (leading to) self-mastery."   Maria Montessori

Recently, I was able to visit and observe in three toddler classrooms all of which were beautiful spaces actively supporting the engagement of children in purposeful work. The classroom environments were carefully prepared to be both beautiful and functional. The physical design, furniture and materials were varied from room to room but all equally supported the children’s independence and ‘innate impulse’ for self-development.

I could see so vividly how the work unfolding before me under the careful and gentle tutelage of gifted teachers assisted the children toward developing self-discipline, the ability to focus through the work in the environment. The materials were effectively captivating the child’s attention -clearly, the key to encouraging that focus.

It is important to say that in Montessori education this toddler stage is considered the first plane of development and to acknowledge that it is the one that has the most influence. ‘It is where thought, feeling, behavior, self-image, and self-esteem are formed.’

But what impressed me the most is the magical way the teachers used eye contact to let children know they are ‘with them’; used appropriate physical contact like holding hands and gentle touch to reassure and offer closeness; and focused attention to convey respect and how deeply valued each child is.

Recommended reading

Awakening your Toddlers Love for Learning  -  Jan Katzen-Luchenta  

Assessment-Feedback and the Self-directed Learner

One of the great strides in education over the last ten to fifteen years is in valuing diverse approaches to assessment and the benefits of innovative assessment.  This includes moving away from assessment of to assessment for learning. Montessori curriculum has always embedded these innovative measures and vehicles for feedback to the learner as an intrinsic part of the learning materials and environment.  As it is very intentionally embedded in the learning continuum to empower and build the learner’s confidence it can be an elusive piece in parent perception of the great strengths and benefits of the science and genius of Montessori.

Assessment for learning is different from formative assessment, the technique known to most traditionally schooled people.  While formative assessment is about providing teachers with evidence, assessment for learning is about continuous assessment and about informing students about themselves.  Formative assessment reveals who is and who is not meeting ‘outcomes’ or ‘standards’; assessment for learning tells teachers what progress each student is making toward meeting a learning outcome as they are learning —when there is still an opportunity to employ the feedback. In the formative assessment scenario the teacher typically provides the feedback to the learner.

When evaluation focuses on the results or outcomes of a program, it is called 'summative.  Summative assessments are  used to evaluate the effectiveness of the instructional program and teaching at the end of an academic year or a set time. The aim of summative assessment is to judge student competency after an ‘instructional phase’ is complete. They are used to determine student mastery of certain competencies and to identify areas that need to improve. Summative assessment seeks to identify which students have reached the top of the learning curve.  It holds students and their teachers accountable for achieving required outcomes - judging learning quantitatively at a particular point in time.  Examples are large-scale, on-demand state and district assessments, as well as traditional classroom assessments, e.g. tests and quizzes, typically used for report card grading.

In the Montessori learning environment there is a continuous array of assessments for learning used to help students learn more—to lead them deeper into their own learning.  Montessori assessment traverses many styles of assessment including authentic assessment – ‘the measurement of "intellectual accomplishments that are worthwhile, significant, and meaningful" – as well as performance based assessment. 

For example, authentic assessment “ … seeks to assess many different kinds of abilities in contexts that recreate situations in which those abilities are used. Students read real texts, write for authentic purposes about meaningful topics, and participate in authentic literacy tasks such as discussing books, keeping journals, writing letters, and revising a piece of writing until it works for the intended audience.  Both the material and the assessment tasks look as natural as possible.”  Authentic assessment stresses the thinking behind work, the process, as much as the outcome.

Performance-based assessment aims at a demonstration of the scope of student knowledge on a subject rather than simply measuring the accuracy of responses to a select series of questions.  Assessments become more than single events occurring at the end of the teaching. They become part of the learning process and keep students aware of their progress and confident enough to continue striving.

In the assessment for learning process, instructional decisions are made by students and their teachers. Thus, students use assessment information too, using evidence of their own progress to better understand what comes next for them. It relies on the class curriculum so that what has been learned and what comes next is clear to all throughout the learning. Assessment for learning motivates by helping students monitor and identify their success. Assessment for learning happens continuously throughout the learning process.  Students have a clear vision of the learning task from the beginning of the learning, as well as an understanding of the progression to competence.  Students also have continuous access to descriptive (as opposed to evaluative or judgmental) feedback from the teacher; information that helps them to improve the quality of their work.

These proactive assessments – which are at the heart of the Montessori approach to student-directed learning – allow students to engage with their own learning process and to successfully negotiate the road to mastery and learning competency.  Each of these specific practices draws the learner more deeply into taking responsibility for her or his own success. Over time these real indicators of learning generate and support an intellectually sophisticated, competent self-directed learner – the goal for every Montessori student.

Sources and references

Assessment for learning: putting it into practice, Paul Black, Chris Harrison, Clara

Montessori and Assessment, Haines, Annette M.

Montessori Assessment Outline, North American Teachers Association

 

Teaching as a Valuable Gift

Recently, I was drafting a quick note of appreciation and thanks to middle school teachers to affirm and acknowledge their curriculum night with parents.  I humbly sought a quote that I thought would resonate with their creative spirit and affirm their fluid and integrated approach to teaching.  I came across this marvelous reflection from Albert Einstein and reckoned any of us would delight in keeping such company in our daily endeavor.

I wonder if this reflection of Einstein speaks poignantly to the idea that consistency and change go hand in hand that great tradition provides the best foundation for change.

It is not enough to teach a man a specialty. Through it he may become a kind of useful machine but not a harmoniously developed personality. It is essential that the student acquire an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. He must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and of the morally good. Otherwise he - with his specialized knowledge - more closely resembles a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person. He must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions and their sufferings, in order to acquire a proper relationship to individual fellow men and to the community.

These precious things are conveyed to the younger generation through personal contact with those who teach, not - or at least not in the main - through textbooks. It is this that primarily constitutes and preserves culture. This is what I have in mind when I recommend the 'humanities' as important, not just dry specialized knowledge in the fields of history and philosophy.

Overemphasis on the competitive system and premature specialization on the ground of immediate usefulness kill the spirit on which all cultural life depends, specialized knowledge included.

It is also vital to a valuable education that independent critical thinking be developed in the young human being, a development that is greatly jeopardized by overburdening him with too much and with too varied subjects (point system). Overburdening necessarily leads to superficiality. Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.

—Albert Einstein, "Education for Independent Thought"

A Commitment to Keeping ‘Ideas in Play’

Adolescence is an arbitrary, contrived category. In past eras children were children until the early teens wherein, through some rite of passage, they were ushered into and took their place in adult society. Today there is no economic place for young adults and no rites of passage. We have, instead, created a holding stage that keeps young people in a limbo, into which children enter earlier and adults stay longer year by year.

—Joseph Chilton Pearce, Evolution's End

As an educator it occurs to me in my daily encounters with teachers, children, administrators and parents how clearly my ability to be ‘atheoretical’ or ‘apolitical’ is central to keeping ideas in play and rejecting the importance of fixed ideas and fixed subject matter. Over and over again, life in school presents me opportunities to grow and to learn how to avoid and to help students and teachers to avoid the entrapment of systems, blueprints or formulas.  To live into this, I must commit to an unwavering trust in children to learn, and I must acknowledge what I intuitively know - social change is the emancipatory potential of inquiry through the continuous reconstruction of experience;  self-directed acitivity, education for life and the common good.

From this perspective, “work” is best defined  through  its intrinsic connection to its inherent creative, community and collaborative components.  This self-directed  ‘work’  unfolds best  in learning communities where children  in their own way,  learn not only the concrete truths about the world, but the social truths as well.  These are the essential truths of people - people with many differences that must live and work together. 

When we keep’ ideas in play’ we empower learners and teach children  that the unity of expression, self-activity, and experience is the beginning not the end of learning –  life-long learning.

Discovering the specialness of every person

 “Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future.”  Maria Montessori

The Montessori philosophy flows out of a deep respect for the child, notably the individuality of each child. We respect the child and we nurture the adult s/he is becoming. Montessori learning initiates out of a deep respect for children as unique individuals.  Montessori teachers work from a concern for the child’s social and emotional development. In a Montessori classroom, children are provided opportunities to explore in an orderly, well-structured environment. Maria Montessori observed that children presented with a calm, orderly environment in which to learn internalize that sense of calm. The curriculum and materials encourage the child to respect the classroom, thus teaching respect for one’s own environment. Thus instilling in children a love of learning, the ability to make appropriate learning choices, and respect for oneself, other people, and one’s physical surroundings.

By assuming the specialness of every person, we build a culture of respect that generates energy, creativity, and magnetism - something that people can sense and feel, and to which they are drawn. Highly respectful cultures treat every person with courtesy and interest, and convey the understanding that every member of the community is valued. By treating every person with the utmost respect, we develop a culture in which everyone wants to give their best to others, and expects to receive the best from others in return. It is the type of culture everyone deserves, and it is up to us to make it happen in our daily lives.

The Rabbi's Gift

               

Once a great order, a decaying monastery had only five monks left. The order was dying. In the surrounding deep woods, there was a little hut that a Rabbi from a nearby town used from time to time.

The monks always knew the Rabbi was home when they saw the smoke from his fire rise above the treetops. As the Abbot agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to him to ask the Rabbi if he could offer any advice that might save the monastery.

The Rabbi welcomed the Abbot at his hut. When the Abbot explained the reason for his visit, the Rabbi could only commiserate with him. “I know how it is,” he exclaimed. “The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore.” So the Abbot and the Rabbi sat together discussing the Bible and their faiths.

The time came when the Abbot had to leave. “It has been a wonderful visit,” said the Abbot, “but I have failed in my purpose. Is there nothing you can tell me to help save my dying order?”

“The only thing I can tell you,” said the Rabbi, “is that the Messiah is among you.”

When the Abbot returned to the monastery, his fellow monks gathered around him and asked, “What did the Rabbi say?” “He couldn’t help,” the Abbot answered. “The only thing he did say, as I was leaving was that the Messiah is among us. Though I do not know what these words mean.”

In the months that followed, the monks pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the Rabbi’s words: The Messiah is among us? Could he possibly have meant that the Messiah is one of us monks here at the monastery? If that’s the case, which one of us is the Messiah? Do you suppose he meant the Abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred! Elred gets crotchety at times. But come to think of it, even so, Elred is virtually always right. Maybe the rabbi did mean Brother Elred. Of course the Rabbi didn’t mean me.

He couldn’t possibly have meant me. I’m just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah?

As they contemplated in this manner, the monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah and in turn, each monk began to treat himself with extraordinary respect.

It so happened that people still occasionally came to visit the beautiful forest and monastery. Without even being conscious of it, visitors began to sense a powerful spiritual aura. They were sensing the extraordinary respect that now filled the monastery.

Hardly knowing why, people began to come to the monastery frequently to picnic, to play, and to pray. They began to bring their friends, and their friends brought their friends. Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the older monks. After a while, one asked if he could join them. Then, another and another asked if they too could join the abbot and older monks. Within a few years, the monastery once again became a thriving order, a vibrant center of light and spirituality in the realm. - Author unknown

Adapted from The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace by Dr. M. Scott Peck

The Serendipity of Teachable…..Learnable Moments

Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.

Plato

Maria Montessori knew that the teacher’s self-knowledge and awareness are crucial to seeing the learner clearly – seeing the child as whole and responding to the child in the moment.  In other words, we speak to the teacher in a learner best when we are conversant with our own inner teacher.  This requires that the heart and mind work together to expand our capacity for connectedness.  I think this further suggests that the intellect – the way we think about learning; emotion – the way we feel about learning; and the spirit – our desire to connect to a greater whole – are an interdependent whole in the teacher and the learner.

So it is that we seek, find and live into teachable/learnable moments.  So it is that we work together to make sense of, acknowledge and live our human paradox – balancing our dependence on how others respond to us with our independence of how others respond to us.

Just as parents set tasks, give choices, and negotiate the dance of holding on and letting go, teachers use the scaffolding of the learning environment to provide structure and support for the child’s own work to develop; providing parameters and boundaries to a work in progress which dissolve because the learner internalizes them.

Through this teaching/ learning exchange the learner is empowered to find her/his voice, to use that voice and to then have that voice heard.

Active, engaged, critical thinking - does it require more effort for student and teacher? Certainly. Does it sometimes involve a period of discomfort or confusion? Sure. If the mission is to give students the tools and capacity to face the future with confidence and competence, we need to assure them that we believe in their ability to step up to the challenge, and support them in their growth toward that end.