Month: May 2026

can kindness be taught

~ keystomontessori ~ Leave a comment

One positive aspect of the social media explosion is the ease of staying in touch it affords. Alumni and their parents share their post-Cornerstone experiences more freely, because it’s just a click/send away. For some of our past students, Cornerstone represents twelve years of their life, building a sense of ownership and home that is not forgotten by a mere change of address. In short, we get letters. This came in from a parent, a forwarding of an email they had received from a high school teacher of a Cornerstone graduate: “I just wanted to let you know your son ended the semester with one of the only A+ with Honors I have ever given. On that note, while I know you know how talented he is, I want to throw in my 2 cents that he should take as many AP classes as possible next year. I have tried hard to keep him challenged in my class, but he is so far beyond other students that I don’t think regular classes are the place for him.” Truthfully, this is not uncommon for our graduates, but the parent highlighted the second part of the teacher’s email as being more meaningful: “The other thing I think is great about your son is that even though he finishes his work easily he helps other students. There is one student in particular that sits next to him and she struggles every day. With the patience of a teacher he helps her ALL class. Sometimes I think she is going to wear on his patience but he just gently answers her questions.“ 

Can kindness, in fact, be taught? As Montessorians, we would answer, “No more than we ‘teach’ geography or arithmetic or science”. Rather, a Montessori school creates an environment, carves a space, maintains a culture that allows a natural process to take place. And while it isn’t quantified on any conference report, the grace and courtesy aspect of our curriculum is an integral component of the fabric of our classrooms. This serves, strongly, as the tapestry on which our lessons are woven. It is so present in fact, that a consistent comment I hear from prospective parents, even after a mere 20-minute observation, is the kindness they witness amongst our students, regardless of class level. Last week, after an especially moving observation, a parent sat with me in the hallway outside of the Junior Class, asking me the how’s and why’s of our school. They enthusiastically embraced the peacefulness and kindness they saw that morning. “Does that happen every day?”, she asked, perhaps a little suspicious. At that moment, Quetzal and Nicholas walked by, hand-in-hand. “Yeh, I said, “Pretty much.”

walking with great care

~ keystomontessori ~ Leave a comment

Walking with great care, the young child brought the stamp game to the table, gently placed it down, and opened the lid. Smiling shyly at me, she carefully began laying out the first and second addends, in horizontal rows, one under the other, carefully aligning the thousands, hundreds, tens, and units by place value. A scene from any lower elementary classroom in the world. In this case, however, the school was Kiara Karitas, and it was located on the other side of the world from me, in Jakarta, Indonesia. The girl, Hee Youn, was a first-year student in their lower primary classroom. A few years back, the larger Montessori community of educators and parents and administrators and children celebrated the centennial anniversary of the first Montessori school. That milestone spoke to the lasting power of a profound pedagogy; one that has truly stood the test of time, allowing children to learn to their potential, to gain an insight to knowledge that is both integrated and internalized, and to develop loving hearts and inquiring minds. In my role as a school board member for my local district in southern Maine, where math curricula, literacy programs, and science textbooks shift with the vagaries of educational reform, I see firsthand the disadvantages of moving from one Newest Thing to the Next Newest Thing, and the expense and learning curve it requires for teachers and children alike. But what struck me in Jakarta (and Seoul, and Nashville, and Sarasota…) was how the span of Montessori not only reaches back 100 years, but also across the world. What does it say of an educational system, that it can speak so forcefully, with such profound results, to parents and children in schools from New Hampshire to California to Asia, Africa, Europe and beyond? What does it say about the Montessori method, that can unite so many schools in a common model, using the same Montessori materials and same prepared environments? What does it say about this worldwide and historical community of teachers, students, and families, who wear different clothes, write in different languages, give and receive lessons spoken in different tongues, but are united all the same? I wouldn’t have bothered to ask Hee Youn. She was too busy, and wouldn’t have cared. And frankly, my Bahasa is lousy.