Tag: montessori-education

kindness in a montessori classroom

~ keystomontessori ~ Leave a comment

One positive aspect of the social media explosion is the ease of staying in touch that it affords. Alumni and their parents now share their post-Montessori school experiences more freely, because it’s just a click/send away. For some past students, their time in a Montessori school represents 12 years of their life, building a sense of ownership and home that is not forgotten by a mere change of address. In short, these schools commonly receive letters. The following is from a parent, a forwarding of an e-mail the parent had received from a high school teacher of a Montessori 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 Montessori graduates, but the parent highlighted the second part of the teacher’s e-mail 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, and maintains a culture that allows a natural process to take place. And while it is not 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. Most Montessori teachers will relate similar comments from docents, waiters, park rangers, or other adults encountered on field trips.

One time, after an especially moving observation, a prospective parent sat with me in the hallway, asking me the hows and whys of our school. This parent enthusiastically embraced the peacefulness and kindness she saw that morning. “Does that happen every day?,” she asked, perhaps a little suspicious. At that precise moment, two 3-year-olds walked by, hand in hand, on their way to deliver a note to the office. “Yeah,” I said, “Pretty much.”

the spilled water lesson(s)

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Maria Montessori said, “Never help a child with a task in which he feels he can be successful.”  This means that a child who is learning something new should be given the freedom to try to succeed.  If we as the adults rush in to “save the child”, the child will not learn.  Children learn through their activity, through their effort, and, very importantly, through their mistakes!  

Let us consider a child in our classroom.  He approaches the practical life area and sees a tray containing a small pitcher of water and a glass; it is a pouring work to practice control of movement.  He chooses to bring it to a table where a friend awaits.  The teacher is observing closely.  Perhaps this child has been shy about trying new things and here he is, ready to take on this challenge.  He has been given a lesson in carrying a tray with water and cup.  One must be very careful when lifting the tray, to turn slowly, and place each foot slowly, one in front of the other, as you move across the room, keeping one’s eye on the tray to keep it level.  He takes one step, two steps, he hears a bird call and his attention is drawn away from the tray.  The pitcher begins to slide…..!

The teacher is still watching.  They consider to themselves, “What is the best thing that could happen right now?” “What is the worst?”  We may think that the best thing to happen would be for the child to successfully walk across the room and gently place the tray and pitcher on the table.  How proud he will be!!  He did it!  And this would be wonderful, no doubt.  But let us consider the opposite outcome.  The tray tilts, the pitcher slides, the water, pitcher and cup all spill to the ground.  What does the teacher do?  The child is upset and so the teacher comes to his side and comforts him, yes, but very quickly asks him what he needs in order to clean the spill (a rag, they are kept by the sink), how to sweep up any pieces of pitcher or cup (a broom and dustpan hangs on the wall), how to wring the wet rag out (a bucket is under the sink), and how to tell his friends and classmates to be careful of the spot until it dries.

What are the lessons learned here?

  1. My teacher loves me.  They do not yell or scold me if I make a mistake. If I make a mistake in my math or reading, they will not be angry.  I have learned that it is a good thing to try things that are difficult. I will learn more if I take risks, try difficult math problems, sound out difficult reading words.
  2. When I make a mistake, there is a way that I can make it better. I have learned that math problems can be corrected, words can be erased and spelled correctly.  If I hurt a friend’s feelings, there is a way to make it up.  My actions have consequences, and I must deal with them, but I can try to correct my mistakes.
  3. This is how a spill is cleaned, I know where the tools are and how to use them.  I have learned that I can be independent. I can take care of things on my own.  I don’t realize that the movement of my arm in wiping the spill, and the fine motor control I exercised in wringing the water out will help me later when I learn to hold a paintbrush and pencil and learn to draw and write.
  4. The whole class has learned a lesson!  All eyes are on the teacher if the water spills, to see how they will react.  There is no scolding, no impatience, no anger.  Only calm and peace.  The rest of the children learn that this is a safe place.  Engage, try, fail, try again, succeed!

still learning after all these years

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Way back in the day of my Montessori career, like early morning, I gave my first talk at an AMS National Conference. So long ago that it wasn’t yet called the Montessori Event!. I’ve added an exclamation, but perhaps that’s how it’s supposed to be spelled and pronounced now? In any Event (see what I did there?), that year it was in Chicago and my rather ambitious topic was “Zen and the Art of Montessori Teaching”. Leading up to the presentation I had nightmares, envisioning a group of saffron-robed Buddhists shouting me down as “not knowing what I was talking about”.  As I was barely thirty-years old at the time, those dream monks may have had a valid point. The main thrust of the talk was how difficult it was to stay present as a classroom teacher, to stay in the moment, to stay in the “now”. How difficult it was to maintain a “beginner’s mind”, a concept explained beautifully in Shunryu Suzuki’s seminal book, “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind”. The idea being that often it is our younger and less experienced teachers that bring a more valid view to a classroom, a child, a material. They are unburdened and unshackled from preconceived notions of an area of the environment, or the behavior of a child.  “We can’t put the group circle there, because I’ve tried that before and it didn’t work”. “That intervention won’t work for them, because I had a student just like that before and it didn’t work”. It could well come to pass that a new teacher tries something and observes the result to be disastrous, but at least it fails on its own merits. There’s honesty there. My presentation concluded along the lines of keeping yourself open to new visions, strategies, concepts, children, because truly we never experience the exact same classroom twice, even moment to moment. In more modern, more trendy language, it would probably translate to “keep and cultivate a growth mindset”, but I like “beginner’s mind” better.

This past week, I gave a series of webinars online, at the request of Alison’s Montessori; the subject being Geometry at the Elementary Level. Included in the many materials I presented, was the Triangle Drawer of the Geometric Cabinet, specifically, The Sum of the Interior Angles of a Triangle. It’s one of my favorites. Tracing the Seven Possible Triangles in the Universe, children color the angles in red, cut them out, and lay them angle to angle to angle, showing they form a straight line, a straight angle, 180 degrees. It  illustrates quite elegantly the difference between a traditional school experience, starting with the answer and those dry “If…. When” statements from 9th grade Geometry textbooks, and a more constructivist model in a Montessori classroom, done when the student is ten years younger and ten years more interested in Geometry. Not wanting to reveal in great detail just how old I am, I have probably given that presentation a few hundred times to both children and adult learners. It’s hard to hold on to that beginner’s mind when your mind could probably do that lesson and check email at the same time (Important Note: I didn’t do that). “Are there any questions?”, one politely asks the group at the end of any lesson. I was only mildly flummoxed when a teacher asked, “Why?”.  “Why do we show this lesson?”, I replied.  “No, why do the interior angles add up to 180 degrees?”  My brain rolodex started to spin… surely I knew the answer to this question… had no one ever asked me such an eloquently simple thing? Much like the Grinch when he attempts to assuage Cindy Loo Who (who was no more than two), I fumbled a bit, drawing circles around each angle… in the end admitting that I was botching the whole thing quite royally. Sigh. The next day, it was off to the Internet to find the answer.  My son, Elijah, famously (at least in our family) stated that “if you have a question, someone else had the same question”. Sure enough, there were a great many sophisticated geometry websites that gave various ways to prove the theorem, but I was looking specifically for one that could be adapted to a Montessori material. I was very satisfied to find one, using the congruency of alternate interior angles, which is a separate Montessori presentation, in the proof. Rapture! I eagerly awaited the next evening’s webinar to show the group (see photo below). It’s debatable who was the most excited, me or the webinar participants!

Dismay at not knowing the answer to the initial question quickly evaporated, to be replaced by a much more comforting thought that there are still things to be learned, still lessons to be revealed, even within experiences we’ve lived over and over.

montessori and the need for activity

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Maria Montessori was a scientist interested in psychology and the unfolding of the adult through childhood.  Pedagogy, and mathematics came second.  This is an important point; her primary interest was in the process of learning, not in any one specific area. How did the physical environment as well as the human environment affect education?

When she was given the opportunity to work with children, she soon discovered that their greatest need was for activity.  She first gave the young children materials, sensorial materials, and the language associated with those objects, the red rods, the pink tower, etc…  Ever the scientist, the observer, she noted that they retained very little of the concept, and “met her with blank stares”. (honestly, I’ve had my share of those reactions over the years as well).  So instead, she simply showed the children the activity itself, the sorting, the discrimination of size or shape or color.  And? The children understood!  And Dr. Montessori understood as well.  Create manipulative materials that isolate a concept. Give the child exact instructions on how to use it, and later, but only later, will the child be responsive to language, the word lessons. Pondering upon the phenomenon, Dr. Montessori realized that 3 important things had occurred, always starting with activity: “formation of the subconscious knowledge”, “point of consciousness”, and “indirect preparation”.


The formation of the subconscious knowledge is the accumulation of impressions not consciously registered, but stored in the subconscious- An illustration of this is a person who, having for many years walked through a woods on the way to work, certainly had stored the impression of innumerable leaves. Yet he might have paid no attention to the difference between a lobed and a smooth/even Ieaf, A casual remark from a botanist would bring the difference immediately into focus. Why? because the knowledge was already there subconsciously. But if the Iong experience with leaf-impressions had not been there, would the botanist’s remark have aroused such immediate understanding? Yet something is needed to build a subconscious knowledge into the light of  consciousness’ It may be a spontaneous sudden realization, or a word after years of sub- conscious experience: a point in a Iong line that stretches into miles!

“So”, she reasoned, “this point oI consciousness can come either spontaneously or it may be provoked purposefully or otherwise”‘The indirect preparation was the unconscious or purposeful incorporation in an attractive experience of items which will prepare an ability necessary for a future task.

“Sensitive periods” were her next discovery  During these, at a determinate age, certain activities had an irresistible attraction but left indifferent younger or older children. Though the attraction lasted for a limited period, while it lasted, it made young children very eager to Iearn. This eagerness garnered Dt. Montessori a lot of criticism and misunderstanding on the part of pedagogues and psychologists who accused her of forcing children oI a tender age to do things which older children found difficult and distasteful. The greatest misunderstanding was, and arguably still, is in the field of the acquisition oI mathematical knowledge.

A few of things to keep in mind. Dr. Montessori was not interested in teaching children any particular subject. So she did not specially try to “teach mathematics”. Her interest was in the child itself and the task she imposed on herself was to try to discover the process of the natural development of the child in its various aspects. She prepared an environment which contained objects the use of which caused the children to arrive at an abstraction. The children were of mixed ages, 3 years at least, and the different groups {three to six, six to nine, etc.) were in communicating rooms so that the children could circulate from one to the other. There was no time-table as {ar as subject-teaching was concerned so that children could remain practicing the same subject for an indefinite length of time. This gave them the possibility of storing a subconscious knowledge which culminated into a conscious realization at a certain

Montessori discovered that abstraction was the result of individual experience and the time involved in reaching it vaded with the individuals. Also, the interest in the exercise was determined not by the efforts of the teacher, but by the sensitive period of the child. And finally, the materials she gave the children contained either an indirect preparation for something to come in the future, or the possibility of bringing into the light oF consciousness certain items which the child already possessed in the subconscious.

The basis of mathematics for children is counting.  Associating symbol to quantity. It was logical to conclude that the next step would be to continue with I l, 12, 13 and this D/. Montessori did for many years until one day when by chance children of this age were present at a lesson given to seven year olds with materials which presented in concrete form the working of the decimal system. The seven year olds were luke-warm, but surprisingly the younger ones showed great enthusiasm. In a day or two, they had gained possession of the materials and brought it to their room. This was another example oI the sensitive periods: what Ieft the older children more or less indifferent aroused intense interest in the younger ones.

the deep roots of montessori

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I spent much of my summers, when I’m not with my family, presenting some of the same materials, and working with teachers in different parts of the world.  From public charter schools in South Carolina, to a village in Ghana where pencils are shared, from an orthodox Jewish Montessori school in Chicago to Shanghai

To say that it impresses upon me the universality of Montessori would be an understatement.  And so I’ve spent some time thinking about what it is about this method of education that is so adaptable across time, over a hundred years, and space.  I think part of the answer is that at its core, Montessori is a reflection of humanity’s most essential components.

It is rooted in movement.  We see this clearly in the materials and the nature of the environments.  Ours is a dynamic space.  Movement is engaged, both gross motor, as works are chosen and replaced, and fine motor, exchanging one stamp for ten, one bead for ten, forming quadrilaterals from triangles.  “Children”, Montessori reminds us, “learn through their hands”.   Movement is also rooted in our humanity.  When we need to express our deepest emotions, are words ever adequate?  What conveys comfort better than an embrace?  What communicates affection more clearly than the stroke of a cheek?  We are born to movement.  Our first breath is movement.  Movement makes us human.

It is rooted in imagination.  Our children place a thousand stamp and see, in their mind’s eye, a thousand cube.  A piece of string becomes a line that never ends, moving to infinity in either direction. Globes become worlds. Look around you, for worse but mostly for the better, everything we have created as humans was created through imagination.  Montessori likened us to Robinson Crusoe, wresting material from the Earth to meet our needs, using our greatest tool, our imagination.  It is what moves us forward with hope, envisioning a future better than the present, better than our past.  “If there is to be change in the world”, Montessori reminds us, “it will begin with children.”

It is rooted in love.  There is no greater lesson in a Montessori classroom than the value of compassion.  The care of our environment comes from a love of order.  The care of each other comes from our love of community.  We could even say that the child’s inner drive to refine, to learn, to grow, is derived from love, because isn’t self-respect and esteem a loving and caring process of our future self?  

And we have all chosen to make this our life’s work.  Now think of the circumstances that have led to this moment.  My parents, one from Germany, the other from America, had to meet for me to be born, and their parents and their parents parents and so on, from Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Austria, Germany.   We are all, then at the apex of a great triangle.  The circumstances and events that led to this moment, repeated for all of us, then gives us the idea, not of a triangle, of a great cone, stretching out behind this moment, and focused right here, right now, as you read these words.  If we look ahead, doesn’t the same shape appear to us?  The events in our lives, planned and unplanned, woven with others, expand out away from us as will our descendants.  A cone behind, cone ahead. That’s what makes our work, in each passing moment, so important.

montessori and haggadah

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My introduction to Montessori came decades ago, nearly four of them and counting.  My introduction to Jewish Montessori schools came only in the last, as of this summer, when a small Montessori school in Baltimore asked for assistance in launching an Elementary level. Jewish Montessori schools?  Who knew?  Well, actually, my ignorance belied the number of schools that were thriving, and continue to grow, both in North America and around the world. It made me curious as to the how and why does Montessori integrate so well with the Haggadah, the classic Judaic guide to education.  Disclaimer: I once gave a talk at an AMS conference entitled, “Zen and the Art of Montessori Teaching”.  Prior to, I was dogged by the nightmare of seeing a half-dozen saffron-robed priests in the back, shaking their heads at my misconstruction of basic tenets of Buddhism.  Gratefully they did not materialize.  I say this now, because the image of a dozen rabbis and morahs, reading this and clucking their disapproval has entered my mind!

The Haggadah, literally “telling”, is an annual part of Pesach (Passover), the narrative of  Exodus. It is timeless in that there is no sense of completion, no expectation that once it is learned, the student is done.  Quite the opposite, as the child grows older, they understand more, as they become an adult, they approach the story with new eyes, when they start their own families, and take on new roles, the tale resonates deeper.  In short, the Haggadah is life-long, and Judaism values life-long learners.  As Montessorians we also understand how the pedagogy fosters life-long learners. The importance of a prepared environment as an instrument to foster curiosity, hands-on materials for experiential learning, and the development of intrinsic motivation that comes from long uninterrupted work cycles in multi-age classrooms. These are traits we hope get carried far beyond a graduation ceremony.

Further, the Haggadah, and one could argue much of Judaic studies is based less on the answers the child gives, but more the quality of the questions they ask.  Specifically, there are steps of the Seder that are different during Passover. Why is it different?  Exactly!  That’s the point, to challenge the norm and the expected, to make an impression and elicit questions rather than provide an answer.  If this sounds familiar to us as Montessori educators, we need look no further than our array of impressionistic lessons designed to provide not explanation, but to spark interest. We will even borrow from Socrates (more on him later), when we say that in Montessori education it is the lighting of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.

Aside from specific questions asked at this holiday, there are also identified four types of questions, and in some writings, four types of children that ask them. One child asks a question that reveals their understanding while another asks a question without regard to the answer. In both cases, we have an engaged child. A third child cannot phrase their question; we can’t discuss it, because they can’t articulate it.  A fourth child asks no questions and has no interest. Think back to the last lesson you gave, whether it was geometry, language, or division of fractions. Did you have all four of these children around the rug?  I feel like all I ever had were some combinations of that engagement over the years! It led to some lively discussions and should remind us that without questions to precede (and proceed), our students are not ready to learn.

As Montessorians, we use the term Socratic Method, to describe our lessons.  We move our presentations along by asking questions.  In fact, I often encourage my adult learners to see if they can give a lesson using only interrogative sentences (and their hands behind their back), or at least have the idea in mind as a discipline.  In reality however, it’s not the teacher giving the question that should take precedence. Why? Because we know that if we give information, especially in a review,  “Remember this is an adjective”, we can’t be confident that this is a piece of information the  children knew (any self-respecting Elementary child will confidently nod their head regardless).  We might perhaps ask, “What is this?” in classic Three-Period Lesson style.  But let’s look a bit deeper. Really, if we ask a question and the child answers (THAT kid, most likely), what have we learned? Perhaps a more insightful method would be one that asks not for an answer, but for their questions.  Could we garner engagement like, “Why is that an adjective?” or “Why are there only seven possible triangles in the universe?”  “Why are all these civilizations by rivers”?  And if we did, isn’t that a better gauge of a child’s development?