A Montessori Heart

Working in the Garden

2010-05-25T17:02:00.001-07:00

We have three tomato plants in our garden. I bought them at the Dallas Farmer's Market at discount price because they were small and "ugly". With the help of little hands they've doubled in size. Here is one of our very first buds.

Gardening is a new activity for our kids and so are getting on those little gardening gloves!

I let the kids loose in a large dirt area next to our growing things. I ask them to weed and prep it for our soon to be pumpkin patch but they mostly just dig deep holes.

This little three year old loves to be in the garden. She tracks me down every time she pulls out a weed, "Weeeeeeed" she'll squeal.

Weeding is one of the best gardening activities for little children. The weeds take enough muscle to be interesting but not enough to be over-hard. It's lends itself to repitition and is never-ending. The children seem to be on a treasure hunt when they're weeding and when one is weeding the rest will invariably follow. It doesn't hurt that weeding demands the prehensile grasp.

This is a shot of our one cucumber plant. Flower before Fruit.

Making Messes

2010-05-19T20:30:00.000-07:00

One of the most brilliant things a teacher can do is allow her little students to make big, messy mistakes.
At school when the kids paint, the table is invariably marked up. My lead said that we should make one table the "paint table" and tape it down with butcher paper, which will be removed (by the asst.) at the end of the day. I'm getting better at fighting these battles. I told her its a better lesson for the child to scrub up after himself. An otherwise obvious child may then become aware of his affect on the table and seek to control himself.

As the good doctor said, "It is well to cultivate a friendly feeling towards error, to treat it as a companion inseparable from our lives, as something having a purpose, which it truly has." (Dr. Montessori)

Paint and its Consequences

2010-03-23T16:18:00.000-07:00

I had an interesting thing happen to me yesterday at nearly nap time. All the children were down and the light was about to be turned out when from a corner of the room we heard some whimpering. My lead teacher went over to investigate and then called me over. One of our four year olds had gotten into a little bottle of paint (purple--her favourite) from a nearby shelf and the paint was now all over her mat, her blanket, etc. She was obviously upset and had even hid her purple, wet hands underneath her. I coaxed her out of the mess and to the sink. And while we were washing up, my lead and another teacher from a different classroom told me that I shouldn't be nice to the girl because she had done something bad and she should experience the bad consequence of someone being upset with her.

My response was that regardless of how I acted with the child, she had already experienced the natural consequence. She messed with some paint at an inappropriate time and consequently the paint got all over. And then she spent the rest of the day cleaning up the paint from her mat. "What a bother! I'm not doing that again!"

'Tis the Seasons

2010-03-20T13:07:00.000-07:00

As go our usual Saturday mornings, we drove into the city farmer's market for our weekly meat, etc. We were really feeling the cruel flirt of spring as yesterday's bright 70s turned into this mornings rainy 37s. I crab and Joey shrugs, "A lot of cold fronts come through here." Whatever that means.

In our attempt to eat solely upon the local and seasonal fruits of North Texas, we've had to ride out the winter rough with little color in our cupboards, eager for the blues, pinks and reds of warmer weather foods.
As with everything that is a true and loving devotion there is sacrifice and discomfort and pain, even. Joey and I are committed to the true and local yields of Earth and so we suffer the wait because we know it is "worth it."
My sister's family suffer the wait for their little boy, as all the loose ends of his adoption are tied up neatly and as they plan their trip to Ethiopia.
All women who long for their child, whether or not they are pregnant, know all too well a long and often painful wait.

In our attempt to follow seasonal foods, we've fall upon experiencing the Lenten season in a newly raw light. We joyfully suffer and indeed sacrifice the winter with the promise of Easter's bounty. I'd never really associated the Earth's seasons with the Church's seasons before and I am thankful for the new perspective.

I am also thankful that honey is a year-long food.

Saving Myself 19 Dollars

2010-01-31T18:26:00.000-08:00

For a little while, I have been wanting to replace my cramped and glaringly white plastic dish rack with a wooden dish drying rack. I saw one at Target for 20 bucks.
Today I was at a local thrift store looking for loaf pans when "Eurika!" I found a wooden dish drying rack for ONE dollar!
Can you believe the discrepancy in cost?!

If I can avoid it, I'm going to avoid Target.

Happy Child Happy World

2010-01-25T19:34:00.000-08:00

I am currently reading E.M.Standing's biography of Maria Montessori, which should be read by anyone interested in the method (second only to those written by Maria herself). Standing insists that the problem with early education is the terrible relationship between the adult and the child and that the solution exits in the healing of this relationship.
No matter how well built a school is, their low windows and shelves, or how awash with extracurricular activities, the strength of a school is in the happiness of the child and the calm of the teacher.
I know a little school with handmade cards and counters, the bead stair and the like, the hall is drafty and badly lit, but the bond between the teachers and the children is obvious. It is the only school I've visited thus far where a child was generous without restraint and without coercion. One child spent a good part of this morning on a detailed drawing only to give to me, a stranger, before I left.

What's real capability?

2010-01-15T16:56:00.000-08:00

Dr. Montessori writes in The Abosorbent Mind that a successful teacher must have, "a kind of faith that the child will reveal himself through work. She must free herself from all preconcieved ideas concerning the levels at which children may be."

I've had the opportunity to experience the hitches in having such prejudices against a child's age.
Every day after lunch, my lead teacher gathers to her table the older ones to whittle them with "big" worksheets. Once, early in the year, my director had all the almost-six-year-olds into her office for a competence test. She made excuse for the test by saying that when she was a teacher she would push-push-push the kids with difficult work and they would always succeed. It was a geometry worksheet. The child has to read the tiny print directions aloud, label with their own writing the geometric shapes (rhombus, trapezoid, etc.), and answer questions (How many sides does a Pentagon have?). My lead sent along her oldest boy for testing and he did well. He's an affable and disciplined little boy, whose parents own an ice cream shop. A few weeks later, much to our surprise, this boy celebrated his fifth birthday. My lead had thought he was turning six when all along he was turning only five.
So the little four year was pushed-pushed-pushed and accomplished work that wouldn't have been given to him if my lead had realized how young he was.

So when he was pushed he succeeded with the difficult work but do we call this actual success if he was pushed into it? Do we consider him capable of difficult work if he was pushed?

Can he do such work independently? Or must he always be pushed? Is that how we indicate his capabilites?

Things so far

2009-01-28T10:18:00.000-08:00

It turns out that I am not the only one who feels a little lost in the classroom. According to my assistant the previous lead teacher kept slim to virtually non-existent records of the children. In addition to that she was pretty slow in presenting new material to the children and at the same time very strict with them about what they could take from the shelves. So, as a result the children are bored with what they know, ready for anything new, and probably a little nervous about what they can and cannot take from the shelves.

And so we've decided that for the next month or so we need to basically asses the children and present as much new material as we can so that we can both know where the children are.

So far I've been stressed out over all the work that needs to be done and not feeling much up for the challenge. But the grandmother of my oldest girl told me reported something her granddaughter had said that was a big shot in the arm: "I miss Miss R [previous teacher] but then I look at Miss T [me] and I smile."

Transition

2009-01-24T10:09:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I met the woman I am to replace. In a nutshell, she's a traditional K-12 trained teacher whose classroom happens to house a bunch of Montessori materials.
The classroom is just crammed with a lot of useless fluff. Also, the room is pretty small which only exaggerates the fluff problem. There are boxes and boxes of who knows what high up on the cabinets and also (get this!) a stack of the buttoning, tying, etc. frames, totally out of the child's reach. Getting the frames closer to the ground was my first step.

Following this type of teacher presents some good and some not-so-good situations.
On the good side, my director is one-hundred percent supportive. She's great. And about as idealistic as I am. She really wants things to change in the school.

On the not-so-good side, the kids are used to a certain routine with the old teacher. And because its already shock to them that they have a new teacher I don't want to completely revamp everything that's familiar to them.

The classroom will just have to move very slowly towards change.

Surprise!

2009-01-15T14:25:00.000-08:00

Last week, I got a call from the director of my new school asking if I might be able to begin teaching not in June but as soon as possible.

On Tuesday I spent the day with my new students, mostly observing. When the children began their morning work session I was was so confused because every child (with one or two exceptions) were writing away on worksheets or in notebooks. One little girl was happily working out a United States puzzle when the assistant teacher stooped down and asked that she fill out a corresponding worksheet when she had finished the puzzle. I assume that all of this paperwork is because of the parents. Ugh!
Although my director is almost as idealistic as I am and completely supportive of me she told me to pick my battles with the parents and that the homework/worksheet thing might not be worth the battle.

The class has a little ways to go towards being truly a Montessori classroom and I am so excited to get it there albeit with some hard work.

I start as the official lead teacher the last week of the month.

Post Numero Uno

2009-01-04T18:48:00.000-08:00

Dear Cyber Reader,

This little "blog" was born first as a cry for help and second as a place to rest my unwieldy enthusiasm for the Montessori method.

Since October I've been taking training classes and volunteering at a local Montessori school while making ends meet by peddling venti no foam nonfat lattes to the suited VIPS of Dallas.
Its not that I hate Starbucks, its just that I don't think "I'm going places" there. More than anything its about as opposite to the Montessori method as you can get.
But, they give me money twice a month and I can't fault them for that.

Anyway-- I've just been offered my very first teaching position (starting in May) and I'm just over the moon. But I imagine that it'll be a trying year and that I'll learn a lot by my mistakes. I look forward to sharing stories and getting advice from other montessorians; I hope that through the wonderful world of blogging I'll be a even better teacher.

Also, my husband (of 1.5 months thank you very much) told me that someday I ought to publish my Montessori story. And so with that in mind, this blog will work nicely for recording my research and chipping away at that prize-winning novel.

Thanks for stopping by. Come back soon.