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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
Join the Revolution! Build a resilient Montessori school Montessori in Action: Building Resilient Montessori Schools delivers a practical and actionable method to provide a strong Montessori experience for all children, families and educators. The first of its kind, this book offers readers a collection of modern and concrete ways to build an equitable and resilient Montessori program, by discussing topics like: * Working within the unique, complex ecosystem of Montessori to build a unified community empowered to serve the mission of the school * Sharing ways to create a culture of honest conversation based on the values of growth and clarity * Offering ways to build strong and resilient systems that will engage the whole community and yield results Perfect for Montessori educators and administrators of all kinds, Montessori in Action will support educators in taking action! This book provides structures, tools and timetables to strengthen and improve schools. It will also earn a place in the libraries of the parents of Montessori children who desire to create and maintain an equitable environment that benefits all students, regardless of their background.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Land Acknowledgment
About the Author
Preface
PART I: Introduction
NOTES
Chapter 1: Why Build a Resilient School?
CHILDREN AND FAMILIES
SCHOOL‐BASED ADULTS
THE WIDER COMMUNITY
CORE ELEMENTS
COMPONENTS
NEW WORLD
SUMMARY
NOTE
Chapter 2: Constructivist Thinking
BEHAVIORIST APPROACH
CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACH
FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE
WHOLE‐SCHOOL MONTESSORI CONSTRUCTIVISM
SUMMARY
NOTES
Chapter 3: Equity
OVERVIEW
SHARED COMMITMENT
DOING THE WORK
RESTRUCTURING
SUMMARY
NOTES
Chapter 4: Coaching
TEACHER IDENTITY
MONTESSORI COACHING
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE WHOLE‐SCHOOL MONTESSORI METHOD
STRONG IMPLEMENTATION OF THE MONTESSORI PROGRAM
TRANSFORMATION OF THE MONTESSORI EDUCATOR
SUMMARY
NOTES
PART II: One School
NOTES
Chapter 5: Calibrate
ECCO
WEEKLY MEETINGS
NEW WORLD CONSIDERATIONS
ROLE CLARITY
APPRAISALS
NEW WORLD CONSIDERATIONS
NOTES
Chapter 6: Organize
OBSERVATION: THE PREPARED ENVIRONMENT
SCANNING
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: THE PREPARED ADULT
NEW WORLD CONSIDERATIONS
FAMILY ENGAGEMENT: SERVING THE WHOLE CHILD
NEW WORLD CONSIDERATIONS
ONE SCHOOL SUMMARY
NOTES
PART III: Honest Talk
NOTE
Chapter 7: Nourish
THE FUNDAMENTAL NEEDS OF THE MONTESSORI EDUCATOR
REFLECTIVE AND DIRECTIVE COACHING
COACHING CONVERSATION SUMMARY
NEW WORLD CONSIDERATIONS
NOTES
Chapter 8: Validate
LANGUAGE OF REVERENCE
COMMUNICATION TOOLS
NEW WORLD CONSIDERATIONS
YEAR‐END REFLECTION
HONEST TALK SUMMARY
NOTES
PART IV: Strong Systems
Chapter 9: Engage
SEAMLESS TRANSITIONS
LATE TRANSITIONS
TRANSITIONING OLDER STUDENTS
NEW WORLD CONSIDERATIONS
SEAMLESS TRANSITION SUMMARY
STUDENT PORTFOLIO
SYSTEM OF JUSTNESS
MONTESSORI IMPLEMENTATION
THE NAUTILUS APPROACH
NEW WORLD CONSIDERATIONS
CHILD STUDY
SYSTEM OF JUSTNESS CONCLUSION
NOTES
Chapter 10: Yield
ONBOARDING
NEW WORLD CONSIDERATIONS
RECORDKEEPING
DATA REVIEW
STRONG SYSTEMS SUMMARY
NOTES
PART V: Take Action
NOTE
Chapter 11: Steps to Building a Resilient Montessori School
IMPLEMENTATION RUBRIC
IMPLEMENTATION PLAN
COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE
NOTES
Chapter 12: Resources to Support
WHOLE‐SCHOOL MONTESSORI METHOD CHECKLIST
ONE SCHOOL
HONEST TALK
STRONG SYSTEMS
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 5
Table 5.1 Sample Teacher Meeting Schedule
Table 5.2 Professional Standards for Virtual School
Chapter 7
Table 7.1 Coaching Situations
Table 7.2 Elements of Coaching Conversations
Chapter 8
Table 8.1 Language of Reverence Chart
Table 8.2 Language of Reverence Chart
Table 8.3 School Communication
Chapter 9
Table 9.1 Seamless Transition Overview
Table 9.2 Sample Transition Timeline
Table 9.3 New World Transition Overview
Table 9.4 Examples of Indicators of Progress
Chapter 10
Table 10.1 Whole‐School Montessori Method Onboarding Process
Table 10.2 Hiring Process Summary
Table 10.3 Whole School Montessori Method Onboarding Process
Table 10.4 Data System Overview
Part V
Table PV.1 Whole School Montessori Method Overview
Chapter 11
Table 11.1 Whole‐School Montessori Method Implementation Plan
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 How the Core Elements Live Inside the Components.
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1 Montessori Equity Core Elements
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1 Work of the Montessori Coach.
Chapter 6
Figure 6.2 Montessori Triad.
Figure 6.3 Sample Shared Observation Tool.
Part III
Figure PIII.1 Communication Theory Graphic of Johari Window Model.
Figure PIII.2 Lid of the Montessori Binomial Cube.
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1 Fundamental Needs of the Montessori Educator.
Chapter 8
Figure 8.8 Year‐End Team Reflection Example.
Chapter 9
Figure 9.3 Chart of Students for Each Classroom.
Figure 9.4 Example of Student Choices for Portfolio Work.
Figure 9.6 System of Justness Overview.
Figure 9.7 The Nautilus Approach Image.
Guide
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Land Acknowledgment
About the Author
Preface
Begin Reading
References
Index
End User License Agreement
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MONTESSORI IN ACTION
Building Resilient Montessori Schools
ELIZABETH G. SLADE
Copyright © 2021 by Elizabeth G. Slade. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per‐copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750‐8400, fax (978) 750‐4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748‐6011, fax (201) 748‐6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data is Available:
ISBN 9781119763123 (paperback)ISBN 9781119764953 (ePDF)ISBN 9781119763130 (ePub)
Cover Design: WileyCover Image:©TetianaLynnyk/Shutterstock
For Bella
Who prompts me daily toward the work of finding and making meaning.
Acknowledgments
This work was born out of the experience of working with many amazing people in my time as a school‐based Montessorian, and I am grateful for their commitment and drive. There are three school leaders during that time who offered me a chance to bring my full self to the work: Alan Feldman, Analida Munera, and John Freeman. You shaped my thinking about bringing the work of Montessori to the whole school, and I learned a great deal from each of you. Alan, thank you for sharing One School, Honest Talk, and Systems to support what we do as a frame for how we all might create something sturdier together. Analida, thank you for the opportunity to explore the yet unnamed parts of a whole school Montessori method. John, thank you for your partnership in implementing visions and for taking many big leaps together.
There were also three extraordinary Montessorians who walked alongside me during that time: Sandra Wyner Andrew, Gretchen Courage, and Uma Ramani. You were collaborators in developing this work, as you each brought the long arc of your experience and love of the method into the public sector. Thank you for the coaching you offered me regularly and for holding such a clear vision even in times of chaos.
I am humbled by the hard work done daily by public Montessori teachers and grateful for the trust of those I worked with over the years. Thank you for continuing to return to the essence of our calling: to serve the child.
In addition, there were many learners along the way who showed me what was needed and some who patiently coached me, including Jaquan, Maria, Edgar, Osvaldo, Mya, Dreshaun, and Kayla. Your willingness to engage in honest talk supported my learning and led to the big idea of sharing it widely.
I want to acknowledge the great impact working for the National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector (NCMPS) for six important years had on me. Thank you to Jackie Cossentino and Keith Whitescarver for giving me the opportunity to work with an organization taking these ideas to a national scale, offering them to school leaders and public Montessori schools of various means and in various settings. Thank you to the team at NCMPS, who engaged in ongoing conversations about the work with “strong beliefs, lightly held.”
There have been many school collaborators along the way but three whose ears perked up and who boldly implemented these ideas from the start and thus further developed them. Thank you to these three original school collaborators who listened, trusted, questioned, refined, and made better almost everything in this book: Michelle Boyle, Megan Hubbard, and Hannah Richardson. We worked closely together for five years, enjoying annual summer retreats to reflect and improve upon what had been implemented the year before. I learned an enormous amount through our work together, and these ideas would have remained just that without your determination and hard work.
Katie Rucker, Peggy Johnson, and Kisha Young and the full staff at Moore Montessori are also collaborators who started their school based on the whole school Montessori method and continue to forward the work each day with children, staff, and families. Thank you for your big hearts and strong push to reach every child, reflect, regroup, shore each other up, and go back to make it stronger so that everyone might thrive.
My great gratitude goes out to the original think tank that resulted in the development of the system of justness – Genevieve D'Cruz, Bobby Johnson, and Allison Jones – as well as the practitioners I worked alongside in schools – Gail Ameral, Marla Dakin, and Luis Lumpris. Your quiet, consistent, and ongoing work to create equitable education through your daily work with key children was inspiring and the work grew from your gifts and insights.
The words and pages became a book with help from Christine O'Connor, Tom Dinse, Kristi Bennett, Mackenzie Thompson, Riley Harding, and the whole team at Jossey‐Bass/Wiley. In addition, Katie Brown supported the ongoing research needed to make the work more robust.
I was fortunate to have some generous readers who spent time with this book as it was forming. Thank you to Michelle Boyle, Natalie Celeste, Teresa Chan, Alan Feldman, Allison Jones, Jacqui Miller, Jana Morgan Herman, Isaac Price‐Slade, Hannah Richardson, and Sandra Wyner Andrew for your thoughtful review of these pages and for your suggestions to strengthen and improve them.
I'd also like to acknowledge the love and faith of my family as I gave precious minutes of our family time to various elements of the work over the course of my children's younger years. You spent summer hours scootering in empty schools, salvaged materials from dumpsters, cut laminated materials, and generously shared me with the work. May I return the favor as you find your life's work and turn your energy toward it.
Finally, this book would not exist without My Dear Associate, who saw me through Bella's death and steadied me to continue the work when I wasn't sure I would be able to. Your passion for creating an accessible, powerful Montessori experience for everyone inspired me to get back up. Your vision for what was possible moved me out of my comfort zone and deeper into making it real. Your belief in human flourishing continues to motivate me daily.
Land Acknowledgment
The ideas shared in this book were born and cultivated in western Massachusetts, home to the Agawam and the Nonotuck, two of many Indigenous groups from Kwinitekwa, the Connecticut River Valley. This book was largely written in Belfast, Maine, overlooking the Penobscot Bay, home to the Penobscot tribe of Abenaki people. “The federal government's Indian Removal policies wrenched many Native peoples from our homelands. It separated us from our traditional knowledge and lifeways, the bones of our ancestors, our sustaining plants – but even this did not extinguish identity,” writes Robin Wall Kimmerer in her extraordinary book Braiding Sweetgrass. This land acknowledgment is placed here as a way to reconnect with the bones of our ancestors, to honor the land we inhabit, and to remind us to illuminate the identities of all those in our communities. I am grateful to the land and all that it has offered me in support of this work, to the Indigenous people who cared for it, and in particular to the wise Venerable Dhyani Ywahoo, who has guided and reminded me that we are all interconnected.
About the Author
Elizabeth Slade has been a Montessori educator for 35 years. She worked in both Springfield Public Schools and Hartford Public Schools building public Montessori programs, implementing systems to support all children, and developing the art of Montessori coaching. For six years, she worked at the National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector supporting school start‐ups, designing Child Study trainings, and bringing the Montessori coaching method to hundreds of schools across the country. Elizabeth is a founder of Public Montessori in Action, a nonprofit organization with a mission to ensure fully implemented Montessori for children, families, and educators of the global majority.
Preface
For the past 35 years I have lived inside the world of Montessori, in independent and public schools, in rural and urban areas. I found ground there that has formed me into the person I've become, and it continues to change me. I imagine by the time this book is in print I will be yet another iteration of myself with revisions to what I've shared here and still more ideas sprouting. This is the nature of impermanence and the beauty of having spent a life aligned with a method that encourages self‐discovery and a commitment to bringing what we have to emerging conundrums.
My Montessori journey began in Washington, D.C., in 1986 when I entered the Washington Montessori Institute and found a new way of education – one that spoke to me as a diverse learner and made sense as a way to honor the dignity of each person. I went on to teach 6–12‐year‐olds in Montessori parent–teacher co‐ops for the next 13 years. The students of that time taught me a great deal about learning. My training prepared me to use observation as a basis for adjusting my approach to everything, so I watched and learned. I learned about building and being part of a community, about the power of honest and open conversations and of the importance of systems to guide us in our work. The children who taught me these early lessons have their signatures in much of the work shared.
In 1999, the first public Montessori school – Alfred Zanetti School – opened in my home state of Massachusetts, and I was then introduced into a wider world of Montessori implementation. I was invited to support district teachers with six weeks of Montessori training as they worked to begin Montessori classrooms in a school that had previously been a traditional K–5 program. The Zanetti school ended the previous year in June as a standard district school and opened in August as a Montessori school with multi‐age classrooms and hands‐on materials spanning children's house, lower elementary, and upper elementary. The whole community was in the midst of a radical shift. When I think back on those early days, I see now my role as a translator supporting the transition from an old way of being into a new way of being for adults and children alike. I also see that an enormous amount of energy was spent on inventing the wheel. Unlike in my career as a classroom teacher, when I had shifted schools and was able to bring the knowledge forward to the next setting with established systems in place, in this situation we had no schoolwide systems to rely on: we were starting from scratch.
Within three years the school had grown an adolescent program and had a waiting list in the hundreds. This prompted the superintendent to convert a second district school to a Montessori school: the Gerena Community School. The principal, Analida Munera, and I shifted to begin the second school while our colleague Sandra Wyner Andrew remained as principal of Zanetti. Gerena was a larger school with an ever‐changing student population; because it was in an affordable neighborhood, families arriving from the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico would move into homes there and then relocate when their situation improved. Gerena was also built to reunite two neighborhoods divided by the construction of Interstate 91 and so had a public walkway tunnel running through its center. This construction, despite its many liabilities, along with families’ determination and outspokenness showed me the importance of including the community in the work and life of the school.
The learners at Zanetti and Gerena taught me a great deal in those years. Their insights and frequent, often immediate, feedback about the school allowed for the development of more inclusive ways of being. They were the inspiration for the Seamless Transitions work as well as many of the other systems, structures, and practices shared ahead.
When a new superintendent arrived in the district and redistributed the Montessori leadership into traditional programs across the city, I began my work in Hartford public schools. What initially brought me there was the child study process, which I implemented at CREC Montessori Magnet along with Jackie Cossentio and Gretchen Hall. The experience of taking something that had originated as a system in Springfield and implementing it in a new setting helped me understand the power of creating shared language and systems across schools and districts.
From there I brought the child study process to the two other public Montessori schools in the district, which quickly led to a permanent position at Annie Fisher Montessori School as an elementary coach. My work there with John Freeman, the principal, and Uma Ramani, the primary coach, allowed for an opportunity to implement the work begun in Springfield as well as to collaborate and co‐create other missing components necessary to strengthen, support, and guide the work. I had not yet had the experience of working with other Montessori trained leaders with such clear vision and boundless passion for the work and this allowed us to move into full implementation of the method. Up until that time, my work was shaped by the demands of the district and the need to comply with external changes which often meant restrictions or requirements that did not serve the Montessori classrooms. Up until that time, I had known only compromise and the repeated experience of salvaging essential pieces of the program from the influx of new regulations. As a team at Annie Fisher, we focused all of our energy on full implementation of the method without compromise as an opportunity to see if in fact it would create the results we knew were possible. And it did. In our final year together as a team the third and sixth graders at the school were outperforming their district peers.
When I was recruited by the National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector, I joined the team, certain that this work could translate and together we spent the next six years expanding, sharing and implementing the tools, structures, and methods that had grown over the previous 14 years working in New England public Montessori schools.
The six years I spent traveling to schools across the nation brought me to work with some extraordinary people in our wider Montessori community: hard‐working, determined educators who held a shared vision for fully implementing the method in a public setting with free access for children and families. The work has been developed together. The work will continue to be developed together, now including you.
PART IIntroduction
This is what is intended by education as a help to life; an education from birth that brings about a revolution: a revolution that eliminates every violence, a revolution in which everyone will be attracted towards a common center.
—Dr. Montessori, The Absorbent Mind
An introduction is a welcome, intentional way of meeting the new through a connector. As you open this book you are meeting some new ideas and for some perhaps even a new world: the world of implementing Montessori education. Welcome to the revolution! For over 100 years, astute observers of children have known that humans are natural learners, that creativity is as common as dirt, that genius resides in every child, and that when given the chance to flourish the potential for humans to innovate and move ideas forward is infinite. Whether you are an experienced Montessori practitioner or Montessori supporter or just coming to know about this method, you are invited to join the community of educators, families, and advocates for children – a community that holds this truth at its center.
The conventional and prevalent method of education in the United States over these same 100 years posits that learning happens because of the information presented by the teacher to a child. By contrast, the Montessori method emphasizes the child's interactions with a carefully prepared environment as an aid to life. This features individual learning over whole‐group instruction and fosters intrinsic motivation, opportunities for concentration and independence, and the development of executive functioning skills. Although the impact of the method, when well implemented, has been researched and written about, the components of how to effectively implement Montessori at the school level, particularly in the public sector, have yet to be fully clarified. That is the direct aim of this work. This book is meant to serve those who are implementing Montessori: teachers, coaches, school leaders, district officials, or those who would like to begin a Montessori program. It can also be insightful for families wanting to know what goes on behind the scenes at their child's Montessori school.
Dr. Maria Montessori designed her schools to serve all children, but for historical reasons Montessori schools have often been largely reserved for the elite. Although this was neither Montessori's mission nor the context in which the method was initially developed, the majority of Montessori programs in this country are independent schools largely serving families with the means to pay for the tuition‐based programs. There has consequently been no shared method for how to build sustainable Montessori institutions in the public sector. A complex and holistic model like Montessori goes against the grain of our current public education system – one designed to avoid complexity. The Montessori model requires unique autonomies and attention to structures for schools to outlast the passionate people and communities that come together to build them.
Therefore, when public school districts elect to open a district, magnet, or charter Montessori program and, in the absence of guidance, develop the school based on the needs of the other schools in the district, the foundation for the program is already working against its very nature. With a steady growth of public Montessori in this country over the past four decades and a significant rise in recent years,2 this is a growing concern. Now that there are many more schools opening, we need a unified approach to propel the work forward. At its best, the Montessori method itself is unified by a shared understanding of a rigorous approach to personalized learning grounded in carefully chosen materials and the development of community in the classroom. This means children around the world are using the same materials in the same way to move their learning forward. This is an enormous strength that is often compromised in the public sector by the wide variation in the application of the method. If we can come together and share an implementation approach, this will allow for consistency across schools that will then offer equitable Montessori programs to children regardless of background and location. The whole school Montessori method presented in this book is a cohesive approach to implementing Montessori that will build resilient and lasting schools, allowing them to provide high‐quality education for children and families over time.
Montessori educators go through extensive training to understand both philosophy and materials. This means a trained person could go into any Montessori school in the world and locate any Montessori material of their choice. A non–Montessori trained head of school once watched this occur as a visiting presenter requested the constructive triangle box to use in an evening presentation after all the teachers were gone. Not knowing what she needed or where to find it himself, the head of school led her to a nearby classroom. The Montessori presenter stood at the door, surveyed the room, realized it was a primary classroom, located and crossed to the sensorial shelf, and picked up the material. He was astounded. “Have you been here before?” he asked. When she shook her head, he asked, “How did you do that?” as though it were a magic trick.
This is a magic trick we need to be able to do with whole schools. We need to all be so familiar with the shared structures of a Montessori school that we can fluidly step in and keep the strong Montessori classrooms going, keep the vibrant community connected, and continue to serve all children and adults well. What slows us down, often to a halt, in public Montessori schools is the lack of cohesive shared structures that become known and easily used by everyone, fostering independence and a greater sense of agency for all. Instead, each school is innovating its own way, with much reinvention of the wheel and some missing pieces, leaving them vulnerable to systemic disorder that may ultimately threaten the success of the program.
At the writing of this book there are 557 public Montessori schools in the United States3 serving over 150,000 children and growing. In the world of public education, however, Montessori schools are vulnerable to starting and then closing, leaving their materials locked in storage rooms – or worse, in district dumpsters – as they return to a conventional model. This cycle continues, with another school opening elsewhere with the same hopes and promises as the one closed just before it. The pages ahead are less about exploring the underlying causes and more focused on offering an approach that will create healthy environments for all Montessori schools that allow them to thrive.
A school district is a biome, and often Montessori programs are formed within them without considering the distinctive conditions necessary to keep them alive. Districts invest an enormous sum in Montessori teacher education, child‐sized furniture, Montessori materials, and the resources to launch a unique program of hands‐on learning. They do this all without altering the systems and structures the school is expected to function within, forcing a model that is at its core about society by cohesion and personalization of work in a system designed for competition and conformity. These district structures can range from the use of letter‐grade report cards to required learning blocks of time each day to the purchase and distribution of workbooks across grade levels to prescribed time designated for “test prep.” Each small element must be negotiated to preserve the health of the program, and much time and energy is spent in translation.
Many schools open with a solid vision and have early success cultivating a strong teaching community, bringing families together, reaching children, and serving their unique needs. These early days are full of energy, and often these schools generate waiting lists. However, what happens next is often the result of something there all along that has taken time to come to light: the unique ecosystem of the Montessori school is not being served within the biome of the larger school district. Thus, it begins to slowly decline in ways such as losing the three‐year cycle that is a hallmark of this multiyear pedagogy of patience.
This deterioratin is often due to the pressures from annual assessment expectations that public schools are held to. Gains in Montessori elementary classrooms are noted at the end of a three‐year cycle as children complete a sequence of lessons, become conversant with assessment terminology, and bring a greater application of abstract skills rather than at preset age requirements. This grace allows learners to build confidence as they move toward mastery rather than experiencing a rush to catch up or pressure to get answers correct regardless of whether they have ownership over the concepts. Rather than temporary recall resulting from preparing for a test, the goal in a Montessori program is a love of learning that results in permanent understanding and skill mastery.
At first, this decline is invisible. Then, when vital people at the school, who have been managing the dissonance, begin to leave, the deterioration becomes more rapid. Sometimes these schools keep their Montessori name but become traditionalized over time as teachers are hired without Montessori training and, lacking the knowledge of how to use them, Montessori materials begin to leave the classroom. Now the school is still considered a public Montessori school, yet it is not fully implementing the method. When the outcome begin to decline, then, it appears to be the result of the method rather than the hybrid approach to educating children.
This book is about how to support Montessori schools in becoming resilient – withstanding or recovering from difficult circumstances – which means acknowledging that choosing to be a part of a public Montessori school means accepting challenging conditions. Resilient Montessori schools are prepared to respond to the difficult conditions that surround public education in this country and stand solidly for what is best for children. Resilient Montessori schools pull together as a community to openly acknowledge the unique needs of the program and then advocate for them to be met within the larger landscape. Resilient Montessori schools hold clear their designer's original vision and are unwavering in the commitment to implement it fully while knowing that a large amount of creativity and innovation will be needed every day to fulfill this.
Like the method itself, we begin the learning process with a direct aim that gives us a sense of what we will know and be able to do once we are done.
Direct Aim:
Know
that the whole‐school Montessori method (One School, Honest Talk, and Strong Systems) will increase access to Montessori for every person in your community
that the core elements within the method are essential for implementation
Do
+ unification moves that matter
+ honest conversations that lean into what is uncomfortable rather than avoid it
+ strong systems to support resilience, equity, and full Montessori implementation
In 1917, Dr. Montessori said in a lecture in Amsterdam, “We are the sowers – our children are those who reap. To labour that future generations may be better and nobler than we are – that is the task without egotism and without pride. Let us unite in this work then.”1 Here is a call for us to unite in this work and build equitable, resilient schools together through the vision of the whole school as a Montessori prepared environment, the shared value of honest conversations, and consistent use of coherent systems and structures.
In the past decade, I've had the opportunity to work in Montessori schools across the country and have met and collaborated with many talented school practitioners along the way. Many have implemented parts of the whole school Montessori method shared here, which has evolved and refined the ideas. In doing so, they have contributed to this book through their insight and knowledge of what is needed to truly serve each child while holding the larger framework of education in today's world. It is with great gratitude to all those who have contributed to a deeper understanding of how to implement the approach that I offer this work forward to you now.
Note about terms:
There is a wide variety of language used in Montessori schools. Here is a list of terms used in this book with guidance to ensure all readers are clear.
Primary
: Classrooms for children ages 3–6 years. Synonyms: early childhood, children's house
Lower elementary
: Classrooms for children ages 6–9 years. Synonyms: EI
Upper elementary
: Classrooms for children ages 9–12 years. Synonyms: EII
Adolescents
: Classrooms for students ages 12–18 years. Synonyms: middle school, high school, secondary
Key children
: Children who present atypically in the classroom and may need extra support or alterations in the learning environment. By their very nature they provide keys for our own personal transformation. Synonyms: behavior problems, high flyers, sped kids
Teacher, guide
: Used interchangeably throughout the book to mean the classroom adult who is trained in Montessori and leading the class
Assistants:
The other adult in the classroom working in support of the guide. Synonyms: paraprofessional, teaching assistant (TA)
Children, learners, students
: Used interchangeably throughout the book
NOTES
1
.
Everyman,
June 1, 1917. Reprinted in
Maria Montessori – An Anthology
, AMI.
2
. Mira Debs.
Diverse Families, Desirable Schools: Public Montessori in the Era of School Choice
. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2019.
3
. Montessori Census, available at
https://www.montessoricensus.org/
Chapter 1Why Build a Resilient School?
Either education contributes to a movement of universal liberation by showing the way to defend and raise humanity or it becomes like one of those organs which have shriveled up by not being used during the evolution of the organism.
—Maria Montessori, The Formation of Man
There are three main reasons to build resilient schools: the children, the adults, and the wider community. The people who rely on schools as an equitable place for education, and who dream of an environment prepared for dignity in learning, all benefit from schools that are lasting.
CHILDREN AND FAMILIES
Children are at the heart of why schools exist, so creating lasting environments for them is a natural priority. Yet for public Montessori schools there is another element: our commitment to the three‐year cycle. In Montessori schools, classrooms are designed to follow the developmental needs of the learner and so hold three ages. The primary classroom, for example, holds 3–6‐year‐olds who are in what Maria Montessori defined as the first plane of development. This is what she called the absorbent mind stage, where children learn through their senses. Those environments have four basic areas of study: practical life, sensorial, language, and mathematics. Classrooms, outfitted with furniture sized for the child of that age, are intended to provide a safe, culturally relevant learning environment that allows for freedom of movement and guided by the same adults for all three years. In this way the child becomes known by the adults – their individual style, preferences, gifts, struggles, and interests. All of these allow the Montessori‐trained adult to tailor a learning program that will support learners in reaching their highest potential.
In addition, the three‐year cycle allows the school‐based adults to come to know the child's family and to build a lasting connection that develops over time. These trusting relationships serve to unite the adults around the growth and development of the child, allowing the family to rely on and collaborate with the school‐based adults promoting an even greater sense of cohesion. This in turn further supports the child as there is a connection between home and school to see them through whatever events happen in their family life, once again allowing the child to thrive.
SCHOOL‐BASED ADULTS
School‐based adults also benefit from the meaningful relationships built over the three‐year cycle as they become known and seen by both the families they serve and a stable group of colleagues. As an important person in the child's life, they are often kept in touch with, revisited, and even invited to graduations and – if they teach long enough – weddings. They also benefit from an unwavering school community; as people who are committed to Montessori they need public programs where they can work for years. As a member of a staff they are an important person in the school community both coaching and being coached by others as they grow into and through the work together. Their own personal milestones such as having children, losing loved ones, and buying a house are shared and celebrated, allowing a closeness to form over time that offers a network of support both in and out of school. School‐based adults benefit from an unwavering school community; as people who are committed to Montessori they need public programs where they can settle in and stay.
THE WIDER COMMUNITY
The wider community in the world of education also needs resilient schools with a cohesive curriculum, reasonable assessment expectations, and dedicated staff. The vision is to offer a Montessori to the wider community that values each child – to create schools where families can send their child knowing they will be seen and responded to with an education that suits both their developmental needs and their individual needs. Because our national educational system is stressed and struggling, it is ever more important that we build lasting Montessori schools. This is a critical call for social change and one that will have a lasting impact on our world when diverse groups of children are educated to believe in their own ability to make a difference in the world.
There will be a lasting impact when groups of children grow up valuing themselves and each other, with the ability to collaborate and build greatness together. This is the goal of public education in our country that is buried deep inside public policy but has led to misguided ideas of how we measure success. If we are to align and unite in this work, we must be willing to push into public policies that threaten Montessori programs. We must be willing to support the larger educational model in finding new ways, not as a subversive act but as an act of leadership. With over 100 years of experience in a time‐tested method, we have what is needed to turn this country's education system around.
This begins in our own schools, leading by example, thus impacting the system simply by being a part of it. For instance, there is a public Montessori school principal in North Carolina whose state official is asking her about the nautilus approach – the unique Montessori alternative to a discipline policy that you will learn more about in Part Three. The state official visited the school and was impressed by the low discipline numbers and the system that protects against implicit bias by carefully collecting and watching data to ensure there is not an overreferral of children of the global minority. They wanted to hear more about a system based on proactivity rather than reactivity. This one conversation is an opening and was initiated only as a result of the school's good standing.
Our influence can be small and gradual, like the method itself, impacting the larger system of education. However, this can occur only if our schools are still open, still high‐functioning, fully implementing programs that offer strong outcomes for all learners. If we are to be change makers and influencers, we need a long track record based on constancy in the midst of the regular sea of change in public education.
The whole‐school Montessori method offers this opportunity: to begin the task of creating sustainable programs that can serve as a vision for how school can be in today's world. Building a resilient school will serve not only your immediate community but also the wider community of education as we create a lasting model in a larger system. It will accomplish this through preserving the Montessori model that so often suffers when it enters the realm of public schools.
Resilient Montessori schools support children, adults, and the wider community. They allow children to live into their unmanifest potential, that they might come to know their unique contribution and make an impact on the world. Resilient Montessori schools allow adults to settle into a functioning school that supports them in doing the work they are called to do, daily implementing a method with visible results that further galvanize them to continue. Finally, it may be aspirational, yet the wider educational community is seeking leadership. In addition, as people who are working in a method used around the world for over a century, resilient Montessori schools could serve as models and proof points for education centered on children.
CORE ELEMENTS
Just as there are three reasons to build resilient Montessori schools (the children, the adults, and the wider community), there are also three core elements, or critical lenses, for viewing the work of building them:
Constructivism
at the root of the method
Equity
and its role in building resilient schools
Coaching
as a means by which to implement the whole‐school Montessori method
These are explored in the next few chapters, laying the groundwork for reading the rest of the book. They are called core elements because they live at the core of the whole‐school Montessori method not just as a way of thinking but also as a way of acting. Our understanding of these elements offers insight into ways to foster resilience and will generate energy to support implementation of the upcoming components of the whole‐school Montessori method (see the next list). Understanding them will impact every decision made for the school.
Following a whole‐to‐parts sequence, each of the next three chapters opens with an exploration of the larger idea and then focuses specifically on how it applies to Montessori schools and the implementation of the whole‐school Montessori method. These chapters are meant not to explore these topics exhaustively but instead to bring into view the invisible influences on schools through their presence or their absence. Constructivist thinking, equity, and coaching are integrated into an understanding of the larger concepts introduced next.
COMPONENTS
One School
Honest Talk
Strong Systems
Each of the subsequent parts of the book are devoted to one of these components with chapters outlining what it means and how to begin in your school. Together they strengthen the school for it to weather the external changes in education and continue serving children and families. With these in place there develops an inviting world that people are drawn to and want to be a part of for the foreseeable future. For children this means their family or caregivers are content and will not move them to a different school in the midst of their three‐year cycle and that their teacher will also be content and will be there for all three years. For school‐based adults, this means a community where there are meaningful connections, they feel seen and valued, and their work feels consequential. They are part of a team that wants to be there doing this work, and therefore each year the team is able to grow stronger. For you, reader of this book, it means a way forward and a community of practice to support your work building a resilient school.
Figure 1.1 visually captures how the core elements live inside the components. Much like the layers of the earth, the core is at the center offering strength and power. Our earth's core, about the size of the moon, spins faster than the surface. “That solid inner core is growing slowly as the liquid iron in the core cools and crystallizes. This process helps power the churning motion of the liquid outer core, which in turn creates the magnetic field that surrounds Earth and helps protect the planet from harmful cosmic radiation. In other words, the inner core is pretty important.”1 The core is largely responsible for the earth being habitable. The core elements of the whole‐school Montessori method serve the same function for the school.
The components of the whole‐school Montessori method are on the surface. The One School component, the lithosphere, represents the ground beneath us, what holds us steady. The Honest Talk component is the hydrosphere, the fluid way we can be nourished through communication. Water and honest talk are something we all need, and when we have clean water and clear conversations we are healthier. The farthest layer out – the atmosphere – represents Strong Systems, or the air that touches everyone in the school allowing for respiration. Clean air allows us to breathe easily, as do clear systems. School systems, like air, are invisible, and we tend to notice them only when we don't have them.
Figure 1.1 How the Core Elements Live Inside the Components.
NEW WORLD
These ideas are being shared in the midst of a world pandemic that is impacting schools around the globe, asking Montessori educators to create a multiage, hands‐on method digitally for this new world. This is a challenge we must rise to as a community to preserve this unique method. In the process, it is also revealing which elements of the school are strong and which are floundering, nudging us toward a whole‐school Montessori method that allows for unification across schools for this new world in which we find ourselves. Therefore, at the end of most sections there is discussion of new world considerations outlining how to implement each component under these new conditions.
SUMMARY
Montessori in Action: Building Resilient Montessori Schools is organized around three core elements and three components of the whole‐school Montessori method. Part I holds the core elements, and Parts II–IV hold the components. Part IV shares action steps you can take, including a suggestion of a three‐year cycle. What if you took three years to implement the whole‐school Montessori method? What if you shared it with your team and took it on together to implement slowly and intentionally in spite of obstacles that may arise within the district, in spite of the innovations necessary to keep school running virtually? Imagine being able to enjoy the unfolding over time rather than expecting instant gratification. The Montessori method itself is a long game rather than a quick fix, which might be why it persists after more than 100 years. Taking the time to lay the foundation and build it over time means that your school will be there long after you have left, continuing to serve your community of learners with strong Montessori education.
Now imagine that 5000 other Montessori programs are prioritizing these same areas, implementing these same components. In three years’ time, as people's lives changed and they relocated, they could work at a different Montessori school using this whole‐school Montessori method. They could walk into their new school and seamlessly begin to work in the new community while building relationships with staff, children, and families. With some orientation, beginning in their first week they could support the strength of the school like a magic trick. When this happens, schools will no longer be people dependent, losing steam when talented people leave, but rather will continue to thrive under the guidance of another person who shares and understands these common goals and the structures that support them. Then our Montessori schools will be resilient: they will be fortified and prepared to respond to, and recover from, stressors or difficult conditions, lasting beyond our lifetimes to serve countless generations of learners.
NOTE
1
. Stephanie Pappas. “Earth's Core Is a Billion Years Old.”
Live Science
, August 26, 2020.
https://www.livescience.com/earth-core-billion-years-old.html
Chapter 2Constructivist Thinking
We can imagine an adult society organized as a constructive society on the same lines as the children's – that is, along the lines of this naturally cohesive society. Attachment to other people is the first stage, bringing men to work together towards a common goal. It would be good for everyone if society could be constructed like this. But we cannot demand it; it must come from nature. If nature is the base, the construction will be superior, but without this base there can only be an artificial construction, one that breaks down easily.
—Maria Montessori, 1946 London Lectures
If society by cohesion is one of our central ideas then understanding the construction of it is an important framework to explore. As Maria Montessori says in the epigraph for this chapter, having nature as the base will lead to a superior construction. And so she did just that: created a system of education based on nature. As a physician fascinated by biology, Montessori developed a system of education that is adaptive and functions with its environment. Different from many other approaches to education that are linear, Montessori built her method around nature, leveraging the child's relationship with the environment and the interdependence of all the parts. In her article “Montessori as an Alternative Early Childhood Education,” Angeline S. Lillard writes about the dichotomy between approaching education as a linear process or more of a dynamic system: “Montessori was a systems thinker. Like Piaget (who attended at least one Montessori congress and was a President of the Swiss Montessori Society), her background was biological (in medicine), and she approached children with deep appreciation of the body and brain as physical entities responding to and with the environment.”1 Montessori classrooms were thus designed based on the prepared environment as an essential aspect of learning. The children learn from the environment filled with materials, meaningful tasks, plants, animals, and other people. They learn by actively doing rather than passively receiving information. There is a natural interdependence within the three‐year cycle where everyone is learning with and from each other in a manner reminiscent of symbiosis in nature; children are not only free but also encouraged to collaborate. Supporting one another and learning together are expected parts of every day in a Montessori classroom.
Education today approaches the work of learning from a range of perspectives, two of which are behaviorist and constructivist. Before exploring the constructivist approach underlying the Montessori method, it's important to understand the behaviorist approach within which many educators were educated.
BEHAVIORIST APPROACH
Briefly, from an educational perspective, behaviorism, a term first used by John Watson in 1912 and further developed with B. F. Skinner, takes the stimulus–response relationship and applies it to learning. This is the idea that learning happens when there is a proper response to a stimulus, such as correct answers (proper response) to math problems on a worksheet (stimulus). The child then is merely reactive to the conditions in the environment without being expected to take an active role in discovery. The belief is that facts and information are separate from the learner and are something to be acquired. Behaviorism then is focused on the outward behavior or result, situating learning outside of the learner.
Many public schools continue to see the work of education from a behaviorist approach with the teacher central to the children's learning, without whom there would be no learning. Learning is evaluated through tests that illustrate whether the student is able to recall and give back the information they have been given. Motivation to engage in learning is largely external, relying on punishments, rewards, and praise from adults to move a child forward in their education.
CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACH
By contrast, constructivism sees learning as creating meaning from experience. Constructivism has its roots in the work of contemporaries to Montessori. John Dewey, who published his philosophy of education in 1897, took issue with the rote learning of the time, instead promoting learning through real‐life experiences: “True education comes through the stimulation of the child's own powers by the demands of the social situation in which he finds himself.”2 Jean Piaget used the term constructivism in 1967 connected to his theory positing that human intellect evolves through adaptation and organization and that human learning is a transformative process, meaning children do not learn in bits and pieces but rather make sense from whatever information they have and then revise as new information is acquired. Lev Vygotsky brought a social aspect to the theory investigating the development of children's reasoning when by themselves and with a “more competent other.” He is known for establishing the zone of proximal development, illustrating the potential of working with another as opposed to entirely self‐constructing.
