Montessori in Action

Building Resilient Montessori Schools

Elizabeth G. Slade

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781119763130
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Métodos de enseñanza de la educación

Join the Revolution! Build aresilientMontessorischool

MontessoriinAction: BuildingResilientMontessoriSchools deliversapractical and actionablemethodto providea strongMontessori experiencefor all children, families and educators. The first of its kind, this book offers readers a collection of modern and concrete ways tobuild an equitable and resilientMontessoriprogram, 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
• Sharingways to create a culture of honest conversation based on the values of growth and clarity
• Offering waysto build strong and resilient systems that will engage the whole community and yield results

Perfect for Montessori educators and administrators of all kinds, MontessoriinAction will support educators intaking action! This book provides structures, tools andtimetables tostrengthen and improve schools. Itwill 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.

PART I
Introduction

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 ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Land Acknowledgment
• About the Author
• Preface
• PART I: Introduction
• PART II: One School
• PART III: Honest Talk
• PART IV: Strong Systems
• PART V: Take Action
• References
• Index
• End User License Agreement