Hello my friends of the Omschool. As a special needs and Montessori teacher, I learned (yes, adults can learn too) that educating wasn't about force-feeding facts into students to regurgitate. It's about fostering organic learning experiences and facilitating connections among resources. Said simply, I as a teacher don't have to have an answer for every question. I just need to help children learn how and where to look to find them.
Montessori is very different from traditional models where the teacher dispenses wisdom and the student consumes it. In Montessori (and I believe all education systems done right) the student is as a teacher as the adult standing at the front of the classroom. And having said that, you won't find a Montessori teacher lecturing from a podium. In her role as facilitator, she sitting on the floor at the student's level, quietly observing, perhaps contributing a thought, encouraging and affirming the learning that is happening as the child interacts with materials, examining and exploring.
And that brings me to a key point about a Montessori-based classroom: it's not rows of desks but a prepared environment with interest centers (called in other disciplines "learning centers."). There are outcomes and objectives but they are somewhat plastic in that each student reaches them at his own pace and timeline. The facilitator doesn't dictate learning (that's actually impossible) so much as provides opportunities for students to experience it.
She curates spaces that foster independent student-led exploration of specific hands-on materials to achieve certain mastery outcomes. An example is using map puzzles to memorizes countries of Asia. Maps are self-correcting (aka self-checking) with names listed on underside of puzzle piece. Only the student knows which he answered correctly and which he didn't. And from experience, I can tell you that this one thing is probably the single biggest motivator to do his best.
Think about it. When we adults feel pressured or monitored or critiqued (a fancy euphemism for criticized, found fault with) we do not do our best. We get nervous and hypervigilant for fear, not only of failure but of having that failure seen, shamed and broadcasted. We live in a climate of competitive one-upmanship, where winning take precedence over learning. We pit students like dogs in a ring fighting over one prize bone. No model could be further from authentic, genuine learning.
Montessori takes more of a developmental approach, and not the box-ticking kind. Development is best understood as coincident and proximodistal, both physically and metaphorically. The child grows from the inside out, from trunk to extremities AND multiple coincidental growth processes are happening all the same time. She's learning to talk, walk, use a potty, count, read all at once. Some children spend more time in a certain area than another area. It's not right or wrong, it's just individual. And suffice it to say that there's a lot going on inside a child that we know nothing about.
Several of my children and now grandchildren are considered "on the autism spectrum" and "speech delayed" (so much wrong with that term delayed, as if they were trains on a schedule). However all demonstrate off the charts mathematical and ironically language abilities. Speech and language are NOT the same thing nor are verbal and receptive language.
One had receptive (meaning can comprehend and understand, also not the same) language skills to rival adults, at two. She could remember complex chains of ideas and had entire stories memorized. Another was reading and spelling words and rattling off math equations at 3. Still another 3 y/0 could build Legos geared for ages 7 and up. None of them spoke much. They have such a rich interior world that spoken language is superfluous. Another grandchild refused to walk till 18 mo. old but his knowledge of trains and music was encyclopedic. And he walks now.
They also have good parents who don't insist they do what they aren't ready (or just don't have time) to do. And yet, in parent circles, look how often parents to compete over their child's developmental markers, such as speech or when she walks. As if these are the only skills that matter. They're not They're just the most measurable. And sadly that's what doctors, educators, child development specialists focus too much on: percentiles, checking boxes and plotting children on graphs. Because we do like our charts. It gives us a false sense of control.
However, the student's progress is or should be, private. It's no one's business if it took him 2 or 20 times to master the map. Or learn to walk or say words. I believe that, sadly, this need we have to nose in, can be detrimental to growth. Now, that said, there is some benefit that ASD kids get services through early intervention. But I do wonder how much intervention is interference. I don't have the answers.
But I will always advocate for student versus teacher-led objective meeting. Because as I said earlier, research and experience bears out untold value to students taking ownership over learning instead of just being herded like sheep through content. And there's never a good reason for competition in the classroom. It is counter-intuitive to post scores on the chart of shame, for all to see. How does it help anyone to know that Briana got a C because she forgot that Azerbaijan is east not west of Armenia?
With no one hovering over him, advising and measuring his progress, the student is empowered (in a system which has generally de-powered) and feels a cogent reason to do his personal best. I've watched that happen time and again in my career. And it is beautiful.
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