Sunday, November 18, 2012

Honoring the Emotional Aspect of the 6-9 Child

Montessori education addresses the whole child, giving equal respect to a child's intellectual, emotional, social, physical, and spiritual needs. Many educational models focus mainly on the intellectual with lesser regard for the feelings, interactions, movements, and insights of students. One of the greatest gifts Montessori parents bestow on their children is honoring the emotional life of their child, letting him/her grow at an individual pace according to his/her strengths and areas of development. Parents and teachers may benefit from remembering Maria Montessori's belief that "it is the child who makes the man, and no man exists who was not made by the child he once was." It is our responsibility as adults to provide structures of routine and consistency, and it is imperative that we also step out of the child's way to allow for his/her own experiences.
Emotionally, the 6-9 child is becoming more independent than s/he was just last year, perhaps demonstrating rebellion against or resentment for what seems like default authority and assumed fact.  As Montessori said, "if an educational act is to be efficacious, it will be one which tends to help toward the complete unfolding of life. To be thus helpful it is necessary rigorously to avoid the arrest of spontaneous movements and the imposition of arbitrary tasks." This might fall under the category of a parent or teacher replying, "because I said so," a statement that children find (understandably) illogical. While the 6-9 child is socially very concerned with justice, emotionally s/he is simultaneously pushing at imposed limits and at times acting "out of character", though what s/he is really doing is developing character by striving toward individualism. 
While the 6-9 child is often concerned socially with belonging, emotionally s/he is chiefly concerned with personal happiness. In the Montessori classroom, social responsibility and emotional peace are balanced by daily, spontaneous problem-solving. The adult serves the child best by helping when needed and asking the child to "find a peaceful solution" or to accept that which s/he cannot change. This is a life skill that many adults still find challenging, yet children are frequently willing to discover a way of their own to make a situation feel better. This demonstrates the familiar declaration of the Montessori child: "I can do it myself," a kind reminder to adults not to intervene unless necessary.
An orderly environment has an emotional impact of great significance on the 6-9 child, who is branching out into a world that can feel scary and chaotic. The Montessori classroom is tailored to the height and viewpoint of a child, not to that of the adult. Work is arranged on low shelves sequentially, with care for beauty and space, so that a child can freely choose materials and use them (after a lesson with a teacher) without further need of an adult. S/he may also repeatedly use the work to encode learning and extend enjoyment, which has a direct impact on his/her happiness. The child feels empowered, free, and successful in the classroom, at times one of the few places in his/her world where s/he is truly trusted. Materials are self-correcting teachers of the child, who uses his/her hands to create understanding within the prepared Montessori environment. As Montessori said, "The children must be able to express themselves and thus reveal those needs and attitudes which would otherwise remain hidden or repressed in an environment that did not permit them to act spontaneously." The Montessori classroom is the child's work space, at all times accessible. 
The 6-9 child is pushing away from family a bit by meeting new people who have different skin colors, beliefs, and behaviors rather than more familiar characteristics. Montessori education values differences as well as similarities, as every child has his/her own personality, learning style, and confidence level. Children learn to look for comparisons between themselves, and Montessori guides encourage positive self-talk, a sense of striving for one's personal best, acceptance of emotions, and helpfulness within the classroom community. It can be a painful time for parents to pull back and allow your child to let go of your hand in order to strengthen his/her own sense of self. At school and at home, consistency and routine are vital to a child’s sense of stability. 
Solid partnerships in the two most important locations of your child’s life make him/her feel secure.  Montessori suggests that "an adult, if he is to provide proper guidance, must always be calm and act slowly so that the child who is watching him can clearly see his actions in all their particulars." Children absorb so much that we do not, having become with age and experience accustomed to our own posture, tone of voice, and volume. Teachers and parents model the behavior they wish to encourage in the child. When adults see a child suffering, we feel an inherent desire to either comfort or control the situation, perhaps recalling the way the child as a baby screamed in the supermarket. We were embarrassed or inconvenienced, but that child is no longer a baby. Truly respecting the 6-9 child involves asking what s/he needs at the time, rather than assuming or jumping instinctually to conclusions. 
Montessori understood that this requires mindfulness and restraint, since for adults "even to help can be a source of pride." We adults feel important when we help children, but children need to feel important by having a voice and a choice in their emotional lives. Often, when given a chance to reflect on his/her emotions, the 6-9 child will find a way to handle a situation that feels appropriate to him/her: taking some time to calm down, eating a snack (to balance blood sugar levels) or drinking water, practicing yoga in the peace corner, or journaling about a problem. Often children verbalize or demonstrate solutions that prove best to themselves, since each person knows best him/herself.
Maria Montessori implored guides trained in her method to avoid making demands of children and to instead use positive language -- telling what one wants rather than telling what one doesn't -- to model problem-solving and encourage emotional strength through words and non-violence. It is interesting, nonetheless, that Montessori admonished adults in two of her most famous sayings regarding students' emotional development: "Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed," and "Do not erase the designs the child makes in the soft wax of his inner life." Montessori students are impressionable people who are learning -- from us, the adults in their lives -- how to balance emotions and express their feelings. Children need to see that adults are not perfect, that we make mistakes, that we feel regret, that we practice courage by apologizing, that we help other people, and that we strive for our own personal best.

Honoring the Social Aspect of the 6-9 Child

Maria Montessori defined planes of development that distinguished the kindergartner from the elementary school-aged child. A main difference was social. Beginning in first grade, a child gradually pulls away from family and toward peers. This shift makes consistency at home and school crucial, since the child is experimenting with cause and effect, rules and consequences, and fairness and justice (which may not always be synonymous) in the two major arenas of his/her life. In the Montessori classroom, the child experiences respect, freedom, and responsibility both to self and to the learning environment comprised of materials, lessons, and classmates of various ages and abilities. 
Socially, the 6-9 child is passionate about justice. At this age, children create mini-societies, microcosms where they can role-play power, status, and competition and feel effects immediately. Our school year begins with a rules assembly, where the societal framework of the Constitution is placed alongside the faculty’s commitment to a mission statement honoring the whole child. School rules are a child’s version of the same expectations for behavior upheld in the larger society, explained with examples and reason. These rules are: respect the rights and needs of others, act in a safe and healthy way, treat all property with respect, and take responsibility for learning. 
Students often discuss at group the logic of these rules, imagine hypothetical (“what if…?”) situations, and work with partners to illustrate them using their hands, hearts, and minds. It is very important that the child understands for him/herself the values of the community, which mainly concern respect, responsibility, and safety. Friendships and belonging are significant at any age, and at the 6-9 level friends can quickly become foes when carefully crafted rules are bent or leaders assert themselves without being chosen. Montessori classrooms are proactive in their approach to social dynamics. Teachers follow the child and respond to needs as they arise. 
We use positive language, exercises in grace and courtesy, peace education, class meetings, and mediation. Conflict resolution is a daily endeavor in all classrooms. Teachers are available to students as guides and models for peace-making, yet the Montessori teacher is not a judge in matters of dispute. We hear concerns and remind children of their own abilities: to tell others how they feel and what they want, to understand the meaning of actions, to ask others about their intentions, and sometimes to apologize and make reparations for the future. Listening skills, the ability to take turns, and a sense of perspective in a consistent three-year cycle bring amazing insights to the 9-year-olds who leave our classes mature and caring individuals.
The 6-9 child enjoys such democratic processes while also exploring morality to understand for him/herself what seems good and what seems evil, and why. The Cosmic Curriculum, the center of study at this age, describes physical and chemical processes that occur without consideration to feeling – such as extinctions, eruptions, and tectonic shifts. Children relate to these events on a very personal level, often mimicking the sounds of a volcano just as, on a stormy day, their moods often create weather within which is similar to that outside. The child also notices in the actions of his/her peers that everyone – even a teacher, even a parent – makes mistakes and is vulnerable to emotions, stress, and fatigue. Honesty about one’s feelings, a sense of humor, and humility go a long way in the Montessori 6-9 classroom, and students benefit from sharing groups where they can compliment others on their perseverance, personality, and progress.
Finally, Montessori classrooms honor the child by allowing him/her to select the preferred social context for activities – solo, partner, or group work.  Each dynamic’s success depends in large part on the individual’s learning needs.  The mixed-age classroom aids a child’s social development by allowing for opportunities to learn from others’ actions, to model social responsibility, and to respond to others’ needs. It creates an atmosphere where children learn to help and be helped by others. Children gain an appreciation for their own work as well as others’ accomplishments, which challenge them without involving a sense of competition. Older children learn patience and tolerance by serving as role models and reinforcing previously learned concepts. Younger students learn courtesy, manners, and conflict resolution from older peers. By staying in a classroom for a three-year period, children develop a strong sense of community and stability, with one-half to two-thirds of a class returning every year. 
As Maria Montessori said, "When we think about mixed ages... we should not have a supermarket, but just what is essential." Because social dynamics are new each year, depth of study occurs when revisiting familiar lessons at a more sophisticated level of comprehension with a new role as an experienced learner. Familiarity and belonging also allows a teacher to better understand each child’s learning style, set holistic learning goals, build on strengths and weaknesses, and foster meaningful relationships with students and their families. It’s amazing to watch students who started as 3-year-olds move through the elementary years with a web of relationships that cross ages, cultures, and learning styles.  

Hands-on Materials (and Food!) Inspire Learning

In Montessori lower elementary classrooms for ages 6-9, the central point of interest is the Cosmic Curriculum -- a series of Great Lessons that begin with the biggest possible questions that humans can ask. When was the Universe born? How did the planets form, and why do they remain in orbit? Of what substance is our planet made? Why does water exist on Earth? What happens during an earthquake or volcano? The first two Great Lessons -- the Coming of the Universe and the Coming of the Earth -- capture and captivate the child's imagination due in part to their size, scope, and level of intensity. We are so fortunate to live in a time when technology and science can show us things only previously imagined by early civilizations through the stories told in each culture.
An important aspect of Montessori classrooms is the mixed-age format, which allows children to work at their own pace with a variety of student peers and mentors. As a child moves through this three-year cycle, s/he becomes emotionally and socially more confident and eventually enjoys giving lessons to others. The child develops depth, since the first exposure to a concept may be very impactful yet shallow. The next year, when revisiting a concept such as Earth history and geology, a student's interest and ability may become increasingly fascinated with the subject. In his/her third year, a child often researches a topic, makes a model, and presents information and ideas to the class. For this reason, I try to vary presentations each year so children see studies from different perspectives and with various materials.

These photographs demonstrate a lesson I gave recently on Plate Tectonics, following study of the layers of Inner Earth -- the crust, mantle, and core. In past years, I have demonstrated Plate Tectonics using an orange peel, an onion's layers, and (last year, memorably) with marshmallow fluff and graham crackers. This year, I used maple syrup (representing viscous magma), crackers (symbolizing continental plates), and fruit leather (for oceanic plates, which are much thinner than continental plates). The work remained on our sink counter for two days so that students could repeatedly encounter the tasty materials and be reminded of the lesson by using their senses of smell and sight.
We finished our week together with "family-style lunch", pulling all of the desks together into a long communal table and waiting to begin eating until everyone was seated. We started by discussing how each student has dinner with his/her family and what makes this time special: setting the table, an absence of distracting media (no television, computers, or cell phones), soft voices, polite manners ("Please pass the pepper."), caring questions and observations from the day, and the intimacy that comes from sitting closely with those about whom we care. Students asked one another about the contents of their lunch and conversation turned to personal questions about pets, siblings, and the impending holidays. (I was inspired to try this approach to our sometimes chaotic lunch time by recalling a 9-12 Montessori classroom where I worked many years ago in Portland with lights off, lit candles, and classical music in the background.) Children deserve to experience this spiritually-grounding and peaceful setting throughout the year!