The Middle Path of Montessori

As a Montessori teacher, I have for years heard two presumptions about this educational method from those who know a little about it, but not a lot: "Montessori is really structured, isn't it?" and "Montessori? That's not very structured, right? Kids just get to do whatever." These dualistic opinions have often puzzled me, and it is only after reading a great book called The Genius in Every Child: Encouraging Character, Curiosity, and Creativity in Children by Rick Ackerly, that I finally have come to understand why people -- usually, parents with children new to Montessori -- think one way or the other. Ackerly -- although not a Montessorian -- writes from the perspective of a longtime educator and father about his experiences with students, their parents, and his own children in a way that resonates with the Montessori approach. He makes a key distinction between guiding students and leading them, the former being superior to the latter. His writing is very succinct, humorous, and insightful about the ways in which education can develop the "genius" alive in each student by encouraging responsibility, honoring uniqueness, caring for the "whole child", and engaging the will rather than expecting mastery. 

1. Responsibility. Ackerly adeptly shares anecdotes which illustrate his evolving understanding of a life's work in education. One of the key points he makes is that children need to be trusted with responsibility. Parents and teachers, he cautions, "can take that enthusiasm for learning away from them if (a) we care more about it than they do, (b) we get worried about their success, (c) we make them give up play (which is a child's right), and (d) if we turn their parents into teachers" (6). One of the main tenets of Montessori education is the presentation of a carefully prepared environment (of both hands-on materials and curriculum in the form of key lessons) that encourages and supports what Maria Montessori called "auto-education". She believed that children have within them the will to pursue their own development, to ask questions, and to challenge the boundaries of reality. This is in stark contrast to the ideology of John Dewey, the father of contemporary public education, whose approach was modeled on the assembly line in the early days of the Industrial Age. That is not the world we live in now, and Maria Montessori had the foresight over a century ago to see children as they were and to help them develop as human beings in relation to the world. Students show their interests, teachers give them lessons on math concepts or parts or speech or kingdoms of life, and the community of learners go as deeply into their studies as they wish.

Ackerly clarifies the term "genius" in his book as "the teacher within... the you that is becoming" (ix).  "Another manifestation of genius is character, and ... to the Greeks kharakter was the imprint that the gods put on the soul at birth. Educating is creating conditions in which the character that is your child becomes what he or she is supposed to become" (38). This reminds me of the aphorism at my school, which hangs above the entrance: "I am becoming..." The verb tense of that statement underlines that the present moment -- not the past, not the unknown future -- is the source of character, curiosity, and creativity in the learner. Another tenet of Montessori education is that it takes place within a mixed-age three-year cycle, whereby two-thirds of the class returns each fall and younger students work with older mentors to understand their environment and studies. Some people ask about the role of the teacher in a 1st through 3rd grade classroom, and it is one of the main reasons that I enjoy my work so much. The teacher (or, as Montessori called her, "guide") is as active as necessary and as invisible as possible. An effective Montessorian observes the children -- not only their intellectual pursuits, but their physical habits, their interactions with one another, their wonder at nature and beauty, and the ways in which they react emotionally throughout the day. Montessori teachers walk a fine line, being careful not to interrupt a child in a state of flow and asking questions only when a need arises. Ackerly strongly suggests that parents honor their role in their child's life with the reminder that "children need teachers at school and parents at home" (7). He comments on the trend of "helicopter parenting": "Hovering is perhaps normal these days, but it often unknowingly stifles, inhibits, and in many ways is counterproductive to the discovery and development of a child's genius" (13). 

Ackerly also addresses the subject of responsibility in terms of a child's social behavior. In the past ten years, I have had many different kinds of interactions with parents, most of them very supportive and understanding. Parents want their child to succeed, of course, and sometimes this becomes an extreme desire to prevent anything bad from ever happening to their child. Sometimes, parents take on their child's social or emotional issues and project hostility toward a teacher. Ackerly, himself an educator and a father, reminds parents: "If you care more about it than they do, you absolve them of responsibility... Support them in the lifelong challenge of harmonizing their needs, drives, and interests with those of others" (34). Far from sparing a child from growing emotionally through a struggle, he states that in educating a child's character, "Nothing succeeds like taking responsibility. Nothing succeeds like failure. Failure is at least as powerful an educator as success" (48). If a parent reacts with anxiety and anger when the child experiences a challenge, the child learns that s/he is not trusted to handle his/her emotions and social interactions. The parent behaves as if the child is in constant need of saving. The best parent-teacher-student relationships I have experienced over the years have consisted of respectful communication between the adults about the child's learning life. Ackerly advises that "our children need to be noticed more and analyzed less, delighted in more than worried over, challenged more than protected, not so much made to be good as taught to be good at being themselves (40). One of my favorite suggestions is to "act as if you are the variable (and your child and everyone else are the constant)." Complaining or blaming are less useful than taking responsibility for oneself and becoming comfortable with adapting to the many aspects of life we cannot control.

2. Uniqueness and the Whole Child. Many contemporary educational models claim to be "holistic" in their interdisciplinary approaches. Montessori education values a rich and wide array of academics and extends its "holistic" approach to place intellectual development on the same level of importance as a child's emotional, social, spiritual, and physical development. Ackerly echoes this belief when he writes that "everything a child does occurs in an intellectual, social, emotional, and spiritual context... the primary determinant of how and what the child learns" (23). Of course, school is a place to learn -- just not simply about history, chemistry, phonics, and fractions. School is a place to learn about oneself and others -- other people, other places, and other ideas. When a child is learning, s/he enters a wonderful state where s/he is intimate with study and peaceful in his/her curiosity about it. That moment is crucial and should not be interrupted, even by an adult's admiration -- which Maria Montessori cautioned her guides to restrain. Ackery agrees: "When your child shows you a piece of work, it is undisciplined to say: 'My, how smart you are.' Much better for us to think of something new like: 'Oh, good, I can see you have been practicing,' or 'Did you work hard on it?'" (30). In my class, I strive to use value-less language or to ask questions, rather than to give approval or disapproval, because the child's work belongs to him/her and is special. It should have nothing to do with anyone else's opinion, which can easily influence children's self-esteem. 

Ackerly calls this curious and engaged state of learning "greatness (which) can never be achieved when comparison is involved. If you look over your shoulder to see if there is a person gaining on you, someone will. Fear will kick in, you will become more self-conscious, and the greatness that you are will fade -- and with it, the quality of your work" (157). Some people ask how children can avoid comparison with others, especially in a mixed-age classroom where the disparity between a six-year-old and an eight- or nine-year-old becomes evident. I often reply that, because students work collaboratively and stay in the same community for three years, there are hundreds of opportunities for children to notice uniqueness and appreciate each individual's struggles toward ability. Students in my classroom are incredibly compassionate and  enjoy gathering for weekly "class meetings" to share aloud their observations about one another, such as "I noticed that Zach was careful with his handwriting," or "I noticed that Sreya was helpful when the pencil tray spilled." Montessori education supports a child's own pace in learning. Self-correcting materials -- such as word study cards or the Stamp Game -- show a child his/her error without judgment. Each child's uniqueness is honored, through the "genius" design of Montessori's concrete materials. A child can revisit the Checkerboard as many times as needed until s/he comprehends advanced multiplication. A child need not be constrained to a single grade curriculum if s/he demonstrates understanding by using the materials. 

3. Engagement, Not Mastery. A school principal for many decades, Ackerly addresses some common parental concerns about their children's learning: "One of the important dimensions of education that the 'back to basics' people and the No Child Left Behind project leave out ... is the prefrontal cortex. To function effectively in the world ... a person needs to use his or prefrontal cortex a lot. This part of the brain deals with complex problem solving, self-monitoring, and abstract thinking skills. It is required for flexibility of thought and the ability to hold and manipulate information in working memory" (84). Contemporary brain research concurs with the Montessori approach to engage these "executive functioning" skills -- which, coincidentally, are supported by increased independence, responsibility, self-awareness, and organization. Again, the design of the Montessori classroom and curriculum is so important for the training of this ability in children. The center of interest in a 6-9 classroom is called "Cosmic Curriculum," the stories from many cultures that address the coming of the Universe, the planets, and life on Earth. In addition to key lessons which the teacher gives in subjects such as chemistry, physics, and geology, students freely explore each of these curricular areas with beautiful and imaginative shelf work -- such as a wooden Bohr diagram for studying atomic structure, gravity experiments, and plate tectonic activities. 

Despite this abundance of creative material and opportunity, parents often worry that school is too easy or too hard for their child. A middle path between these extremes exists, and Ackerly observes that "IQ does not predict success. Neither do grades in school, nor scores on standardized achievement tests... One thing that does predict success, however, is the passionate pursuit of interests" (81). An engaged child is learning and enjoys learning. A nervous or stressed child cannot learn, because the amygdala inhibits brain electricity from crossing the midline when a person's emotions are elevated. Ackerly continues: "Parents can have a powerful role in maintaining this (a child's enthusiasm for learning), mostly by not getting worked up and anxious about their children's academic achievement... This can be very destructive (80). "Our children are on their own journey ... (and) need us to have confidence in them. If we lose confidence, it is our fears that are showing, not their weaknesses" (143). It is our responsibility to children to believe in them and not project our concerns or opinions onto them. 

What I finally understood about the aforementioned presumptions people often make about Montessori (being either too structured or not structured enough) is very simple: both of those extreme points of view reflect the person's relationship with the fine line, the middle path that is the Montessori Method. In reality, a Montessori classroom provides structure and encourages individual pacing and depth, honors uniqueness of the individual and respects the needs of the community, and engages student interests while adhering to (and often exceeding) the minimum requirements for learning (benchmarks). One of the main tenets of Montessori education is to "follow the child" -- an aphorism I selected for this educational blog, because it reminds me of my quiet role in remembering that, as Ackerly states, "the child knows". 

Curriculum: Math Operations and Montessori Materials

One of Maria Montessori’s great contributions to education – aside from her Peace Education model that honors the child’s rights and dignity – is the construction of coherent, concrete manipulatives that reinforce place value and base-10 patterning in mathematics. Her math “games” are a gift to model learning.

In years 3-6, Montessori students are introduced to various beautiful materials which offer visual-spatial representations of number. A giant vanity of beads hangs in chains of various length, as in the parlor of a queen. The chains drape vertically as bracelets of squares, and numerical necklaces lay in cubic strands on wooden terraces. Students are introduced to math operations and the concept of place value with the golden beads, which are made of either glass or wood. Maria Montessori observed that children appreciate beauty and care for objects that are fragile and valuable. She entrusted children with these learning objects, often giving them trays on which to carry the materials around an environment, from the place where the object "lives" in the classroom environment to the mat or rug where a child's learning takes place.

With ages 6-9, the stamp game is introduced. A box with four vertical sections (units, tens, hundreds, and thousands), the stamp game contains wooden stamps painted in green, blue, and red. It also reinforces place value in each numeral family – simple, thousands, million, billions, etc. This material can be used to teach all math operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) by allowing the child to develop understanding of the nature of “exchange” (trading ten unit stamps for one ten stamp, for example).  Vertical stamp games – “bead frames” in the form of colored beads movable across a horizontal wire – demonstrate these concepts in upright form. 

In Montessori classrooms, students use hands-on materials to explore math operations. Introductory lessons for all operations are often practiced first with the stamp game. After the initial lesson, a child may work autonomously either by him/herself or with a partner.  As Montessori said, "Education is a natural process carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words, but by experiences in the environment."

Two materials exist that excite students learning multiplication and division operations: the checkerboard and the test tubes (also called “racks and tubes”). Very similar to the stamp game, the checkerboard reminds the user of place value – while also seeming similar to a game. Students practice each level of sophistication, starting with a single-digit multiplier. They enjoy exchanging bead bars and eventually moving their products diagonally. The multiplicand extends to the billions place and the multiplier to the thousands, with multiple-digit computation manipulated with the same colored unit bars that the child found at ages 3-6 with the bead cabinet. To a child, it looks like you are playing checkers, when you're actually multiplying large numbers! 

The test tubes are arranged like the racks in a chemist’s lab, reinforcing place value yet again with each family of colored beads set in tubes with a dividend into the millions place, each house in grey, black, or white bases. “Exchanging” happens with the kinesthetic power of a banker. The idea of “banking” continues in the multiplication bank game and the money game. Students enjoy choosing an international name as they play banker with one to three players. Children love games, and Montessori devised a very crafty way to inspire interest in math by offering endlessly fun experiences with trading, exchanging, and playing with numbers.

Still other materials in the math curriculum demonstrate Maria Montessori’s genius at connection beauty, intellect, and play. The Decanomial (also known as the Table of Pythagoras) can be constructed by students on two rugs, then views from an eagle-eye perspective. The Decanomial uses the same colorful beads found in other materials (such as the bead cabinet and checkerboard) to construct a visual multiplication table. Children take great care to make sure that their rows are parallel and orderly. At the end, they often notice the “backbone” of the table on the diagonal forms the squares of numbers, while all other multiplication facts form rectangles. This introduces a concrete lesson about exponents and helps many students with their multiplication math facts – by inviting them to count and see the numeric value (rather than simply abstract a “trick” taught at home by a well-meaning parent). Students follow this lesson with a plastic Decanomial, which they can also lay out on a rug with a partner.

Maria Montessori created so many materials that act as hands-on objects for students to learn math concepts.  She was a scientist and observer first, and she carefully considered what she noticed about children’s intrinsic motivations to learn: they enjoy beauty and order, they desire to play through work and to work as a form of "play", they care for materials that are fragile (in part because children like to be trusted), and they want to be in charge of their own learning. Maria Montessori bestowed onto children self-correction, logically-designed materials that they use every day in their classrooms.

Literacy Workshops: Predicting

Reading is a crucial skill for acquiring information, developing critical thinking skills, encouraging compassion, forming logic, making choices, and navigating the unknown -- not only in school, but in the larger world, as well. Reading involves two main skills -- decoding (the ability to decipher and reproduce sounds in isolation or combination, then in word form) and comprehension. Many parents consider their child's decoding skill as the main aspect of reading ability. While phonemic awareness is very important, comprehension involves many more sophisticated abilities -- such as reading pictures for context clues, making mental images, identifying key story elements (characters, setting, plot, etc.), retelling, predicting and inferring, solving problems, relating the text to oneself or the world or other books, and demonstrating understanding through re-creations or reports.

This year, we've been working on reading skills with our weekly Literacy Workshops, which focus on decoding, comprehension, and writing or pre-writing skills related to a read-aloud text. One of our first lessons was about Choosing a "Just-Right" Book. Students in my mixed age (first through third grade) Montessori classroom generated a list of ways to know if a book is too easy or too hard (shown above). Many elementary classrooms have leveled reading libraries constructed from an adult perspective, yet I have tried to avoid this so students develop independence and knowledge about themselves as readers. (The hand drawing is a reminder from our librarian about the "five-finger" rule: if you find five words on a page that are unknown or hard to decode, that book might not be "just right" for you right now.)

One of the students' favorite Literacy Workshops was about Predicting. At the start of a school day, I placed three carefully wrapped presents of varying sizes on a rug (shown above). At morning group, I told students that these were gifts for the class which we would open at Readers Workshop later that day. I also encouraged them to touch, jiggle, hold, or carry -- but not open -- the presents, so that they might predict what was inside. That afternoon, we first discussed the definition of prediction and how we predict what will happen in the future. On a white board, I drew a graph for their predictions and the reality of the actual prize, and we noted these (shown below).

One child opened each gift. The first was a magnifying glass (for observing), the second was a game of dominoes (looking for clues or patterns), and the third was a set of the Choose Your Own Adventure series -- wildly popular during my childhood. At the beginning of each book, there is a warning, which I read aloud in an ominous tone: 

BEWARE! THIS BOOK IS DIFFERENT FROM OTHER BOOKS. YOU AND YOU ALONE ARE IN CHARGE OF WHAT HAPPENS IN THIS STORY. THERE ARE DANGERS, CHOICES, ADVENTURES, AND CONSEQUENCES. YOU MUST USE ALL OF YOUR NUMEROUS TALENTS AND MUCH OF YOUR ENORMOUS INTELLIGENCE. THE WRONG DECISION COULD END IN DISASTER – EVEN DEATH. BUT DON’T DESPAIR. AT ANYTIME, YOU CAN GO BACK AND MAKE ANOTHER CHOICE, ALTER THE PATH OF YOUR STORY, AND CHANGE ITS RESULT.

The class broke into small groups, with an older student reading to the others, who voted on what path to follow when their book asked them for direction in the plot. 

When we came together about twenty minutes later, I asked students, "How did you make your first choice? What did you predict would happen? What made you think that would happen? Were you correct? Did you go back and read the outcomes of the other choices? What was different? Which ending did you prefer?" Reflection motivates metacognition (thinking about how we think), and students enjoyed adding a gesture to their new reading comprehension skill: whenever they predict, they stroke their chins like reading detectives. In the months since this lesson, our class has revisited Predicting when reading other books, and a parent mentioned to me that her child has started using this term at home, as well. ("I predict we will have chicken for dinner!") This means she is thinking about what she is thinking all of the time -- not just during Literacy Workshop!