Imagine the classroom out of control with children running around, children speaking rudely to each other and their teachers in speech and action, where materials are utilized without regard, often as swords or as a tool to hurt a friend. Every effort to offer guidance and suggestions have been exhausted but little changed.
This classroom had two certified Montessori teachers, an experienced assistant and twenty-eight students aged 3-6. The room offers a full compliment of beautiful and well-maintained Montessori materials, where the adults had taken great pains to foster respect for the child, to support each child’s ability to be independent, make free choices, encouraging curiosity, intrinsic motivation and free movement. The room utilized the peace curriculum for conflict resolution.
This scene does not befit the serene sense of peace that a prepared Montessori environment is supposed to project, where children work alone, cooperatively with a friend or a small group of friends, or with a teacher. Where children move graciously and use the Montessori works creatively, with purpose and care for the materials, and they engage respectfully with their peers and teachers, and there is a new openness to redirection and conflict resolution.
After long discussions and reflection, the Administration team restructured the team, leaving one of the teachers but replacing the other co-lead and assistant. As if some magic dust fell upon the wave of a magic wand, a totally different classroom now exists.
We are confronted with the hard questions: What are the elements that make up Authentic Montessori? Can we even name them? When examining the areas that traditionally make defining Authentic Montessori problematic, Montessorians focus on the tangible. Which accreditation authority is more authentic – AMI, AMS, IMC or another? AMS and AMI teachers are often conflicted about the use of non-Montessori works verses “classic” materials in the classroom (Lillard, 2011). What is really at the heart of implementing Authentic Montessori?
According to Tim Seldin (2006), in Finding an Authentic Montessori School, authentic Montessori “refers to the preparation of the teachers, and the specific Montessori designed school program that they implement.”
An essential element of Authentic Montessori is respect for the child by providing a prepared environment. It allows children to make choices while encouraging and supporting independence, curiosity, intrinsic motivation and movement. It utilizes observation as a tool to uncover the needs of the child and the classroom community.
The pivotal piece of preparedness goes beyond the credential, but the spiritual and reflective nature of the teacher, which can make or break how the method unfolds itself for the children. In The Secret of Childhood, Maria Montessori (1972) writes of The Spiritual Preparation of the Teacher where the teacher must “prepare himself interiorly by systematically studying himself so that he can tear out his most deeply rooted defects, those in fact which impede his relations with children.” In other words, the teacher must always introspectively ask, “Do my actions hinder or help the child or children in the classroom?” This wisdom can be taken one-step further to reflect, “Do my actions help or hinder the team’s ability to serve the children?”
The teacher’s reflective and spiritual preparedness will help her to address the potential obstacles she brings to the classroom (and the team of teachers). She is that crucial piece providing the foundation for the other essential elements such as multi-aged groupings, the materials, observations utilized to prepare the environment and inform lessons, to unfold organically and naturally in the environment. She views the classroom each day – each year as fluid – as ever changing.
Like the children, we are in the process – we are never finished – we are constantly in a state of learning. We learn from the children, from our peers, from our mistakes. We observe the child to learn how best to serve him. We observe the child to identify the child because we know that if we do not follow the child, we have not done our job. We respect the child before us, who is becoming the person she is meant to be – the person we will never know because that person is a long way off. On this journey, we question ourselves. We reflect on our work. Have we done enough? Have we done too much? This is what Authentic Montessori means!
Alexa C. Huxel is the Director of School at Hamilton Park Montessori, located in Jersey City, NJ and former lead teacher at Princeton Montessori School, Princeton, NJ. This article is condensed, with permission, from The Montessori Leadership Magazine (Volume 15 Issue 2, 2013), an official magazine of the International Montessori Council.
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