Training: "Get On the Horse"

This post is inspired by recounts of the AMI Montessori Refresher Course held in Tampa, FL in February.  At the conference, Montessori Teacher Trainer Ginni Sackett of Portland led a session on working at the "intersection of home, casa, community, and culture."  Sackett advised directresses to "meet the child at the door" to recognize that each child comes to school from a different family, value set, neighborhood, socioeconomic class, and the list goes on.  Children are wired to absorb the cultures that surround them.  If a child is born in Vietnam, she will learn Vietnamese; if a child is born in Ecuador, he will learn to eat rice, beans, potatoes, and corn.  If a child frequently watches cartoons or plays videogames, he will become accustomed to these activities.  We cannot begrudge a child for absorbing the cultures he experiences, but we can "meet him at the door" of the Montessori Children's House and help him apply order to the many parts of his world. 

One of the overarching tasks of a child from birth to age six is classifying and integrating the information he has absorbed.  Like a librarian organizing books or a scientist organizing theories, he  creates categories in the mind.  The Montessori materials are specifically designed to aid this task by isolating specific concepts and skills.  Because children from birth to age six are developmentally incapable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality, Montessori materials focus on what is real.  These concepts and skills - whether table scrubbing, differentiating between varied textures, multiplying, or telling time - are components of the adult world the child prepares to join.  

Montessori Children's houses, however, do not exist in blank voids.  They cater to an infinite array of families, communities, and cultures with varied understanding of early childhood development and with differing amounts of time, means, and desire to properly aid it.  Some children come to school with an abundant amount of love, a rich array of experiences, and solid grounding in reality.  Some do not.  For the latter group, Sackett used the metaphor of wild horses heading for a cliff.  You can't get in front of the horse and stop it.  You can't beg and plead with it to change it's course.  Instead, you have to jump on the horse and steer it away from the cliff, steer it back to reality to provide the strong foundation the child needs. 

It's Monday morning and a three-year-old child stands before you.  "I saw a dragon this weekend," he says with wide eyes.  Too often in the Montessori context, we are tempted to say "Dragons aren't real."  Sackett instead advises directresses to honor that the child has opened up and use the opportunity:  "You saw a dragon this weekend?  What did the dragon look like?  What color was your dragon?  Was it large or small?"  As language enrichment ranks high in importance at this age, start there.  "You know, I've seen a dragon, too.  I've seen a Komodo Dragon in Indonesia."  Go on to describe the Komodo Dragon.  Bring the child to the world map or the map of Asia.  Reference the cultural folder for Asia.  Or instead, "I wonder how many other animals have the word dragon in their name... dragonfly, sea dragon, etc."  Create language cards for the animals you discuss to capitalize on and fuel the child's interest.  Notice the keys each child gives and use them to connect the child to the Montessori materials; or as Ginni Sackett so aptly put, "get on the horse."