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Classroom: Becoming a Directress

To create a Montessori classroom, you need a prepared environment with specially designed materials tailored to the sensitive periods and characteristics of children in the particular plane of development.  You need a prepared directress to connect the children to the prepared environment.  And you need the children.  Many adults who study Montessori feel strongly that it is the best way to educate children.  Some of these adults go on to become Montessori directresses.

These directresses-in-training learn the history of Montessori education and the facets of its theory.  They learn precise purposes and extensions of materials and the ways to present them.  They study details such as how to walk across a classroom, how to position one’s body when talking to a child, how to use encouragement instead of praise, and the list goes on.  Through observation, these directresses learn to follow the child.

Some directress training happens in lecture halls and model classrooms, in which teacher trainers explain the science of the approach and what we should aspire toward in our classrooms.  Some directress training occurs during an internship with an experienced teacher.  And the rest accumulates in our own classrooms, as we gain experience one child and one day at a time.

Like other professional fields, the learning curve is steep, and it can be frustrating to acknowledge how little we know at first.  We have an endless desire to learn and gain expertise.  Sometimes we feel filled with the little knowledge and experience we already have.  Our more experienced colleagues shake their heads at us, like adults do at teenagers, amused or annoyed by our staunch beliefs, huge revelations, and glaring blind spots.  But more often, they are gracious in spirit and generous with time: modeling, explaining, and providing us with feedback.  We are so new.  We do the wrong thing so resolutely at times, and at times we do the right thing quite timidly.  We devote ourselves to analyzing and comparing ourselves to peers.  We want to be good at our work, and we want to serve the child.

In time, even the hardest fruits ripen and even the greenest teachers can become wise.  As I move forward with a peer group of Montessori assistants, and soon a cohort of directresses-in-training, I look forward to gradually losing my green.  I am excited to have a better sense of myself in the classroom, to achieve peace in my practice and humility and respect in engaging with peers.  I look forward to moving beyond the occasional validation from connecting to the child to using this closeness to observe and connect that child to the Montessori environment.  Lastly, I look forward to gaining enough experience so that my work in the classroom reflects less of my place on the learning curve than how to best serve the child. 

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