A Montessori Approach
-by Kristina Campagna, Montessori Teacher
Through free choice and care of the environment and self, the Montessori philosophy lays a foundation for individualized and experiential learning aimed towards releasing each child’s potential for growth.
I work as an educator of three- to six-year-old children at a Montessori school in Chicago. Every day, I take in the complete picture all at once. There are children moving peacefully and deliberately in space, positively interacting with their peers. One paints a picture on some recycled newsprint, another dries spilled water, while others hold a yoga pose. One three-year-old listens to the inside of a shell while another receives a letter sound lesson. A four-year-old waters plants.
Kazimier and Elif find me as I get settled in and enthusiastically offer to help set up snack for the class. As they have practiced many times, they know the process and complete this work cycle with little direction. Typically, Elif prepares the dishwashing stand by filling up two bins with soapy and plain water, while Kazimier retrieves bowls to fill with crackers and fruit that he cuts up. He knows where to find the finishing touches before snack becomes available to all: number cards, which show the serving size of that morning’s spread in numerical and countable value, as well as tongs. Naturally, they are the first to enjoy snack in the morning to delight in their work.
While they do this, I briefly touch base with my co-teacher for any updates for the day before choosing an album to play in the background while we all work. Then, I begin moving about the room to provide gentle guidance and redirection, take notes to track each child’s work progress, and straighten up shelves where needed.
This year, our class is evenly balanced between three-, four-, and five-year-olds. After being in our class for at least a year, the older students are confident moving freely in our space and choosing table and rug works by themselves from shelves in our room. At this time, they are enjoying coloring cats and pumpkins to pin poke or cut before taping to our windows to decorate for Halloween, writing and illustrating their own booklets using vocabulary cards, and ordering number tiles from 1–100.
Our younger students are still learning the elements in our room — what’s what, where to find it, and how it is used. Practical life works such as scooping corn kernels, pouring water, and mixing bubbles have been keeping them engaged while they strengthen their fine motor skills. This week, we also began hammering nails into a pumpkin which was a favorite for all.
Students exercise free choice and movement
It wasn’t until I moved from a rural town two hours south of Chicago that I learned that alternative methods of education exist. So, when I started working at this school a few years ago, I knew as much as a Google search revealed about Montessori education. There was plenty to be learned in the beginning: how to present each work, the skill objective in each, the developmental intention behind works, the placement of each tray in relation to another on a shelf, notetaking, teaching reading and writing skills, etc. etc. I had never worked full-time at a school before, so even memorizing the routines, first aid techniques, dish washing procedures, and how to fill out reports were challenges at first. While becoming more comfortable in these areas, I also worked on strengthening interpersonal skills to better connect to my students, such as active listening, conflict resolution, and behavioral modeling. A few years later, I am still learning and refining my practices.
I came into this experience with a passion to work with children. I have a background as a Jumpstart Corps Member, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in developmental psychology from DePaul University. In the time since, I have completed certification programs in both TEFL and child and family yoga and I have worked in Mexico as a rotating teacher’s aide and an adult English teacher at a daycare for children ages zero to four. Now, I facilitate a collaborative effort to incorporate Spanish language education in each classroom, and I teach pre-Kindergarteners Spanish as well. Given my experiences within the field, I find the Montessori method to be a powerful teaching approach.
The Montessori philosophy of education was developed by Dr. Maria Montessori in the early 1900s in Italy. Dr. Montessori was progressive for her time. After becoming the first female physician in Italy and practicing psychiatry for some time, she cultivated an interest in pedagogy and soon found herself observing what strategies work best in education. From her observations came the nuanced philosophy practiced in over 100 countries today. For those who are interested in cultivating a deeper understanding of this approach, a list of resources to explore will be included at the end of this piece. And for parents considering a Montessori education for their children, a school visit is highly recommended to gain a clearer perspective on how these principles come together in a classroom setting.
To condense, Montessori education fosters the freedom within each intellectual to act on its environment within limitations. In a nurturing Montessori environment curated with the needs of the student body in mind, one would observe the development of the will: students exercise free choice and movement, and experience equal access to the opportunities for growth through fulfilling works within the prepared environment. Teachers come to understand their students by “following the child,” to put it in Montessori’s words. Through keen observations with regards to their students’ behaviors and interests, Montessori teachers can learn how to challenge each intellect in the ways it is revealing that it needs to be challenged.
So, what does this look like in our microcosm of reality? Well, it varies from classroom to classroom as the interpretation of and approach to the philosophy differs in the eyes of each teacher. In the physical environment, generally observing, most Montessori classrooms furnish shelves (usually wooden), which hold space for trays that contain beautifully designed works. The works on a single shelf are unified by the area of age-appropriate development for which they are designed and are typically arranged from the least to the most challenging from left to right and top to bottom. A work designed to aid in the development of fine motor skills, such as tweezing seeds from a plucked sunflower, would be placed after works designed to aid in gross development of the hand and wrist, such as pouring noodles from one container to another.
“We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being.”
In our current environment, we foster the development of each child in the following areas:
- practical life skills (e.g. sweeping, folding towels, pouring, food preparation)
- sensory needs (e.g. smelling herbs, grasping knobbed cylinders, feeling pumpkin seeds, playing a xylophone)
- mathematical skills (e.g. tracing sandpaper numbers, organizing lengths of striped rods, counting spindles)
- language development (e.g. vocabulary cards, tracing metal insets, reading sentences)
- art (water color painting, cutting lines on strips of paper, collaging, pastel drawing)
- science (e.g. learning about land, air, and water, conducting experiments, observing safe chemical reactions)
- cultural exposure (e.g. learning about continents, countries, and international customs)
Imagine a three-year-old child attracted to an art work located on a lower shelf involving scissors. After several attempts, a teacher notices that she has not yet developed enough muscular tone to open the scissors. Having made this observation, she calmly approaches the student and redirects her back to the art shelf inviting her to choose a different medium. Attracted to the clay, she takes the tray to a table. The teacher then silently shows her how to transform the clay in various ways. By pinching, rolling, and squeezing the clay and through exposure to other fine motor materials, she will be able to successfully complete the scissor work in time.
In my experience, this methodology and the mindset that I have achieved through it, works. Seeing each child as a human being who has potential for growth and who deserves the freedom to fulfill themselves through the exploration of their natural interests works. Behavioral changes which denote the absorption and integration of knowledge and experience are visible over time. And time and patience are part of the key which opens the door to our full potential.
Afterall, “We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. It is not acquired by listening to words, but in virtue of experiences in which the child acts on [the] environment. The teacher’s task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child.”(1) In posts to come, I look forward to sharing more snapshots of classroom experiences, momentous problem-solving strategies, and highlights of student works.
Kristina Campagna is a Montessori educator in Chicago, IL. She will be contributing more pieces about progressive education, in general, and Montessori education, specifically, in the future.
(1)Montessori, Maria. (1967). The Absorbent Mind. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
List of Resources
The Absorbent Mind by Maria Montessori
The Discovery of the Child by Maria Montessori
The Secret of Childhood by Maria Montessori
Montessori from the Start by Paula Polk Lillard and Lynn Lillard Jessen
