Final Thoughts

As I wrap up my time at the Montessori school, I am so grateful to have been able to observe there! I have a 100 page notebook full of all my observations and have more than 50 bookmarks on my computer that I have collected in the last 2 months! I also ordered several more (4) books about the Montessori methods that I have been skimming in addition to the 3 I purchased at the beginning of the summer.  It has been absolutely fascinating to watch the methods unfold in front of my eyes and then to be able to read about what I observed.  I have already looked into organizations where I can become accredited and learn how to create my own guidebook and have bookmarked those to come back to when I am ready.  

I have been able to get into my classroom already this summer and have made changes to my own spaces as a result of this experience.  One of the big changes I made was to think about the specific kinds of skills that my students might need at the beginning of the school year and pulled out supplies and materials to have ready to create some varied levels of work for them, depending upon what skills they already have mastered.  I have also moved some of my shelves and cabinets around to create spaces for working independently or for working in partnerships.  I intentionally placed like things together and tried really hard to put away materials that did not need to be out cluttering the space.  

One of the other things that I have been able to do this summer is share with colleagues about what I have learned.  I had very long lunches with 5 colleagues who were very interested in hearing about what I observed and ways that they could implement some of Montessori's methods in their classroom spaces.  I will be doing a presentation this week about some of my observations to more colleagues as well. 

I think my biggest take-away is that there are lots of misconceptions about Montessori and her methods and each time I work with a colleague I ask them to tell me what they know about her methods and then work to clear up the misconceptions that they have.  I have heard how expensive it is to start a Montessori program up, that the work is antiquated, that there is no discipline, it is expensive for families to attend a Montessori school, and that Montessori programs are so rigid that children are not able to have fun and find joy in their work.  It has been very interesting answering those misconceptions with what I observed and I was able to change the thinking of each colleague I talked with.  They all shared that I was clearly fascinated with what I observed and as two of the colleagues are on my teaching team, we made a plan to get together once a month and check in to see how our attempts at Montessori methods are going.  We are aware that we cannot dive right in and try it all out, but creating differentiated works for our students was a place we knew we all could start.  We developed a simple plan for introducing each work either as a small group or individual lesson and that is something we will check-in about with each other throughout the school year to determine what works best for us.  We do love the practical life work, but we also know that in our situation, we have limits as to what we are able to include and not include (baking), however, we did find a "no-bake" cookbook for children and are considering using that as a way of making sure to include some work with baking/cooking.  

I was also reminded of things that I am already doing in my classroom that, with a small change, can help me further use Montessori's methods. One of those things is labeling my student's cubbies.  In the Montessori school, each child had a hook with their name (in cursive) along with their picture and many children visited those pictures to get help writing friend's names or to get help in spelling words that had sounds from a friend's name.  I will add last names to my students' cubby labels as well as a picture of each child so that my students could use the labels in the same way.  One child at the Montessori school walked the line of hooks each day and would say each child's name and I saw so much value in that work that I knew I needed to make the change.  Another change I have discussed with my Kindergarten team members is the way Montessori "teaches" a child to read (see previous post for more details) and how we can take those ideas and use them when we usually introduce letters and sounds.  Given the recent changes in our literacy standards (more focused on the Science of Reading), I immediately made connections between Montessori and SoR and how they both encourage teachers to start by teaching letter sounds long BEFORE introducing students to the symbols that represent letters.  My team agreed to try this idea out this upcoming year any place we would usually teach a specific lesson on a letter name.  We will place more emphasis on and our teaching point will focus on the sounds.  The names of letters and the symbols will be mentioned, but as the symbol representations of letters are more difficult for children to learn, we will focus on sounds.  

I plan to keep reading the rest of my Montessori books and building my list of online resources so that I can come back to them as I need them.  I truly believe that Montessori's methods and ideas can and should be more accessible to ALL children and I will work hard, in whatever role I end up in, to employ as many of them as I am able.