Montessori parent's night, Common Myth 1

Parent’s Orientation and Common Myths about Montessori Education

            My first private school parent event was nerve wracking.  As a first year Montessori guide I feel insecure in gaining the confidence of parents who are paying huge sums of money for this education.  I needed to seem confident while I was still nervous and insecure about the looming first day of school.

            One piece of advice I have for first year private school teachers is to make sure you have your student handbook and policies memorized before parent events.  After teaching in poor inner city schools where parents were shy to ask anything or question the teacher at all, I felt unprepared for the specificity of questions I received regarding library books, field trip supervision, and other issues.

            At my parent night I presented 2 myths that prevail regarding Montessori education.  I later added a 3^rd.  I am going to present them here in a 3 part series.  Feel free to use these in parent’s nights or in any situations in which you need to defend Montessori.

Myth 1:

            "In Montessori children are allowed to do whatever they want.  Children who aren’t self motivated to work will spend the whole day wandering around bugging others."

Why its wrong:

            In a Montessori classroom we set the expectation that everyone comes in and works as hard as they can for the entire work cycle.  A mixed-age Elementary classroom has 6 year olds come into a classroom where 7, 8 and 9 year olds are working as hard as they can.  The 6 year olds know that that is what happens in school when they come into the class and see the older children getting going on work.  Children have choices in their work but work is all based on the classroom materials, which are limited to give a number of choices the children can handle.

              Children may only do work after they’ve had a lesson from the guide, so at first children start with 2 or 3 work options.  Then they have an increasing number of options as they progress deeper into the curriculum.  By the time they are able to use all the materials in the room they are well practiced in choosing appropriate work.

            Children may choose their work schedule and choose activities that challenge them, but they are expected to choose work.  Going around flicking other children’s ears is not an option in a well functioning Montessori classroom.  In Montessori at first it is necessary to be as strict (if not stricter) than in a traditional classroom.  The children do have a lot of freedom and they need to know how handle this freedom.

            We talk a lot in Montessori about freedom and responsibility.  Children have the freedom to choose work and the responsibility to choose appropriate work that challenges them.  Children have the freedom to use valuable and breakable materials; they have the responsibility to care for them so they last for many years.  They have the freedom to move freely about the room and the responsibility to not wander aimlessly or run in the class.

            Once these basic responsibilities and the routines are established, the guide's responsibility becomes cultivating an atmosphere in which challenging oneself in math, geography and reading is more interesting and socially acceptable than running around flicking ears.  If flicking ears or making funny noises to disrupt the class becomes more interesting than the content and lessons it is all lost.  But if the lessons spark the children's interest and challenge them to start independent work there is no limit to what can be achieved.

            The mixed age class cannot be underestimated as a tool for motivation.  Children in Montessori learn to write their own problems and challenge each other to solve harder and harder problems.  In one classroom I observed in I watched an 8 year old boy write multiplication problems that stretched the entire length of his graph paper, then tape 2 pieces of graph paper together to make even longer problems.  A 6 year old boy sat with him and he wrote himself an addition problem that scaled two taped together pieces of graph paper.  This classroom had an excitement about math in which children voluntarily chose to challenge themselves by working on harder and harder problems  These boys each did a single problem that required dozens of digits worth of calculations.  


            If they were in a traditional school they might have been given 10 short problems to do and then told they were done and should move on to other activities.  Yet they were in an environment where children try to outdo each other by doing harder and harder math, so they voluntarily chose to go far beyond what an assignment may have mandated and spent an entire morning focused on one enormous problem.

            In my class we teach children to make balanced work choices.  Sometimes they engage deeply in a project that takes all day in one subject, but children are encouraged to do work in each subject every day.  Children choose what math activity, language activity and science activity they wish to work on, but do some of each every day.  Children record their work in journals then conference with guides to make a work plan.  Everyone is supported in finding appropriate work as much as is necessary.  Some children may be given 2 sentences of content to spark hours of independent work.  Others may need a guide to sit with them for much of the work cycle to get engaged in some productive work.  No matter what it takes, we find a way to ensure that everyone works as hard as they can all day.