That's The Spirit!

The first thing I notice when a Montessori classroom isn’t going well is the environment. That is almost always the first problem! You can take the adults and all the children out of the room, and then you see it plainly: either the space is set up for success, or it is not. I started to post photographs to describe why this is, because so many educators seem hungry for clarity about Montessori’s advice on the physical environment. Preparing the environment in specific ways, Maria Montessori showed us, truly matters… down to the detail.

But the second element that stands out has to do with the leading adult in the room. Many Montessori teachers and their assistants have training, they have experience with children, they have energy. But too many forget the most imperative aspect of this work: it is about the spirit!

I have I walked into two contrasting classrooms of roughly ten children ages 18 months to 3 years old. In both, children were milling around restlessly, at least one child was crying loudly or shouting, while only one might be concentrating on meaningful work at a table or rug. Not what we hope to see, right?

In the first room, the teacher walked around, her shoulders rounded with fatigue, her expression displeased, her voice hard. “Marvin, you can’t run in here you know that.” She grabbed Marvin by the shoulders and tried to slow him down, leaning over him, speaking to him in a low tone, trying to calm him. I felt for her! Everywhere I looked, children needed to be redirected and there’s no way for an adult be everywhere at once: Sally by the dish washing was pouring her pitcher of water on the floor under the table and rubbing it with her hands while her clothes were getting soaked; Charlie was singing loudly on the toilet with the door open, saying “I’m pooooing! I’m poooooing!!!”; Delfina was going from shelf to shelf, taking activity trays to little tables, sitting as if to work with them, and then popping up to run to get another one and taking it to a different table…leaving work out and also the chairs where someone could fall over them. The assistant cleaned the sink area with tough, abrupt motions and a spray bottle, looking down and stopping very few minutes to tell a child to get work out and sit with it. Oh, heavens.

In actuality, it isn’t such events––in and of themselves––that make such scenes disappointing. Whenever we’re working with very young children, the room can feel chaotic because children these ages are not yet “normalized”, which means “self-regulated” in modern terms (and I just learned from a colleague that in Italian this word Maria Montessori used can be directly translated as “stabilized”). The young children’s minds are flitting about and they are struggling to find ways to direct these thoughts and actions. The first thing that can help them is providing an environment with accessible order, beauty, organized activity and sequences. But the second is the adult who can link them to activities in an appealing way that speaks to their inner drives. Here’s the difference in the second classroom:

As I close the door behind me in the second example, I hear a random “yeller” as well, and I see the same sorts of things happening, but when I look over at the adults, I see something striking: The teacher bends down on one knee with a wide smile on her face, radiating love in her expression. She speaks with a wiggling child, gently holding one of his hands in hers and says, “Kevin, we use our walking feet here at school. Here, let’s find the shoe polish for the shoes on your feet.” She rises and guides him over to a nearby shelf, then bends down on one knee again so that they are face-to-face and eye-to-eye. She smiles at him, pointing to the shoe polish activity on a tray, “This is the shoe polish. I bet you would enjoy this today!”

Kevin eagerly takes the tray with both hands and practically runs with it to a small table, just a few steps away. He pulls out the chair and sits in a hurry, then starts pulling each item off the tray and slaps them down on the table all askew. Simultaneously, the teacher shadows him in what looks like slow motion by comparison, with a slight smile on her face. She helps slide his chair up to the table as he sits in it, and says, “We can bring your chair closer to the table, there you go––that’s more comfortable for your body.” And then she straightens each item into a more orderly fashion as he’s taking them out, and she touches each item and says, “We have a dish…some polish…a buffing brush, a polishing cloth…” Kevin slows down to watch and says, “Polish! Dish!” He pulls hard at his shoe to take it off…

The teacher rises slowly––again with a slight smile on her face––and walks slowly over to a child who is wandering, offers her hand and says, “Laura, we have flower arranging today. I can show you the flower arranging…” Then she turns to her assistant and whispers, “Miss Thomas, Could you please help Patty in the bathroom? Please go sit with her and have a little conversation while she’s using the potty, thank you.”

Gradually, child by child, even though the disruptive things are still happening, the teacher and her assistant move from one child to another, persistently connecting them to work in a cheerful manner, guiding them to clean up with a smile, helping them. And sure enough, in this classroom, the periods of concentration are growing, the children are learning to calm themselves, the world is starting to make sense to them.

The biggest difference we can see externally is adult expressions, movements, tones of voice, and the phrases they say. But the real difference is internal. This is what Maria Montessori meant when she described teaching as an act of the spirit; the adult must show full respect for these little beings, to see the good that’s in there, and to nurture and encourage the human tendencies in each child, relentlessly and despite all the distractions and the chaos. Every morning, it is a three-hour exercise in showing faith in the children’s potential when no one else might see it there!

Some people think this takes a certain temperament. We’ll say, “I could never work with two-year-olds!” But Montessori showed us that with any temperament, we can do this work with the focus on teaching as a spiritual task. To do this, we believe in the child who is not yet in front of us but whom we know can and will emerge. We learn, in Montessori training, how to connect children to meaningful activities that settle them, and foster their independence so they can begin to think clearly and make sense of the world around them. It’s about showing each child, “I believe you have a best self that will develop with help” by loving them with your voice, your manner, and the words you choose. It’s heart-to-heart communication. It’s the spirit in you speaking to the spirit in them.

Ultimately, addressing the spirit in each child in this way enables our young children to participate in community life and contribute to it. People may think those teaching very young children are “just daycare workers,” or “only pre-school teachers,” but honestly, ask yourself what in this whole wide world could be more important than helping young people form a positive view of the world, of others, and of themselves as good beings who are capable and loved?

What could be more important than this spirit?

For more about the spiritual aspects of Montessori, the prepared environment, and helping our children succeed, order a copy of THE MONTESSORI POTENTIAL: How to Foster Independence, Respect and Joy in Every Child, here!