Thinking about my mentor/role model: She has many skills, not just classroom discipline. She is excellent at choosing work that will be interesting for the children. She has excellent predictive abilities, about how the class will respond to certain things, work, structures, etc. She is fun: she mixes it up, keeps things from getting boring, gives the kids time of and such, for fun, when they are doing well, with their academics. She has a plan: she has several fun, challenging, time-intensive, independent activities the youngest children can do, for the first several weeks. This gives her time to get the rest of the children acclimated and chugging along with plenty of work of their own to do, before coming back to the new arrivals and spending more time, getting them familiar with the routine of working hard and with focus every day, and all the various specific habits and routines of class. She went hard and exhaustively on the general classroom expectations, and enforced them with extreme consistency, right from day one, but also has been making sure they get activities to do, materials that they can do on their own, every day, to get them progressing with reading comprehension, mathematics, etc.
It's basically what I was struck with, when I first saw her in action. All the theory I had read and heard about, in my masters program, she was doing. My masters program was not Montessori, it was a standard 1-6 education degree, from a fairly integrated, experience and science based perspective. But all this start of the year stuff, that's exactly what my teachers were talking about when having us read, "the first 6 weeks of school." As one example among many. Or else, she was surpassing the theory I was being taught, achieving results that were beyond what was being taught. Many of her students, I think perhaps most, who make it to the upper grade levels, are one or two grade levels above where their age would put them.
What my teachers did not teach, was her discipline methods. I suspect this is because teaching that is much more difficult. Which is not a good reason for not teaching it, but is understandable. They were not given the time necessary to do so. What she is doing... even she is not really sure about, in terms of mechanics she could dissect and give to me, or teach to me. It makes me think doing so would make for a genuinely useful contribution to educational science, and education practice, via teacher education.
Regardless of understanding it, by being around it, I think I am beginning to osmose it a little. Hopefully if I can get it, even if it's still kind of tacit and not really understood, I can then take the time to unpack it in a way that is more quickly teachable. What she does is not any of the nice discipline models that I've read about in books, with their steps and structures. But it's something that, like salt or sugar, would enhance whatever practices are being used. It ends up making the children more respectful, responsible, and generally integrous.
A final short note on my learning to teach process, is she is ramping up the real, meaty learning, very quickly. Within this first week, within the first few days, the kids were working on very serious intellectual concepts. This "press for learning" as some of the education research calls it, characterizes her teaching style and is likely one of the reasons her children are so advanced. Very few worksheets before the actual work is getting started, and it is work she has carefully chosen to be actually useful, not just busy work, and stuff the children can do without teacher intervention, so not giving her more work to do. This is one of the things you need to do with Montessori; give the kids stuff they can work on, practice, on their own. And just as importantly, systems of accountability and an atmosphere and expectation, and awareness to back up those expectations, that children are focusing on and doing the work seriously.
Onto other things. The word "put" when you look at it closely, seems very odd, like it is a child's failed attempt to spell it. You'd think it should be pronounced like "putt" from the spelling.
Ume, our less social, more streetwise, more svelte cat, has a scab on her back and is acting weird, and now has a lump near the scab. I hope we can take her into a vet and figure out what's going on. I would be quite sad if anything happened to our dear cats. Which is a new kind of feeling for me in regards to pets, but they are really great people, so maybe it's just like with children: at first I didn't really get attached to them, but then I met some really sweet, respectful ones, and realized it was just when they were being bratty or disrespectful that I felt no strong attachment to them. Kids get no points for "cuteness" in my book. I will treat them kindly and with respect, but if they want me to miss them when they're gone, they're going to have to display some positive character traits like kindness, truthfulness, responsibility, etc.
Kind of like how you might choose your friends or company. To bring it around to the original topic, that's one of the things I love about my mentor's teaching and thus classroom, is in creates changes in the children, towards those more positive, and thus more enjoyable to be around, characteristics. She's mentioned that she sees those qualities in the children, all of them, and I've heard similar things from my teachers in my masters program. To see those positive qualities is half of the work of cultivating them. (But the other half is not being permissive when they don't live up to that potential you see in them, constantly pushing them to live up to what they are capable of, not just academically, but as human beings.
OK, I Out, finishing on Sunday morning. Hopefully that's a sign that my time management and prioritization learning is progressing.
No comments:
Post a Comment