Dr. Angeline Lillard presents Maria Montessori’s key insights about childhood education, the subsequent educational research that has validated her approach, and how these ideas are implemented in a modern Montessori classroom.
From Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius
For more information, visit: http://montessori-science.org
Dr. Angeline Lillard presents Maria Montessori’s key insights about childhood education, the subsequent educational research that has validated her approach, and how these ideas are implemented in a modern Montessori classroom.
From Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius
For more information, visit: http://montessori-science.org
Dr. Angeline Lillard presents Maria Montessori’s key insights about childhood education, the subsequent educational research that has validated her approach, and how these ideas are implemented in a modern Montessori classroom.
From Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius
For more information, visit: http://montessori-science.org
Dr. Angeline Lillard presents Maria Montessori’s key insights about childhood education, the subsequent educational research that has validated her approach, and how these ideas are implemented in a modern Montessori classroom.
From Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius
For more information, visit: http://montessori-science.org
Dr. Angeline Lillard presents Maria Montessori’s key insights about childhood education, the subsequent educational research that has validated her approach, and how these ideas are implemented in a modern Montessori classroom.
From Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius
For more information, visit: http://montessori-science.org
Dr. Angeline Lillard presents Maria Montessori’s key insights about childhood education, the subsequent educational research that has validated her approach, and how these ideas are implemented in a modern Montessori classroom.
From Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius
For more information, visit: http://montessori-science.org
Dr. Angeline Lillard presents Maria Montessori’s key insights about childhood education, the subsequent educational research that has validated her approach, and how these ideas are implemented in a modern Montessori classroom.
From Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius
For more information, visit: http://montessori-science.org
Dr. Angeline Lillard presents Maria Montessori’s key insights about childhood education, the subsequent educational research that has validated her approach, and how these ideas are implemented in a modern Montessori classroom.
From Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius
For more information, visit: http://montessori-science.org
In this interview, with Kelly Thomas, Tim Seldin, President of the Montessori Foundation and Chair of the International Montessori Council, will share what it is about the Montessori approach that nurtures creativity and inventiveness that we can all learn from?
Montessori school alumni include Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, not to mention Julia Child and rapper Sean “P.Diddy” Combs, making it appear that the Montessori educational approach might be the surest route to joining the creative elite.
Click the image below to watch the video or scroll down to read the transcription.
Kelly: Hi Tim. I am so happy to have you here. I am a big fan of Montessori. Both of my kids go to an AMI Montessori School here in California and I’m also a big fan of your book, which I use with my children, had some great activities. I’m hoping you can tell us what exactly Montessori is.
Tim: Montessori means many things to many people. Its best known as a system of education, but it’s really a movement and a philosophy of life. Its mission is to change society to create a more peaceful world in a world that’s oriented to partnership. But in terms of education, it is a strategy that says let’s look at what we know about children from a scientific perspective. Let’s attempt to consciously do what can be shown to work best.
What we know about children is that children are different. They learn in different ways. They have different personalities. They grow in different ways. The idea of teaching one thing to an entire class that is really rather neurological.
Montessori is first designed for differences. It’s designed to support each child as an individual. It’s designed to be incredibly respectful and child honoring and is designed to follow the child as they develop from birth ideally, all the way through high school and beyond.
Kelly: You hear about all the kind of famous people who had Montessori background, like the Google founders and famous musician and things. I think there are a lot of schools that call themselves Montessori, there’s AMS Montessori, there’s AMI Montessori. What are the differences? Are they all considered true Montessori?
Tim: Montessori is a movement and it’s not copyrighted. There is no central authority. It’s not a franchise. It’s something that can be studied and defined by research. We know what authentic or fully implemented Montessori is. But individual schools can’t help but be themselves. Their programs, their approach to life is created by the nature of the owners, the nature of the teachers they hire, the culture of the parent body, and the culture they live within. It’s can have somewhat different faces.
To think that it is simply AMS or AMI is a serious mistake because while there are two large organizations, the American Montessori Society, AMS and AMI, Association, Montessori International, the reality is those were only two of hundreds of Montessori societies. In this country, there’s give or take around 13 Montessori societies. I happen to be the chairman of the third largest, the International Montessori Council.
I started in AMS. I’ve worked with hundreds and hundreds of AMI schools. What I can say to you is the reality is you have to look at the individual school and you’d have to ask, “Does this school fit my understanding of what Montessori should be? Is it a good match for me? Is it a good match for my child?” but I can’t really get too caught up and brand loyalty because one Montessori school will be somewhat different from another. But truthfully, we all have more in common than we have differences. The differences are usually pretty minor.
Kelly: What are some of the differences?
Tim: I think the major differences you’re going to find in one school versus another is not based on the brand, but rather on how faithfully this particular teacher, this particular school is implementing Montessori
This is what a parent should be looking at when they’re thinking about a Montessori school for their children. They should be asking, “Do I find the following things? The first is every class led by a fully qualified Montessori educator.
Now this is usually a graduate-level course of study that will typically take between one and three years. There are different brands, but as long as they’re all MACTE accredited, which would include AMI, AMS, IMC, the group that I’m connected to, the International Montessori Council, or any of the other, as I mentioned, 13 organizations in the United States.
As long as they’re accredited by the US Department of Education’s recognized Accrediting body, the Montessori Accreditation Council for Teacher Education (MACTE), that’s the first definition of do you have a fully trained Montessori teacher?
By the way, in our world, more children in a class is better, because the larger the class, the more children will tend to learn from each other. The best teacher of a child is another somewhat older child. It’s the community of children covering a three-year-age-span that makes it work. Usually, Montessori classes will have between 20 and 30 children to two adults from the children’s house (ages 3 to 6) level and up.
But in these classes, children learn to be basically self-regulating. They make choices and they go through the day with a very quiet hum. It should almost feel like uncanny silence, but it shouldn’t be the silence of the teacher running around going, “Shhh, shhh, shhh.” It should be coming from within the children.
Kelly: Montessori teaches kids to learn how to think and develop their self-internal intrinsic motivation.
Tim: I like to think of Montessori as being based on four pillars. Those pillars are first off of a voluntary passion for excellence, the desire to do things, not just to win, not just to be the best in the class, but simply because we really care about our work. It’s not just something we do to get a paycheck. We do it because it defines who we are. The passion for excellence that Tom Peters wrote about years ago in his bestselling book, In Search Of Excellence, is very much connected to the entrepreneurial spirit of Montessori, whether in a young child or in a Montessori adult grown-up.
The second is the idea of internalizing a set of universal values, not just hearing them in chapel, not just having them parroting them back, but literally learning to live in such a way that you follow the rules because it’s the right thing to do, not what’s in it for you if you obey and what could happen to you negatively if you disobey because that just invites a child to ask, “Am I willing to pay the price or do I think I’m going to get caught?”
When we believe that children need to learn from home, from school and from society kindness and compassion, honesty and integrity, the idea of reaching out and doing what you can for your fellow human being and the idea of being as positive and as happy in your life as you possibly can and understanding that happiness is not something that you strive to achieve. It’s an attitude. It’s a way of living and it’s not something that can be taken away from you because you lose possessions. It’s almost a philosophy of life.
There are universal values, nonviolence, integrity, empathy, compassion, peacefulness that we teach in all good Montessori schools.
The third pillar I would suggest is the idea that we want our children to be global citizens and to have a real sense of global understanding. Every Montessori school is an international school.
We think they need to know their family story, your country-of-origin story, the nature or a story of the community in which they’re living at this time and place. They need to be really rooted in the understanding that they don’t live alone. They’re connected to all of humanity and all of life. They have to think globally, not just about the moment, about this quarter’s bottom line, but about the good of the long haul, about the generations unborn.
The fourth is the idea of service, service to others and self-service, taking care of yourself. You might think of everything in this as balance, but it tends to produce entrepreneurs, not the typical drudge or the child who burns out by the third year of high school or the third year of college. Usually, these are kids that just keep going and never want to retire because they’re having too much fun doing what they’re doing.
Kelly: Does Montessori work for all families and all types of kids?
Tim: Well, it’s not that it wouldn’t work. I think a better way of understanding it Kelly is it simply isn’t going to work because ultimately the parent is the captain of her child’s fate. She’s going to decide what she or he feels is best for the child.
The average parent frankly doesn’t want Montessori. If they think they want it, it’s probably because they don’t really understand what it is, which is okay, but they’ll usually stay for a few years and then move on to a real school and put them in something totally different.
As type-A personalities, what many parents want is something that’s going to make their child do more, faster, as if it were a race. I think that’s really a very misguided approach. It leads to a great deal of the anxiety, depression, and mental illness that we’re seeing in the world around us.
Montessori is not a religion; we don’t believe that we can, or should, try to convert people. We try to find families who are going to love us for what we are. Part of our message is that we create conditions in which children will develop at their own best pace in their own best way. What we’re really going to focus on is character, kindness, compassion, and an openness to learning, a sense of wonder.
Kelly: You’re saying that it’s best to start when the child is three. What about people who keep their children home until later? Are they missing any key things that happened in the earlier years?
Tim: As a Montessori mom, you know the answer. The earlier children enter Montessori and the longer they stay, the deeper the impact of Montessori is likely to be.
We encourage parents to enroll their children as young as possible; as close to birth as we possibly can. This is not because we’re going to teach them to read and write and do four-digit arithmetic earlier. That might happen, but when it does, it is a by-product of Montessori. We all want our children to become the very best people they can become. In Montessori, it’s easy to create those kinds of communities with children who are toddlers or age three, and sometimes age four.
If you just want to think of it from a curriculum perspective, and that’s in my opinion, a very small part of it, there is so much to learn in a three, four, and five-year-old class. Children entering Montessori a year or two late will normally be well behind most of the other children. It’s usually a night and day difference. However, that doesn’t mean that the older child can’t enter a Montessori school at five or above and benefit greatly if the school is willing to accept them where they are.
We start where children are and keep building from there. In Montessori, we call it ‘learning how to learn.’ There are things that you can learn at age three that change you for the rest of your life. The same thing is true of a child who starts even younger at age two.
It isn’t about core knowledge. It’s not about reading and writing and arithmetic. It’s what is now being called executive function skills. It’s eye-hand-coordination. It’s vocabulary. More than anything else, it’s a sense of self.
Children are learning all the time. The question is whether the messages they’re receiving, the things they’re learning are destructive to their long-term ability to learn, whether it’s sowing seeds of self-doubt, worry about whether you’re smart enough, fast enough, wealthy enough, whatever. Most humans are filled with self-doubt about whether or not it’s okay to make mistakes, but humans make mistakes all the time. It doesn’t mean that we should encourage kids to spell things wrong or get mathematics problems incorrectly, but we have to teach children to not be afraid to try to teach them that they can do it.
Kelly: I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about what are the misconceptions that people have of Montessori
Tim: One of the most basic is that Montessori is a brand name like Chick-fil-A and they expect every Montessori school to be the same. At the Montessori Foundation, we get calls and emails every day by the hundreds asking, “How do I know whether I found a real Montessori school?” People will ask, “Should I go AMS, AMI, or IMC?” and you’ve already heard my answer there. To me, that’s silly to think only in terms of these brands because if you take five schools, they will not be the same. They’re different.
Instead, let’s ask, “What is Montessori supposed to be? Do you find it in the school you’re considering for your child? Frankly, is it good enough? Because no school is perfect. As a parent, you really have to be an unusual person to choose Montessori for your children because there is no guarantee. I mean, we can talk all we want about the Google guys and the founder of Amazon and all the other famous Nobel laureates and so forth that went to Montessori.
When you’re sitting there looking at your child and another parent says, “Well, your child Kelly, your child’s reading, but my child’s not, so something’s wrong with my child. She’s clearly not right for Montessori. She needs more structure. She needs to be pushed. I need to send her elsewhere.” Lots of people think like that and there’s nothing we can do to change them.
All we can do is ask what is it that we’re looking for a Montessori school and parents ought to be asking themselves this question, “Is Montessori right for me?”
The other thing with this, by the way, is competition. A lot of people think Montessori as opposed to competition. We’re not. We simply say competition is rather silly. When you’re trying to motivate children to learn, they’re going to compete with each other naturally.
They don’t need outside adult interference. Instead, let it happen naturally. Let them learn about the real consequences of the real world step by step. At age three, four, and five this is silly. It’s not the way it works or shouldn’t work. Any school that’s playing high stakes testing with a three, four and five-year-olds really ought to be thinking about what is it doing.
Kelly: what is the most important thing in the first plane of development, like zero to three? What should a child be exposed to or doing? I think this book had some amazing stuff for the early years, I referenced myself, but if you could just talk about a couple of things that are really important.
Tim: Well, in the first three years, a trial is going from infancy through the toddler years. Most of us call the toddler years the terrible twos. I would suggest to you that they don’t need to be terrible at all. They can be the “terrific twos.” What children are doing at that age is they’re beginning to become independent, beginning to get control of their bodies. They’re beginning to get control of their emotions. They’re beginning to learn how to operate in society.
A lot of it has to do with the neurological development of the brain, learning how to make their body work. Much of what we do from birth to three is we’re teaching language. We’re helping kids to communicate their thoughts.
We’re teaching them to be part of a group. We’re teaching them how to make their hands work, which you might call fine motor movement. We’re teaching them how to move about the environment and not bump into things and drop things. We’re also teaching them a work cycle, how to select something from the shelf. Work with it typically on a table or on a rug, which many of us use small rugs to define a work area and then to put it back.
We’re going to teach them how to do things for themselves because the goals, of course, are to be able to operate throughout the classroom on your own, to prepare your sleeping mat, to get food when you’re hungry. You’ll often see things that you could buy at Pier One or stores like that, little cheese plates that will break. They’re not made of plastic. You find little forks and knives that are their size, little glasses that fit in the hand of a toddler, and they will prepare their own food when they’re ready.
We use very lightweight tables. All our classroom furniture is within the ability of the age range of the class to move around the room. The whole idea is to assist the development of the dignity of the child.
Kelly: I know that you want everything to be real life. What’s the harm of, say, someone who wants to go to Disneyland or let their children see Frozen, the movie? Tell us about the philosophy on those princesses and things like that.
Tim: Well, there are several issues. One of the most basic ones is that young children don’t need any help with fantasy. They have it down pat. Children come into the world just filled with a natural tendency to make-believe. They don’t need to see Walt Disney for that. It will happen all over the world, naturally.
What they need help with is learning about reality. It’s not that fantasy is bad, or that we would tell a parent, “Don’t ever do that.” What we say is to help them learn how to manage things that are real. Many toys and movies are meant to distract and entertain, but they’re not connected to reality.
What we’re trying to do is to teach people empathy and understanding of reality instead of having everything be cartoonish. That’s number one.
That has to do with independence and to know the difference between a cartoon show that shows people flying and what really happens if you jump out of a tree.
The second is a lot of the things children experience is created by big business and it’s designed to turn children into consumers. We could get a really interesting conversation going about the true stories of princesses hundreds of years ago and how the middle class, the working class, and the peasants felt about princesses and princes.
Today we’ve turned that into fantasy land to sell toys, cereals, and everything else. Is it horrible? No! I mean, my children enjoyed Disneyland. I just think that we need to remember the kids don’t need a lot of help with the fantasy part. They’ve got that.
Kelly: Where can people go for more information about Montessori in general, if they wanted to read up more about, to learn more about the philosophy?
Tim: Well, anyone could Google Montessori and they’ll come up with probably 300,000 websites. Certainly, one source is our website, www.montessori.org. We really focus on trying to help parents understand Montessori and use its principles at home. We sponsor an international association of Montessori parents called the Montessori Family Alliance.
Here is a link to the digital archive of Dr. Maria Montessori’s essays, The Erdkinder and the Functions of the University. In this work Maria Montessori considers the needs and issues of needed educational reform for adolescents and university students. She looks at each level and seeks the optimum method for facilitating growth.
Click the cover image to read it online.
by Robin Howe, EdD
Editor’s Note: If we had a dollar for every time a skeptical parent has questioned the amount of time their young Montessori child spends washing tables …
Ironically, I missed the session of my Montessori teacher training when we were given the lesson on how to wash tables. I remember doing it as a Montessori child. How hard could it be? I was just getting out of my first career in the restaurant business, and someone was going to teach me how to wash a table? I had washed and set tables for the rich and famous. I had cleaned more tables than everyone in that class combined. I was, in fact, relieved to miss that day of instruction. The summer training session ended, with my teacher trainer reminding me that I still needed to have a lesson on table washing.
A month later, about three weeks into the school year, where I was doing my internship, my lead teacher, a wonderful, experienced Montessorian, invited me to join her while she gave a review lesson to one of the returning students on table washing. Great, I thought! This was my opportunity to receive the lesson, seemingly without missing a beat. About twenty minutes later, I found myself sitting there observing a four-year-old finish up his work, while I, the ‘non-lesson-needing ‘expert’ watched dumbfounded.
I once thought that table washing was one of the most remedial tasks that a Montessori student would ever have to learn. As a result of watching this lesson, and essentially being humbled by a four-year-old (also an experience that has since occurred on many occasions), I have come to realize how important and difficult this work is for children.
I have now learned how to give this lesson, and it never ceases to amaze me that it is so complicated. More amazing is the way that my students seem to pick it up so quickly and how I still, after many lessons, have to focus in order to perform it correctly. For these reasons, I would like to share the lesson, as well as some observations, on how children respond to this exercise. It is my hope that others will gain a better appreciation for the complexity of this lesson and will, as a result, appreciate its importance and contribution as a part of the Montessori curriculum.
When working with any water exercise, the first step is to have the child put on an apron. Students are already familiar with where aprons are kept in the classroom, as well as how to put one on. Next, the teacher asks the student to go together to where the table-washing kit is located on the shelf. The child is either shown or asked to identify the table-washing kit and is then asked to take it to the side of the table that will be washed, placing the kit on the floor next to the table. Included in the table-washing kit are the following: soap in the soap dish; a soap brush; a pitcher for gathering the water; a bucket for dirty water; a basin (or bowl); a sponge; a drying cloth; and a hand towel that will serve as a mat for the materials. Generally, the materials are kept in the basin that will be used for the water. With the hand towel in place on the floor, the materials are arranged along the top of the hand towel in this order: sponge, soap, brush, drying towel (from left to right), and the water pitcher. And basin along the bottom. Note: This lesson may vary depending on the classroom and teacher.
After all the materials are placed on the towel, water is brought to the table using the water pitcher. Children have to fetch the water, which exercises body control as they navigate through the classroom, returning carefully with a pitcher filled with water (about two-thirds full). Then, the water is poured from the pitcher to the basin. The pouring of water from a pitcher is an extension of work that the student has already mastered in earlier Practical Life lessons.
Next, the brush is wet and run across the soap until it is foamy. Using the wet, soapy brush, the table is methodically scrubbed in a circular motion. There should be small, but visible, suds on the surface of the table.
The brush is then rinsed and returned to its place on the mat. The dirty water is poured from the basin to the bucket, and the child carefully walks the dirty water to the sink to empty it. He will return it to the mat and fetch the pitcher so that he may again fill it with clean water to pour into the basin.
Now, the child wets the sponge and wrings out the excess water. Both the wetting of the sponge, as well as the squeezing of the sponge, are skills the child already possesses as a result of previous lessons in Practical Life. Starting at the bottom of the table, moving in horizontal motions, the child begins to rinse the soap from the table.
The sponge is wet once again. As an extension of this Practical Life exercise, the student might be asked to count how many compresses the sponge gets and then count the number of squeezes in order to expel excess water.
The child rinses the sponge, and picks up the towel to begin carefully drying the table top. After the surface is completely clear, the child checks the edge for suds and wipes it accordingly.
Step 1: Apron
Step 2: Collecting Materials for the Lesson
Step 3: Preparing the Materials
Step 4: Getting Water
Step 5: Pouring Water
Step 6: Wet the Brush
Step 7: Soap the brush
Step 8: Scrub the Table
Step 9: Dump the Dirty Water
Step 10: Fill the Pitcher with More Clean Water
Step 11: Pour the Clean Water into the Bowl
Step 12: Wet and Wring the Sponge
Step 13: Wipe the Table with the Sponge
Step 14: Dry Table with Cloth
Step 15: Dump Dirty Water into Bucket
Step 16: Dump Dirty Water
Step 17: Clean Up Any Spills
Step 18: Roll Up a Clean Towel
Step 19: Fold the Mat
Step 20: Return the Materials to the Tray
At this point, the table is now clean and dry, and the basin is filled with soapy water. The student then pours the water in the basin into the bucket and disposes of the soapy water. The process of disposing of the water is also a very important part of the lesson. The child, again, has to navigate through the classroom, focusing on his movement and the balance of the bucket so as to not spill the water. This is great practice for walking slowly and being patient.
Once the water is dumped, the child uses the towel to make sure the work area is clean and dry. The dirty towel is placed in the laundry hamper, and a fresh towel is carefully rolled, and placed in the pitcher. Next, the mat is carefully folded and all materials are returned to the tray as they were found.
This lesson is important for many reasons. As mentioned during the lesson description, the child has to practice patience, while exercising fine-motor skills and balance. The student’s ability to sequence is challenged, as the proper completion of the work is dependent upon the ability to follow the proper steps. Another important aspect of this lesson, perhaps overlooked much of the time, is the time that the student spends working with the teacher. This is one of the longest lessons and can often take up to fifteen minutes.
During this process, children must listen carefully and ask questions, which helps them develop important language skills.
I hope that my description of this exercise offers some insight into the Montessori classroom and instills a sense of respect and feeling of awe for the children. Similar to the mistake I made, many people assume that these lessons with simple names must be simple, causing us to wonder how they could be so important. Indeed, I have come to realize that they are important, not only as a part of children’s Montessori academic curriculum but also their development as people. •
Daniel Robinson (Robin) Howe, III was a Montessori student from age two through the eighth grade. He worked his way through multiple levels of certification, spent many years in the classroom, managed a number of Montessori schools, and then earned his EdD. Formerly, co-head of the NewGate School, Robin is a senior consultant with the Montessori Foundation.
TOMORROW’S CHILD © • NOVEMBER 2019 • WWW.MONTESSORI.ORG
I’m going to dive right in to discuss a very tricky area for parents and children alike: tantrums.
I hope you find this article useful so you can start applying Montessori principles in your home too.
Tantrums are a pretty normal part of life with children from around one to five years old. Maybe they’ll start a little later than one year and will end earlier, but anything in this range is fairly normal. Your child is learning that things don’t always go their way. And, as parents, we are helping them learn how to deal with these emotions and to make amends.
It can be upsetting for a parent. It’s hard to realize that your child is actually asking for your help. They are overwhelmed by the situation and need your support to calm down. It’s not the time to take it personally.
It can be possible to avoid tantrums before your child loses control. Here are some ideas to ward off tantrums when you see the first signs of your child losing control.
1. Be prepared: take a small bag with some simple games and some favorite snacks if you expect your child to wait patiently in a doctor’s office or a cafe.
2. Label their feelings: “Boy, you really wish you could stay longer”; “You really wanted some orange juice right now!”
3. Redirect them: “I can’t let you hit your brother, but you can hit this drum/pillow.”
4. Get down to their level: “You sound frustrated. Can you tell me why?”
5. If they are struggling, ask them if they would like some help: give them just as much help as they need and then step back.
6. Give them a choice: “Would you like to put on your shoes or your scarf first?”
7. Establish routines: “… and after lunch, we’ll go to the toilet, read a book, and tuck in for a rest.”
8. Let them show their anger creatively, “Show me how angry you are. Here is some paper and a pencil. Wow. They are big circles. You are really mad!”
Events can often escalate to a full-blown tantrum. Sometimes it’s from your child’s frustration; other times their anger or rage; sometimes because they want to be in control; their communication may still be limited; or because they are tired, hungry, or overstimulated. They can throw themselves on the floor, push us away, try to hit us, a sibling, another child, or even break something.
It can be useful to note things that cause tantrums in your child: over-scheduling can be common; a new baby; moving to a new house; or certain children may trigger them.
Sometimes the tantrum is even caused by us as we deliver the news that it is time to leave the park, or we serve some food they don’t like for dinner, or that we would like them to get dressed to leave the house.
It’s OK for your child to have a tantrum. You can acknowledge their displeasure at what is going on. You can help them to do the thing that they don’t like. However, when we back down and give in to them, you will find they shout even louder next time.
It’s difficult to be the parent and stay strong. But your hard work will pay off in the long term. They will learn that when you say no, you mean no; and when you say yes, you mean it too.
I like the advice from Positive Discipline for Preschoolers (by Nelsen EdD, Jane, Erwin M.A., Cheryl, et al. Jul 9, 2019). “If you say it, mean it; and if you mean it, follow through with kind and firm action.”
Action may be, for example, leaving the park with a sad toddler, acknowledging that they really wish they could stay longer.
When your child is having a tantrum, some experts advise putting them into time out. I find this difficult as your child is asking for help to calm down, and you are removing your support and punishing them instead.
When we punish our children, they often get angry at us rather than being sorry for what they have done. Or they try to work out a way to get away with it next time without being caught.
Instead, I look for ways that I can support my child to calm down. I’m not saying that their behavior is OK, but when they are in the middle of the tantrum, it is not the time to teach them anything. They cannot hear you. They have lost control. So let’s help them calm down.
Some children will respond to a cuddle during a tantrum. You can rub their back, cuddle them, and sing to them as they go through all the range of emotions from anger, to intense frustration, to sadness, and sometimes regret. I once held my son for 40 minutes as he refused to get dressed. And I watched him go through all these emotions. In the end, he announced he was ready to get dressed. He told me he loved me. He wasn’t angry with me. He was grateful that I had just been there for him. I know sometimes you have to leave, but in this case, we just changed our plans.
Other children will push you away and don’t want to be touched. In this case, I make sure they are safe and cannot hurt themselves or others. I stand nearby and keep offering my help, “I’m here if you need some help to calm down. Or we can have a cuddle when you are ready.” After the tantrum, I like to offer a cuddle. “That was tough. And now you have calmed yourself down. Would you like a hug?”
If they are throwing toys at their sibling or trying to hit me, I would remove them so that everyone is safe. “I can’t let you hit me. My safety is important to me. Would you like to hit these pillows instead?” If your child is trying to hurt the baby, you can place yourself physically between them to keep the baby safe as you help your older child calm down.
For a child over three years old, you can set up a “calm place,” which they can use when they are upset. It may be a tent with some pillows and favorite things. It may be a corner with some trains. You can ask your child if she would like to go to her calm place.
This is different than ‘time out,’ as the older child is in control; she can come out when she feels calm. If she comes back still in a rage, I would gently tell her that she looks like she still needs to calm down and can come back when she is ready.
Maybe you are thinking that if I support my children while they calm down, I’m saying that their behavior is OK, and I’m encouraging them to get angry. When they are upset, indeed, my objective is to help them calm down.
Once they are calm, I then help them to make amends. If they drew on the walls, I would get them to help me clean up. If they broke their brother’s toy, they can help to fix it. I’ve asked the kids to help scrub their sheets when they used marker pens in bed and made a mess.
In this way, they learn to take responsibility when things go wrong. And when it’s over, it’s over. The good thing about young children is that they can move quickly from deep anger and sadness back to their happy selves. We need to move on too and not let this upset the whole day by referring back to it or keeping on about it. Once they have made amends, it’s OK for everyone to move on. •
Shouldn’t we just ignore their tantrum?
I don’t like to ignore children when they are having a tantrum. They may not let me touch them, but I keep offering support and letting them know I am available when they need me. If you were super upset and your partner just left the room for you to get over it, you would likely find them unsupportive. We are showing our kids that, good or bad, we will be there for them.
What do I do if we are out in public when they have a tantrum?
There are basically two options:
First: Go home—if you find it difficult to have people watching you, it’s best to just leave. This may mean parking a full shopping cart and following the above ideas once you are home.
Second: Stay and support them—my preferred option is to hang in there and do what you would do even though you are out of the house. If you have more than one child with you, make sure they are safe. And then offer as much help as you can to help your child calm down. People watching will more likely think about what a lovely, patient parent you are, rather than what a horrible noise your child is making.
I find it difficult to stay calm myself. What can I do?
If your child has triggered you, it is indeed difficult to help them calm down.
• If your partner is available, it can be easiest to get them to step in instead.
• You may want to make sure the kids are safe and go to the bathroom to catch your breath.
• Find a mantra that you can repeat, “I breathe in calm, I breathe out anger.”
• Remember not to take it personally. Perhaps visualize putting on a bullet-proof suit that will resist everything (including words) that your child throws at you.
These tips should help you remain calm and give your child the support they need to regain control.
Learn from Simone Davies, an AMI Montessori teacher with15+ years’ experience working with 0-3-year olds, owner of Jacaranda TreeMontessori in Amsterdam since 2008, mother of two teenagers, and author of the book The Montessori Toddler. Visit her blog at themontessorinotebook.com
This article is from the November 2019 issue of Tomorrow’s Child magazine. Reprinted with the author’s permission.
“The undisciplined child enters into discipline by working in the company of others; not being told he is naughty … Discipline is, therefore, primarily a learning experience and less a punitive experience if appropriately dealt with.” —Maria Montessori
Teachers spend years learning to create an atmosphere in Montessori classrooms that embody the wisdom of Dr. Montessori while fostering the spiritual awakening in their students and themselves. Administrators try, via parent education and engagement, to explain the developmental stages of children so that expectations are realistic for all. Montessori parents are a special group of people who want a very holistic education for their children. However, none of us is immune to needing some reminding of how to talk and treat people we encounter regardless of their place in this world. We are all in this together. By practicing and modeling these skills we can all benefit and change the world.
Many parents and teachers, and some Montessori Directresses make use of ‘time out’ as a means of compelling children to behave in a certain way. Sometimes, the child is required to sit on a specific chair. Sometimes this is called a ‘thinking chair,’ and the child is instructed to think about what he has done. There are many variations on this theme, and the strategy has many names. Ultimately, they all boil down to the same thing.
According to Montessori, a child who is unruly or disruptive should be taken aside by the Directress, away from the disruption of his peers. The adult will stay with the child, quietly re-assuring him, until he is ready to return to his work. This has been interpreted by some as an endorsement of the ‘time-out chair.’
Although removal from the activity of other children can help an over-excited or distraught child to calm down, it is very difficult to use the chair in a non-punitive way. Maria Montessori is quite clear in her writings that punishments have no place in a Montessori environment.
In the early years of its use, the ‘time-out chair’ was seen as a positive step in disciplining young children, as opposed to scolding or complete isolation, or in the absolutely unacceptable (but not absolutely obsolete) practice of spanking children. The technique was regarded as an aid in helping children to learn independence and self-control. Children could take part in group or individual activities as long as they obeyed the house rules. Any infraction would mean removal from activities and peers and, for a specified time, sitting in a designated place some distance away from the center of activities.
The adult then gave the child the opportunity to determine when he felt he could rejoin the group as a cooperative member or asked the child (after whatever time interval seemed appropriate) if he could now cooperate with the rules and be readmitted to the group. The problems associated with a time-out system are essentially those that arise from any method of punishment. Children may well behave in the required way, but they conform in order to avoid being sent to the chair, whether or not they have internalized the rules. It is a simple example of operant conditioning.
Time-out and other punishments are not appropriate in a Montessori environment because they focus on behavior rather than internal development. Punishments reinforce what Maria Montessori called “obedience of the wrong kind.”
Punishments don’t work because they neither help to develop the willpower associated with real choice nor do they help to teach alternative, more acceptable behaviors. Any authoritarian approach discourages creative problem-solving, the development of appropriate conflict-resolution techniques, and the growth of an internal locus of control.
In many ways, isolation from the group can be even more negative than physical punishment, as it engenders feelings of rejection in the child, which can have serious implications for children with already diminished self-esteem. These ideas are supported by Peter Haiman, who argues effectively against the use of time-out in the home. His arguments apply equally to the classroom.
Most importantly, as Ann Clewett points out, “The very existence of the chair causes anxiety in some children.”
The use of star charts and black marks (or any other version of the debit/credit system) has the same result. These systems, just by being evident in the environment, can trigger a stress response in some children, which often results in the very behavior they are designed to deter. Frequent use of these systems only serves to reinforce the child’s negative self-concept by repeatedly humiliating the transgressor in front of his peers.
Clewett’s alternatives to the time-out chair are very similar to those proposed by Dr. Montessori:
“Rather than removing the child from the learning situation when she makes mistakes, we should stop the inappropriate behavior and send her back into the situation to practice the new behavior. Once a child knows that we are helping her find new ways of accomplishing what she wants to, she will begin to think out more acceptable ways herself.”
Until she grasps the concept of alternate ways, she will revert to old habits. Intervention to prevent aggression and suggestions of acceptable alternatives must be made for a number of weeks before children begin to use the alternatives consistently themselves.
The important point in Clewett’s argument is that the adult helps the child “find new ways of accomplishing what she wants to…” Instead of trying to change the child’s behavior, we help the child choose different strategies. By avoiding the use of punishment (and, for that matter, rewards) we shift the emphasis from control to cooperation, from conflict
to collaboration.
A child who might resist control comes to see the adult as an ally, someone to turn to when help is needed. The absence of punishments and rewards is critical to the development of self-discipline.
References
Britton, J. L. . “Montessori Explained,” Child Education (July 1984)
Clewett, Ann. “Guidance and disciple: Teaching Young Children Appropriate Behavior,” Young Children (May 1988)
Haiman, Peter. “The Case Against Time Out,” www.naturalchild.org/guest/peter_haiman.html
Sharon Caldwell is a Montessori consultant in South Africa. She is also a member of the staff of the Montessori Foundation.
Tomorrow’s Child/ Jan 19 / pg 10
Dear Cathie—
We are new to the Montessori philosophy and want to make the most of it in our family and our children’s lives. We have come to this a bit late, as we just moved to an area with a Montessori school. We have enrolled both of our children and are trying to learn as quickly as possible. What are the kinds of things we should be doing at home to support the kind of learning the children are doing at school? — new Montessori parents
Dear Parents,
You are asking all the right questions and doing all the right things! Montessori is indeed a philosophy and you can’t adopt it too late in the life of your family or your child. In a Montessori school, the guides believe that your child will reveal himself through the work that he chooses and shows us (the adults in his life) that which he needs to learn at that time. It is our job to aid him in this journey, showing him skills and activities that interest him, challenge him, and grow his academic, social, and motor skills as he moves along this path.
We strive to allow him as much freedom as he can handle in doing things for himself and being independent. We create an environment with maximum accessibility based on the ages and skills of the children and then teach them to use the materials in that environment safely. An Infant/Toddler environment would let the child be able to reach for their own diapers and their own lunch box so they can show us when they are hungry. A 3-6-year-old environment might contain scissors, a stapler, tape dispenser, sewing needles etc. An Elementary environment is much richer with all the tools and resources a child would need to plan a complicated individual or group project or a “going-out” field trip of their own choosing.
The primary ways that your family can help are to allow your child to be as independent as possible in all areas of his life. Let your child do as much for himself as his age and skill set allow in the areas of dressing, eating, food preparation, and contributing to his family. Let him choose his clothing and dress as much as he is able. If he cannot do all of a dressing task, let him do the part that he can. If he is not strong enough to pull on his whole sock, you can pull the sock over his heel and he can pull it up to his ankle. If he cannot manage his shirt, let him place his hands in the sleeve holes and then help him get his head into the head hole. Together pull the shirt over his torso. Removing clothes is an easier skill and will be mastered more quickly. With that comes the responsibility of placing the dirty clothes into the hamper. Sure, you can do it quicker, but letting him do it aids him in the path to independence! As he gets older invite him to help you sort the laundry, match the clean socks, fold the dish towels, and even carry his own lunch box to the car and into school. Try to constantly think
of things that you are doing that your child might be able to do
for himself.
Strive for independence in eating and food preparation. At mealtime, encourage your child to help prepare the meal. Teach your child to set the table. Perhaps, at first, he will only place the napkins under the fork. Eventually, he will know where all the parts of the table setting go and will be able to do it independently. This is a great way to get some quality family time while teaching valuable table-setting and food-preparation skills. A child as young as two can tear lettuce, and at three or four can cut vegetables using a child-friendly knife (https://www.forsmallhands.com/small-nylon-knife). Preschoolers can also help to cut vegetables or fruit even when they are not brave enough to eat them. Once the meal is on the table, encourage your child to serve himself from the family serving bowls. This is good practice in motor control as well as choosing the amount of food you are planning to eat. If your child is Elementary aged and your family is ordering ‘take out,’ allow your child to help in the planning and even in making the phone call to order the food.
Allow your child to get his own snacks independently (within reason). Create a place in your home that has snacks available for your child. Let him choose his own snack food from among those choices. Since you (the parent) stock the snack spot, you still have ultimate control over how much and what your child is eating. Your child is gaining valuable practice in deciding what to eat and how often to eat from these limited choices. If your refrigerator allows it, place a small pitcher and glass on a low shelf so your child can pour his own water or juice when he is thirsty.
As he moves towards Kindergarten, he is probably ready to take over parts of packing his own school lunch. Try to arrange your refrigerator so the things that your child will need for his lunch are available for him to access independently. He can select his own yogurt, or make his own sandwich, put his own fruit into the reusable container and close it (great motor practice), and fill his own water bottle. Let it be a joint effort until his skills are solid, and then let that be your child’s work because he has mastered another piece of independence. Let your child be a part of choosing what food to buy each week, so he gets to experience being a smart consumer. Once he is old enough, he will be able to contribute to the family grocery list and eventually shop for himself with confidence and skill.
Encourage your child to contribute to the family. A very young child can do simple tasks such as taking their plate to the sink, hanging up their towel or putting their toys away. Children a bit older can bring in the mail, feed the dog, empty the trashcans in the house, or take out the garbage. Families can work together to plan vacations, solve problems within their families, or create a new project, such as a vegetable garden or a fire pit. All of these things help the family to function as a unit and help children realize that they are a member of a group.
Optimal development is the goal of every Montessori classroom and every family. Guides encourage each child to grow in their social, emotional, academic, self-help, and motor skills each on his own timetable. All the adults in a child’s life help him along his path to independence, and by working together, parents and Montessori schools aid the optimal development of a child so he can become his most authentic, happy, and healthy self.
Tomorrow’s Child/ September 2018/Pg 34
Children in kindergarten playing and exploring the concept of balance using weights
When we try to define what our children really “get” from Montessori, we need to expand our vision to include more than just the basics. Of course they learn to read, do four-digit mathematics, recognize geometric shapes, and identify the parts of a plant and a mollusk. They also learn how to be a contributing member of a community.
A Montessori school is more than a classroom. It is a society in a microcosm, and the skills and lessons they learn in this environment extend well beyond the traditional definition of academic success. They are life lessons that were very much needed at the time when Dr. Montessori developed her teaching methodology, and they are life lessons that remain relevant to our children today.
“The basic nature of our society and the family itself have changed radically, and only an equally radical change in education will suffice.”—John Dewey, School, and Society, 1899
In her book, The Schoolhome: Rethinking Schools for Changing Families (Harvard University Press, 1992, revised 2009), Dr. Judith Rowland Martin writes that she was not very impressed when she first encountered Montessori education. She understood that Montessori schools placed children in multi-age classrooms and used manipulative learning materials, which may have been very unusual during Montessori’s lifetime, but have since been incorporated into most early childhood and many elementary classrooms, thanks to the Open Classroom movement of the 1960s. However, Dr. Martin’s understanding of the value of the Montessori approach became dearer when she came across a statement in Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s book, A Montessori Mother (first published in 1912), in which Fisher disagrees with the universal interpretation given to Montessori’s “Casa dei Bambini” or “Children’s House.”
In A Montessori Mother, Fisher wrote, The phrase, ‘Casa dei Bambini,’ is being translated everywhere nowadays by English-speaking people as “The Children’s House,” whereas its real meaning, both linguistic and spiritual, is “The Children’s Home (or Children’s Community, ed.).” Fisher insisted upon this rendering, which she felt offered a much more accurate and complete insight into the character of the Montessori classroom.
Dr. Martin recognized that “This misreading of the Italian word ‘Casa’ as ‘house’ has effectively cut off two generations of American educators from a new and intriguing vision of what school can and should be. Read ‘casa’ as ‘house’ and your attention is drawn to the child-sized furniture, the Montessori materials, the exercises in practical life, the principle of self-education. But if you read ‘casa’ as ‘home,’ you begin to perceive a moral and social dimension that transforms your understanding of Montessori’s idea of a school.
Once I realized that she thought of school on the model of a home, the elements of her system took on a different configuration. Where before I had seen small children manipulating concrete learning materials, I now recognized a domestic scene with its own special form of social life and education.”
Martin realized that what Montessori had established was not simply a more attractive classroom in which children would be taught to read and write. The Casa dei Bambini represented a social and emotional environment where children would be respected and empowered as individual human beings.
It was an extended family, a community in which children truly belonged and really took care of one another. Montessori described this process of emotional growth as “valorization of the personality,” a strong sense of self-respect and personal identity. Within this safe and empowering community, the young child learned, at the deepest possible level, to believe in herself. In an atmosphere of independence within the community and personal empowerment, she never lost her sense of curiosity and innate ability to learn and discover. Confident in herself, she opened up to the world around her and found that mistakes were not something to be feared, but rather an endless opportunity to learn from experience.
This special relationship that is so common among Montessori children and their teachers and schools is very different from, and much more dramatic than, the experience most children have in school.
Frances Merenda, a 1990 graduate of The Barrie School in Silver Spring, Maryland put it this way:
“I started in Montessori at age two. I’m a product of the entire system. I did well, but still many people wondered if I had been prepared for college and whether I could ‘make it’ in a ‘real’ school? The skepticism was so disconcerting that I never bothered to step back and see what 15 years of trust, respect, teaching, and learning had done for me. When I went off to Northwestern University, I left my support system and community behind and entered a world that was much colder and uncaring.
At first, I deeply missed that sense of belonging. I didn’t realize that Barrie had not only given me a second family, but had also taught me how to build new friendships, support systems, and community wherever I go. I now use my years of experience in community building to cultivate secure relationships with people I have come to know. Barrie did more for me than just prepare me academically for college. It prepared me for anything to which I chose to apply myself.”
To understand how this evolved, it’s helpful to understand the world in which Montessori lived at the time she developed her educational approach.
Montessori was a professor of medicine, specializing in psychiatry. At that time, there was no such thing as Freud’s “talking cure.”
There were basically two approaches to the treatment of disturbed individuals.
The most common and familiar treatment was to confine people who acted strangely to insane asylums.
The second, and almost forgotten, approach was the “Moral Education” movement that spread across Europe and North America during the 1700 and 1800s.
These therapeutic communities were villages set off in the country where chronically despondent or nonviolently dysfunctional individuals lived in group settings with caring individuals.
The fundamental principle of the Moral Education movement was respect and kindness. Instead of treating their patients as prisoners, the staff acted on the belief that within each human being there is a core of goodness and a “sound mind.” The community lived and worked together as an extended family and developed a sense of belonging that is dearly reminiscent of what we see in our children’s classrooms today.
These communities were much like an Israeli Kibbutz, self-sufficient farming communities in which each individual was encouraged to become more independent while contributing to the overall operation of the village. Patients lived in small homes with a couple who served as their mentors. Surviving reports suggest that a great bond developed among those who lived and worked together. The movement recorded success rates that were far more effective than traditional approaches; returning their clients to their home communities as productive, happy citizens after an average stay of eleven months. A sense of close personal community and positive human relationships was proven successful as a means to help bring these disturbed people back to reality.
Montessori was well aware of this movement through her medical research into innovative strategies for treating the intellectually disabled. She used this same model with tremendous success in her own work with mentally disabled and autistic children in Rome and later hypothesized that even more dramatic results might be achieved with “normal” children. Her first “Children’s Community” was made up of 60 inner-city children from dysfunctional families.
In her book, The Montessori Method, Montessori describes the transformation that took place during the first few months of operation, as the children evolved into a “family.” The children had a sense of becoming the owners of their school. They were encouraged to rearrange the furniture, prepare and serve the daily meals, wash the pots and dishes, help the younger children bathe and change their clothes, sweep, clean, and work in the class garden. Through their day-to-day involvement in their classroom community, Montessori saw these children develop a sense of maturity and connectedness that helped them realize a much higher level of their potential as human beings.
While times have changed, the need to feel connected is still as strong as ever. In fact, for today’s children, it is probably even more critical.
Whether it’s an inner-city child or a child from an affluent suburb, the sense of community has all but disappeared from our children’s lives. Families regularly move from house to house, and from town to town. Grandparents usually live in other cities or other states. Both parents work out of necessity, and when they are at home, they are very, very busy. The over-programmed, hurried child has become the norm for this generation.
Many children have the sense that they do not belong to anything or anybody, which is why peer friendships, which give a sense
of belonging, are especially important to children today.
Along with whatever else Montessori gives our children, it definitely gives them the message that they belong-—that their school is like a second family.
Children will normally grow up to be productive, happy and confident individuals if given the right emotional environment. It seems clear that our attitudes about people, the ability to overcome our egocentric tendencies, our willingness to share, to compromise, to resolve conflicts non-violently, and our ability to discover an underlying sense of self-worth are not qualities that human beings develop spontaneously, but rather through years of experience with caring people who convince us that we belong and give us the opportunity to practice and master these skills of everyday living. As in all things, we learn by doing.
One of the greatest strengths in the approach that Montessori developed is the three-year age grouping that you will find in every Montessori school.
By consciously bringing children together in a group that is large enough to allow for two-thirds of the children to return every year, the school environment promotes continuity and the development of a very different level of relationship between children and their peers, as well as children and their teachers. For teachers, this relationship presents itself as a commitment that they make to stay with the children in their class for a prolonged period, rather than jumping from job to job or from classroom to administration. Montessori teachers do more than present curriculum. The secret of any great teacher is helping students open their minds and hearts so they are ready to learn; where motivation is not focused solely on good grades, but a fundamental love of learning.
As parents know their own children’s learning styles and temperaments, teachers, too, develop this sense of each child’s uniqueness by establishing a relationship over a period of years with the child and her parents. Montessori schools give our children not only the sense of belonging to a family but also of how to live with other human beings. By creating a bond of parents, teachers, and children, Montessori sought to build a community where individuals could learn to be empowered, where children could learn to be a part of families, where they could learn to care for younger children, learn from older people, trust one another, and find ways to be appropriately assertive rather than aggressive. To reduce these principles to the most simplistic form, Montessori proposed that we could foster peace by healing the wounds of the human heart and producing a child that is more secure. She envisioned her movement as potentially leading to a reconstruction of society.
Montessori schools are different, but it isn’t just because of the materials that are used in the classrooms. Look beyond the pink towers and golden beads, and you’ll discover that a classroom is a place where children really want to be—because it feels a lot like home.
Tomorrow’s Child/ September 2018/ pg 23
Original classic tie
2017 marked the 25th anniversary of the Montessori Foundation. The organization was founded by Tim Seldin and Joyce St Giermaine. To help honor their work we wanted to created something to show them our appreciation and thus the Seldin men’s tie and St. Giermaine infinity scarves were born. The design was inspired by the Metal Inset work of Anne Frank, (yes, the Anne Frank who was a Montessori child before she was imprisoned during World War II and before she became known for her diary and thoughts).
Her drawing was our conference artwork, which we then turned into this beautiful Mandala. We now refer to it as a UNIVERSAL symbol of Montessori and our commitment to her legacy. We sourced the production of the pieces with a company in Denver, CO who have the utmost consideration for the people and the environment. They are all made from recycled material, are machine washable and wrinkle free; including the gift box. Every purchase helps them further
their mission of hiring skilled resettled refugees who otherwise lack the opportunity to work in their trade and in turn helps the Foundation continue our work. And, like the Mandala, it’s all so circular.
Blue on Blue infinity
Your purchase of this item helps us continue to provide high quality, lower cost resources to schools, guides and parents.
For IMC members the cost is just $40USD + $4.95 shipping and handling.
For non-members the cost is $50USD + $4.95 shipping and handling. [Note for IMC Members: To obtain, the discount, first log into montessori.org. Then return to the email or store and place your order.]Give to that special teacher, mentor, administrator, board member or yourself!
Even non-Montessorians will love the vibrant colors (available in the combos in the photos).
Traducción de textos y videos del Inglés al Español
As a book reviewer for the Montessori Foundation’s two publications, I am fully aware that everyone and their cousins are writing books for parents, teachers, and administrators extolling the benefits of a Montessori education, describing the key points of the Montessori philosophy, and comparing the Montessori approach to education versus other more conventional approaches. To be honest, as a person whose lifetime career is Montessori education, I dreaded having to review yet another book for parents and teachers about Montessori.
However, I found this book to be refreshing in its presentation as the memoir of a Westerner from Europe. Beginning with the author’s struggles as a child, herself, how she set a goal for herself to help children around the world and achieving that goal as a Montessori guide in Saudi Arabia,
Karine Perkins has woven the elements that are included in so many other books on the subject of Montessori into a story of her personal journey and career.
After earning a Bachelor of Education Degree at Oxford University, where she met her husband, teaching in conventional schools in England, receiving her Montessori training and certification, and beginning a family, she finally found employment where? Saudi Arabia. This was a new culture in a different part of the world and the beginning of accomplishing her life’s goal.
So many books that have been written about Montessori these days have chapter titles that are often stiff and repetitive from book to book, such as: Principles of the Montessori System; Creativity and Education; The Impact of Movement in Education; Order in the Environment; etc. In contrast, Ms. Perkins’ chapter titles are intriguing and unique. Here are a few examples: Victory, Biscuits!; Pick Yourself Up!; Goodbye Fatima, Welcome Turmoil!; and more. A person flipping through the table of contents in this book may think, “Wow. I wonder what this is about? This sounds interesting!” And she begins each chapter with a Montessori quote! Pink Tower in the Desert brings interest to an audience that might, otherwise, decline to spend time reading a philosophy-of-education book. It gives the reader a new twist to the presentation of Montessori. ′
Montessori Leadership / January 2018 / p 24
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