The Montessori Approach
Maria Montessori believed that children have an inherent motivation to learn, and that a specially prepared environment, with a trained teacher, will allow them to develop as whole people and productive citizens in an ever-changing world.
Visitors to Montessori schools are invariably struck by the advanced work, concentration, joy, and freedom that they witness. Because the teacher is apparently engaged with only one or a small portion of the children at a time, a visitor’s first question tends to be, “But how do the children know what to do?”
Dr. Maria Montessori was able to solve this dilemma of motivation by searching for the powers within them, present from birth, for their own self-formation into mature adults. She did so by creating the Montessori approach, bringing her medical training in scientific observation and discovery to bear over a lifetime of working with children all over the world, from every background and culture. Eventually, she devised very specific environments to aid the children in their natural development in each stage of their childhood and young adulthood.
Recognize Inherent Tendencies and Sensitivities
Dr. Montessori observed that children displayed universal traits which allowed them to engage in the world and learn what they need to learn through each phase of development. She called these “Human Tendencies” and “Sensitive Periods.” The Human Tendencies are instincts such as exploration, order, orientation, communication, repetition, exactness, abstraction, and manipulation, all which are utilized for education and self-development. The Sensitive Periods refer to periods of time before the age of six when a child is intensely interested in some aspect of their world such as language, sensorial experiences, movement, order, social behavior, and small objects. The purpose of these periods is for the child to absorb this part of their environment for mastery and understanding as they mature.
Prepared Environments for Each Stage of Development
The success of the Montessori method is reliant upon supporting the human tendencies and sensitivities of individual children at each stage of their development (Dr. Montessori’s “Planes of Development” are 0–6 years, 6–12 years, 12–18 years, and 18–24 years). This means that the child at each stage must have an environment that is specifically prepared in every detail to serve the child’s needs. Our classrooms are designed especially for each plane of development, not only in physical layout, but also in the materials, lessons, and structure of the work day. By creating a classroom that meets the intellectual and psychological needs of each age group, children are able to fully engage in their work, utilizing their evolving natural tendencies.
Every Child Is an Individual
In addition to a specifically prepared environment that supports their optimal formation at each stage, children need a teacher who understands their unique needs as individuals. Only intimate knowledge of each child enables the teacher using the Montessori method to guide children in finding their own natural response to the classroom environment with its many Montessori materials and activities. The teacher is constantly observing all the children and keeps very careful daily records of each child’s activities and behavior. In this way, the teacher knows when it is the appropriate time to introduce a new material to a child and how long the interval should be before a new presentation is given. It is in this interim period of independent practice with any given activity, and not when the teacher is actually present, that real in-depth learning takes place for the child.
Montessori Assessment
For older children in the Elementary Level the teacher asks that they demonstrate their understanding of the concepts embedded within a given material before going on to a new one. Hence, there is constant “testing” in the Montessori method, but it is accomplished in this informal and non-competitive way. In fact, the children are always encouraged to teach and help each other collaboratively throughout their Montessori years, rather than to think of their learning as a competition with others.
Freedom
The final principle in establishing a successful Montessori classroom is the children’s freedom to respond to the environment according to their own interests. This is a difficult concept to grasp, and to follow, for most adults. We have, after all, been taught ourselves as children by methods that involved the teacher giving the information for learning and asking for its memorization in order to reproduce it for testing at a later time. Such forced-learning, which over time typically leads to forced-forgetting, represents a superficial level of knowledge for the student of regular schooling. The in-depth, creative thought of the Montessori child who has worked independently for mastery of a concept for many hours and in some cases years, leads to a much deeper knowledge. For example, to grasp the concept of the Trinomial theory of cubing, children begin to work on a concrete level with the Trinomial Cube at age four so that they can discover independently the abstract level of the algebraic formula around age nine.
Trusting the child to be interested in every area of human knowledge and culture is not a principle that Montessori devised from some ideal of human nature and childhood. Rather, she observed the children themselves from their birth onward and discovered that they do indeed have a propensity to explore their whole world. The challenge became to give them an environment appropriate to their skills and level of development in order for them to do so. That she successfully met this challenge is verified daily in authentic Montessori classrooms all over the world.
"We cannot begin to thank each of you enough for all that Forest Bluff has done for our family over the years. You have touched and influenced our lives in fundamental ways: encouraging a positive outlook on life, a belief in the goodness of individuals and mankind, a love and curiosity for lifelong learning, and that wonderful joy in productivity! These, and the respect and kindness for others, are the most important elements of what goes on in our classrooms and what we have found to benefit our children the most. We have the utmost appreciation for, and are the thankful recipients of, these attributes in our children. Their years at Forest Bluff have shaped our children and are at the core of how they conduct themselves and view the world--all of which has been demonstrably noticeable by their teachers, friends, coaches and friends’ parents in middle school, high school, and college. Their deep, Montessori-sculpted self-awareness has provided an unshakable core on which they rely as they learn to make their own decisions."