Montessori and Me - Part II: The Montessori Course

Disclaimer: I would like to clarify that by Montessori, I mean the philosophy that Dr. Maria Montessori, an Italian doctor, put forth for helping the young minds of the world live in this World. I use the word live here because after all, quoting Dr. Montessori, education is a way of life.

The above disclaimer shall be repeated keeping in mind, new readers who might chance through this blog :). So plow straight ahead the next time :).

I had preliminary talks regarding the fellowship around December 2012 and was advised to get started with the books on Montessori which are published by Kalakshetra Foundation. I started with “The Child in the Family” and later “Education for the New World” before moving on to the heavy ones - “The Absorbent Mind” and “The Secret of Childhood”. Frankly, at the beginning, I was too skeptical if I'll get through even a single book. I somehow hadn't read much of non fiction books by then and I used to find it difficult to complete them. But with these books, I hung on to them from day one. My reading was protracted as it was confined to train journeys (I still had to work you know). So I found myself flipping back interestedly every time I restarted. I figured that I could relate to many of the thoughts and examples mentioned in the books in my own life. I found myself nodding along at many a point. The more I read, the more I was convinced of doing the course and the fellowship.

The books talked about the need for the child in a family should be treated as an individual working at his own self development. They spoke about the amazing powers that children have at an young age which helps them to adapt to this World into which they are thrust upon. They also dwell on the Sensitive Periods that children have, which when harnessed methodically, can enhance the child's development manifold. But all these together drove down the truth that children learn by themselves. All adults can do is help them in the process by providing a conducive environment. The child is very similar to a seed which when given the appropriate conditions at the appropriate time and in appropriate amounts can grow into a fully blossoming tree.

The fellows had an orientation in June 2013 through book reading sessions and also certain preparations needed for us to work with children of the 3-6 year age group. The preparations predominantly focused on how we need to be humble and let the children always have the spotlight in the environment. The mantra was to always “Follow the child”. We also had sessions that helped us to be conscious of our own movements which will be always watched by the ever absorbent children. We brushed up our language skills and also were given tips on prioritizing which helped us later during the actual course.

All geared up for the Mumbai leg, three of us fellows began the actual course there. The first few days of the course was spent on the aspects of children that I spoke about earlier and how children change physically and emotionally as they grow up. We also had lectures on the human needs and tendencies that drive and help the children in their process of self development. Then more particularly, we understood the characteristics exhibited by the children of the three to six year age group. Once this foundation was set, we proceeded towards how the environment needs to be prepared for the children to develop. The usual materials that form the part of this environment were broadly classified as Exercises of Practical Life, Sensorial and Culture. Culture included Language, Math, Botany, History etc. The major part of the course was covering these materials on why they are used, how they were designed, how they are to be shown to children, the major aims of them and when we should show them to the children. The reinforcement of the earlier theory can be seen in the designing of these materials and this can be felt only by our practice with them repeatedly.

During the course, I slowly realised how things that I liked to do came in handy. I had to juggle between travel, cooking, running to schools, attending lectures, running a marathon, reading, loads and loads of writing, illustrating, material making, painting and some football as well. I used to be an active participant in the Craft classes in school – ever enthusiastic to paint or stitch. These were called for during illustrating or material making. Running was a wonderful time to listen to your body and gave me the calmness that was needed to live in the moment. This helped me greatly to think and consciously act. My tryst with ink pens was re-ignited through the need to write my albums worth a 1000 pages. My constant obsession to plan or organise helped me manage my time and energy during the course. The ever constant craving to live away from parents on my own made me cook as well!

It was towards the end of the course that we had to write the essay on Indirect Preparation. But I had seen it coming all along that like I predicted there wasn't any lecture on that. This was the essence of Montessori according to me. The cherished experiences in life at one point will come back in your life at the hour of need later. These past experiences, if they were ones that were underwent willingly and with concentration, serves you as a boon. You seem to do things that you never considered you will do, but seem to be always prepared to do it. It was a coming together of several seemingly unrelated things. The Montessori environment for the children is based on this very essence. When the children are probably in the environment you may or may not see the changes happening, but when they do blossom out, it seems a miracle.

Our trainer always used to say, the Montessori course is just the First Period – an introduction, to understand Montessori. The Second Period – period of association, is much much longer. The Third Period is the one of mastery. I have just stepped into the second period...

Montessori and Me - Part I: How it all Started..

Disclaimer: I would like to clarify that by Montessori, I mean the philosophy that Dr. Maria Montessori, an Italian doctor, put forth for helping the young minds of the world live in this World. I use the word live here because after all, quoting Dr. Montessori, education is a way of life.

The above disclaimer shall be repeated (hoping against hope that this will be a first of many posts) keeping in mind, new readers who might chance through this blog :). So plow straight ahead the next time ;).

I have been repeating myself over the past year and half as to what I am doing with my life, so I plan to dedicate this first post to try and explain myself and how my tryst with Montessori began.

It was my second year in college when I was all enthused and very eager to attend my first lectures on Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE) at the fabled National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli. I hung on to every word (that I could make sense of) the first  few weeks. But soon I found my interest slipping away. One of the things I am proud (not all times though) of inheriting from my parents is I think too much. So with one such retrospection, I wondered how I could not like the lectures I so wanted to be in (getting into ECE there is another story).

The cross examining of myself led to the fact that my seed of interest was probably not brought up in a conducive manner. I have to admit. I was not one to read books on my own to learn something new. Maybe, I never cultivated the habit or maybe I didn't realise I had to. So school passed, thanks to all the wonderful teachers I had at Bhaktavatsalam Vidyashram and the last two years at DAV, Mogappair (not all at DAV). But now, I was all at sea in college. The lectures seemed droning, barring one or two (there were more in the later years, but it was too little too late). I was barely clinging on to my interest. It was hard to self-learn when the interest passes away. But somehow, I scraped through the year (and the later ones as well for that matter).

The other line of thought focused on the lecturers. They hardly seemed to care about what they were lecturing on. They had certain things to say and they said that, but not with any kind of passion or the will to pass on some knowledge. (More on this can be found here at my earlier post.) I started to think how difficult it would be to actually say what you knew in a manner that was liked by the rest.

Opportunity presented itself in the form of C++ (Oh! I love C++ from school days) classes for juniors through a club in college. I tried my hand, though with only few juniors to listen. I thought it went ok. (it was only for 3-4 days though as we had a very low response towards the end)

The other opportunity was through SPIRIT-ED which was more of a challenge. Handling 30 enthusiastic 6th to 9th graders once or twice a week to pass on knowledge about computers in about 45 minutes, was a lot about planning and managing time. Again the children seemed to respond well (which was more due to the fact that it was about computers and not because of me).

The experiences felt good for me and so the idea of a teacher got stuck. But three years of scraping through meant I hardly knew about ECE. Predictably my GATE results fell flat. (Also, thanks to my desires for voluntary work in innumerable situations). One thing was sure. I should not be a lecturer in ECE department in any college, if anyone else should not suffer what I did. The idea temporarily shelved I joined Athenahealth.

Then, I looked for more such opportunities once I started working. Then MAD (Make A Difference) and Bhumi happened. I took up teaching English rather than Math (which is always my favourite) as I believed my favouritism to Math was in-born, thanks to my parents -both working in banks. I always was naturally attracted to numbers and geometry and I never can recall how I learned them or imbibed the interest in them. But English was different. I had to struggle to improve my vocabulary, my speech and general conversation. Having fairly overcome this, thanks to innumerable opportunities at Bhaktavatsalam Vidyashram and NIT Trichy, I could understand some of the difficulties, if not all, that young minds faced with regard to learning English.

I was impressed with the curriculum and training at offer at the NGOs and how they were supposed to help the children initially. I was a regular, saturday 10 am to 12 noon teacher at centers in Chennai for the first two years. I was fairly able to execute my lesson plans during the first two years and again the children seemed to reflect the effort - a proud moment then being one of my class children winning a spelling bee contest across all centers we were handling. At the same event the first seeds of doubt were sowed with regard to the needless competition we seemed to have created. Some tears were being spilt while I was proudly looking at my child.

The third year at a center, I took up friday evening classes, thanks to some volunteer shortage. Man, that was challenging. Children who were knackered after school had to be taught English and our lesson plans were to be executed. First two weeks I remember closing classes at 7 40 pm (scheduled being 7 pm) simply because they had come late. I knew soon, it wasn't working. I had to re-invent myself to keep their interests and needs in mind and in class. I found Mosquito bands that were a need and converted them as an opportunity to get them to class early. But children showed me even better. I used to limit the bands to five to reward early birds. But halfway through the class, they naturally began to share. I was amazed. Meawhile, I started to find out each of their interests and tried to work the class around them, trying to give individual attention and group attention at the same time. It worked to some extent. More importantly, I finally seemed to have caught their attention. They actually looked forward to my class. But I felt that was still a work in progress. That year end I just made sure we did not have any competition but just a workshop from which all who attended (budget constraints meant we had to choose only a few per class) benefited.

A long time ago, a friend of mine had mentioned in passing about the Montessori philosophy in a CRY volunteer meeting. On further questioning him then, all I came to know was that it was a philosophy that avoided competition and arouse the interest of the children naturally. The organisation which he was working with then threw open a fellowship in December 2011. I saw it the first time and was interested on the outset and my eyes lit up when it mentioned a year is to be spent on Montessori training, but failed to grab the opportunity then. My third year at the NGO (2012-13) turned out to be the last nail that spurred me onto apply for it in December 2012- January 2013. And that is how it all started...