Montessori and Me: Part V The Elementary Course Experience

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 plough straight ahead the next time :).

While my first Montessori diploma was an eight month long Marathon, this Elementary course was a different race to be run. Spread over a scheduled four modules and 8 weeks of Observation/Teaching Practice, with ample breaks in between, the course was to run from September 2015 until November 2016. Alas! With floods in Chennai, the carefully planned schedule was sabotaged and we finally completed in February 2017.

Each module was a six week sprint. And not the kind of sprints that IT companies (well mine used to have one) have for targets. Every week was a hundred metre dash, with barely any time to breathe. Tuesdays were submission days by default and whatever happens from Monday to Friday in class had to be fair-typed (Yes - only typed :'( ) and submitted with appropriate illustrations. My tryst with computers had to continue and I had a tough time keeping up with the deadlines, thanks to -my procrastination, printer and well, the internet - in short me.

As for what happened during the course, I wrote it as a poem when we were planning our convocation. The major chunk of the course is for us to understand how, when, why to show the materials to the children, interspersed with theory on how we should prepare ourselves. This pattern, in essence, was very similar to the earlier course. But there was no order in which each of these subjects were presented, which is exactly how it will be with Elementary children as well. But within the subjects, there are certain progressions from one difficulty to another and that order was maintained throughout. 

(To those who are familiar with the Sun and Earth song, that was the inspiration.) Here is the poem I wrote:

Language, Math, History and Biology,
along with Geometry and Geography
All have a story and play their part
In the development of a child in Elementary

Math it starts with WHM
Winding its way down to Proportion
Be it any subject, Math remains
Causing us lots and lots of pains.

Language, its structure is intricate
Keeping every subject up to date!
With names of yore and lots of action,
Giving every Part including emotion.

History, it is old and new,
Even though civilizations have been few
Humans Satisfying needs all along
Helping each other for years at long.

Geography, it is short and sweet
With lots of charts and experiments in it
Showing how humans depend unaware
On sun and earth and water and air.

Biology is all about life
Starting with how lives at strife
Live with finding whatever their needs
And finding time for some good deeds.

Geometry is an abstract class
Starting way back even before Pythagoras
Relating lines back and forth
Leading shapes to what they're worth

Music and Art, they play their part

Inspiring the children to go far at heart.

The patterns and combinations flow

Always asking the question of how!

Theory it is for the adult to know

Helping him or her how to show

Observing the child at every stage

And pacing the ideas at any age.

(For those unfamiliar, WHM refers to Wooden Hierarchial Material - a material that impresses the idea of families of numbers.)

While each of these areas were being covered, the concept to be covered was already in my mind. But how Dr. Montessori meant for the children to arrive at it on their own was the most intriguing part. So, while the materials and lessons were shown, there were several 'Aha!' moments. The one that I vividly remember was one with division of fractions by fractions. Children are always familiar until then that division always refers to sharing equally and the answer is always what a single whole unit gets. This was beautifully materialized in the Fraction material that I exclaimed in joy while the presentation was being shown to us! I even had the perfect moment to present it to children during my teaching practice and was a wonderful, satisfying experience.

While the breaks were dedicated to my work at Jamunamarathur with RELIEF Foundation, the course otherwise kept me occupied full time. When I look back at the past year and a half and more, I still somehow found time to cook (thanks to my Dad as well who came in whenever he could), attend some close friends' weddings in several places North and South, attend the Mumbai Montessori Conference, run a full marathon and a couple of half-marathons all along this time. 

While we were being given the presentations, like our trainer Ms. Ann Dunne used to say, there were always unsaid things. It is those things or thoughts that the Elementary child can easily imagine, reason out and pick up. And the joy of picking them up on their own is what really cements the learning. It is always those thoughts to which we put our mind to work and execute, that retain as our experiences. Be it a mistake or a success, we surely learn from such experiences. The idea of Dr. Montessori again here is to maximize the possibility of having such experiences for the children of the second plane (6-12 year olds), and that is what we learnt we should be doing as an Elementary Director or Directress.