by Marc Seldin | Montessori Administrators, Montessori Teachers, The International Montessori Council
As the Center for Guided Montessori Studies (CGMS) prepares to launch the world’s first low-residency Montessori Infant/Toddler program, we thought it might be an opportune time to revisit the reasons we created our blended learning approach and what we believe may be the advantages of and shortcomings to alternate teacher training models.
We all know how traditional Montessori training is conducted: long summer days packed into rooms, crowded around a presenter listening to lectures. Your hand may tire from furiously taking notes as you watch lectures and presentations, but the enthusiasm in the room is palpable, as learners interject questions and follow fascinating threads of conversation.
There is some strength to this traditional model, especially for those who thrive in classroom environments. The real-time aspect of classroom learning definitely holds some advantages, especially in terms of being able to get a question answered the moment it occurs.
For many people, however, the experience is overwhelming and exhausting; for others, the traditional model is a transformative experience, where the constant reinforcement of Montessori concepts can lead to real personal breakthroughs. Still, it can be very difficult for anyone with a full-time job or family obligations to give up an entire summer, especially if a training center is some distance away.
Today, many training programs follow alternative models. Starting at the end of the last century and increasingly popular today, there are programs that offer weekend classes throughout the year. There are usually ongoing assignments that are submitted electronically or by mail. Although the occasional weekend class can be inconvenient, busy people do report definite advantages. Despite sharing the same basic method of traditional programs, weekend courses offer less disruption.
It may be easier for some people to process the Montessori curriculum if long training days come in weekend chunks rather than full summers. The downside to this model is that people may have to drive more miles to visit distant training centers many times a year.
Newer programs, such as the CGMS, the Age of Montessori, or Montessori Live offer even more convenience to the learner. While our programs differ, we all began with this question: If we were starting from scratch, what could teacher training look like in the 21st century?
Schools have always complained about needing to properly train their teachers. When designing our program, we wondered if there were a better way to do it?
At CGMS, our answer was that we didn’t want to give up the best parts of the traditional model, but we wanted to face the fact that the world has changed.
Weekends are no longer times of rest, and it is much harder now than it used to be for a parent to go far away for an entire summer. We live in a world where two-income families are common, and the costs of living in a distant city for a long period can be an impossible burden. Would-be teachers often face other obligations besides money that make prolonged travel difficult and giving up weekends impossible.
We also know a bit more about brain science than in Dr. Montessori’s days, and we all know about the brain fatigue that comes from long days of uninterrupted lectures. Not everyone can continue to absorb new information after eight hours of instruction.
At CGMS and other MACTE-accredited low-residential programs, we distill the essence of what’s best about face-to-face training into short, residential sessions. For example, our Primary students perform one residency of almost three weeks. After this, they continue to work with the same students in weekly modules; this is real group learning, not a place to study at your own pace.
Where does the rest of the learning occur? Both online and in their classrooms. The typical process begins with a student watching a video of a lesson being presented to a real child. Student teachers will then practice the lesson in their practicum classroom. Students can have their laptop or tablet right next to them while they practice, rewind to check on the steps, and practice some more. Periodically, students are asked to record their lesson practice and upload this video to share with fellow students and a Montessori expert that we call an Instructional Guide. We also visit them several times in their classrooms to provide extra support.
The same skills that are essential in traditional training are, if anything, required even more for succeeding in a low-residential one like our program. Students must have strong organization and time management skills. The fact that students work at home, amongst the distractions of everyday life, will require an above average level of focus and. Of course, these skills are essential for anyone who wishes to be a
Montessori teacher.
During the course of the week, students at CGMS can work around their schedules. They still have to meet the class deadlines, but there are no ten-hour days of lectures – unless, of course, the student wants that. Our students have more time to absorb the material and experience less brain fatigue. The
disadvantage to this is that it takes longer to finish our course of study than a traditional program.
Our new Infant/Toddler program will also follow this model. Launching next summer, the entire course will be a bit more than a year long and very rigorous. The online format allows us to make the course as long as we need; we aren’t forced to cram an entire curriculum into the summer holidays. For this reason, CGMS will be one of the first programs to include a significant nutrition component, helping the new teacher to understand the powerful effects of healthy eating during the critical developmental period from birth to three years.
So, is online learning right for your school? This may not be the best question. Instead, ask is it right for a particular teacher? A person with the time, freedom, and income may thrive in the traditional summer model. Although denizens of Facebook may disagree, the real extrovert may prefer the weekend learning model. Of course, anyone who is uncomfortable with a computer would do best to look at a fully residential training option.
We live in an era where there is a Montessori training option for every learning style. Summer and weekend training programs will continue – and should continue – to exist. But for those learners who thrive in online environments, and for those would-be Montessori teachers who just can’t travel or give up their weekends, there is now another option. In the 21st century, online learning will be just one more way to expand the reach of authentic Montessori training.
Marc Seldin is one of the principal founders of CGMS and still serves as its COO. A passionate Montessorian, Marc attended a Montessori school through 6th grade and has done consulting for numerous Montessori schools around the country.
Montessori Leadership / 2013 / pg 8
by Marc Seldin | Maria Montessori, MFA, Montessori Education, Montessori Family Life, Peace Education, The International Montessori Council
The four-year-old girls were good friends, but now they’re angry. One said something to the other, tempers flared, and a friendship is in jeopardy. Fortunately, the children are in a Montessori classroom. Montessori schools use many techniques for harmony, but in this classroom they have a peace rose. One little girl retrieves the flower from its shelf, expresses her hurt, and passes the rose to her friend. Together they explore their feelings, and conflict is transmuted into understanding. The children have learned a process to maintain harmony.
In a time of re-surging intolerance, we may turn to our classrooms for reassurance. They are gardens of peace, the fields where we sow the seeds of a better world. We may seek solace in the work we do, knowing that the beauty we nurture will in time blossom into magnificent flowers of justice, kindness, and equality.
Recently, I have found myself thinking again and again about victory. We know that peace is more than just an absence of war. But what is a Montessori victory? Do we conquer our enemies? No. We will not repair this world by subduing those who disagree with us.
Do we shout down the bigot? How much better for the world if the bigots abandon their bigotry? How much better if the criminal no longer commits crimes, if the sinner no longer sins? The Second World War was conceived when the victors of the first war mistreated the vanquished; a third world war was averted when the conquered became allies. Force without justice is domination, not victory.
A Montessori call to arms is a call to the classroom. This is where we cultivate real victory.
True and lasting peace will arise from our schools, where we prepare the next generation of peaceful leaders. The work we do is ever more vital, and I urge you not to despair at the territory we still have to cover.
Let’s recall how far we have traveled from 1907, when Dr. Montessori opened the Casa dei Bambini in Rome. Nominated three times during her life for the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Montessori worked tirelessly to improve the rights and conditions of women and children. Justice informed her methodology, and peace infuses the very DNA of our classrooms. The strides made for liberty in the past century—the advances made for children, for women, for minorities, for gays and lesbians—do not doubt that, even today, we see the ripples of her work throughout all the social progress we’ve made.
That the task is not yet complete should not surprise us.
Wherever we look globally, we see the anger and the outrage of those who have felt excluded from the political process. Income inequality is at an all-time high. Far-right parties are rising across the world, fueled by bigotry, economic uncertainty and a populism born of the sense of neglect by elite powers. The political turmoil is only one of the symptoms of our broken world. We do not forget the millions of refugees fleeing war and the victims of the terrible wars themselves.
Do not be disheartened, for as long as we teach peace, there will be a light in this world.
Yes, our work begins in the classroom, but shall we stop there? What else can our school communities do?
It will not be enough for us just to stall some current agenda. When we work to defeat ISIS in the Middle East, Boko Haram in Africa, or unseat some political adversary at home, we earn but a moment’s respite. Unaddressed, hatred and violence will always return in a new form. A lasting peace requires us to heal the deeper wounds of this earth.
Dr. Montessori taught us that when children act out, it is because they have unmet needs. Is this not true of adults as well? Perhaps at no time since the Second World War has the planet been so united in angst about the future. Montessori has a healing message for a broken world, and this is the time for us to recommit to telling the story, both inside and outside of our classrooms.
We can begin by speaking our healing message. Shout it from the mountaintop, whisper it in the halls of your school. Organize, promote justice, discuss difficult topics. Model peace in and out of your classrooms. Educate the children and adults in your community.
Participate. Engage.
It begins and ends with our conviction that Montessori has a message of peace, which will help mend this world’s wounds.
In the sidebar is my attempt to formulate a Montessori statement on peace. We urge every school to create such a statement and share it. Feel free to use or modify mine as you see fit.
Tomorrow’s child/pg34/Jan2017
On January 16, 2015, Marc Seldin spoke about Strategic Tuition Pricing for Nonpublic Montessori Schools
