9of.us

I’m here to get my training to be a certified 6-9 Montessori directress. That means I can be a head teacher in a class of 20-30 first through third graders. This past year I’ve been an assistant in a 6-9 classroom, and was totally converted to the Montessori method of teaching.

You’ve got the kids for three years in a row, so when, in March, you finally figure out a way to help a first grader focus on work and not bounce off the walls, or get frustrated, or weepy, you’ve got two more years to use it, and to see it bear fruit. Older kids teach and model for the younger ones, and it gives third graders a reason to practice maturity and responsibility. Lessons are given individually or in small groups, and children spend their mornings working out those lessons for themselves, figuring out and mastering the concepts. They can work in groups of two or three, which they love, and they’re frequently conversing both with each other and their teachers. That means I, as teacher, get to have a direct role in their socialization, guiding them to right speach, encouraging them in positive interactions, and explaining things to them, like “boys get so excited about the games in PE that they yell instructions without thinking that it sounds harsh. You can’t take it personally, honey. That’s just the way they are, and it’s fine.”

The lessons themselves are remarkable. Concepts are taught from concrete to abstract, with materials that really grab children’s attention, and hold it. Seven year old children can sit down and work out for themselves how to divide 2,487 by 654 and it actually makes sense. You can hold it in your hand. Or a second grader can research the in-utero development of a baby’s ear, and make a little book about it.

They learn the stuff I want to know, or am thrilled about. Today I went down to an island in the Long Island Sound (it was gorgeous, sunny and windy). I collected four beautiful pink crab shells, and I’m going to try to figure out how to make it into a work: vocab cards with the parts of the crab, and maybe give a little lesson where I cut one of the shells open, and we see that there’s nothing inside: everything’s in the crust, as in, “crustacean”.

Today we ended the 3-6 overview, with a little preview of some of the stuff that’s done in a 6-9 classroom. It brought to mind many occasions of helping a child with a work, or my own figuring out how to use one of the materials. I found myself missing my students very much, another reason it’s good to have kids for three years straight. I’m at 35 college-ruled pages of notes, plus two full pages of questions to ask the 6-9 instructors next week. Oh, and a little booklet with two pages of ideas for cool class projects and lessons that I’ll do once I’ve hit my stride with the basics.
Today I had a long conversation with a speach pathologist in the class about how to help one of last year’s first graders. I think it’ll be a big help. I think he has trouble with auditory processing, so she told me to do stuff like give a series of commands, and see whether he can do them: “Take this pencil and put it by the sink, then go get the dictionary, come here, and lay it on the table.” He may not be able to remember all of that. We’ll see in August.
Tomorrow I’m going on a field trip to NYC. I think I’ll spend the mid morning and afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (even though museums are strange and artificial things, Sean), and some time in Central Park. That’s all for this weekend, I think. I’m thinking I might like to go to Little Italy, Greenwich Village, and the Natural History Museum some time this summer. If anybody has recommendations, do recommend.

Praise God for asking me to do just what delights me most! “What, you want me to spend all day, every day, talking and working and playing with 6 to nine year olds, Lord? Okay!”
Claire

This entry was posted on Friday, June 22nd, 2007 at 8:05 pm by Claire and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.