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The Promise (and Persistent Myths) of Montessori Education w/ Andrew Faulstich, Dr. Ayize Sabater, and Kelly Jonelis
399 Plays9 days ago
Montessori schools are some of the few that wear their pedagogy on their signage: Cottontail Creek Montessori School. Montessori Children’s House. Acappella Montessori. (just to name a few of the dozen or so in Iowa). While the majority are private schools, there’s a growing number of public Montessori schools and programs as well. I think because of these two factors, being largely private and one of the only public-facing pedagogies around, you don’t necessarily have to be acquainted with the Montessori method to develop an opinion about it.
We recorded this in two sessions, one with Andrew Faulstich – Director of Education at Oneness Family School and co-founder of Developing Education – and Dr Ayize Sabater, school founder, co-founder of the Black Montessori Education Fund, and former Executive Director of Association Montessori International-USA. And a second session with Kelly Jonelis, Montessori Adolescent Program Director, Math Specialist, and Co-Founder of Developing Education.
In this episode you’ll hear the journeys that brought them to Montessori education, what Montessori is and is not, and what otherwise “mainstream” education can learn from the ideas and practices first developed by Dr. Maria Montessori over 100 years ago.
Recommended Reading & Media List:
The Montessori Child: A Parent's Guide to Raising Capable Children with Creative Minds and Compassionate Hearts - Simone Davies & Junnifa Uzodike
Erica Maretti - The Best Weapon for Peace
Montessori - The Child and Adolescence
Montessori - Psychogeometry
Montessori - Citizen of the World
Montessori Potential - Paula Preschlack
Diverse Families, Desirable Schools - Mira Debs
Montessori - From Childhood to Adolescence
Montessori - Education and Peace
Breaking the Paradigm Podcast w/ Andrew Faulstitch
Breaking the Paradigm: You ARE Good at Math with Kelly Jonelis
Dr. Ayize Sabater - WPFW 89.3 DC #YouMustLearn, Thursdays 6pm - wpfwfm.org #YouMustLearn
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Core Pedagogy of Montessori
00:00:00
Speaker
You know, we could erase all of those materials tomorrow and the core of the scientific pedagogy would be the same and we'd still be able to have developmentally appropriate environments because everything we're doing we're basing off of our observation and our experimentation with young people and based on what we know and understand of their developmental needs.
Podcast Introduction and Acknowledgements
00:00:22
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Human Restoration Project podcast. My name is Nick Covington. Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this episode is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Skylar Prim, Sybil Priebe, and Simeon Frang. Thank you so much for your ongoing support.
00:00:39
Speaker
Montessori schools are some of the few that wear their pedagogy on their signage. Cottontail Creek Montessori School, Montessori Children's House, Acapella Montessori, just to name a few of the dozen or so here in Iowa.
00:00:53
Speaker
And while the majority are private schools, there's a growing number of public Montessori schools and programs as well.
Montessori Education: Personal Journeys
00:01:00
Speaker
I think because of these two factors, being largely private and one of the only public-facing pedagogies around, you don't necessarily have to be acquainted with the Montessori method to develop an opinion about it.
00:01:14
Speaker
We recorded this in two sessions, one with Andrew Falstich, Director of Education at Oneness Family School and co-founder of Developing Education, alongside Dr. Ayizé Sebader, school founder, co-founder of the Black Montessori Education Fund, and former executive director of Association Montessori International USA.
00:01:35
Speaker
And our second session was with Kelly Janellis, Montessori Adolescent Program Director, math specialist, and co-founder of Developing Education. And in this episode, you'll hear the journeys that brought them to Montessori education, what Montessori is and isn't, and what otherwise mainstream education can learn from the ideas and practices first developed by Dr. Maria Montessori over 100 years ago.
00:02:01
Speaker
I came into these conversations as more or less a blank slate and left an inspired wannabe Montessorian.
Pathways into Montessori Education
00:02:09
Speaker
So if you're like me, you'll want to check out the extensive reading list attached to the show notes as well.
00:02:16
Speaker
Now, before we get too much into what Montessori education is and how it's different from other approaches, I wanted to know each of our guests' stories. Who are they? What's their journey in education?
00:02:29
Speaker
And what drew them to this work in Montessori? I was ah two ways into Montessori. One is the just the theoretical knowing of Montessori. I was ah a student at a small historically black college in Atlanta, Morehouse College.
00:02:49
Speaker
And my ah roommate, who at the time was the class valedictorian, and so he's super smart of smart cats and I would stay up wee hours of the morning studying.
00:03:04
Speaker
This guy is never studying. He's like just gallivanting around doing his thing. And maybe at 2 a.m. in the morning, one day, I just got to wake this guy like, what are you doing that you don't? And he's like getting straight A's and I'm burning the midnight oil.
Experiences and Insights from Montessori Practice
00:03:22
Speaker
in fact, they even called me Mr. Neon because I'm keeping the light, the neon light on wee hours of the morning studying.
00:03:29
Speaker
And he's like, oh, I'm a Montessori child. yeah know And I'm like, oh, man, I need to find out more about this Montessori thing if it's got this guy just glancing, you know,
00:03:41
Speaker
breezing through with straight A's. um And so that was my initial introduction. And so we actually went on to open up a school that was Montessori inspired because um I was so impressed with some of the Montessori oh you know, recollections that he had Montessori.
00:04:03
Speaker
um And so I read up as much as I could and tried to incorporate it in the school that we opened up. So that was just the theoretical. oh However, fast forward to i moved to DC in hopes of opening up another school and um on the way, got married, had children, you know, met a beautiful woman. had children.
00:04:27
Speaker
And my wife became a Montessori um educator herself. And our children were able to go to the Montessori school. And it was my child that really had me do the deep dive into Montessori. Because while my wife would be telling me while she was even going through training, wow, this Montessori is fascinating. This is revolutionary. This is the way to change the world. And I'd be like, oh, yes, dear. Yes, dear. Okay. Oh, yes, dear.
00:04:57
Speaker
And The day that they had the open house where the guide allows the child to show you around and introduce you to the work that they were doing.
00:05:09
Speaker
And at that time, I was actually helping to run a after school program working with middle school students. And my child was maybe six or seven in the white tail. For some reason, I thought it was in a primary, but she said, no, he was in the lower elementary um But he starts to show me around some of the work that he's doing. And it just blew me away that it was comparable to the work that some of the teenagers in afterschool program that I was working in.
00:05:36
Speaker
That night, I went home to my wife and said, do you know that montesorio is and do you know that Montessori is a way to change world? And so I was all in, 10 toes down that, yes, Montessori is the pedagogy to to truly change the world.
00:05:52
Speaker
really, you know, again, just based on some of the things my son was doing at an early, I mean, just briefly, i mean, he was um literally, he took an interest in Greco-Roman culture and, you know, he started to talk about some of the things and he knew like more about Greco-Roman culture than probably everybody in our house put together. And, you know,
00:06:14
Speaker
He was walking around with 400 page books on Greco-Roman culture at like seven years old. I'm just like, this is mind blowing. And so, yeah, I was I was all the way in in. my story with Montessori, I like to say that I'm a lifelong Montessorian because I entered a Montessori school at four years old and was there through sixth grade to the end of upper elementary.
00:06:39
Speaker
And that experience, I didn't really know it at the time, but it fundamentally changed my life. It changed, um you know, who I am. It changed how I see the world. And after sixth grade, I went to a traditional New England prep school, just one mile down the road from where I am right now.
00:06:56
Speaker
And At that school, in high school, I had the opportunity to travel to China as part of a service learning program, and we were working in rural schools in Yunnan province.
00:07:08
Speaker
And it was the first time, you know, my my experience was what it was. It was student-centered and student-directed, and I called my teachers by my first name, and by their first name, and they cared about what I was interested in and what my passions were, and asked me what I thought and what I cared about. And, you know, I went to a totally different cultural context to a place that was you know hugely underprivileged in a lot of ways and realized that most of the world didn't get the kind of education that I had. And it was a huge, huge awakening moment. And and from that from that moment on, my path had sort of been pivoted toward an education, though I hadn't yet connected the dots to Montessori until a couple of things.
00:07:49
Speaker
happened. The first was in January 2020, I was in grad school and I was part of a trip to Southern India and it was a research trip and we were studying microfinance and women's empowerment. So it wasn't an education trip, but this professor said, Landra, I know that you're studying education and so you know we'll spend a day visiting two schools.
00:08:11
Speaker
And the first was um this place called Nite University. It was the number one engineering college in the state of Karnataka in southern India. and We had this presentation by the admissions director who stood up in front of us and said 75% of our graduates at the number one school of engineering are unemployable, unemployable. They cannot engineer anything because they've only learned by rote learning. They don't know how to ask questions of their professors because that's culturally inappropriate.
00:08:41
Speaker
They don't know how to relate interpersonally. They have so many issues with like working together and collaboratively because they've only been taught to work as individuals that are competing against each other for grades.
00:08:53
Speaker
And she said, this is a huge problem. And we actually don't really know what to do about this. And so we left Nite University thinking, oh, my gosh, you know, this like, what what do we even do about this? And then in the afternoon, we went to a Montessori school for children, probably two or three, all the way through high school for exclusively for children who were orphaned. So all of the children lived on campus.
00:09:16
Speaker
The adolescent students ran the operation of the entire program, the finances, the food, the facilities, all of the above.
Montessori's Impact on Human Relations
00:09:25
Speaker
I saw young people with all of the odds stacked against them thriving I saw them being empowered to make change in their community. Students were graduating from from high school at this Montessori school and were making real meaningful changes in their communities, positively benefiting these places where you know they'd come from. And it was this juxtaposition of this...
00:09:49
Speaker
ah pillar of top tier Indian education on the whole fundamentally failing their young people versus this Montessori school, which had no money, barely any resources, maybe only one or two staff that even had a Montessori credential because they couldn't afford to have any more.
00:10:06
Speaker
And this school with all of these odds stacked against them was able to create these amazing outcomes for this young people. And so that was the moment where I said, okay, Montessori is calling me back. You know, I have to come back to this pedagogy.
00:10:19
Speaker
And, you know, ever since then, i think, I think that Aize is spot on that. This is a pedagogy. That's not just about, um, it's not just about learning more things. It's not just about, you know, um it's It's not just about making kids you know happy or feel good, though certainly that happens, but it's about how do we change the way human beings relate to one another, to our environment. It's about how do we actually listen to young people who are telling us the things about our world that we as adults have taken for granted or that we're doing that may be in so many ways fundamentally harmful to our existence as human beings? And how do we let that guide us to this future that Montessori described of a place of equitable interdependence? And every time I've been in a Montessori environment, I see the potential for our young people to lead us to that place. And that's what I saw in that school in India, and that's what I've seen in Montessori schools across the world ever since. And so from four years old to to now, I've been hooked.
00:11:23
Speaker
I could probably fill the whole episode talking about this, so I'll do my best to to keep it short. But um let's see, way back in the beginning, i would i would start by saying that i myself am a product of a traditional public school ah system where i um I think it is relevant to say that as a white female ah kind of fell into the compliance of that system, I learned to follow the rules and do what I was told. And interestingly, as I learn more As an adult human who has experience with education, um I realized that a lot of my um creative problem solving and and just ah open, not open mindedness, but that creative piece of me, I think was really stifled by going through that system. So, um but that's my way back background. Because I fell into those rules and thrived in that system, I decided that that's what I wanted to do with my life. I was going to be a teacher. I was going to, you know, for as long as I can remember, i wanted to teach. Once I realized that um numbers really worked for me, I was like, I'm going to be a math teacher. That's what I always wanted. So that was the career I pursued straight out of college, got a job at a very large, um low income college.
00:12:41
Speaker
public high school district um and very quickly realized that ah the student population there was not reflective of me and myself and that these these learners were going to need something different than what worked for me. um So after about five or six years in that system, I was frustrated with the system, not the students themselves, but I felt stifled by um all of the the politics, you know, the the administrators sitting behind a desk in an office off campus telling me what my students needed, um swore off teaching, was going to use my math degree to be an actuary or something else. um
00:13:26
Speaker
quit quit my job at that time is when I had my first born. So it was kind of a natural break. I ended up being a stay at home mom for a few years, took some time to decide what um what next steps are going to look like. and when my oldest, who's now 12, was to a friend of mine said, hey, you've got to check out this local Montessori school. And I was like, mana what?
00:13:46
Speaker
Like I had never heard of it before then. So um I checked it out and I'm like, man you know, the school starts at two and a half. And i'm like, two and a half. Like, I'm still a stay at home mom. I was pregnant with my second at the time. Like, I'm not ready to send her to school. But I check out the school and I'm like, OK, yeah, it seems like a pretty good spot. So we'll start her. But part of why i live where I live is because we're in a good public school district as a public school teacher. When I bought the house, that was one of the things I considered. Right.
00:14:17
Speaker
So, OK, we'll put her in early childhood there. But once we get to kindergarten public schools, Well, then I learn about the multi-year cycle and that capstone year and how important it is to stay. ah So, okay, fine. We'll stay through kindergarten, first grade, we're going to the public school district. I went to public school. She'll be just fine, just like me, right?
00:14:41
Speaker
um And then ah the the folks at that school needed some extra help in their elementary classroom as they were getting ready for like a work work expo thing. They knew that I had a teaching background, was a stay-at-home mom. They invited me to just kind of be another you know adult person in the room for a few weeks.
00:14:59
Speaker
And being in that ah that early L, first through third grade classroom, I was like, oh my gosh, I can't take my kid out of this system. Specifically having the math background that I have, seeing all of the materials, how they build upon the foundation set in primary, just the ability to, like everything that we talked about,
00:15:19
Speaker
being the dream when I was in public school, ah you know, freedom to move, like individualization, all of those things were just everywhere and built in. And I was like, oh, man, i guess we have to stay. And right around that same time, their adolescent program was looking for a math specialist. um And I was like, well,
00:15:40
Speaker
darn, i guess this is probably the place for me. And so we kept my kid there I started in the 12 through 15, so seventh, eighth and ninth grade adolescent program as a math specialist. That was about eight years ago. um And then over time, my role has grown. Now I'm the director of the program.
00:15:59
Speaker
My kids are nine and 12 and still attending there. So my oldest is going to be in the adolescent program with me next year. um I've never regretted the decision once. I see the difference in the young people that get to go through an education system that actively teaches them how to be kind and decent humans and be a member of community and society. And um comparing that with folks who don't have that same experience, ah I wouldn't change a thing. So it's interesting to see. i would say that starting my career, I was very focused on the
00:16:36
Speaker
Typical outcomes, like you have to learn these math topics, you have to get these grades, you have to get these scores. And now, you know, eight plus years later, i'm I'm fully flipped and like none of those things actually matter.
Understanding Montessori: Dispelling Misconceptions
00:16:51
Speaker
I also wanted to know, how do Ayize, Andrew, and Kelly describe Montessori education for people who see the sign outside the school but have no idea what it stands for?
00:17:02
Speaker
And what are some of the misconceptions people have about Montessori education? The 30,000 foot answer is, i mean, kind of kind of what I said, not to repeat myself, but it is it is about helping young people become a who they were meant to be so that our world can move to.
00:17:23
Speaker
a place of peace and Montessori writes about peace education. And what she means by peace is not, so she has this really great book, education and peace. If you haven't read it and you're listening, I highly recommend you do. And she, um although many years earlier has the same sort of idea that Martin Luther King Jr. writes in his letter from a Birmingham jail, this idea of a, you know, a positive peace, meaning the presence of justice versus a negative peace, which is just the absence of conflict.
00:17:50
Speaker
And she really saw education as this way to move us toward this idea of positive peace, toward this meaningful presence of justice in society. you know and But then I think, you know to get maybe more granular, what a Montessori education means is that every young person in the environment gets fundamentally treated with dignity, that their that what they need individually and collectively is considered and is meaningfully provided.
00:18:17
Speaker
And in Montessori, we don't ask the question, you know, what do I think a child of this age should be doing? We ask, who is this young person in front of me based on their developmental needs, based on my observations?
00:18:29
Speaker
How can I prepare an environment that best fits their needs? you And that's why I think Montessori is also a really powerful tool for inclusion, because we're not saying, how do we fit every child into a box? We're saying, how do we prepare the environment to serve every child?
00:18:45
Speaker
And we're always saying, change the environment, not the child. So if the child is not thriving in a Montessori program, then the environment must change to support that child. now Sometimes that doesn't happen, certainly.
00:18:59
Speaker
But you know that that really... um that to me from the macro to the micro it's about it's it's about being in that emergent space of how do we provide the best thing for this young person whatever it is that they might need at any given moment and trust that when we provide that development will occur so we don't do it saying oh well they have to master standard you know 5.4.3 by next week so we're going to give them this we say what is the thing they need to be a thriving person And when we do that, and every time I've seen it done, you know whether it's an early childhood all the way through high school, all of those other pieces fall into place so easily because we've focused on the whole person first.
00:19:42
Speaker
Yeah, no, I definitely appreciate what Andrew has shared and what I like to do and explain in explaining Montessori so you could get real technical.
00:19:54
Speaker
um I just try and come at it simply by saying from my vantage point, the easiest definition of Montessori education is common sense education. it's It's common sense in that you first are, you know, one of the mantras within Montessori is follow the child and you are allowing the child to, know,
00:20:19
Speaker
be in the driver's seat of their learning process. And so you allow the child to follow the things that interest them. And so thereby you don't have to twist their arm for them to learn 5.4, 4.3, you know, they you don't have to twist their arm to say, well,
00:20:37
Speaker
Now this is, you know, March and we should be covering algebra. And so you have to study chapters two or three. No, the child is interested in the thing. So again, my son, seven years old, was interested in Greco-Roman culture and he's soaking up as much Greco-Roman culture as he, you know, so the teacher didn't have to force him to, he was the one saying, well, give me more and walking around with 400 page books of Greco-Roman culture. And so, you know, that you are following, allowing the child to follow their interests, that's common sense.
00:21:11
Speaker
It's common sense to allow children to learn in a social manner and that you place children in mixed age groups. Then they're able to connect with students who are older, some students who may be younger, and you almost have what I like to call the positive peer pressure, right? And so you have sometimes the older students helping to guide the younger students in things that they might be interested in learning because they see the older students. And so that's common sense to allow the natural development to process so that students will be able to to to blossom and to be able to move and talk and have fun in a learning environment. That's common sense. I mean, children want to be children. They want to be able to move. They want to be able to, you know, laugh and, you know, really enjoy themselves. And that Montessori allows for this natural human development and for the child to follow their curiosity. And as an Andrew said, an environment that then looks to nurture that.
00:22:17
Speaker
It seems to me pretty common sense education. And so that will be my simple, you know, of course, you could get super technical, but that's just the simple of it for me.
00:22:28
Speaker
to underscore the piece that it's based in human development. It's not based on what we think development is, it's based on what we know development is. you know And I think that sometimes we, when when you look at how conventional education is structured, you see a linear path of growth. In first grade, you learn this, in second grade, you learn this, in third grade, you learn this. That's not how development happens.
00:22:50
Speaker
And so when we base it on human development, that like that's where the power, I think of it is, we call it a scientific pedagogy because at its best, it's not about the materials.
00:23:02
Speaker
Sometimes people think, well, Montessori is about the pink tower or the you know the rods or whatever. And yes, those materials are important. But you know we could erase all of those materials tomorrow, and the core of the scientific pedagogy would be the same, and we'd still be able to have developmentally appropriate environments because everything we're doing, we're basing off of our observation and our experimentation with young people and based on what we know and understand of their developmental needs. And I think that's like that that to me is the point where you know I think that there's a lot, and I've said this, I think that there's a lot that you know Montessori and progressive education
00:23:37
Speaker
can learn from each other. I think that's Montessori's core fundamental insight is that you we spend a lot of time guessing what we think young people need, but if we're just basing it off of their development and our observations of them, there's a lot less guesswork to go on there.
00:23:52
Speaker
Well, I think that the biggest misconception is that um I think most folks have heard the the quote, follow the child. And I think many people misinterpret that as give the child freedom to do whatever they want. And the the adult does not exist. um Interestingly, a lesser known Montessori quote that I'm not going to get exactly right, but ah it's along the lines of, um you know, the teacher ah can tell that that their classroom is functioning well when the children behave as though the adult is not there. And and and like in in a way that the adult would expect, right? So that the children are engaged in purposeful work and the teacher can just step back and observe. um
00:24:40
Speaker
and And it's not this wild, crazy, like children are running around doing whatever they want. So yeah, Even as we're talking about math, I'm thinking, man, I could see folks who are not familiar listening to this and and still not seeing the vision that I have in my mind of what it looks like. um So so like, I guess I would say that all of the work ah specifically I'm gonna talk specifically about adolescents. So again, well, everything in Montessori is mixed age. It's usually three year chunks. um it It tends to differ for adolescent programs because having students stay through ninth grade, if you don't go all the way through 12th grade is tricky, right? Folks wanna start high school when high school starts. um So I feel like I'm very fortunate. I don't know of many other programs that have the 12 through 15 altogether.
00:25:34
Speaker
um So that's that's really great to have. But excuse me, sorry. um The concept is students are still learning. Students are being offered um ah different different lessons and and topics within the disciplines. It's just done in a way that allows them to connect more purposefully with the
Montessori's Interdisciplinary and Experiential Learning
00:26:00
Speaker
work. So um most often you would give what's what's called like a sensorial or an experiential invitation to the work. So um coming up this next quarter in my own program, my students are going to be doing um a project related to a pollinator garden. We were offered an opportunity to start up a pollinator garden on campus. okay so Within that, I have planned an opportunity for us to go to a local arboretum and look at what their pollinator garden looks like and talk to some experts and sort of spark some interest. and Then there are so many branches off that students can choose to kind of deep dive their work
00:26:46
Speaker
their work on Whether it's what is a pollinator? Oh, I want to study just bees. Oh, I want to learn about the life cycle of a butterfly. What are the plants that pollinators like? what why are Why are pollinators important? Why are we talking about this? What do we need to do to the soil on our campus to get it ready to receive these plants? Are we planting seeds? Are we starting them inside? So so it's this whole branch, but it begins from them going and seeing something and talking to people outside of the walls of the school and then connecting that invitation with their personal interests. So I'm not saying, hey
00:27:25
Speaker
Do it, study whatever you want. It's here's here's the the umbrella. Here's the capsule that we're all going to be working within. And now follow your passion within that. And then I, as the practitioner, need to be responsive to, oh, this kid is wanting to study this thing. So I need to prepare some lessons that can support that work. I need to support that student in finding their own resources, et cetera, et cetera.
00:27:50
Speaker
Also within that, I'm looking for connections to history, connections to math. Obviously, a garden in pollinators is very science heavy, so it's going to be easy to find connections to that.
00:28:02
Speaker
Last quarter, my students studied U.S. government and we took a trip to our state capitol. And um I thought, you know, so that's a very history humanities heavy thing. Well, we had students develop hypotheses about science. how they think the government actually works compared to what official documents say it's supposed to do. So now they're getting a lesson in science about developing and testing hypotheses, even though they're not using microscopes or slides or anything like that.
00:28:35
Speaker
we're still integrating how science looks through that lens. I gave them lessons on um how the unemployment rate is calculated. And we looked at some graphs and charts and data related to the age of members of Congress. And so so it's...
00:28:51
Speaker
They're getting all of these pieces. they're They're reading graphs. They're developing hypotheses. They're learning history. They're learning government. But it's done in a way that is both interconnected and relates to to their interests. They have some type of an offering where they can live and experience the thing. It's never just on paper.
00:29:10
Speaker
For Kelly, part of becoming a Montessorian meant grappling with the baggage of mainstream schooling, particularly around math education. And for all of my preconceptions about the Montessori method being primarily concerned with little kids in the rug playing with wooden blocks, what does Montessori education look like with otherwise traditional academic content for adolescents, especially in mathematics?
00:29:35
Speaker
I would say that playing with blocks is actually a really good way to put it. 100%. Yeah. um I mean, so so first, I think the root of this is removing the adult in the room as the sage on the stage and and breaking down this notion that the adult is the holder of all knowledge. and the giver of all knowledge, and that children, adolescents, students are these empty vessels that are just passively waiting to be filled from the adult.
00:30:10
Speaker
So in a Montessori class, or math specifically, is taught... concretely, right? So there's this idea of beginning with a concrete um experience, and then moving eventually into abstraction. So, and and this is really what clicked for me, because as a math teacher, again, in a traditional public high school setting, I remember trying to explain some high school level math concepts ah and and like grabbing markers or erasers or whatever whatever objects in the room I could to try to show students concretely, like, this is what... I mean, even something like division, like, this is what division is. You have... I literally have six things and I'm dividing them into two piles, like...
00:30:59
Speaker
It's not... Yes. my My experience with math, this was like in the 90s, right? But was with those number cube block things, yes right? Like, and like, here's a cube of 100, 10 by 10, and here's a line of 10. And then, and we would make all the different things and do, I don't know, areas. And so we could visualize concretely um with the blocks what multiplying five by five looks like, right? With those cubes that that I just...
00:31:27
Speaker
Again, another revelation is like that is starting in the concrete and moving more to the abstract than attaching, you know, number theory and stuff to those ideas. Oh, yeah, exactly. And Montessori. So um that she has so many great books. Interestingly, the first Montessori book that I was offered to read was her book called Psychogeometry, which sounds a little crazy. It's not. Yeah.
00:31:51
Speaker
um we I suppose this is a good opportunity to sidestep. I'm not sure if Andrew or Aize talked about um the idea of a psychodiscipline, which is a very Montessori concept, which is the idea of offering these disciplines, math, science, language, history, humanities, but through a lens that is sensitive to the learner's time, space, and place where they are in their mindset, what they're ready for, what is going to be meaningful to them. So you're not just dumping the subject, but you're doing it through a way that allows the learner to connect with the subject and and the way that the subjects are also intertwined. So in in psycho geometry, ah geometry through a psychic lens, um I realized the the how many Montessori materials exist. So, of course, I'm working with adolescents. I think most people think of Montessori first through early childhood, right, where they have all of the blocks, they have all of those things. And so I knew yeah some of the materials, but not all of them. and And she outlines them in this book. And the precision and the way that they all overlap with each other is taking your idea of like the blocks that you put together to the stick of 10 and the square and the cube and just like exploding it. So all of her math materials are all, it's all based in the metric system. Everything is
00:33:18
Speaker
one centimeter to so up to 10 centimeters. She has materials called the metal insets that are flat that students will trace. Those are the same dimensions as like the pink tower that you can build up that are the same dimensions as the broad stair that you can build out. that So all of these, so students as they're, you know, these are learners age like two or three to six are working with these materials and really like in addition to seeing concretely what's happening, they really actually kind of get this ingrained sense of what quantities feel like. So and and one of them, the number rods is the the longest one is one meter long and the students are supposed to carry it end to end. And part of the reason was so that they would grow up knowing like here is a meter.
00:34:10
Speaker
and And could estimate. um So that's what I would say is that from the earliest age, students are taught that math is not some theoretical concept. It's not something that you're imagining. You've got bead bars, you've got you know, squares and cubes of kind of like what you're saying, the little blocks, except they're beads. There are different colors that that help you to see the way that they're related across different materials and across different concepts. And all the way up through, i i use some Montessori materials with my ninth grade students. You know, we use, um Montessori didn't develop specific materials for adolescent learners, but they
00:34:52
Speaker
We ah practitioners have taken the elementary materials and sort of expanded it. So when I'm teaching my students how to factor polynomials by completing the square, we are using materials where they're literally completing a square.
00:35:06
Speaker
One thing that I appreciate about a Montessori classroom, even starting as young as primary, I can hear my own children's primary teacher saying that the beauty of having a more open schedule and having the gift of time is that when a student is wholly immersed in meaningful, purposeful work,
00:35:26
Speaker
There's not a bell that pulls them out of it and says like, okay, I know that you're in the middle of counting the the thousand chain, you know, or or doing whatever the case may be, but now it's time to read. Yeah, we're done thinking about math. We have to go think about history now, and then we have to go run the mile. Right, right, exactly. Just...
00:35:46
Speaker
I think about how cognitively draining all of that task switching was for me as a teacher yeah and like contributing to eventually my burnout and and leaving classroom teaching. And I just think like kids experience that same thing every single day. Like no wonder they're not bought in and invested. They know that the bell's going ring right um right as they're about to get started with something. yeah Exactly. Exactly. A hundred percent. So, um so I'll, I'll share what the trajectory of what um my specific adolescent program schedule has looked like, but this is one area where I think that different programs vary quite a bit. um When I first started, our, our schedule was pretty much open. It was just like, you've got the day, here are the things that you need to get done get them done. um i do think that over time,
00:36:33
Speaker
young people's capacity for that has changed. And at the risk of getting onto a whole other topic, certainly um in the wake of COVID, I've i've noticed that that so but the young people I'm working with need a little bit more structure than that. So um yeah, so our day is broken up into still pretty big blocks. so So at the younger ages, in primary and in elementary, there is an expectation that students have a three-hour Is it three?
00:37:03
Speaker
i think it's three. Three hour. not No, I'm second guessing myself. Block of work time where they are uninterrupted. They have that chunk of time to move between work, to to immerse themselves in work. They could read for 10 minutes, decide they're not into it, put it away. They could get out some writing. They could get out some math work. They could whatever the case may be.
00:37:25
Speaker
um So again, at the adolescent level, it's it's a little bit different. And this is part of the conversation that ah that we've been having recently. So my students, I've still set aside the first I think it's more like two to two and a half hours of our day as time where they are working on work that is not on a computer. So that that is their one criteria. um Usually that means that they're focused on either math work or language work. Language work could be working on a paper that they're writing, could be writing a journal, could be reading something, either that they've been assigned or for leisure. In my program, they have lots of different math opportunities. We have a math seminar. The students also have a seminar that's based on a piece of literature. So so the morning two and a half hours is just a chunk of time where you're working on whatever you need to work on.
00:38:21
Speaker
um We actually, i i skipped over, we start our morning with about a 15 to 20 minute um community meeting. So as soon as our day starts, a student leads the meeting where we review kind of the week that we're in, what are due dates. So yes, the students do have dates when assignments are due.
00:38:39
Speaker
what are a lot of them are not like, here's the lesson that we learned today. Here's the homework for that lesson today. It's due tomorrow because tomorrow we're going to have another lesson on a different topic and you'll have a new assignment. It's it's usually weekly or or longer of these due dates. so But everybody gets on the same page about what work is coming due.
00:38:58
Speaker
Anything that we have going on specifically that day, we spend a fair amount of time off campus? what are What are things that we need to expect about the day? And then at the end of that morning meeting, my students make themselves a checklist or a to-do list for the day. What are the things that I need to prioritize throughout the day? And then it's up to them to fit it in when and where it works for them.
Community Engagement and Real-World Learning
00:39:20
Speaker
um After that two and a half hours, they've got another 90 minutes and Is this math mathing? I don't know. it's It's going to be close enough. Nobody's scrutinizing my schedule um where they have ah an opportunity to be working on a Chromebook. So um and again, this is very it's it's interesting to me to juxtapose a traditional system where I think almost everything is on a Chromebook, at least the local schools. I don't know if this is how it is by you, Nick, but by me, everything is one to one all the time.
00:39:51
Speaker
um I've had students who transfer out of my program to the local public high school for 10th through 12th grade. And they're like, they gave me the paper assignment, but it's also online. And I don't know if I'm supposed to turn in the paper or if I submit it online. So I just did both things. And it's a whole like wild one-to-one tech world out there.
00:40:11
Speaker
so So my students have about ah an hour to an hour and a half Monday through Thursday when they can be using a Chromebook. And it is specifically for um Typing final drafts of papers. So we expect them to be handwriting notes. They handwrite journals. They do a lot of handwritten work. But if they're doing a research paper or something more formal, we ask them to type it.
00:40:33
Speaker
We do let them use some online sources for research, but we also expect a certain number of printed sources that we'll get from the library. um And during that time, when they have access to their Chromebooks, we have a small group of students who is cooking lunch for our whole community. So every day, our group of about 15, we have three students who go plan a meal every day, cook lunch.
00:40:57
Speaker
um And then the afternoon in my program, again, is another block of What is it? Maybe another hour and a half ish. So while I'm skipping over the important part, we have community lunch. We all sit together, eat the lunch that students prepared for us for that day.
00:41:12
Speaker
After lunch, my students clean up the environment. They clean up everything that was used in the kitchen. They mop, they sweep, they dust. um Water the plants. We keep chickens and bees. They go out and take care of the animals.
00:41:25
Speaker
After that, my 12 to 15 year olds have recess every day. They go outside. They have 30 minutes of unstructured outdoor time to go and be young people.
00:41:38
Speaker
um And then after all of that, our afternoon chunk of time is about an hour and a half, and that varies by day. So we have one day where we're focused on community work, meaning um bigger work related to our gardens that we're keeping our chickens, if we have Our students sell things, you know, um what what they need to be doing for production and exchange, we call it. We have a day where an expert comes and does creative expression lessons, whether that's creative writing or it's art or things like that.
00:42:09
Speaker
um We have one day where it's physical expression. So we we spend an extra chunk of time learning a team sport or dance or something like that. um And then a couple days where they've got more open work time in the afternoon. So I would say that in the adolescent program, we have more structure than in some of the other levels of Montessori, but it still is intentionally big chunks of time where students need to decide and prioritize for themselves, like what work they're doing and n when.
Montessori vs. Conventional Educational Philosophies
00:42:41
Speaker
All of this begins to reveal the elephant in the room. With its 100 years of practice and development and its inroads into public school districts around the country, why does the predominant mainstream education model look the way it does and the Montessori model remains on the outside looking in?
00:43:02
Speaker
if you go back in the history of education, there are competing um philosophies on education. And I think you see it very starkly when you look at the American educational system.
00:43:16
Speaker
So, um,
00:43:20
Speaker
For if you even look, you know, within capitalism, you see that they have a assembly line, you know, factory model ah that this is how we're going to build these cars. You know, so we have this station. This happens at this time. and Then go down the assembly line and that happens there.
00:43:40
Speaker
And there was a push for a factory model of education. that um said you have the children in rows, you have the bell that rings at you know eight o'clock, and then they move at nine o'clock to the next thing. And so this is what they call the factory model of education.
00:44:02
Speaker
that was devised and I think is based on the Prussian educational um system that, you know, they felt would be really good to funnel a bunch of children in and be able to keep them in organized, you know, manner and then have the sage on a stage to direct what they're going to be doing and You have the tabula rasa and you just then pour into this blank slate, you know. And so um that factory model of education then comes into this human development scientific pedagogy that, you know, has been described with Montessori.
00:44:40
Speaker
that's. Then, you know, here in the U.S., s many folk doubted and um cast aspersions on Montessori's more human developmental following the child approach in favor of the factory model.
00:44:58
Speaker
And I would dare say that, you know, and so while for many of the elite, they saw this human developmental approach and adopted it for many of their children. But for the masses of people, it's easy to funnel them through this factory model. And I think that you know, even within many ah university settings and many traditional educators, they thought that the factory model, at least for my, that's my read of it. And I think that's why Montessori didn't get um so so so much, make make so much progress.
00:45:42
Speaker
Well, I mean, when you look at Montessori's writings, it's really interesting that, you know, over the course of her life, obviously her ideas are evolving. She's doing more experiments. She's working with more young people. She's refining the method.
00:45:56
Speaker
And the through line of it all is she's seeing how powerful this can be to fundamentally change the status quo. um There's a moment in her life in, know, when she's in Italy and she gets this proposal from Mussolini to make all of Italian schools, Montessori schools, if they basically kowtow to the fascist state.
00:46:15
Speaker
And she thinks about this idea and ultimately rejects his proposal. And as a result um is exiled in India for seven years, essentially on house arrest for the majority of that time because of her stand against fascism.
00:46:27
Speaker
But you know as she's living through World War II and working with these young people and seeing that she's seeing the powerful insights of this work and she's realizing that not enough people are listening. And you can see the stakes in her writing and her speaking. increase throughout her lifetime and get you know towards the end of her life almost quite hyperbolic because she is deeply concerned. um i've got to Actually, I've got a quote um right here that I think is really um illuminating.
00:46:56
Speaker
ah She writes, there are only two paths before us. We must either prove worthy of our great achievements or die as a result of them. And she really believed that humanity has made such progress scientifically, but has not made what she called the spiritual or inner capacities, the moral and ethical dispositions to use those great achievements in a way that benefits humanity versus a way that would destroy humanity.
00:47:20
Speaker
And you know i think to to really underscore what Aize said is that the status quo doesn't benefit from Montessori kids who question the status quo. There is power tied up with our education system, which is primarily social reproduction. you know we We certainly see that in in the United States. And that power has a vested interest in not having people question that power. You know, which is precisely why, you know, I think Aize is exactly right, that we see Montessori schools in these small affluent pockets.
00:47:52
Speaker
And even then, you know, I did a podcast episode with a friend of mine, Justin Tosco, and he said, you know, we really need to stop celebrating the Montessori graduates like Jeff Bezos and the Google founders. and Because that's actually not the vision that Montessori described. She's, you know, rolling over in her urn right now, thinking that those are the models, because those are people who,
00:48:14
Speaker
aren't breaking the status quo, they are the status quo. They're the ones who are taking advantage of people with their massive wealth and power. You know, a true Montessori education does the opposite. Montessori wrote about the creation of this new human, when human beings would go through a developmentally appropriate education, they would become this new human. And and to paraphrase what she wrote about it, the new human would not be the victim of events, but would have the clarity of vision to transform the future of human society.
00:48:42
Speaker
That's what she saw as the outcome. And so I think, you know, for for that reason alone, Those who are in power, will you know the revolution won't be funded. like They'll never make all Montessori schools because then they'll lose their power. I mean, even when I was in grad school and at the time I went to to UPenn Graduate School of Education, it was the number one graduate school of education in the US.
00:49:06
Speaker
and And I say that because Montessori came up a couple of times. Once in my curriculum and pedagogy class, and we talked about it for five minutes. and I was like, wait, can we can we go back? I'd just come back from India at the time. because was like, this is actually a really powerful scientific method. And my professor was like, oh no that's like a fringe thing. We don't need to talk about that. And then this is during the pandemic, I'm writing a policy brief. It was part of our capstone. And my proposal was I'd done a lot of work in in West Philadelphia public schools.
00:49:35
Speaker
and seen how, you know, but talk about schools that actively harm young people. Like, I mean, it was it was horrific what what I saw in those settings. And so my proposal was, okay, everybody's at home.
00:49:46
Speaker
This whole virtual thing isn't working. Take this time during COVID and transition all Philadelphia public schools to Montessori schools, K through 12th grade, just like go, you know, go the full thing. And my professor different professor, instead of critically engaging with that idea, was like, that's just a preschool method. Write about something serious.
00:50:06
Speaker
And it's this denial of, there's there's a rejection of anything that's not the norm, not to bash on Penn, but I think, you know and they actually just called me for money and I said, well,
Evaluating Montessori's Educational Benefits
00:50:17
Speaker
wouldn't you change your stance? I'll be happy to donate as an alumni. I was at an event this past May and they were talking about equity in education, which I think is hugely important. But their their fundamental premise was, we just need to give more kids what everybody else already has in the conventional system.
00:50:35
Speaker
But the conventional system actively harms most kids. you know I just brought adolescents from my Montessori high school down to Capitol Hill as part of an advocacy day with the Montessori Public Policy Initiative. These were all young people that had been in conventional schooling and came to us from Montessori high school um you know at some point during their high school career, and they were able to articulate really clearly you know the differences between this conventional schooling where their health and well-being were not centered, where they were seen as a number, where their issues weren't meaningfully addressed, where them giving feedback was seen as divisive and disrespectful.
00:51:14
Speaker
versus their experience at a Montessori high school where their health and well-being was prioritized, where they were seen and heard as full people, where where they were thriving and having an experience that they didn't even think was possible. you know And so I think that there is this denial of, well, there's only one way we can do education and it's too hard to do anything else.
00:51:33
Speaker
because there's there's vested interest in power. And you know then the debate is, so do we have conventional public schools or do we have the vulture capitalists who have these you know private schools and whatever, and and sort of this this battle, but or same thing with you know public and charter. I think we're having the wrong debate.
00:51:49
Speaker
I think we've seeded the pedagogy debate and we need to reopen that up because it doesn't matter if it's a public school, if it's a charter school, if it's an independent school, if it's using top-down authoritarian pedagogy that only benefits the powerful, that itself needs to be fundamentally questioned. And that's what I think Montessori could really add to to the national international debate.
Montessori's Inclusivity Efforts in Black Communities
00:52:11
Speaker
For better or worse, billionaire elites like Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, and Mark Zuckerberg have famously either attended or sent their kids to Montessori schools. but it seems counter to Maria Montessori's message of education for peace to have her pedagogy co-opted solely for the children of rich white people.
00:52:31
Speaker
So who is Montessori for exactly? Dr. Sebader's work on Montessori for Black People and the Black Montessori Education Fund helps us understand how Montessori is for everyone and the opportunities and challenges of expanding the reach of Montessori education.
00:52:48
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think that would be probably one of my number one and maybe number two myths to bust is that Montessori isn't just for, you know, upper class, you know, white students.
00:52:59
Speaker
And for me, as I observed in Montessori environments, I definitely would see um maybe a good percentage of individuals that fit that bill.
00:53:11
Speaker
However, as I saw ah students socializing and having fun and a learning experience and allowed to move freely and allowed to, you know just have joy in the learning process. I realized that all children um who you know might be interested in these type of um systems should be afforded the opportunity. And it was right after I'm coming out of grad school with my you know doctoral degree
00:53:47
Speaker
And so I have the highfalutin degree. I had some connections with folk in different places. And we had the assassination of Brother George Floyd.
00:53:57
Speaker
And I remember going, you know, with my son, Aize II to one of the Black Lives Matter um rallies in D.C.
00:54:08
Speaker
And the pain of the Black community was palpable. And so it it it really was like one of those aha moments. You know, Aize, you have this highfalutin degree, you have some connections. And so Is there something you can help to bring to your community to to shift the pain into possibility?
00:54:32
Speaker
How to move from this pain to to some to some healing? And it was, well, you know, i have some... some some agency, let me go ahead and try to bring this liberatory educational construct as my way to bring some healing, bring some therapy, bring some possibility to my community. And it was there that I you know said, I'm gonna try and you know shout from rooftops, I'm gonna beat the drums, I'm gonna be shouting at the top of my lungs that we need to engage more folk in the black community
00:55:07
Speaker
into this you know really holistic, therapeutic, liberatory educational um construct. And so you know from that point in 2020, we began to provide resources so that um you know Black adults who want to get a Montessori credential, that they might be able to put some skin in the game, put you know some funds on the table for folk.
00:55:31
Speaker
For a family who might not have a ah Montessori public charter or public option to put some funds on the table for them to be able to send their child to a Montessori school for, you know, Black Montessori leaders who want to even engage in developing their own Black Montessori school, putting some funds on the table or expand an existing um you know enterprise.
00:55:56
Speaker
we you know We don't pay at all, but we do put a little, um grease the wheels just a little to try and help further folk along the way. And then even to allow folk to have some resources if they want to study the lived experience of Black folk in Montessori. And so we have you know buckets of funds and have really been trying to speak to um as many um interested Black communities, Black churches, um Black you know organizations, encouraging them, because many folk within um education think
00:56:33
Speaker
Just follow the status quo. They just look oftentimes traditional education in Montessori is maybe a footnote, if if even a paragraph in somebody's textbook that they really, you know, just as Andrew just you know alluded to, they really don't give it serious thought and don't look at the best. breadth of how Montessori really engages in this human developmental process to allow students to to blossom. And so I said, I want to bring that to more um children, more adults in my community and, you know, have been doing that for, you know, five years now. And yeah, we, you know, and it's funny,
00:57:12
Speaker
When we went to talk into some of the prominent historically black colleges, um the dean over at ah Howard University, Dean Williams, you know pulled me aside and said, well, Aize, do you think there really will be a lot of black folk that might be interested in this Montessori approach? And we said, OK, Dean, we're going to do an event at your place and let you see. And it was standing room only. ah And, you know, again, even when we opened up our fund and said, you know, and I and i just got to tell this quick story. So when we opened a fund, we said we were going to give away ah maybe $10,000.
00:57:53
Speaker
ten thousand dollars i think we said we were going to give away. And We did this event. We worked with ah this or this group of folk who wanted to celebrate Dr. Montessori's. I think, what was it? 100th?
00:58:07
Speaker
see I forget which anniversary it was. And we're going to do this. It must have been Montessori 150th, so maybe a hundred And fiftieth and Is that right? Maybe. ah Don't quote me on the exact, you know, what you do. It's a lot of years. it A lot of years. A lot of years. And we, you know, broadcast that the Black Montessori Education Fund is going to be supporting folks. And we got requests of over a million dollars. And so we laughed at ourselves that we were going to try and give away $10,000 with a million dollars in requests.
00:58:40
Speaker
And so we had to, you know, we, during that event, we raised maybe like $25,000. So we wound up giving away $10,000. everything we raised because we just had so much demand for more black individuals being engaged in this, um you know, liberatory educational pedagogy. that That is so incredible. And if I could follow up, like as you're shouting from the rooftops, right, speaking in black communities, do you run into the same set of stereotypes that we've been talking about, about the exclusivity, the whiteness? And I wonder, do you get the same kind of conversion stories as your own?
00:59:17
Speaker
So it's interesting in some black communities that know something of Montessori, there is a receptiveness um because they have either seen Montessori in practice or um they had some progressive parents who wanted to put them in Montessori because they particularly in the um primary, you know, so there are three, fours and fives before it's time to go to a public school, a traditional public school.
00:59:49
Speaker
And so they might have had some Montessori experience and they are aware of the benefits of Montessori. But then I also have run into many who feel that Montessori is just a free for all.
01:00:02
Speaker
and that the students are able to do anything and it's not structured. And so I don't want to, you know, i want my child to really be disciplined and I want my child to be able to interact with, you know, the the powers that be. And so I don't want them just in an unstructured thing doing, you know, running around.
01:00:23
Speaker
And so have to help people to understand, know, but Actually, Montessori is structured. In fact, some might say it's even more structured than, you know, and so, you know, helping to to shatter myths is definitely something that has to be done in many and many. And then others, they just don't know, you know, they've heard of Montessori, but they've never really explored it much.
Further Resources and Reading on Montessori
01:00:49
Speaker
If you're like me, leaving this exploration of Montessori education, wanting to learn so much more, Aize, Andrew, and Kelly have you covered. So where do they recommend we go from here?
01:01:02
Speaker
The one Montessori text, in addition to what Aize has shared, because I think they're all, you know, the greatest hits, is Citizen of the World, which is actually a collection of her writings, which is sort of like a, like that's what I give to people as like as an introduction, because it's a nice,
01:01:18
Speaker
It's a nice selection without getting too in the weeds. Montessori is very verbose and she's very, she, sometimes she goes on tangents. So this way and that way. and And so there's like, but that's, I think that's a really great place to start. There's also been some books written recently by other folks. So there's, I think it's the Montessori Potential by Paula Lillard Preschlack, which is, you know, sort of a nice overview for people who are really new. There's also a diverse families, desirable schools, which is about Montessori in an era of school choice written by Mira Debs.
01:01:47
Speaker
maybe six or seven years ago now. I think that's that's quite that's that's a pre-COVID book or just pre-COVID book now, um which is wild. you know And and that that book also has a lot of fascinating history of Montessori in the US, particularly Montessori in black communities, which is a history we don't hear about.
01:02:04
Speaker
And of course, this is I'll do a shameless plug for both Aize and I. Aize has ah a radio show and it's not exclusively about Montessori, but he talks about it all the time. And and I talk about Montessori all the time on on my podcast, Breaking the Paradigm as well.
01:02:17
Speaker
So I would say there are some really groundbreaking works ah recently. One is um Erica Moretti put out one of the best weapons for peace, um talking about using Montessori as and effort towards peace. And Now, I got to just go off on a tangent. So Montessori is known as um focusing on peace.
01:02:46
Speaker
However, this would be a challenge to Montessorians who might be listening that in this time where we see wars and rumors of war and more wars happening than we even or counting properly, um how many are actually engaging their young people in their environment in what does peace look like in the time of war?
01:03:10
Speaker
And how do we, um in person-to-person ways, but then even raise our voice to really advocate for peace? And so I think theoretically many talk about it, but to be able to see it in action, I think is something that I, you know, again, I got to go off on a tangent to to to just hit that. I also would direct folk to ah one of the other, I mean, ah definitely for us who, you know, went through the adolescent training, Mano Sorri's work on um the child and adolescence is definitely, you know, hit some some key points there.
01:03:52
Speaker
The other book that I wanted, and this is for um folk who have young ones at home, and it's a series by Simone Davies um and Juniper Uzadikwe.
01:04:04
Speaker
um It's the Montessori Child series. And so they have followed almost the different planes, right? know, students along the developmental process. And so, yeah, the Montessori Child, I would direct folk to Simone Davies and Juniper Uzadikwe.
01:04:22
Speaker
So that's a whole little series. And and mine is a um FM radio show on WPFW 89.3 in the nation's capital called Hashtag You Must Learn and comes on most Thursdays, 6 p.m.
01:04:37
Speaker
ah And if you wanted to go to the archives, go to WPFWFM.org.org. And in the archives, you could just search hashtag you must learn and you will see some of the past additions. And yeah, I'm regularly bringing on Montessorians to help broaden people's horizon and broaden their awareness to this, the power of the Montessori approach. And again, i would direct folk to the Black Montessori Education Fund um to, you know, we did our first conference last year
01:05:14
Speaker
where we plan to get 100 persons and we didn't get 100 persons. We had over 220 persons come to this conference. We were pulling our hair out like, okay, where are we gonna put all these people?
01:05:26
Speaker
oh So it was a good issue. This year we're doing a retreat over the Juneteenth weekend um this summer. And so if folk wanna check out some of the work, go blackmontessori.org. Again, that's blackmontessori.org. And again, thank you so much for this opportunity to be able to share and, you know, something that is definitely passionate in my heart.
01:05:49
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm going to go down the Montessori list. Of course, there are there are many things from non-Montessorians. If you're going to read one book by Dr. Montessori, I would say that it should be From Childhood to Adolescence. That's it. Interestingly, it's the appendices of that book, Appendix A and Appendix B, that um adolescent practitioners go to as the um the writings from Dr. Montessori about what an adolescent program could look like. But as the title implies, she does talk about
01:06:20
Speaker
from childhood through adolescence. Another one that I would say by Dr. Montessori is education and peace. And it sounds like um you may be hit on this with Andrew and Aize, but especially given the times in which we live, um which unfortunately are seeming not that dissimilar from the times in which Dr. Montessori lived, um Funny how that works. ah In that book, she talks about the idea that um peace is not just the time and space between wars, but like as long as one group of people is being dominated by another group of people, then we're not achieving peace. which I think is a really thought-provoking idea. And again, as the name implies, she talks about how the way that we educate young people is the only way to work toward true human solidarity and and worldwide peace.
01:07:20
Speaker
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01:07:31
Speaker
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