There are, despite the loneliness of our classrooms and the heartache of having been called to teach, others on the path with us. Teaching is hard. Teaching in a Montessori path is even more so. Montessorians are asked to give up so much of ourselves, to make ourselves humble and lowly before the child, to be servants, to be scientists, to be saints. We often let ourselves down. There it is, then. We will let ourselves down. But there are others on the path with us. We can lean on each other. We can walk in each other’s footsteps. Sometimes we’re at the front of the path. Sometimes we’re following another traveler. Sometimes we’re resting. Sometimes the laughter of our group is so cacophonous that we forget how tired our feet are. Sometimes we’re so far ahead or behind that we can’t even see each other anymore. But we’re not alone.

We are each other’s navigational stars. Montessori’s words, across generations, guide us. Our own words, whispered in each other’s ears or passed in notes or published in books, they give us guidance, too. They remind us on the hardest days that we’re not alone. We are not alone. We share certain tendencies, certain traits, common among humanity, common across decades. We are working in common toward a perfection we may never individually see. But we’re on the path. And we’re not alone.

A Delicate Task

Teaching and Learning on a Montessori PathBy Catherine McTamaney

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 Catherine McTamaney
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-3142-6

Contents

Foreword by Marie M. DuganLiving Legacy and former President of the American Montessori Society.....................viiNavigation: An Introduction.........................................................................................xiiiOrientation.........................................................................................................1Order...............................................................................................................17Exploration.........................................................................................................33Communication.......................................................................................................49Activity............................................................................................................65Manipulation........................................................................................................81Work................................................................................................................97Repetition..........................................................................................................113Precision...........................................................................................................129Abstraction.........................................................................................................145Perfection..........................................................................................................161

Chapter One

Orientation

"The child is both a hope and a promise for mankind."
—Maria Montessori


When did you know you wanted to be a teacher?

Has it been since childhood, when some warm smile
greeted you to your first day at school, or when you
connected with that one voice who made more sense
than all the others?

Did you line up teddy bears and baby dolls into your
own classroom, or did you hear the call to teach when
you lacked the ones you needed yourself? Who were the
teachers who touched your soul?

Who guided you to teaching?

When you imagine yourself as Teacher, whose voice do
you hear calling in the distance?

I. The Naming of Things

From the Latin, oriri: to rise. Orientation is that natural tendency to know where we are and how we fit in with what's around us. The term, "orient," is traced to the early fourteenth century, when it suggested the rising in the east of the sun each morning. In the mid-eighteenth century, it came to mean, "to take one's bearings," or, literally, "to face the east," as the Earth seems to do each morning. When we orient ourselves, we take our own bearings. We search for our physical place and, equally importantly, our spiritual place in the communities we share.

Our desire to understand our physical place is easy to grasp. When we enter a new environment, we look around. How tall is the room? Where is the light? Where will I go once I cross the threshold? Am I comfortable here? What is here that I recognize? North, south, east, west, downtown, uptown, midtown, near the library, across from the school, out back, by the window. We place immediate markers in our minds, and in doing so, we understand our physical place. We know if this is our place.

Some of us orient ourselves by the map points: north, south, east or west. Others find our physical place in terms of deeply-engrained knowledge of where things have always been: past McCreavy's auto shop, out by where the post office used to be, not quite to the I-440 intersection. We need to place ourselves within the environment around us, and we do so by situating our place against other objects or benchmarks we presume to be unmoving. Our physical orientation is dependent on our knowledge of what is or was in this space.

Our desire to understand our spiritual place is much more elusive. When we enter a new environment, our spiritual orientation asks different questions. Do I feel comfortable here? Do I know anyone here? Is it what I expected? Do the people here look welcoming? Do I feel at ease? Warm, welcoming, friendly, intimidating, cold, off-putting ... we place different markers in our mind, with the same hope to understand how we fit in. We place ourselves spiritually within the environment around us, and we do so by situating our place against other places that evoked a similar feeling. This reminds me of home. Industrial architecture feels cold to me. I cannot see around that corner. Our spiritual orientation is dependent on how we feel in this space, on the emotions of comfort and safety or fear and vulnerability the space offers to us.

The need to orient ourselves, both physically and spiritually, is no new phenomenon. Orientation influences rituals across cultures and religious traditions, from the east-west orientation of the world's great cathedrals, to the mandate to face Mecca in Muslim prayer, to the orientation of the angel Morini on Mormon temples or the offering of Native American prayers to the four compass points. From the ancient Mayan cities built from east to west to modern yogis facing east to complete their sun salutations, our spirits seek orientation, that connection to what else is around us, what has been and what is unchanging, to something as profound as the rotation of the Earth or to something as mundane as the closest fire exit. We are driven by an essential human tendency to find our place.

II. Orientation and The Child

Teaching is a calling. We are called to the profession, and we are called each day to the horizon that we cannot see. Our orientation as teachers needs always to point beyond the edge of the map. And although we seek security by understanding where we begin, we do so with an eye on the unknown. We want to know where we are, to know better where we are going.

The children, too, seek their own orientation. For the children in our classrooms, we provide the map points. We offer the careful grids of reliable, thoughtfully placed materials. We offer the same lesson in the same way throughout the year. The terrain is unchanged. Because our classrooms offer a consistent topography, the child can be the cartographer of his own learning, mapping mapping mapping, building his knowledge of the concepts of Practical Life, Sensorial, Math, Language and Culture. As the child readies himself to leave the classroom, his map will have the same hills and valleys as the other children who've discovered alongside him, but the fingerprints will be most assuredly his.

When we are criticized by those who don't understand us, for being too rigid in our routines, too precise in our presentations, we should remind ourselves that the predictability of the Montessori classroom is not for the benefit of some curmudgeonly teacher who just doesn't want the children to be too loud. Our routines are our daily rituals, and like all ritual, they make concrete what may be too big for us otherwise to grasp. They provide landmarks and signposts for the child seeking his own orientation. We tell the child, "You are safe here. Your world is reliable. And your influence here is real."

We admire the harmony of the normalized classroom, when the children have all already found their own paths and are uncovering without our constant guidance. And just as easily, we are frustrated by the rabbit holes and wild geese we run down and chase around, trying to find the pacific. When our guidance for children seems, well, misguided, we return to the basic orientation of the classroom. We look to see what it is in the environment that could be causing the students to stumble. When an alpinist is unable to scale the sheer, glassy face of the mountain, we don't blame the climber. We acknowledge the challenge of the mountain. We look for better tools with which to climb it or an easier path to the top.

Likewise, when the children struggle to orient themselves in the classroom, we look for better tools with which to help them find their way. The child's orientation is clear when he knows his relationship with the environment around him. When that is absent, the child is truly lost. We support the child's orientation by providing reliable, consistent classrooms. The materials, the routines, the presentations remain the same. The terrain does not change. We support the lost child by providing reliable, consistent relationships. We react the same way to the same actions. We welcome the child with the same warmth and acceptance every day. We stand as a constant guidepost. When we know a child is lost, we should never blame the child for his confusion. Instead, we should make more clear the direction we hope he'll follow, and offer a warm welcome down the path.

Today, may I observe the terrain with new eyes
When the child stumbles, may I clear the path
Without chiding the child for falling
May I see the children's struggles as obstacles to
overcome
And may I offer

Tools fit to the task

Paths worth walking
Companionship on the trail

May I remember that, though I guide
I can walk only in my own shoes
I can follow only my own path
The child is his own explorer
The discoveries are his to find

III. Orientation and The Self

We know what to provide for the child who is struggling to orient himself, but in order to provide it, we need to be ourselves sure of the path. Our own orientation, as adults and especially as teachers, is no less important than the orientation of the children we hope to guide. We need to know where we stand. Toward our own sense of place, we seek outside markers, signals and posts to let us know we are where we think we are. What is my job description? What is my title? Who is my boss? Who is my assistant? They're all signposts, helpful because they give us orientation. They tell us north from south. They give us a sense of belonging, these special names and roles. "Because I am the Lead Teacher, I am this. I am not that." "Because I am the Assistant, I do this. I do not do that."

There is security in these concrete trailmarkers, to be sure. But just as we know that the normalized child doesn't need the teacher any more, neither does the normalized adult need these external signposts. They are helpful to us in the same way that an initial lesson is helpful to the child: they give us a simple place from which to begin, and an unspoken challenge to move beyond. When our adult communities are normalized, teachers do what teachers do because that's what teachers do, not because it is in their job descriptions or because their contracts demand it. We hear our calling and we follow it. We feel secure. We don't jump at shadows because we know nothing is lurking around that corner.

It's a long way, though, from relying on the signposts to knowing the way by heart. The path is not clear. And it shouldn't be. Each new community of children is different, even though the terrain remains the same. Likewise, each community of teachers is different, even though the silly job descriptions remain the same. When we rely on our titles and positions to orient ourselves, we remain focused on where we are instead of where we aim to go. We move toward normalization as adults when we acknowledge the goal. When we ask ourselves, "how would I behave if I was already sure of myself here," we shine a light down the path ... we begin to see ourselves as we wish to become, and we begin to step toward there.

If we are to guide children toward a horizon we cannot see, we need to believe in it ourselves. We need to believe ourselves as capable of the same growth and change and self-direction as we are so certain exists in the child. When we behave without reliance to those signposts, we do what needs to be done, simply because it needs to be done. We take action to move our communities closer toward where we want to be, usually in small steps and sometimes in great leaps. We offer each other help. We share our knowledge and skills. We see ourselves as the teachers we hope to become, we act as though we already are and, in doing so, we magically find ourselves transforming.

May I remember who I wanted to be
When I was called to be a Teacher
May I suspend my fear of the unknown
May I ask for answers
May I ask for help
May I do what needs to be done
When it needs to be done
Because it needs to be done
May I remember the hope
The confidence
The clarity of my calling
And when that call is distant
And the path unclear
When my confidence wavers
And I lose step
May I resist the urge to run along the rocky path Let
me slow down
Let me move with caution
Small steps careful steps
Let my work be my guide

IV. Orientation and Each Other

When we behave as though we are already the teachers we hope to become, we also find ourselves better equipped to offer the same to others. In our need to orient ourselves, we too often fall into habits of territory and self-protection. Feeling unsure of our place, we carve out small worlds of our own divinity. We build walls at the borders.

Where are the borders of your country? Are they at the door of your classroom? Are they in your assertion of your training? Or your presentation of some prized piece of material? What are the parts about who you are as a teacher that are non-negotiable?

Once you've defined them, named them in the map key of your teaching, you need to decide why they're there. Are they an essential part of your teaching, core to what you believe, essential like the ground water? Or are they man-made, built up because that's how you were trained, or because you've never done it a different way? We all have both types: those landforms that are a part of who we are and those which are built up on the surface. The ones we know to be essential help to orient us more clearly. We find, as we identify them, that they cross boundaries. The core parts of our teaching are often the ones that other teachers share, like rivers flowing between countries. We are stewards of those rivers, challenged to keep them flowing, preserving their nourishment. They connect us. We rely on each other through the water we share.

The ones that are inauthentic provide us only temporary shelter. We feel safe behind them, but they keep us from strengthening our practice by keeping us from the other teachers with whom we might grow. An appealing fallacy, but a fallacy nonetheless. They make us bellicose. They are the pedagogical equivalent of land mines, our intellectual weapons that we fire at each other in an effort to protect our own borders. They separate us from each other, and from becoming the teachers we hope to be. How many times have you had a difference of opinion with another teacher, on how to present a material, or what was causing a child's behavior, or what steps to take next, and found that rather than influence your decision, it changed how you felt about that teacher? These conflicts arise when we are unsure of why we believe what we believe. We need not only to name our values, but to understand why they are our values. When we bicker over how we've always done things, we blind ourselves from who we may become.

Some pieces of our teaching are, indeed, so core to who we are and how we've been called that they cannot be discarded. But most of what we do is far more pedestrian, the remnants of our training or the routines that we adopted from previous experience. We can tell the difference by asking, "Why do I believe this dearly? Could I still be the teacher I want to be if I couldn't believe this anymore?" When we start by naming the parts of our teaching we cannot do without, and the ones we could discard, we are better able to build bridges to other teachers, to parents, and, most essentially, to the children. When we start by naming the parts of ourselves we cannot do without, and the ones we could discard, we are better prepared to step off the path and discover something new.

I look to a distant landscape
To a future I cannot see

My teaching is an act of faith in that unseen horizon
That the work I do today
Will help the child tomorrow
And tomorrow
And tomorrow

That the child I nurture today
Will reach that horizon
Will discover new lands
Will blaze trails beyond my ability to imagine
May I provide for him what he needs most on that
adventure
May I not burden him
Or load him down with what we should both discard
Though I cannot see it
Though I'll never see it
May I protect that horizon

Sending it only the seeds of our healthiest blossoms
Trusting the child to reach
To discover
To blaze
Beyond my ability to imagine

Chapter Two

Order

"The observation of the way in which the children pass from the first disordered movements to those which are spontaneous and ordered — this is the book of the teacher; this is the book which must inspire her actions." - Maria Montessori

Why do they say that Order is Heaven's First Law?

Can you remember a time when you felt confused?

When things weren't happening the way you expected
them to or the way you thought they should?

How does confusion feel? What are the other emotions
that accompany confusion?

How do you know what to expect, when you know what
to expect? When you don't?

How does knowing how things will unfold feel?

What are the other emotions that surround that feeling?

How does order make us more perfect as Teachers?

I. The Naming of Things: Order

We all have a preferred way of doing things, from what side of the bed we like to sleep on to whether we sit down or bend over to put on our shoes. Whether it's where you put your keys or how deep your laundry basket can grow before you absolutely must address it ... our little preferences, our quirks, the way we like things just because we like them that way: that's our tendency to order.

If you find yourself noticing that all the pencils in the tray are the same length, or straightening a picture that's shifted out of place, that's order. When we notice patterns, or create them, we are seeking order. When we place all the mugs together in the cupboard and all the glasses in their own group, we are creating order. Our need for order infuses our lives, even our messiest, most slovenly friends, even our teenage kids and sloppy roommates ... look closely enough and you'll find the order there. It might not be your way of ordering things, but it will be there.

This tendency to order emerges early in our lives. For example, own natural rhythms and patterns of sleeping or eating, established even before we are born, reflect our tendency toward order. There is a sense of control in what we can predict.

The first thing we do when we see something new is to decide where it fits with something we know, something we are comfortable with. We try to put it in ... order. When our scientists create ever-expanding tables and charts to describe the relationships of everything from galaxies to subatomic particles, they are following the tradition of a thousand generations of humankind.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from A Delicate Taskby Catherine McTamaney Copyright © 2012 by Catherine McTamaney. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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