From the Mind of Maria Montessori

As we celebrate Montessori Education Week, we thought it would be interesting to share some of Maria Montessori’s most famous quotes from her books and speeches.

“One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child”

 “If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man’s future. For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual’s total development lags behind?”

 “Here is an essential principle of education: to teach details is to bring confusion; to establish the relationship between things is to bring knowledge.”

“We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, not all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.”

“The first essential for the child’s development is concentration. The child who concentrates is immensely happy.”

“Respect all the reasonable forms of activity in which the child engages and try to understand them.”

“The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!”

“Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.”

“The greatest sign of success for a teacher… is to be able to say, the children are now working as if I did not exist.” 

The Wonder of Girls

Another gem from The Gurian Institute:

Gender and Education News

Feb 11, 2015

The Wonder of Girls 
Girls tend to be "the connectors" in many classrooms.  As always, when we look through a "gender lens" we are not stereotyping but instead looking at broad generalizations that hold true across cultures.  

It may seem like there is heightened focus on boys and their challenges both academically and behaviorally in school and at home but also we don't ever forget girls and their unique social and academic needs! 

The Old Girl Code:
The old Girl Code message was, "It is your responsibility to make others happy."
Many girls, because they are relationship-oriented, are 'pleasers,' which impacts their confidence and self-esteem.
Too often girls think that being nice means being quiet, never showing anger, and not expressing their true feelings.

The NEW Girl Code

--It is not your responsibility to make everyone happy.  If you are interrupted, wait a beat, then continue.  Be passionate, concise, and clear.

--Find the job with the options you need – rewrite the workplace.  Fortune 500 CEO and “top dog” are not necessarily right for or the gold success standard for most women with families.

--Stop taking things personally!  The world is competitive, and people are just not nice, especially when they want power.  Deal with it

--Because girls often avoid conflict and failure, we forget to teach these skills—so, nurture your own strength as much as you do your desire to be loved and mirrored.
 

--Don’t blame men for a woman’s situation—it distracts from success building with these excuses.
 

Females may have trouble understanding male emotions because:
Males tend to delay complex emotional reactions.
Males tend to choose physical expression of emotions over verbal expression.
Males tend to mask vulnerability.
Males prefer a quicker release of feelings.
Males view emotions as a design problem that needs solving.
Females view emotions as life processes.
For more information go to

www.gurianintstitue.com

Parent-leadership: 3 Insights

By Jim and Michele Aspinall
Based on Work with Author and Psychologist, John Rosemond

Most believe that for any problem there is a right method or technique to solve it. Are your children misbehaving? Just get a good parenting book. Need advice on how to discipline your children? A quick Google search is sure to yield numerous blog posts and videos on parenting. Sift through all the parenting techniques available, and choose a method that is appropriate for your child’s age, the duration of problem, etc. Problem solved? Not exactly.

Having a method is good. But no method will work for long if you don’t adopt a leadership attitude. Here are just a few insights from the most recent Parenting class led by Jim and Michele Aspinall on 1) the relationship, 2) the talk, and 3) the nourishment involved in parent leadership.

1) The Relationship

The Parent-Leader and the Child-Disciple

Again, no discipline will work for very long if you don’t establish yourself as a leader.“Leadership Parenting” means how you present yourself to your children: You must act self-assured, calm, confident, cool under fire, compelling, interesting. You radiate authority. Most importantly, you act like you know what you are doing. With this, your children will also feel that you have their best interests at heart.

Your actions should exude 4 attributes:

• You act like you know what you’re doing (You are decisive).

• You act like you know where you’re going (You have a vision that guides your decisions).

• You act like you know what you want your child to do (You are assertively direct: you don’t beat around the bush when it comes to giving instructions).

• You act like you know your child is going to obey and/or live up to your expectations (You are positive, optimistic, self-assured, and inspiring: you bring out the best in people).

And with you as the leader, your child becomes… your disciple. A disciple is someone who subscribes willingly to the authority of his or her teacher, who believes that the teacher speaks the truth, and that by following the teacher, his or her life will be greatly improved.

A child-disciple then, is defined by four qualities:

• He knows he can rely on his parents (trust).

• He looks up to his parents (respect).

• He follows their lead (obedience).

• He subscribes to their values (loyalty)

2. The Talk

Communicating effectively as a Leader

Effective leaders are characterized by their communication skills. Confident, decisive and concise communication inspires the child-disciple to trust in your leadership.

The Communication is Confident.

• Parent-leaders are masters of inspiring, authoritative speech (what Rosemond calls Alpha Speech). When they talk, no one doubts that they know what they’re talking about. They say what they mean and mean what they say.

The Communication is Decisive.

• Parent-leaders know what they are doing (or at least act like it): their decisions arise from conviction, not reaction, and can be relied upon.
• They tend not to give explanations for the decisions they make, and when they do express their rationale, they do so concisely (When someone in a position of authority explains the reason behind an executive decision, he runs the risk of conveying that he’s not quite sure of himself).

The Communication is Short and Sweet.

• The fewer words a parent gives when giving instructions or conveying expectations, the more likely it is that the child will obey.
• This highlights the 4 most powerful words in parenting: “Because I said so”. This is a statement of leadership. You are simply saying to your child that, as an adult here, I do not need to justify my answer to you.

3. The Nourishment

Is Your Child Getting Enough Vitamin N?

Finally, be certain that you are giving your child regular, daily doses of VITAMIN “N.” This nutrient consists simply of the most character-building two-letter word: NO! If you haven’t already started, you can begin by administering vitamin N to your child’s in the following ways:

• Turn their world right side up by giving them all of what they truly need, but no more than 25% of what they simply want.

• Don’t do for your children what they are capable of doing themselves. Say, “You can do that on your own.” This encourages the growth of perseverance and self-sufficiency. When the child says, “I can’t,” don’t argue. Just say “Well, I won’t.” You’ll be amazed at how creative and resourceful children can be under the right circumstances.

• Don’t always rescue them from failure or disappointment. Remember that falling on one’s face can be an invaluable learning experience.

• Remember that just because a child doesn’t like something doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen or exist. For children to grow up requires that parents resist the temptation to constantly protect them from the discomfort of having to divest dependency.

• Don’t worry about treating children “fairly.” Remember that, to a child, “fair” means “me first” with the biggest and best of everything.

• Don’t overdose your children emotionally by giving them too much attention or too much praise. If you pay too much attention to your children, they have no reason to pay attention to you.

To recap, a parenting method is like a tool: having no leadership mindset is like holding the tool with a loose, greasy grip that renders it ineffective. Whichever parenting method you choose should be undergirded with an attitude of leadership aimed at helping your children become the best people they can be. It starts with love and leadership, and it culminates with your children leaving home and showing you what a good job you did.

Jim and Michele Aspinall are parents of two children, 11 and 8 years of age.Michele is an AMI trained teacher at the primary level and pioneered Countryside Montessori School's All Year Montessori program. She has been working in the classroom for nearly 25 years. Her husband Jim is the Director of Operations at Countryside Montessori School.
Published with permission by Countryside Montessori school in Northbrook, Illinois

Gratitude for the Montessori Kindergarten Year

When I am asked to explain the importance of the kindergarten year of a Montessori student I get very passionate. I have the unique experience of being a Montessori parent as well as a Montessori teacher, so I have seen the remarkable metamorphosis of children in my classes, as well as in my own children.

Having taught for many years before my first son reached kindergarten, I knew that a Montessori education worked and I felt it was superior to anything that the other area schools could provide. By that time, I had seen hundreds of children excel in the Montessori program and knew that my own son would be no different. Still though, I had the same concerns that I hear repeated every year from other parents: How will he transition when he leaves Montessori? What if he never “chooses” to learn to read? Is it worth the private school tuition when I can get kindergarten for free?

I am here to say though that year after year, those parents (including myself) share the tremendous sense of success in having chosen Montessori for the Kindergarten year.

The best analogy that I can give for the kindergarten year is that of the building of an archway. When children are three and four in a Montessori classroom they build their foundation of knowledge. As they learn their isolated letter sounds and numbers with the materials, refine their fine motor skills, and learn to be a good member of their community, they are building up the pillars of their archway.  It is during the kindergarten year though that, using the foundation they have built, they can tie all of that knowledge together to create a beautiful, strong support system for their future success.

For those children not continuing in the Montessori program, they still have great pillars of knowledge gained from their preschool years which they will continue to build, but the “coming together” of concrete materials and abstract concepts will not be as strong as the archway could have been.

Over the years I have been fortunate enough to give my children many gifts. We have taken trips, had elaborate birthday parties, and numerous toys. But the one gift that I feel is the most important that I have given them, that they will have with them their whole life, is the gift of their education. And I truly believe that their Montessori foundation, including the kindergarten year, will be with them forever.

Melanie Thiesse

Parent of Nathan (15) and Brandon (9) and

Curriculum Coordinator at The Westmont Montessori School

Parent Involvement: What Skills need to be part of a Daily Routine

Parent Involvement: What Skills Need to be Part of a Daily Routine?

Repost of article by Erika Burton

Parent involvement in early literacy is directly connected to academic achievement. Children need parents to be their reading role models with daily practice in order to navigate successfully through beginning literacy skills. According to research, parents should focus on the words on the page while reading with their preK reader (Evans, Shaw, Bell, 2000).

Here are some strategies for beginning and seasoned readers' literacy success:

•   Point to each word on the page as you read. This beginning literacy strategy will assist children with making print/story/illustration connections. This skill also helps build a child's tracking skills from one line of text to the next one.

•   Read the title and ask your child to make a prediction. Beginning and seasoned readers alike need to make predictions before reading a story. This will go a long way to ensure that a child incorporates previewing and prediction in his or her own reading practices both now and in the future.

•   Take "picture walks." Help your child use the picture clues in most early readers and picture books to tell the story before reading.

•   Model fluency while reading, and bring your own energy and excitement for reading to your child. Both new and seasoned readers struggle with varying pitch, intonation and proper fluctuations when they read aloud. Older readers will benefit from shared reading (taking turns).

•   Ask your child questions after reading every book. Reading comprehension is the reason we read -- to understand. The new CCORE standards assessing U.S. children's readiness for the workplace and college ask children at all grade levels to compare and contrast their understanding of concepts. This takes practice. Help your child explain his or her understanding of any given story in comparison to another. Have your child share a personal experience similar to a problem or theme within a story. Higher-order thinking skills (critical thinking) are skills children are expected to use in both written and oral assessments in school. There is no way for a teacher to ask every child to use a critical thinking skill every day. Parents can.

•   Connect reading and writing if possible. The connection between reading, writing and discussion should be incorporated with daily literacy practice. Have a young child dictate to a parent who writes in a journal or on a sheet of paper. Modeling the formation of sentences aligned with the words of a story is crucial for a child to begin making a neural interconnectedness between reading and writing. A child's process of drawing pictures brings his or her personal creativity toward the story. Sharing these illustrations of experiences and individual interpretations related to the sentence he or she has created on the page is yet another step toward this early balanced literacy approach.

Beginning and lifelong literacy is transformative and constantly growing. However, the process must begin when initially learning to read, and must be as intuitive to a child as when he or she learned to speak. This can happen through incorporating repetition, proper skills and modeling.

ERIKA BURTON'S PROFILE

Practicing and Modeling Empathy

How can we teach our children to be empathetic and not just sympathetic? We role model it ourselves! This is a great illustration of the words of Brene Brown, Ph.D., that remind us to stay connected to those around us by feeling with people.

How Babies and Children are Designed to Learn

Psychologist, Alison Gopnik gave a Ted Talk where she made some bold statements about the minds of babies and children. In it, she explained that while adults are task-oriented and tend to focus like a spotlight on one thing at a time, children have more of a lantern of consciousness, taking in and learning from all of the environment. In this way, she believes that children are actually more conscious than adults.

Experimenting with the environment and learning about it is the job of the child. When adults see this happening we tend to call it "getting in to everything" but it is the true work of childhood.

The Ted Talk, viewable here, is informative, funny, and certainly worth a look. Enjoy!