This will be the first post in a series on the pros and cons of Montessori school–why we love it, and why it doesn’t work for us. I expect many of the issues we’ve uncovered with Noah in the Montessori setting will apply to most, if not all, school settings. Good thing we always wanted to homeschool!
Let me begin by saying that our decision to part ways with Bloomington Montessori School does not reflect a failing of school, teachers, or method. I honestly can’t think of a better setting for Noah (or any child) to learn from, with the exception of the student/teacher ratio (10:1).
Simply put, we spent Summer and Fall trying to acclimate Noah to a large group setting. BMS offers a single space for 30 preschoolers plus three teachers to work and learn. There are three age groups (3s, 4s and 5s), 10 students in each group. The classroom is gender-balanced. Students “work” individually or together on self-contained projects that might include tracing sandpaper letters and later reproducing them, mixing a colored ice cube into a bowl of water and then shifting it into different containers such as a tea set, classroom cleanup (sweeping, mopping, washing tables), map-making, flag-making, reading, or outdoor play. The idea is that the children learn self-direction and self-control. They choose their activities and work on them without interruption, progressing naturally in difficulty. Teachers offer one-on-one aid as it is requested. Older students “show leadership” by aiding younger. Sometimes students are assigned partners whom they work with in a work period.
Noah loves the work intensely. He enjoy playing “I Spy” where he identifies objects by first letter sounds. He enjoys all writing work, brings home flags he has reproduced on his own (using scissors, glue, different paper colors, etc.). He has been doing quite a bit of Math work lately involving stamps and rows. I’ll have to get some images for my next post. He also greatly enjoys tactile work such as corn sorting and Play Doh.
Noah also loves his teachers and the other students intensely.
What Noah does not love–what has kept him from getting comfortable in the classroom–is the number of people in the given space (it’s actually quite large), the noise and motion. He also takes issue with the smells. Noah is super sensitive to what is happening around him. I’ve blogged a great deal about his issues with television screens. He has the same response to groups of living things. He grows agitated and his self-control begins to slip.
This isn’t terribly unusual. When this disposition was combined with the trauma he’d experienced upon treatment of his head wound, well, Noah became over-defensive of his body. He began lashing out at the adults around him. His teachers have been quick to repeatedly point out he has never been physically agressive toward other students, but he does deal with his stress physically. And you can’t do that sort of thing in a Montessori environment because it’s whole creed is to promote peace. He has since recovered from that trauma and calmed down greatly, but he still needs to learn proper communication, which is difficult for the following reasons:
When Noah gets agitated, he needs to bump into things. You may have gleaned that he is in almost constant motion. He makes your standard little boy threats (“my hands are knives and I’ll cut you”), and then feels remorseful because he knows he shouldn’t say those types of things. The remorse feeds his agitation. The agitation feeds his movement. It’s a vicious cycle, the result of which was me dropping him off late and picking him up early every day to prevent hostile/defensive outbursts that include tantrums, shrieking and more vocalized morbidity.
The con here is that the classroom environment agitates him. You could say he’s not mature enough to deal with that agitation in the way the other kids are. Really, the senses that aren’t fully developed in the other kids are kicked on in overdrive for Noah and his brain hasn’t caught up with them yet. While he’s extremely articulate, he’s only three and three quarters. He doesn’t always understand what’s happening inside his body, and we can’t expect him to. The best we can do is help him pay attention to himself so he can grow to understand. So, one way we’re doing that is pulling him out of an environment that constantly puts him on edge, thus making him unable to stop and see what’s going on.
Some pros here (there are several): His teachers put out special tactile work he can use to work things out physically (corn sorting, Play Doh, table-washing), and they direct him to it when he gets overwhelmed. They also have a rocking chair for him to sit in, if he chooses, at group meetings. It’s often easier for him to sit outside the circle. Whatever his learning need is, Montessori has met it. But Noah’s need for a physical outlet like running is much greater than his need for an intellectual, if tactile, outlet when he’s stimulated. Does that make sense?
To take it a step further, the end result is that Noah spends the morning angsty because school is coming up in the afternoon. He spends his evenings wigging out because school was overstimulating. He doesn’t sleep well. He doesn’t show much interest in a lot of the activities he loved before school began. His self-esteem has lowered. No amount of Math learning (and boys is it exciting to watch him add on his fingers!) can excuse letting him feel this way.
Anyway, the biggest reason we are leaving Montessori is so that Noah can run around and shout. In short, be a kid, because, you know, he is just a kid. He should be having fun, not stressing out. It’s not like preschool is required.
November 24th, 2009 | Category: montessori | Comments (3)
