Define “Good Teacher”

One of my classmates found this article in the Washington Post.  Here’s the summary:

“While debate rages in the education world about how to measure effective teaching – or whether it is even possible to do so – research funded by a prominent advocate of data-driven analysis [the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation] has found that growth in annual student test scores is a reliable sign of a good teacher… The foundation in the past year has collaborated with local teachers’ unions on reshaping teacher pay and evaluation in several major school systems.”

Guess who was paid $45 million to do the research?  Educational Testing Services.  Because nothing says “impartial research results” like hiring the country’s largest test-producer to point out the importance of testing to evaluate both children and teachers!

Basically, here’s how I imagine the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would define a good teacher:

Good teacher: (n.) 1. One who bribes, threatens, punishes, and in many other ways manipulates children to reach arbitrary markers set by moronic politicians. 2. One who robs children of the joy of learning in order to procure a bonus and pension.

Here’s my definition of what they consider a “good teacher”:

Good teacher: (n.) 1. One who is bribed, threatened, punished, and in many other ways manipulated to reach arbitrary markers set by moronic politicians.  2. One who is robbed of the joy of teaching in order to finance a broken and corrupt system.

I’m seeing a pattern…

Author’s note: Shortly after posting this, Alexa pointed out that the New York Times had also written about this study, although they give a somewhat different take on the methodology and results.  Here’s an excerpt:

“Teachers whose students described them as skillful at maintaining classroom order, at focusing their instruction and at helping their charges learn from their mistakes are often the same teachers whose students learn the most in the course of a year, as measured by gains on standardized test scores, according to a progress report on the research.”

I still have major issues with equating “students who learn the most” with “gains on standardized test scores” and pegging the blame or glory on the teacher…

Changing the Paradigm

I’m so behind the times these days, that you have all probably seen this video elsewhere.  But in case you haven’t, it’s a must-see (short and powerful)… Enjoy!

Tomorrow’s Child Magazine

How does a Montessori teacher maintain order and harmony in the classroom without the use of rewards and punishments?  How do 25 or 30 young children manage to spend their days together in an environment of respect and community?  How can little tykes develop so much self-discipline and self-control at such a young age?

Find out by reading the November issue of Tomorrow’s Child magazine (published by The Montessori Foundation), where I write about all this and more!  You can subscribe to a digital version of the magazine or get the hard copy delivered in or outside the U.S. by going here!  It’s a great resource for home schooling parents, teachers, and anyone who’s curious about Montessori education and the role it can play in the lives of families.

Happy reading!

Leading Principles of the Montessori Approach, part I

Whew, blogging while getting the Elementary certification is a little like birthing a child while cooking a seven-course meal (or something like that…).  At any rate, I wanted to share these great principles that can help you make the right decision for your child or your students during your Montessori journey.  They’ll be posted in four parts for ease of reading.  I hope you enjoy them!

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When faced with an uncertain situation in the classroom, it is always advisable to go “back to the basics”.  What follows are reference points/yardsticks that will allow us to make decisions that are aligned with the Montessori approach and are in the best interest of the child’s development.

The True Purpose of the Materials
Dr. Montessori’s focus was not the teaching of subjects; she was intrigued by the child’s development and how he learns.  Therefore, the subject area should never become more important than the children.  She offered materials as a means of development, not as an end in themselves.

We should not offer a material – be it table washing or the stamp game – with the goal of getting the child to learn how to wash tables or to obtain the right result for an addition.  We should guide children towards materials that will provide them with the developmental opportunities they require at that precise time.   We can know what their needs are by observing them and educating ourselves regarding the different sensitivities children exhibit at different stages (that’s a post for another day).

A child who washes a table will be refining his movements and developing the ability to follow a sequence of steps, regardless of how clean he leaves the table.  Similarly, a child who works with the stamp game will come to understand the fundamental concepts of arithmetic operations, regardless of whether he gets the correct answer every time or is able to add in his head.

The characteristics of the materials must be such that they prepare the child for something in the future (indirect preparation), while allowing him to reach awareness in the present (direct preparation).  Only the adult can develop an idea of what happens in the future; the child is not conscious of the preparation that is going on while he works.

Reaching Abstraction
The repetitive use of the Montessori materials is what allows the child to reach abstractions.  Dr. Montessori deemed a material valid and useful if it was able to hold the child’s concentration and if it permitted him to pass from the material to the mental world (from the concrete to the abstract).

It’s important to remember that abstractions take time.  The child must use materials that will allow him to reach abstraction by himself on his own timetable; this is the real meaning of freedom, growth, and self-construction.  When a child reaches abstraction depends on the individual, but if it is to be meaningful it will be based on individual experiences and not on someone else’s knowledge.

Dealing With Conflict the Montessori Way

If you’ve ever wondered how conflicts are resolved in a Montessori classroom, or are looking for a kinder and more effective to help your child deal with disagreements and even fights, then visit www.MariaMontessori.com to read my newest post!  Enjoy!

www.MariaMontessori.com – Check it out!!!

We’ve had some bad news in my family, hence my absence from the blogging world.  However, one positive and exciting thing that’s happened is the launch of www.MariaMontessori.com!!!

Months in the making, this website will be an amazing resource for parents and teachers alike!  I’ll be writing there on a regular basis,  sharing my thoughts on Montessori and my experiences in Elementary training and beyond.  Let me know what you think!!!

Parenting: A Spectator Sport?

You probably knew that several decades ago swaddling babies was common practice.  But did you know that parents strapped babies’ legs to prevent them from growing crooked?  Can you imagine that the ligament under a child’s tongue was split to ensure he would eventually speak?  Babies wore snug caps, not as protection from the sun, but to prevent the ears from protruding.  And did you know that if you were trying to be a good mother 100 years ago, you were expected to pinch and stroke your baby’s nose to ensure it grew long and sharp?

We now know that none of these practices are necessary, and many are harmful.  We know too that if we let Nature run its course, our babies will grow up with straight legs, the ability to speak, and ears and noses that respond to genes and not to forceful coaxing.  Nature, the powerful energy that created a baby inside a mother’s womb for nine months, continues to guide the child’s development once he comes in contact with the outside world.

Parents who are aware of this will gladly echo Maria Montessori’s words in The Advanced Montessori Method: “What a relief to say: ‘Nature will think of that.  I will leave my baby free, and watch him grow in beauty; I will be a quiescent spectator of the miracle.'”

While we’ve made great leaps in the understanding of a child’s physical development, we still feel the need to swaddle, strap, dissect and stroke his intellectual and emotional needs.  We walk around carrying this fictitious burden, and we forget that Nature is asking us – begging us – to trust her ageless wisdom.

If given freedom, children will learn because they are driven to do so, just as they are driven to grow.  I can’t convince you of that, nobody can.  I can only invite you to step back and watch Nature at work.  Remove yourself from your child’s path for thirty minutes and be a “spectator of the miracle”.

Woe to us, when we believe ourselves responsible for matters that do not concern us, and delude ourselves with the idea that we are perfecting things that will perfect themselves quite independently of us!

— Maria Montessori, The Advanced Montessori Method

One-Size-Fits-All Schooling, Executive Functions, and the Beauty of a Montessori Classroom

Although I had already listened online to a similar version of Dr. Hughes first talk, “Enriched Environments, Activity-Based Learning, and Higher Order Cognitive Functions”, I was struck by the societal aspects he brought up.

He began by illustrating the large amount of brain geography that is dedicated to the hands, and contrasting this with how our current system of education is structured.  As Sir Ken Robinson points out in his humorous TED talk, it seems that the end goal of our educational model is to produce university professors.  However, while not every child is destined to become an academic, every child has an ability they are spectacularly good at.  Unfortunately, children whose talent does not align with our society’s current interpretation of intelligence will be denied access to privileged educational opportunities; these are only available to those who can successfully acquire and demonstrate knowledge in one particular way (through rote memorization and test-taking).

Dr. Hughes presented a study that compared the cognitive development of monozygotic (identical) and dizygotic (fraternal) twins.  While the former developed at more or less the same pace, the mental growth spurts of the latter were completely unrelated.  We can therefore conclude that simultaneously educating groups of very different children using a single curriculum and pace DOES NOT WORK.

The most interesting part of the talk had to do with executive functions, which are the skills developed in the pre-frontal cortex that allow us to orchestrate our thoughts and actions in accordance with internal goals.  In other words, these are the brain functions that allow you to plan, make decisions, trouble-shoot, overcome strong habitual responses and resist temptations.  They help you be “good at doing things” – they make you effective in this world.

Executive functions develop through self-guided learning, self-structured play experiences, and self-regulated language (all three of which children get very little of at traditional schools).  Sadly, executive functions cannot grow in an unhealthy physical and emotional environment, where exposure to hands-on and self-guided developmental opportunities is lacking.

Dr. Hughes then showed us a slide of a stunningly beautiful Montessori classroom.  He pointed out the qualities in our classrooms – beauty, peace, respect – and argued that these should be essential components of any environment.  He then told us that the lovely classroom we had seen was from a school that catered to children of low-income, at-risk families.  “What would the world look like if every child was educated in that environment,” Dr. Hughes asked.

Doin’ the Happy Dance!

I opened my e-mail at work this morning and… MAJOR EXCITEMENT!!  I found out that Dr. Steve Hughes – THE Dr. Steve Hughes – will be coming to my town to give a series of talks for parents and teachers at my training center!!  I was terribly pumped, and ran into the teacher’s lounge to tell everyone.  Sadly, I was greeted with blank looks and one “Oh, I think I’ve heard his name somewhere…” comment.

I guess most of my co-workers don’t spend their free time trolling Montessori blogs, hee hee 😀  (Funny, even 16 years after I finished high school, I’m still the nerd who gets excited about things most people could care less about.)

For those of you who need a quick refresher on who the good doctor is, you can visit his website and watch these great videos!  You can bet  your bippy I will provide ample post-seminar coverage on May 30th!  Stay tuned!

Baby Steps

For many years I was in a very bad relationship, from which the only “escape” was television.  I would lay on the couch for hours at a time, sometimes the entire day, watching mind-numbing dribble in hopes of shutting him – and my conscience – out.  When I finally escaped for real, it was to a small apartment without cable.  Not having cable didn’t matter, because all my possessions were in two suitcases and three boxes, and one of the things I left behind was the television.  I quit TV cold turkey, started a blog, read books my ex had forbidden (yeah, that bad...), and threw myself into growing my business.  Suddenly, I had so much free time and felt so productive!  Yet, I felt odd around my friends, like an outcast, because I was no longer up-to-date on the latest shows.

When my fiance and I had our first date four years ago, it turned out that right away we had something in common.  Neither of us owned a TV, and to this day we are among the 1% of Americans who don’t have a boob tube in their home.  Before you peg us as “holier than thou” people who brag about their superiority and heightened intellect because they don’t watch TV, let me tell you that we love The Daily Show and Lost. But because we get the programs on iTunes, we can watch them commercial-free and we know that when the 20-minute Daily Show is over, so is our screen time for the day.

The real reason I don’t ever want to own a TV is because I have no will power.  Seriously.  Here’s an example: About a year ago, with my fiance out of town, I house sat for a couple who had one of those monster TVs with ten million cable channels.  The day was gorgeous, I needed to walk the dogs, and yet there I was, glued to the boob tube, flipping through the channels.  There was nothing good to watch, but my brain kept hoping that the next channel would feature the world’s most entertaining and absorbing show ever.  It didn’t, so I wasted 10 hours of a perfectly good Saturday watching a Supernanny marathon and shaking my fists at her ineptitude and behaviorist nonsense.

What does all this have to do with children (who, after all, are the focus of this blog)?  Well, I have 24 students, and only two of them don’t watch TV.  Want to know why?  Because they don’t have a TV at home.  Trying to keep your kids (or yourself) from watching the TV when it’s sitting in the middle of your living room is like trying to diet when a moist, velvety chocolate cake is sitting on your kitchen counter next to a tall glass of milk.  Could you resist?  I know I couldn’t.  I would even chug the glass of milk, knowing full well I’m allergic to dairy products.  That’s exactly how TV is.  You consume it, and you let your kids consume it, even though you know it is not healthy for you or them.

At least you – as an adult – have a little more control over how much damage you do to your brain by watching television.  Your child has zero control.  Zero.  Her brain is attracted to novel stimuli by default; it’s nature’s way of ensuring that she explores and learns from the world around her.  Sadly, TV editors are all too aware of this phenomenon and take advantage of your child’s unconscious needs by changing shots or scenes every couple of seconds (even those dratted educational videos do that).  Your child isn’t enjoying that show, she’s hypnotized by it.  This has dire repercussions now and in the future. (Fellow teachers, feel free to share your experiences with over-exposed children in the comments).

This brave and honest dad tried to turn of his family’s TV for a week, with mixed results.  I love this man’s honesty and humor, but what I admire most are his courage and determination in the face of something as addictive as TV.

Could you unplug for one week? Why or why not?