in this interview Tim Sullivan president of the Montessori Foundation and chair
of the International Montessori Council will share what it is about the monetary
approach that nurtures creativity and inventiveness that we can all learn from
hi I'm Kelly Thomas welcome to and genius baby every week on interview
leading expert to help you help your child reach their full potential so that
your child can become all that they are born to danger HM I am so happy to have
you here I am a big fan of on a story both of my kids go to a ami Montessori
School here in California and I'm also a big fan of your book which I use with my
children has some great activities and I'm hoping you can tell us what exactly
is Montessori well Montessori means many things to many people it's best known as
a system of education but it's it's really a movement and a philosophy of
life its mission is to change society to create a more peaceful world and a world
that's oriented the partnership but in terms of Education it is a strategy that
says let's look at what we know about children from a scientific perspective
let's attempt to consciously do what can be shown to work best and what we know
about children is that children are different they learn in different ways
you have different personalities they grow in different ways and the idea of
teaching one thing to an entire class to us is really rather neurological so
Montessori is first designed for differences it's designed to support
each child as an individual it's designed to be incredibly respectful and
child honouring and it's designed to follow the child as they develop from
birth ideally all the way through high school and beyond you hear about all the
kind of famous people who had Montessori backgrounds like the Google founders and
famous musicians and things so I think there's a lot of schools that call
themselves Montessori there's AMS Montessori there's and
I'm on a story what are the difference of them cat are they all considered true
Montessori Montessori is a movement and it's not copyrighted and there is no
central authority it's not a franchise oh it's a it's something that can be
studied and defined by research we know it authentic or fully implemented
Montessori is but individual schools can't help but be themselves they're
there their programs there their approach to life is created by the
nature of the owners the nature of the teachers they hire the culture of the
parent body the culture they live within so it's gonna have somewhat different
phases to think that it is simply am S or am I is a serious mistake because
while there are two large organizations the American Montessori study AMS Nami
Association Montessori Internationale the reality is there's own those are
only two of hundreds of monastery societies in this country there's give
or take around 13 monastery societies I happen to be the chairman of the third
largest the International Monetary Council I started an AMS I've worked
with hundreds and hundreds of ami schools what I can say to you is the
reality is you have to look at the individual school and you have to ask
does this school fit my understanding what Montessori should be and is it a
good match for me is it a good match for my child but I can't really get too
caught up with brand loyalty because one Montessori School will be somewhat
different from another but truthfully we all have more in common than we have
differences the differences are usually pretty minor what are some the
difference I think the major difference is you're gonna find in one school
versus another is not based on the brand but rather on how faithfully this
particular teacher this particular school is implementing Montessori this
this is what a parent should be looking at when they're thinking about a
Montessori School for their children they should be asking do I find the
following things the first is is every class led by a fully qualified
Montessori educator now this is a usually a graduate level of course of
study that will typically take between one and three years there are different
grants but as long as they're all Mac T accredited which would include am I am
as IMC the group that I'm connected to the International monastery council
where any of the other as I mentioned they're 13 organization in the United
States as long as they're accredited by the US Department of Education
accrediting board which is by the way called Mac T monastery Accreditation
Council for teacher education that's the first definition do you have a fully
trained Montessori teacher and by the way in our world more is better because
the larger the class the best teacher of a child is another child it's the
community of children that make it work so the more children of the class within
reason 100 in a room is not a good idea but usually between 20 and 30 is the
typical range and a few more is not the end of the world unless state law
doesn't allow it but in these classes they are basically self-regulating
they're making choices and they're going through the day with a very quiet home
it should almost feel like uncanny silence but it shouldn't be the silence
of a teacher running around going it should be coming from within the
children Montessori teaches kids to learn how to think and develop their
self internal intrinsic motivation I like to think of monasteries being based
on four pillars those pillars are first off a voluntary passion for excellence
the desire to do things not just to win not just to be the
best in the class but simply because we really care about our work it's not just
something we do to get a paycheck we do it because it defines who we are so the
passion for excellence that Tom Peters wrote about years ago is very much
connected to the entrepreneurial spirit of Montessori whether in a young child
or in a monastery adult grown-up the second is the idea of internalizing a
set of universal values not just hearing them in Chapel not just having them
parroting them back but literally learning to live in such a way that you
follow the rules because it's the right thing to do not what's in it for you if
you obey and what could happen to you negatively if you disobey because that
just invites a child they ask you am I willing to pay the price or do I think
I'm going to get caught when we believe that children need to learn from home
from school and from society kindness and compassion honesty and integrity the
idea of reaching out and doing what you can for your fellow human being and the
idea of being as positive and as happy in your life as you possibly can and
understanding that happiness is not something that you strive to achieve
it's a it's an attitude it's a way of living and it's not something that can
be taken away from you because you lose possessions it's almost a philosophy of
life and so there are universal values non-violence integrity empathy
compassion peacefulness that we teach in all good Montessori schools the third
pillar I would suggest is the idea that we want our children to be global
citizens and to have a real sense of global understanding every Montessori
School is an international school we think they need to know their family
story their country of origin story the the nature or story of a community and
what's there living at this time in place they need to be really
rooted in the understanding that they don't live alone they're connected to
all of humanity and all of life and they have to think globally not just about
the moment about this quarters bottom line but about the good of the long-haul
about the generations unborn and the fourth is the idea of service service to
others and self service taking care of yourself so you might think of
everything in this as balance but it tends to produce entrepreneurs not the
typical Drudge or the child who burns out it by the third year of high school
or third year of college usually these are kids that just keep going and never
want to retire because they're having too much fun doing what they're doing as
Montessori work for all families and all types of kids eat well it's work I think
a better way of understanding it Kelly is it simply isn't gonna work because
ultimately the parent is the captain of a child's faith so she's gonna decide
what she or he feels is best for the child the average parent frankly doesn't
want Montessori and if they think they want it it's probably because they don't
really understand what it is which is okay but they'll usually stay for a few
years and then move on to a real school and put them in something totally
different what they want as type a Type A personalities what they want is
something that's going to make their child do more faster as if it were a
race I think that's really a very misguided approach it leads to a great
deal of the anxiety and the depression and the mental illness we're seeing in
the world around us and Montessori is not a conversion religion what we try to
do is find families who are going to love us for what we are and part of our
message is hopefully you've been hearing it is what we're going to do is create
conditions in which your child will develop in his or her own
best pace in our own best way and what we're really going to focus on is
character and kindness and compassion and an openness to learning a sense of
wonder so you're saying that you it's best to start wouldn't Aldous 3 what
about people who keep their their children home until later I mean are
they missing any key things that happen in the earlier years there's a monastery
mom you know the answer to that the simple reality is the earlier a child
enters longer they stay the deeper the impact of Montessori is likely to be
you'd want to get a child as young as possible I'd say it's close to birth as
we possibly can not because we're going to teach them to read and write and do
four digit arithmetic earlier that might happen but that's a byproduct they still
have the ability to become the very best people will ever become and it's very
very easy to create those kinds of communities with children or toddlers or
very very young really like the only age three sometimes age four if you just
want to think of it from a curriculum perspective and that's in my opinion a
very small part of it there is so much to learn in a three four and
five-year-old class that the child entering a year or two late is so far
behind it's usually night and day difference however it doesn't mean that
the child couldn't enter a monastery school if the school is willing to
accept the child where she is and so you start where the child is at and you keep
building from there but there are there are things and I would call it in in
summary learning how to learn there are things that you can learn at age three
that change you for the rest of your life the same thing is true of a child
who starts even younger at age two it isn't about core knowledge it's not
about reading and writing and arithmetic it's it's what is now being called the
executive function skills since I hand coordination its vocabulary
and more than anything else it's a sense of self children are learning all the
time the question is whether the message is there they're receiving the things
they're learning are destructive to their long-term ability to learn whether
it's sowing seeds of self-doubt worry about whether you're smart enough fast
enough wealthy enough you know whatever most humans are filled with self doubt
about whether or not it's okay to make mistakes but humans make mistakes all
the time it doesn't mean that we should encourage kids to spell things wrong or
get mathematics problems incorrectly but we have to teach children to not be
afraid to try to teach them that they can do it
I'm wondering if you could talk a little about what are the misconceptions that
people have at Montessori one of the most basic is that Montessori is a brand
name like chick-fil-a and they expect every monastery school to be the same
and so at the Montessori foundation we get calls and emails every day by the
hundreds asking how do I know whether I found a real Montessori School and
people ask me should I go am s or am i n't you've already heard my answer there
to me that's silly to think in terms of that grant because within those two
organizations you take five schools and they're not going to be the same they're
different instead let's ask what is monasteries supposed to be and do you
find it in the school you're considering for your child and and frankly is it
good enough because no school is perfect as a parent you really have to be an
unusual person to choose bonus Ori for your children because there is no
guarantee I mean we can talk all we want about the Google guides and the founder
of Amazon and all the other famous Nobel laureates and so for that went to
Montessori when you're sitting there looking at your child as your fellow
parent is saying your child Kelly your child's
reading but my child's not and so something's wrong with my child so I
need she's clearly not right for Montessori I need to send her elsewhere
lots of people think like that and there's nothing we can do to change them
so all we can do is ask what is it that we're looking for what we're looking for
a Montessori School and parents ought to be asking themselves this question is
Montessori right for me the other thing with this by the way is competition a
lot of people think Montessori as opposed to competition we're not we
simply say competition is rather silly when you're trying to motivate children
to learn they're going to compete with each other naturally they don't need
outside adult interference instead let it happen naturally let them learn about
the real consequences of the real world step by step and at age three four and
five this is silly it's not the way it works or shouldn't work any school
that's playing high-stakes testing with a three four and five-year-olds really
like to be thinking about what is it doing what is the most important thing
in the first plane of development like zero to three what what should a child
be exposed to or doing and I think this book with had some amazing and stuff for
the earlier sigh I referenced myself but if you could just talk about a couple of
things that are really important well in the first three years a child is going
from infancy through the toddler years and most of us call the toddler years
the terrible twos I would suggest you that they don't need to be terrible at
all they could be the terrific tools what children are doing at that age is
they're beginning to become independent the beginning control of their bodies
are beginning to get control of their emotions they're beginning to learn how
to operate in society a lot of it has to do with neurological development of the
brain learning how to make the body work and so much of what we do from birth to
three is we're teaching language we're helping kids to communicate
their thoughts we're teaching them to be part of a group we're teaching them how
to make their hands work what you might call fine motor movement we're teaching
them how to move about the environment and not bump into things and drop things
and we are also teaching them a work cycle how to select something from the
shelf work with it typically on a table or on a rug which many of us use small
rugs to define a work area and then to put it back and we're going to teach
them how to do things for themselves because the goals of course are to be
able to operate throughout the classroom on your own to prepare your sleeping mat
to get food when you're hungry so you'll often see things that you could buy at
pier 1 or stores like that little cheese plates that will break they're not made
of plastic little Forks that have their size little knives that are their size
little glasses that are fit in the hand of a toddler and they will prepare their
own food when they're ready they'll often assemble these very lightweight
tables all our classroom furniture is within the ability of the age range in
the class to move around so whole idea is the dignity of the child I know that
everything you want everything to be real life and so what's the harm of
saying someone who wants to go to Disneyland or have frozen alright wait
how tell us about the philosophy on you know those princesses and things like
that well there are several issues I mean one of the most basic ones is
children when they're little don't need any help with fantasy fantasy they got
down pat children come into the world just filled with the natural tendency to
make-believe so they don't need to see Walt Disney for that it'll happen all
over the world naturally what they need help with is learning about reality so
it's not that Janice E is bad or that we would tell a parent don't
ever do that what we would say is help them with things that are real because
one of them is meant to distract and entertain but they're not connected to
reality and so what we're trying to do is to teach people empathy and
understanding for reality instead of having everything be cartoonish that's
number one the second thing and that's you with independence and just a reality
check just to know the difference between some cartoon show that shows
people flying and what really happens if you jump out of a tree right the second
is a lot of this stuff that we do is really big business it's designed to
turn people into consumers and the princesses and so forth you know you we
can go back we look very we got a really interesting conversation about the
stories of princesses two three hundred years ago and how the middle class and
the working class and the true peasants felt about princesses and wards but what
we've done with that today is we turn that into a fantasy land to sell
products and cereal and everything else is it horrible no I mean my
grandchildren enjoy Disneyland I'm up you're around distant land pass holder I
just think that we need to remember the kids don't need a lot of help with the
fantasy part they got that where can people go for more information about
Montessori and general if they win don't read it more about to learn more about
the philosophy well I mean anyone could Google Montessori and they'll come up
with probably three hundred thousand websites certainly one source because we
really focus on parents and we're not particularly oriented to trying to sell
parents on things we actually run an international association of Montessori
parents called the Montessori Family Alliance if you know someone who'd be a
great fit for the show come on over to Ongina fay be calm and share your tips
and story ideas you are your baby's first and best
teacher
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