Just watching

Spent the morning watching children, and letting them manage themselves.  I had one child watch another child complete an entire map with labels without any assistance.  The one that was observing was silent the entire time.  I also observed that she did absolutely no independent work.  She has trouble picking her work.  Another child wanted only to pick the work that someone else was doing.  Yet a third didn't like it when she had to sit alone until she was able to pick a job that she wouldn't be silly about.

I'm having morning circle less and less often.  I like the results in the morning, but the frustrating part is that I like presenting lessons to the children as a group.  As a consequence, I'm thinking about how to redesign my classroom so that more and more materials are on the shelves without ever needing a formal lesson.  Certain areas just need to have a built in consistent structure so that the lessons can change subtly, but still remain in place and child directed.

Yesterday, a child was determined to be silly by eating the pieces of a job.  On purpose, and with the intent to make other children laugh.  It became an opportunity for me to create a job that will allow the children to wash their own job when they put it in their mouth.  She got to wash all 55 pieces of that math job during outside time.  Then in the afternoon, she got to complete the job.  (Perfectly capable of it.)

I bought bamboo drawer dividers.  Best move ever for the classroom.  There are so many cases where they work better than either baskets or trays.

Rambling today.  I need to work on my writing style and organizing my thoughts more.  Yet, at the moment I don't care.  I write more for myself than anyone.

Quiet Days

A couple of children have left.  They are moving on to kindergarten.  Others will soon.  It's the way of the summer though.  The children start to "check out" and only want to talk.  Whoever said that they are intrinsically interested in work doesn't watch those ready to be with the older kids and "not there yet."  They have turned social at all costs.  As a result, classroom management is both easier and harder.  You know what these kids can do, and you know what lessons you can throw at them!  It is truly amazing how one single child can dramatically impact the playground and the classroom.  This year, it was one in each classroom.  The teachers can talk to each other outside right now instead of constantly trying to eyeball what chaos one child will be creating.

One of my teachers is out on maternity leave.  I miss her deeply, but at least this wasn't a surprise.

Going to remodel the kitchen in a few months.  Lot of money, time, construction and chaos for a dishwasher.  OK Then.

Wow.  Restart.  I felt the need to write today, and how it actually clicked in so many ways to write about teaching, kids, worries about them and general thoughts.  So much has happened.

Short list:

• Started a Montessori school.  Super successful.  Super happy, and I absolutely love my faculty.  One hell of a lot of work that I don't regret, except sometimes a bit on the weekends but I'm working on managing that.
• Blog template got screwed up/ hacked.  Eventually, I'll fix that.  I had to reset it to a default.
• I started the school.  Part of my dreams.  It works.  I get tired.  I'm in high demand.
• Hit with a cyber- attack.  Super fun.  MRA's decided that I hated men and went after the school.
• My husband is now the CEO of his own startup which is flying along at super speed and doing very well.  A year and a half ago he was fired from a company with the potential of what 8 million when the stock vested after 4 years?  I think so.  Better all around.
• My own kids.  Never mind them.  17 and 20.

OK.  I'm back to thinking about kids.  I have always wanted to write, and periodically I do.  Somehow, somewhere.  I think that I'll write a novel when I want to retire.  Right now, and right here, writing about Montessori and education with bits of personal in it.  I like random.  I like random everywhere - with kids, in life, and in writing.

I've been thinking about a child.  Let's call her Ellie.  She's going to do her kindergarten year at my school, and I'm glad.  I like her parents.  Good people.  She's got some strange learning styles.  I started to wonder if she has language processing issues / disorder.  Have you ever looked that up?  Weird damn nonsense and generally quite useless.  Strange that it is completely under "auditory processing disorders."  Have you ever wondered why adults don't wonder around admitting that they have "x'?

Anyway, after two different conversations I realized a key insight.  Her actual skills are phenomenally weak for a 5 year old, but they are extremely difficult to detect and evaluate because she is adept at copying and she is functionally not cognitively flexible.  It is only when you put her in a situation where she can't copy someone and "pretend or memorize" that you can literally see how much she's struggling.

I felt like a puzzle formed before my eyes.  Now I need to work on my teaching strategies.

I've accomplished a school!

I'm so absolutely delighted. My school is growing and full as of today. It doesn't give me much time to write. It doesn't give me much time for much of anything and the challenges are quite satisfying. I love where it's gone! I want to write more about the joys of the children right now. It tiny bits.

There is the child that came into the school unable to hold a pencil that colored a world map to great satisfaction and beauty recently.

The ones that are starting to read.

The child that was so fearful of puzzles that he would work with three pieces on the shelf until he walked away.

The one that said, "There is no cute allowed in my house.  'Cute isn't awesome.  Superheroes are Awesome.'"

Neuroscience and Education

I just learned about a free, online course that is about Neuroscience, Education and apparently features a Montessori classroom.  The course is available at http://www.learner.org/courses/neuroscience/ and looks like Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics was involved in the development.

Julia Volkman wrote about in the Public School Montessorian.

Montessori Apps

Another advertisement for a "Montessori App" crossed my email this week.  This time it was complete with a demo video.  The app was apparently developed in conjunction with a well known Montessori school somewhere.

I wanted to know more about yet another app, so I watched it.  It reminded me a lot of the look of many computer games for preschoolers.  Add the letter to sound out the word, etc and the voice over will help ou hear it.  It "looks" like the Montessori materials are being used- except nobody is writing their own words or making mistakes.

There are the continent globes.  They have some nice pictures attached.

Then came the "pink tower."  First you place the blocks in size order on the "rug." Then you get to build a tower.  Really?  We can build a pink tower now with one finger, but the system won't allow for mistakes.

This is just inevitable.  Adults that use technology think that it has to be developed right for the kids.  It has the Montessori name and school sponsorship.  I'm trying to figure out how to really make the argument that it is just not the same.

Khan Academy

Khan academy
After a couple of interesting discussions recently, I really wanted to learn more about the Khan academy.  After about an hour and a half, my conclusion is that I'm disappointed.

This is not innovative education.  This is a massive collection of video based lectures.

Education background matters, but funding apparently does as well.  Please spend some time evaluating for yourself.

Most of the videos are high school (Algebra, biology, chemistry, calculus), college (differential equations) or general knowledge (computer science, astrology, credit crisis).  There are large sections of Sal Khan working through test problems.  Some of the sections are developmental math.

Developmental math sections
Basic lectures.  No visuals, no manipulatives.  I can see value in some of these for adults that understood the concept in an initial language and are trying to build English skills.  The lecture on _order of operations_ consisted of working a problem with the requirement that _order of operations_ is "Do this first."  No understanding of why.  Place value was just the same.  Repetition of words, no real understanding if the child did not understand.

CA Standards algebra 1  (Test problems) 
Poorly labeled section titles.  Blurry cut and paste problems.  I found that the demonstration of one problem assumed knowledge in the answer.  _i.e.  "Multiply out using the distributive property."  Then evaluated the multiple choice answers for the "distributive property."  The lecturer was also audibly distracted by a firetruck going by.

Chemistry  (Appropriate for 1st year HS or college.) 
Introduction to Atom- first lecture listed under chemistry.

Khan (presumably) starts with a philosophical discussion of cutting an object into every smaller objects until you get to the "uncuttable."  When he states that we now know an atom has parts - proton, neutrons, electrons he uses the term "orbit."  He also explicitedly states that electrons aren't in an orbit and this view is incorrect or mentally incorrect (despite a visual.)  It's not for several more minutes that he explains that an electron can really be in an orbital cloud.  During this video he makes at least two references to really understanding atoms when you get to the segments on quantum physics.

There were several other things that bothered me about this lecture.  "Protons are purple.  It's a nice neutral color."  The use of the term "He" to represent "Helium" before any discussion of what an element was.  Jumping right into the periodic table in the same lecture.  At 12 minutes out of 21, he discussed the atomic weight and mass of carbon and called it a neutral atom.  (First lecture remember!)

History (Appropriate for 1st year HS or college.) 
1620-1750 1st lecture.
I can sum this easily. There was this successful settlement, then there was this one, then not much happened for about this entire period of 130 years except the colonies formed and the British were here and the French were here.  Then the British and the French got into a war.