New Ideas, Humor and Discontent

The AMS Montessori conference was several weeks ago in LA. I didn't get to attend as many workshops as I would have liked to do, but I went to several and I'm glad that I spent money to buy the presentations of others on CD's.

"The religion of my training school and I'm orthodox!" by Marlene Barron in a session about observation. I loved this. We have to do it the way we learned... Never mind that other training centers are different, and might have a different approach. Never mind that in other parts of the world they might do it differently. Outside of the US, children often learn to carry weight on their heads- maybe we should put the pink cubes in a basket. Why do we always stack them up? We put the geometric solids in a basket. What about observing the child? What about properly preparing the environment to meet the child's needs?

Maybe we should actually place the pink cubes in a basket. Maybe it will actually allow the children to carry WEIGHT to work their developing bodies. Children love the ability to carry "heavy" objects. What if we did put the pink cubes in a basket? The youngest children might have to carry the objects one at a time. The oldest children might work on the strength of their bodies or work with a friend to carry the basket. Would it be an interesting and challenging work to place all the blocks on the floor? Would they still see the control of error built into the material when they accurately built the pink tower?

Bee Pape talked about math GAMES and patterning and sorting of the knobless cylinders. "Always present a material more than one way. That way they learn that they can explore." I know some of the work she looked at. Math researchers- Constance Kamii who used the work of Piaget and developed it. Other ideas and theorists besides Maria Montessori, but everything that we need can exist in a Montessori classroom.

There was another talk by Jonathan Wolff. It was about classroom management. "Let's tell the children that they may not work with a material. Why don't we just call them a sociopath right now while we're at it?" The list was long... many teachers can generate a lot of behaviors that do not help a child develop. Some solutions for off task children included exhibiting excitement and a "may I watch?" behavior. He was hilarious. ( I want to listen to the CD, and come back to this one.)

I was frustrated to hear of the amount of dissatisfaction with AMS or the AMS/AMI division. It seems to be a continuing problem for everyone that AMS doesn't seem to have strong standards but that many AMI schools and teachers have concerns hiring teachers that are not AMI trained. It's possible that we need an individual certification process at some level. The initial training can be high quality but variable. Subsequent training can offer many benefits and individuals can learn many things. However, what I've seen is that AMI schools will shut their doors to teachers from any background that is not AMI. This may be an area that I want to get personally involved in.