A Teacher Who Loved Her Students

Ellen Galinsky, a nationally known researcher of children's learning, concluded her keynote address at the American Montessori Society's national conference in Chicago this year with a quotation from a seventh grader. "On the first day of every school year I can tell what kind of a year it is going to be. I just look into the eyes of my new teacher and I can tell if he or she likes children."

I think many students can sense whether or not their teachers like them but they rarely put it into words. It is more likely that their behavior in that teacher's classroom will reflect what they sense; if they feel liked or loved they will respond to that teacher and have a more successful school year .

This quotation reminded me of a teacher our son, Charlie, had when he was seven years old in a 6-9 class in our Montessori School. Her name was Miss FitzGibbon, a beautiful tall young woman who did many interesting classroom projects. I remember observing one day when each child had on big rubber gloves as they were dissecting a frog. On another day of observation, each child was busy with Montessori materials but together were humming a classical melody. When later I asked her about this, she said "Oh that's from a Brahms symphony. I usually play it every day after lunch, but today I forgot and so the children hummed it.

Every Friday she played a different kind of music and the children danced with each other as partners as she danced with each child in turn. I couldn't help but notice how each child kept watching her hoping he or she would be the next one to dance with Miss FitzGibbon.

This teacher had the gift of making each child feel that he or she was special to her. "She really loves Harry," one parent told me. Then another, "You know she really loves Andrea Lee." One after the other, mothers kind of whispered to me that that their child was especially loved. And, of course, I knew she loved Charlie.

One day Charlie asked if he could invite Miss FitzGibbon for dinner. I agreed and she said she would love to come. Charlie wanted to set the table and be sure her place was next to his. Then he went upstairs. When the door bell rang Charlie came bounding down the front stairs and I couldn't believe what I saw. Charlie, who always had his hair in his eyes and his shirt tail hanging out, had put on his dark blue First Communion suit, white shirt and red tie, that he had worn only once before, and his hair was combed back with what must have been about half a jar of vaseline.

Charlie would do anything for Miss FitzGibbon. It was one of his best years in school!

FOSTERING CREATIVITY

When Sir Ken Robinson gave the final keynote address at the 2011 National Conference of the American Montessori Society  in Chicago, he called upon teachers to look for the hidden talents of their students. Search deeply, he urged, for the natural aptitudes and diversity that can lead each child to a fulfilling life and perhaps to creative discoveries that could make a difference in the world. If you design conditions that encourage the uniqueness of each child, he advised, then these often undiscovered talents can flourish.

A few days after I had heard these inspiring words, our son, Chris, sent me an article in a technology newsletter that confirmed many of Robinson's points. Written by Peter Sims, (author of the forthcoming book, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries) it bemoaned the fact that our educational system emphasizes spoon-feeding knowledge and testing while it neglects nourishing creativity. "Utilizing existing knowledge," he writes, "works perfectly well for many situations, but not when doing something new, creative or original."

An extensive six-year study about the way that creative business executives think, found several "discovery skills" that distinguished the innovators from the non-innovators. These included experimenting, observing, questioning, and networking with people of diverse backgrounds. In a word, "inquisitiveness."

These skills surfaced again in an interview that Barbara Walters did with Larry Page and Sergei Brin, the founders of Google. When asked what was the driving factor behind their success, they did not credit their computer science degrees, but pointed to their early Montessori education. "We both went to Montessori school," Page said, "and I think it was part of that training of being self-motivated, questioning what's going on in the world, doing things a little differently."

Such testimonies raise the critical question of the purpose of education. Is it simply to convey knowledge, as the current system is weighted, or is it also to make room for nurturing children's hidden talents and fostering their ability for self- learning by encouraging them to observe carefully, to try new things, and to ask "What if?" and "Why not?"

What do you think?

The Importance of Books in the Home

Recently I was excited to read new research showing that the number of books in a child's home is a strong influence on how far he or she goes in their educational pursuits.  "Scholarly Culture and Educational Success in 27 Nations", a study by four researchers in the United States and Australia, shows that the influence of home libraries is found nearly everywhere in the world and it has more power than the researchers expected.  The research team claims definitively that children who have 500 or more books in their home get, on average, 3.2 more years of schooling than children in bookless homes.  This influence on children was found to be universal despite differences in gender, culture, economic status or the level of their parents' education.

The study shows that even the children of poor or illiterate parents in China, on average attained the same academic level as children of college graduates if they had many opportunities to read in their growing years.

As a long time interpreter of Maria Montessori's work, I was pleased to read about this newly documented importance of children's surroundings.  It confirms, in yet another way, Montessori's strong emphasis on the quality of the environment for children's development.  Books are only one aspect of a child's environment, but they are extremely important and I urge parents to pay attention to this new evidence.

Make books a priority in your home environment.  Buy them; read them yourself as a model for your children; trade them with other families; give them as gifts; read to your children at least once a day and take your children to the library frequently to select books that appeal to them.  If your budget is tight, go to the used book sales that many libraries use as fundraisers.  And don't relegate all books to one room in your home.  Have books available in as many rooms as possible.

I know that there is a lot of competition for both space and activities in today's homes.  TV's, computers, cell phones and electronic games may all claim priority over books.  But how many years do they add to a child's formal schooling?  This new study shows that a family in which each member has several shelves of favorite books has a better than average chance for each child to attain a higher education!