The First Day of School in Russia

As six-year-olds are getting their little back packs, pencils, and lunch boxes ready for their first day of school here in the United States, I am reminded of the opening day of school for first graders that I witnessed in Russia in 1990.

We were a group of twenty adults and teenagers from Altoona, PA in an exchange program with twenty adults and teenagers from Rostov on Don in the Soviet Union. In 1989 the Russians had come to Altoona, stayed in our homes and visited our businesses and schools.  As the highlight of their visit they had presented a beautiful musical program in our local high school in which over 1400 people had heard their teenage chorus sing a program of Russian folk songs that concluded with “America the Beautiful” and “Let There be Peace on Earth” in perfect English. Tears flowed in the audience.  The Cold War was still on, these were the Russians whom Americans had feared for years, and yet that night everyone in the auditorium loved them as friends.

The next year when we visited Moscow and Rostov on Don they arranged for us to stay in hotels, because their tiny apartments, already housing three generations, could not accommodate overnight guests.  But they had saved their rationing stamps for months in order to provide us with wonderful meals in their homes.  We taught them square dancing that was a great icebreaker, and with the help of various translators we resumed the friendships we had formed in Altoona.

 I will never forget the first day of school that we witnessed in Rostov.  It was held in an outdoor arena that was filled with parents, teachers and friends of the little six-year-old children. Each little girl and boy was dressed in what had to be a beautiful new outfit, and each child carried an elegant bouquet of flowers.  Their faces reflected joy and excitement as they walked into the arena and the crowd cheered  them as they began one of their most important journeys in life – their education. To me it seemed so fitting to celebrate this inaugural day as even more significant than their eventual graduation.

After some talks in Russian that we could not understand, the children were entertained by a very talented mime.  This young man pretended he was eating an ice cream cone.  He loved the taste; it dripped on his suit; he guarded it from others who wanted it; it fell on the floor and so on.  The new first graders squealed with delight.  This day was a delight for all of them, a day they would long remember as the beginning of their formal education.

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?