The Montessori School

I'm at a Montessori school last week and this week to observe and occasionally help out. It's been a fascinating experience! The school has about 70 students aged 7 to 15, divided into 3 classes. (Montessori classes usually have a range of at least 3 years per class.) I've learned many of the students' names and earned the privilege of playing volleyball with some while others invite me to sit with them at snack. The teachers too are warm and welcoming, and have mostly left me free to roam around and observe wherever I want.

My main role is that of an onlooker, but it's allowed me to get a thorough impression of the school. Each class starts the day with a morning circle, where students explain their plans for the morning. (Older students even have to write down what they expect to accomplish each day.) A key feature of the Montessori method is that instead of large-group instruction, students more often learn through individual or small-group work that tends to be more hands-on. A few examples: to learn to write, the youngest kids trace one letter at a time, first in sand, then on paper, going over the same giant letter in ten or so colors of crayon. Math uses lots of color-coding and involves a cool block puzzle that illustrates the Pythagorean theorum, as well as beads that work like an abacus. The oldest students formed their own political parties and are in the process of holding elections as a way to explore Austria's government. The only subjects that routinely involve formal group instruction are choir (optional) and English (required after age 12, but opted for by many or most younger students).

Even in assignments that involve more traditional practice problems or writing assignments, students have flexibility. During the free work periods that make up the bulk of each day, they can decide to work on only writing, or start with math and later move to science. Certain tasks (especially in math) have prerequisites that they must finish first. Over time, students put in roughly equal work on each subject, but they might focus more on one or two during a given week or even month. In others, they can design their own project: if they find themselves intrigued by rock formations or the ancient Egyptians or Chinese poetry, they are free to propose a way of studying it alone or with a friend. The result is that students enjoy school much more: not only being in the building, but also actually learning and working. It also makes them much more assertive than your typical Austrian student: they readily voice resistance to assignments they don't like and try to barter for what they want. But from what I've seen, the teachers are well-respected and know when to insist on a certain method, and the students don't generally try to evade work.

The few cases where I've actively helped or participated have been really neat. On Friday, I accompanied a group of younger kids to a local church, where they were preparing for First Communion. Since Austria is heavily Catholic but not especially religious, First Communion is typically the responsibility of the schools. Georg, the teacher who led the trip, taught me as much as any of the 7-year-olds about the physical layout of Catholic churches! Later that day, I helped Nina, a special education student, check her work on some math problems. It’s a good thing she was using such a good method, because my ability to explain math errors in German is pretty limited! The aforementioned color-coding simplified my explanations and facilitated her understanding. Today, I presented my “life story” to some of the teens in English, and we discussed the elements that surprised them or sounded familiar to them. They were, of course, shocked by college tuition rates. (Austrian public universities cost about $1000 per year.) Tonight, I’ve spent hours trying to prepare for tomorrow, when I’ll explain the US voting system…in German…to the teenagers. Oy. By far my favorite moment so far has been in the 7-year-olds' English class, when they got a chance to ask me to translate a word or two for them. Guess what word they wanted? "Cambrian." One of Montessori's features is a huge chain that teaches younger kids about pre-historic periods and gives them a sense of how comparatively brief human history is. They had apparently used this chain earlier in the week. That's Montessori for you in a nutshell...fostering curiosity in all kinds of topics!