A teaching philosophy focused on applying my Montessori training to teaching intermediate elementary grades in Montessori schools and beyond.
1. Building a classroom community begins with a call to action.
At the beginning of each year, I will call students to join me in a shared understanding and ethos of how we will learn from and lead each other in our classroom and school community:
We are all teachers
We are all learners
We are all leaders
We are all followers
Let us go forth and explore the world together!
2. My central goal as an educator:
“An education capable of saving humanity is no small undertaking; it involves the spiritual development of man, the enhancement of his value as an individual, and the preparation of young people to understand the times in which they live.”
Maria Montessori – Education and Peace
In interpreting Montessori’s philosophy and how it impacts my own practice in public education in British Columbia, I understand my central goal as a teacher to be:
I will engage each student in the process of becoming more sophisticated in their understanding of both themselves and the world.
3. I will make the creation of connections and the spirit of exploration a central part of my teaching.
Here is an essential principal of education: to teach details is to bring confusion; to establish the relationship between things is to bring knowledge.
Maria Montessori – From Childhood to Adolescence
Through the new curriculum in British Columbia, we are in the process of being freed as professional educators to teach the relationships between things and the skills to understand and evaluate those relationships. As part of showing students how to become more sophisticated in their concept of themselves and the world, I will show the relationships between the subjects.
4. Helping students explore the world involves reaching outside of my classroom.
An exceptional teacher realizes that they are not the only vector to education. I will use my networks from my previous career and my engagement with my community to bring resources into my classroom both physically and electronically. I will infect students with my own enthusiasm for science, technology, social studies, languages, literature, cultures, the outdoors, music, drama, and all the other beautifully human endeavours we will explore together. I will exhort them to infect me and their classmates with their own passions, talents and ideas.
5. Helping students to come to a sophisticated view of the world means engaging fearlessly with complexity.
The world is complex and we are complex beings. I will actively give students permission to live that complexity and learn to be fearless in their navigation of it. I will not be afraid to show them challenging ideas, engage in difficult discussions, and use complex language. I will show them how to use their curiosity to navigate the world and show them the joy of moving from wherever they are to the next level of understanding.
If I don’t know a new technology, I will find a resource that lets my class community learn it together.
If I don’t succeed in a lesson, I will engage my students in making it better and come to a community understanding of why it didn’t work. Through this, they will see me living the ideals of lifelong learning and being willing to learn from failure.
If my students don’t understand a concept, I will take it as an opportunity to solve the puzzle of explaining it in a new way.
In sum, I will engage them in the uniquely human joy of solving life’s puzzles.
6. I will always strive to manage my class not through censure or fear, but through developing a shared desire to build a learning community and by providing a well-prepared environment.
The prize and the punishment are incentives towards unnatural and forced effort, and therefore we certainly cannot speak of the natural development of the child in connection with them.
Maria Montessori – The Montessori Method
The most challenging feat of a teacher is not so much the aptly prepared lesson, the brilliant scope and sequence or the well-delivered explanation, it is the creation of a successful, driven learning community. I will encounter students with myriad challenges, talents, interests, and needs. I will strive to guide them towards their own personal ethic of why they contribute to their classroom community rather than inhibit it. I will help them understand that it is necessary not simply to be accountable and kind, but to believe in the power of those qualities.
I will do my utmost to prepare a compelling environment for learning where contributing to the classroom community is more compelling than detracting from it.
I will accept that I will need to repeatedly learn from failure on the long journey towards making this a successful and central pillar of my teaching practice and show my students how to learn from their own failures in meeting our shared ideals.