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Excerpt from an Interview with Annie Carlson of the Montessori Academy of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago. featured in Dad's Magazine premiere issue.
DM: Are children of all different ages put together?
AC: Yes, we mix the ages at every developmental level. So we have three to six-year-olds together, then six to nine-year olds. I know what a three year old could be doing in general, but I don't want to limit it to only what a three-year-old can do. So the three's, four's, five's, and six-year-olds are in the same classroom. If a three-year-old sees a six-year-old reading and wants to start reading, that's fine with me, I'll start sandpaper letters and show them what the sounds of the letters are. It's interesting we teach the sounds of the letters, not the names. Most of the children learn the names, but when they have three sounds they can begin to put some together. We don't restrict that to one age. It's in a classroom set up so that the materials are inviting to the child, and often it's like a family. The younger child sees the older one riding a bike, and then they want to ride the bike, or they see an older one tying their shoe, and they want to do it. So it's the same in the mixed age classroom; the younger children see what the older children are doing and can be motivated that way.
DM: If you had to find a preschool for your child, what would you do?
AC: We encourage parents to observe at our school but to also observe at other schools, so that they have some sort of comparison to make. The most important thing is, if you sit down in the environment and look around, are the children happy? Are the children relaxed? For me as a Montessorian, are the children able to be self-directed? Is everything teacher directed? Now it's time to color, now it's time do math, for example. I'm looking for that independence that I might find in a Montessori school. I want to see that reflected in the environment. I want to know, could I spend three hours in this environment and be interested? If I look around and I don't see anything I'm interested in, my children won't be either. If I'm not comfortable, they won't be. There have to be things that are challenging; also, it's important to see that it's not a perfect day. You're lucky if you see something go wrong, and the children or the teacher have to handle it. If you go into a school and everything is just ducky, it's hard to know what's going to happen if there is a situation.
DM: Tell me about Montessori.
AC: Maria Montessori was an educator at the turn of the century; she was actually the first female physician. She was asked by the Minister of Housing to come and direct some children in tenement housing, because he didn't want the children whose parents were working to ruin the building. So Montessori came in with new ideas about education. She observed the children, and, through her observations, developed a philosophy of education. She found that if the environment was beautiful, the children wanted to take care of it. She found that if the children had choices, they were more likely to take something and finish it. Do the whole work cycle and see it through to the end. She found that children were more likely to focus when they had their own choices. That they increased their attention span. She was the first to have scaled down furniture. It looked like adult furniture, but it was scaled down so that the children could move gracefully. They weren't crawling up on great big furniture. They learned to move with the furniture.
So what is Montessori? It's a system of education that centers on the child with a tremendous amount of respect for the individuality of each child. The multi-age groups kind of speak to that. The teachers are trained in an overview of child development. So we have an idea of what a child of one, two, three, four or five is doing, and then we set up an environment that is beautiful, that the children can use independently. We give a presentation, and then we ask the children to choose.
DM: Give me an example of a typical day at Montessori.
AC: The children are given a presentation anytime they want to use a material. Then they can use that material anytime they want. There's many different ways to use a material; there are many different depths to use materials. Lots of variations. The teacher is trained in observation, so she's able to stand back and see what this child is doing and devise in her mind where that child needs to go next. It's a very integrated curriculum. For example, if a child is skipping, and coordinate left and right, chances are they're getting ready to read. Montessori calls teachers Directresses, because she wanted to make the distinction between a teacher, who stands up in front of the room and teaches you how to do something, and a Directress, who shows you how to use a material, and allows you to explore and experiment.
DM: How does the day flow?
AC: We meet the children at the gate, and they come into their classroom and take care of their coats or shoes, and then they are free to choose their work. The Directress is there to greet them, to say good morning, shake their hand and get them started on their day. With the multiage group, many of the class have already been there for years and are familiar with the ground rules and which materials they have been presented. A lot of times, an older child will show a younger child how to do something, and there's no better way to get something straight in your mind than if you have to teach it to someone else. Montessori is also credited with "peer teaching". Maria Montessori didn't use that term, but she knew that the older children could help the younger children, and we hear that term now a lot in education.
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