Our Young Cultural Ambassadors:
By Kateri Carver-Akers and
Kristine Markatos-Soriano
“Todos somos amigos,” says a 5-year-old
Indian American girl. She produces
this phrase with ease and warmth in
her voice. As her Montessori guide has
modeled for her, this girl models for
two 3-year-old Caucasian boys who
are resolving a conflict. We are all
friends. Although the children use and
hear this phrase in a language that is
not their native tongue, they feel its
importance in cultivating community.
They are students at The Language
Center Montessori School in Chapel Hill,
NC, and they are learning in a language-
immersion Montessori environment.
The school offers a choice to parents—
Spanish immersion or French immer-
sion—but Montessori comes with both.
42
At the school, our motivation for
promoting bilingualism is to improve
communication across cultural bound-
aries, and to promote peace, respect,
and an appreciation of diversity.
Though bilingualism may increase
cognitive development, this is not our
driving force. We want to foster a gen-
eration of “cultural ambassadors” who
can build bridges across cultures.
Our children are entering a diverse
and challenging modern world. One
key issue—immigration—presents a
realistic picture of what our students
face. In our town, Chapel Hill, the
Latino population increased about
400% from 1990 to 2000 (http://www.
duke.edu/latinovoices/index.html).
Immigration, an international concern,
is linked to education, race, poverty,
ethnicity, oppression, women’s issues,
MONTESSORI LIFE ISSUE 2, 2007
health care, religion, and other issues.
In classrooms, teachers struggle with
their planning books to develop meth-
ods that best reach our new immigrant
neighbors. As their numbers increase,
so does the need for cultural awareness
and sensitivity for all communities.
As an amazing world citizen her-
self, Maria Montessori inspired hope
in generations of people that our earth
could be a more peaceful home. If she
could see the modern world that our
children are entering now, she proba-
bly would stress this hope even more
fervently. How can we equip our chil-
dren for this modern world? What
must we do to “follow the child”?
Among other things, we must support
the child’s pure desire to make friend-
ships across cultural boundaries, we
must learn from the absence of racial
prejudices and cultural stereotypes in
her young heart, and we must foster
her natural ability to learn languages
at an early age. Following this modern
Montessori child will help create a
new generation of peacemakers who
value tolerance, diversity, and hope,
and who effect change at home and
across borders. In a language immer-
sion Montessori classroom, the skills
of these peacemakers—these cultural
ambassadors—take root in a very pro-
found way.
The Canadian government devel-
oped language immersion classrooms
in the 1970s and, after 30 years of expe-
rience, the results have been very pos-
itive. English reading achievement
scores of immersion students are
generally higher than those of non-
immersion students (http://www.stat
can.ca/english/freepub/81-004-XIE/
200406/imm.htm). Stephen Krashen,
professor emeritus of foreign language
acquisition at the University of Southern
Montessori Peacemakers for a Modern World
California, says that “Canadian immer-
sion is not simply another successful
language teaching program—it may
be the most successful language teach-
ing program ever recorded in the pro-
fessional language teaching literature”
(1985, p. 15). Its method of comprehen-
sible messages to the students in the
target language contextualizes learn-
ing, unlike the traditional method of
memorizing colors and months. When
a child in the Montessori environment
encounters, for example, Grace and
Courtesy lessons or Sensorial lessons in
Spanish, the target language becomes
part of the child’s everyday life in the
classroom.
Language is not simply a combi-
nation of nouns, verbs, and other parts
of speech. Rather, it is an integral part
of culture, the vehicle through which a
child defines meaning and experiences
the world. When children learn to nav-
igate their world through multiple
languages in a warm and loving envi-
ronment, they receive keys to new
cultures and develop a spherical view
of the world (rather than a narrow and
ethnocentric one). While a young child
cannot be transformed into a child
from another culture, his bilingual
skills and his open heart, acquired in
his language immersion Montessori
classroom, serve as critical building
blocks for future diplomatic leader-
ship in cross-cultural communication.
As stated on the U.S. Department of
Education’s website (http://www.ncela.
gwu.edu/pubs/nysabe/vol10/nys
abe101.htm):
If we provide consistent, thoughtful
and meaningful cultural teaching
for our bilingual students, they
will be better equipped for the 21st
century than their mono-cultural
counterparts, be they native speak-
ers of English or native speakers of
a language other than English.
Indeed, bilingualism and bicultur-
alism are not only a step toward the
future, but also an intermediate
stage in the journey toward multi-
culturalism in its most positive
sense, and perhaps ultimately to a
shared global vision of world peace.
While Montessori schools consid-
ering the implementation of a lan-
guage immersion program should
understand why the merger of the two
methods is so successful, many teach-
ers and administrators want to know
how it functions so smoothly. We will
describe below the approach we have
developed and refined over the past 7
years, which will include the role of the
guide; gathering time activities; and
examples of lessons from the Practical
MONTESSORI LIFE ISSUE 2, 2007
Life, Sensorial, and Language areas.
Our Approach
In our two 3–6 classrooms, we
have two co-lead guides and an assis-
tant with 24 children, about 10–25% of
whom are highly fluent or native
speakers because one or both of their
parents speak the language. Our co-
lead guides are fluent speakers who
may or may not be native speakers. We
always have at least one native speak-
ing co-lead guide. Our assistants are
often college graduates with a degree
in Spanish or French and thus have a
strong interest in speaking the lan-
guage on a daily basis and working
with fluent colleagues. The assistants
not only learn a great amount about
Montessori (and often pursue training
as a result), but also develop an
increased knowledge of the target lan-
guage (for example, how to comfort a
child in Spanish or how to solve a con-
flict between two children in French).
Except for the opening 6 weeks of
school, during which time we may
speak slightly more English for com-
municating certain ground rules or
dealing with separation issues and/or
lingering potty training issues, we
speak to the children in the target lan-
guage between 90% and 100% of the
time. Just as all materials in the envi-
ronment are in Spanish or French, in
each area of the classroom guides give
all lessons in Spanish or French. When
observers inquire about the English
they hear in the classroom among the
children, we explain that we never tell
a child that she may not talk at our
school! New 3-year-olds use English
for talking to both their guides and
their peers (in most cases, English is
the only language they know). We
listen to these young 3s, and, from the
beginning, we respond to them in simple
43
Spanish or French, using gestures so witness, the real miracle happens The guide may further note that the
they can grasp the gist of the meaning when, one day, usually late in the first child’s phrase was generated without
and, more importantly, feel heard and year or in the beginning of the second any assistance, that she used the cor-
emotionally secure. year, the child begins to rearrange the rect future tense, the imperative form,
words and phrases the guide has and that this particular utterance was
The Role of the Guide given him to communicate his own produced without being recently mod-
Beyond the requirements of the message. He has strung his own neck- eled for her. She put the words together
prepared environment, the language lace, and he will restring it thousands completely on her own. A final observa-
immersion guide must be a exception- and thousands of times from now on, tion the guide may make is that the
al model. As she speaks, she must take rearranging and varying the language, phrase is actually a gentle invitation to
into account children’s ages, expres- and incorporating new words, tenses, a classmate.
sive and receptive levels, interests and and forms.
so on. For example, a new 3-year-old In their observations, language Gathering Time
from an English-only home receives immersion Montessori guides must Gathering time in a language
very “tailored” language so as to pay close attention to the child’s lin- immersion Montessori classroom has a
assure comprehension and a home- guistic development. This acute different focus from a traditional
like feeling of security in La Casa or La awareness enables the experienced Montessori classroom. Although always
Maison. A 4-year-old with a year and a guide to note the child’s productive preceded by a Grace and Courtesy les-
half under his belt will receive a very language use, grammar, syntax, and son, our gathering times focus on
different “tailored” message, to chal- the communicative value when a child language-related activities about three
lenge his growing ability in Spanish or says “quand tu auras fini ton travail, times a week. These often take the
French. The guide can also vary the viens t’asseoir à côté de moi” (when form of a game, and are designed to
use of the target language if she has you finish your work, come sit next to me). increase the children’s knowledge of
special concerns about a child, his
fatigue at that moment, his personal-
ity, and even his mood.
Each fall we provide special train-
ing for our language immersion
Montessori guides. Throughout the
workshop, we use the analogy of a
child stringing a necklace in order to
explain the language acquisition
process. However, this necklace is not
the familiar pasta and recycled hole-
punched paper variety but is a metaphor,
suggestive of the Montessori bead
materials that we call les perles/las per-
las in our French and Spanish class-
rooms. The gift of language is precious
like a pearl. Each time the language
immersion guide models a new word
or series of words, she gives the child
a new “pearl” to add to her linguistic
necklace.
In the workshop, we explain how
the child receives these “pearls” and,
for a while, simply passes them back
and forth between himself and the
guide. In other words, the child
repeats the exact same words or phras-
es that the guide models. While this is,
in itself, an extraordinary process to

44 MONTESSORI LIFE ISSUE 2, 2007

nouns, verbs, and expressions.
One game we play is matching
pairs. We randomly distribute 12 pairs
of matching fruit cards facedown in
front of the children. The guide invites
one child to turn her card face-up on
the rug in the center of the circle.
Using her knowledge of each child’s
ability in Spanish or French, she may
ask that same child or another to name
the fruit. Then she asks each child to
peek at his card to see who has the
matching fruit. Each time, the teacher
can help the children identify fruit or
ask further questions related to its size,
color, taste, etc. A variation is to use
cards for animals, professions, and
actions (running, eating). One exten-
sion is to have names of fruits written
down on cards to hand out to the chil-
dren who can read in the target lan-
guage so they can match their word
card with the correct picture card.
Another game begins with silence
and then moves into a game of mim-
ing simple Practical Life activities,
such as “couper et manger une
pomme” (cutting and eating an apple).
The guide acts out cutting and eating
an apple without any words and asks
the children to guess what she is
doing, encouraging them to use the
infinitive forms of the verb first and
then later, a full sentence, “tu coupes et
puis tu manges une pomme” (you cut
and then you eat an apple).
In the Memory game, the guide
selects ten small objects from the class-
room just before gathering time. She
places all the objects on a tray and
brings them with a tablecloth to a rug
placed in front of her. She gently
removes each object from the tray,
naming it as she places it on the rug, as
in the first part of a three period les-
son. It is best to start with a variety of
familiar classroom objects: the conti-
nent puzzle piece of Asia, a third
brown stair, the vowel i, a sponge, a
snake, a pouring cup, a napkin, a paint
brush, a ten bar, and a compass. The
guide asks the children to study the
objects on the rug. She then opens the
tablecloth, lifts it high, and allows it to
float down, gently covering all the
objects. She covertly slides her hand
under the cloth, snatches one object
and, in one gesture, takes it away,
wrapped in the cloth. She puts the
cloth next to her and then poses the
question “¿que falta?” or “qu’est-ce
qui manque?” (what is missing?) The
children enthusiastically respond with
the name of the object that lies inside
the cloth. Each time we play this game,
we are amazed by their joy in the
covert snatching and their outstanding
memory skills.
Practical Life
We have anywhere from 35 to 50
individual work choices on our Art
and Practical Life shelves. The ration-
ale for having such a variety (in terms
of language acquisition) is to offer the
children an array of verbs, nouns, and
expressions in an everyday context.
For example, in a traditional classroom
where Spanish or French is taught two
to three times a week for 20 minutes,
the children may learn nouns such as
grandmother or sister (from a unit on
family) or airplane or train (from a unit
on transportation). While these are
good words to know, the children do
not touch, manipulate or use these
objects as part of their daily
Montessori classroom experience.
Giving the children the language of
their immediate surroundings lets
them apply the words in context.
Thus, they learn verbs in French or
Spanish that translate into actions such
as to pour, to squeeze, to fill, to punch,
to thread, to glide, to sweep; and
nouns as names for real objects nearby
such as sponge, flask, container, water-
ing can, dropper, sink, broom, needle,
and bucket. Since repetition occurs
naturally with the practical life activi-
ties, if the child absorbed flask and
sponge during the second use of the
work, perhaps by the fourth time, she
would internalize additional terms
MONTESSORI LIFE ISSUE 2, 2007
such as funnel and spill.
Practical Life also offers opportu-
nities for the use of verbs in present,
past, and future, and the imperative
form as well as for the use of a wide
variety of nouns: “Por favor, va a
vaciar el balde en el lavado” (please go
pour out the bucket in the sink). In a lan-
guage immersion Montessori classroom,
we use real-life sentences that give multi-
step directions with verbs, adjectives,
and interrogative and imperative forms.
Simply put, we use natural speech and
the children absorb it completely.
We follow the traditional approach
of giving Practical Life lessons mostly
in silence but, if and when we do
speak during a lesson, it is only to say,
when holding a sponge, una esponja; or
when making a motion of tweezing,
pincer. The target language prevails,
yet silence reigns. Silence is the space
in between the words on a page: read-
ing would be so difficult without those
spaces. Our acquisition process, espe-
cially in Practical Life, would not yield
such results without silence. Instead of
naming a work at the beginning of a
lesson as many guides choose to do,
our language immersion guides
decide, at that moment, whether the
child is ready for any words at all to
accompany that particular Practical
Life lesson. Frequently, the language is
actually applied at the moment of
cleanup: “N’oublie pas de chercher
une nouvelle serviette blanche pour la
prochaine personne qui se lave les
mains, merci bien.” (Don’t forget to go
get a new white towel for the next person
who washes his hands. Thank you.)
Sensorial
Most second language teachers
would be overjoyed to witness the
breadth, diversity, and potential learn-
ing opportunities that lie within the
Montessori prepared environment.
For example, how much more person-
ally meaningful, engaging, and experi-
ential is a Sensorial lesson on caliente,
tibio, frio (hot, warm, cold) using the
45
Thermic Bottles than a more traditional
presentation that teaches the concept
by circling pictures on a worksheet?
Sensorial lessons offer the opportunity
for numerous repetitions and for
repeating the actual words in their
natural context. Furthermore, they
introduce a wide range of nouns,
adjectives, and grammatical struc-
tures. For example, the pink tower and
the red rods present wonderful oppor-
tunities to teach the comparative and
superlative forms: petit, plus petit, le
plus petit (small, smaller, smallest).
Most language teachers would not
introduce this grammatical structure
until the student had several years of
the language under his belt. Not so in
a language immersion classroom,
where the children are just as ready to
hear it in a second language as they are
in their native language. They learn
Concentration
both the concept and meaning directly
in the target language while they are in
their sensitive period for language.
A Montessori guide knows the
important role of language in the pre-
pared environment. She knows when
it is not yet appropriate to use lan-
guage in a lesson and when the
46
moment is ripe to add the language to
the lesson. The Montessori guide
knows when the actual word should
not be given since the child’s explo-
rations are primarily sensorial. It is the
language immersion Montessori
guide, so sensitive to the child’s lin-
guistic development in the target lan-
guage, who recognizes that when she
does in fact give, for example, the
French word that describes the sensor-
ial impression of lisse (smooth) and
rugueux (rough), these words fall on
ready ears and on a prepared mind.
Language
We have created our own lan-
guage curricula reflecting the standard
French or Spanish Montessori lan-
guage album, and at the same time
have incorporated second language
acquisition techniques. All the chil-
dren learn to read in Spanish or French
first, no matter how much or little of
that language they know when arriv-
ing at our school. All our sandpaper
letters are the French or Spanish alpha-
bet. For example, we have the sandpa-
per letters in French for é, eau, au, etc.
and in Spanish for ñ, rr, ll, etc.
Our “I spy” games are played
with objects second language students
will know and recognize. The first
three to five consonants and two to
three vowels we teach are very carefully
chosen to reflect the first syllables they
will blend and find in Object Box 1.
Unlike English, in French and Spanish,
there are very few concrete consonant-
vowel-consonant words, such as cat,
bat, sat, hit, fit. Our approach reflects
how native children learn to read in
French and Spanish, which is with syl-
lables. For example, once a child
knows m, c, r, t, a, i, o with sandpaper
letters, we immediately teach them to
blend ma, ti, co, ri, ca, mo, ta. Though
these are only rarely words, they are
the building blocks for thousands of
words in French and Spanish. After a
child successfully blends, we move
right to the moveable alphabet.
MONTESSORI LIFE ISSUE 2, 2007
Usually by early spring of his second
year, the child has begun to blend and
make syllables. Once the child blends
with ease, he is on his way to two- and
three-syllable words almost overnight;
pala, vaca, luna, canasta, or vélo, moto,
ami, café, canapé.
In our 3 to 6 classes, the 3- and 4-
year-olds have no English language
lessons whatsoever. They receive
many language lessons for literacy
awareness, for example, sequence sto-
ries and right to left orientation. These
concepts are applicable to the English
language, yet are taught in the target
language. The children usually speak
English fluently and know their alpha-
bet from the traditional song they
learned outside of school. But it is only
at 5 years old, when the children are in
the third year in the classroom, that we
begin teaching them to read in
English. By this time, they are already
using early readers in Spanish or
French. When we begin reading in
English, we do not return to sandpa-
per letters or “I spy” or similar games.
The child already knows the entire
process of reading from her experience
with the target language. All the skills
transfer completely to English and are
applied without the 5-year-old being
conscious of the transference.
Much of the communication in our
language immersion Montessori class-
room is meta-communication: about
the act of communicating itself. The
children function in an environment
where communication is constantly
evolving, sometimes challenging, yet
always collaborative. The children
help each other. During the language
games at Gathering time, the child
who knows the word in Spanish will
help the child who cannot retrieve the
word; when a child does not under-
stand the directive from the guide to
get a tissue first before putting on her
shoes, the older child shows her
where the tissues are and explains
the guide’s request. Thus they find
that communication does sometimes
involve misunderstanding but they
can learn respectful, peaceful ways to
resolve these differences from both
each other and the Montessori guide.
They are comfortable with difference.
They are flexible. They negotiate mean-
ing on a regular basis. We see cultural
ambassadors begin to emerge who
may continue Montessori’s vision.
Children in a Montessori language
immersion classroom learn that there
are two ways to see, to feel, to smell, to
say, to sing. Within a few months, they
learn that there are actually several
ways, even in the same second lan-
guage, to see, to feel, to smell, etc. They
begin to experience multiple perspec-
tives for everything; they become accus-
tomed to living linguistic diversity.
On a concrete and practical level,
learning in a second language makes
students clearly aware of multiple per-
spectives. They learn that an object has
multiple signifiers. In other words,
“slipper” is the same as pantoufle. The
children come to understand that only
the signifier changed; the actual slip-
pers, the signified, do not change.
What makes the whole process of
Given that ethnocentricity is one of
the bases of racism, this Montessori
language-immersion student is poised
to be an ambassador who breaks down
cultural barriers. The student’s experi-
ence of negotiating all the various
types of “difference” on a daily basis
has allowed her to internalize the con-
cept of diversity.
Just as it is difficult for non-
Montessorians to fathom that a child
can successfully carry a porcelain
pitcher filled with water across the
room with grace and pride, it is also
difficult for many adults to grasp how
children can operate comfortably and
successfully in a language-immersion
environment. But it works just as
effortlessly as the transition that all
Montessori children make, for example,
from the sandpaper letters to the
Moveable Alphabet. They develop a
deep and authentic awareness of other
cultures that informs their actions and
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they become bilingual and biliterate.
References
Krashen, S.D. (1985). Inquiries & Insights:
Second Language Teaching: Immersion &
Bilingual Education; Literacy. University
of Southern California; New Jersey.
http://www.duke.edu/latinovoices/index.
html. Retrieved July 26, 2006.
http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/pubs/nys
abe/vol10/nysabe101.htm. Retrieved
July 26, 2006.
http://www.statcan.ca/english/free
pub/81-004-XIE/200406/imm.htm.
Retrieved July 26, 2006.
KATERI CARVER-AKERS is the founder
of The Language Center Montessori School
in Chapel Hill, NC. Contact her at
kateri@languagecenternc.org.
KRISTINE MARKATOS-SORIANO is a
teacher at the Princeton Montessori School
in Princeton, NJ.
negotiating difference so effective and
smooth for our young cultural ambas-
sadors is the underlying universality
of our world. Slippers are slippers
after all, no matter what the language.
Just as the Montessori guide fol-
lows the child’s transition from the
concrete Golden Beads to the abstract
Stamp Game, so it is for the older child
to transition from concrete linguistic
differences to abstract cultural differ-
ences. The primary child who has
learned to accommodate difference on
a linguistic level develops into the ele-
mentary child who translates this abil-
ity to an abstract philosophical level.
The growing elementary child begins
to understand differences for what
they are, rather than reacting to them
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MONTESSORI LIFE ISSUE 2, 2007 47