PHILOSOPHY AND ADVOCACY STATEMENT Philosophy and Advocacy Statement on Curriculum

The Montessori approach, to which I adhere, views children as having their own inner guidance for learning and development. Evidence of this inner teacher is supported and informed by current research in human development and neuroscience. My model of child education is to implement the Montessori approach to learning, in which teachers act as coaches and facilitators of connection between the child and some meaningful work. I have termed my educational approach as child interest driven education. So where does curriculum for the young child lie within this framework? I believe it lies in the connection between the childs own interest and some meaningful work. In early childhood, this work is done with specially designed manipulatives.

Although conventional Montessori schools have been associated with high cost and therefore have been inaccessible to all segments of society, this does not have to be the case. The principles of child interest driven education can be applied in any environment including at home, in public places such as restaurants and playgrounds, as well as any early childhood education environment. Mini-lessons have even been offered as simple yet inviting opportunities for learning to street children on the city sidewalks of Ecuador, India and Nigeria in a program called character teaching (http://imsmontessori.org/montessori-characterteaching.htm). True Montessori teaching follows the laws of human development and scientific discovery about how children learn, what Dr. Montessori called laws of nature. The role of the teacher is to identify the childs interest as an expression of this inner guidance; then invite the child to connect with some meaningful work. Dr. Montessori identified the following qualities that children exhibit when given the opportunity to choose their own work in a prepared 1

PHILOSOPHY AND ADVOCACY STATEMENT environment: precocious intelligence, love of order, independence, self-discipline and social empathy towards others. I advocate that the role of professional educators, parents and other adults in society should be to create safe environments where simple lesson materials are offered and that children may choose and work with independently, guided by their own interests (http://imsmontessori.org/IMS-teacher-education-true-natural-montessori-teaching.htm). In this environment, concern for teaching to the weakest link is resolved. Children work at their own pace and the trained adult is free to spend more time observing, assessing and responding to the needs and interests of individual children. The environment is peaceful, relaxed and responsive to the teacher within the child. A free-choice environment also provides natural social lessons which are derived from interaction between the children, and are coached by the adult.

Requisites to prepare adults to work in these environments include a solid grounding in child development and how the child learns. Preparation also includes grounding in the concepts of language, math, and science, and in the practical use of materials which demonstrate these principles in concrete form. Adults must be trained as observers, like scientists, looking for the childs interest, and responding to that interest by presenting a brief lesson in a way that allows the child to make her/his own discoveries and to progress at her/his own pace. Adults also need to be trained in how to coach children, rather than teach them how to offer a minimum amount of instruction so that children may experiment and discover for themselves the concepts and lessons embodied in the materials, thereby gaining the skills they will need to build upon as they scaffold their own learning.