Today on Blooming Curious, I am super excited to welcome Alex Peterson.
Alex is a Montessori teacher dedicated to fostering a love
of learning in young children.
Under the handle Miss Nearing's Montessori, Alex creates engaging
educational content on tiktok and Instagram, sharing creative teaching
strategies, hands on activities, and insights into the Montessori approach.
Through her content
Alex connects with parents and educators, making learning
accessible and fun for everyone.
She holds a bachelor's degree in early childhood and elementary education, and
has a background in special education.
She holds her AMS primary three to six certificate from the Montessori education
center of the Rockies in beautiful
Denver, Colorado.
Welcome to Blooming Curious, Alex.
Thank you for having me.
It's such a pleasure.
I am so excited.
For anybody listening who doesn't know, I found Alex on Instagram
and Alex is a prolific creator.
And every day there's some very cheerful teaching going on about
Montessori and what the children in her Montessori class are doing.
So this is what drew me in and I just thought this is amazing.
This is exactly what Blooming Curious is about.
It's about curiosity and learning and children loving what they're doing.
So I'm very excited.
So Alex, for those of us that are unfamiliar and haven't got a clue or
have never spent time in a Montessori classroom, explain to us what
Montessori education is and really how is it different from a traditional
classroom or traditional teaching?
Sure.
So, when you think of a traditional classroom, you typically think of a
teacher who's kind of in charge of the learning and she plans lessons
or he plans lessons each day.
And every day you show up and there's a scheduled time block
that you have a math activity or a language lesson or a science lesson.
Or two.
Today on Blooming Curious, I am super excited to welcome Alex Peterson.
Alex is a Montessori teacher dedicated to fostering a love
of learning in young children.
Under the handle Miss Nearing's Montessori, Alex creates
engaging educational content.
on tiktok and Instagram, sharing creative teaching strategies, hands
on activities, and insights into the Montessori approach through her content.
Alex connects with parents and educators, making learning
accessible and fun for everyone.
She holds a bachelor's degree in early childhood and elementary education, and
has a background in special education.
She holds her AMS primary three to six certificate from the Montessori education
center of the Rockies in beautiful.
Denver, Colorado.
Welcome to Blooming Curious, Alex.
Thank you for having me.
It's such a pleasure.
I am so excited.
Um, for anybody listening who doesn't know, I found Alex on Instagram
and Alex is a prolific creator.
And every day there's some very cheerful.
Teaching going on about the Montessori and what the children
in her Montessori class are doing.
So this is what drew me in and I just thought this is amazing.
This is exactly what Blooming Curious is about.
It's about curiosity and learning and children loving what they're doing.
So I'm very excited.
So Alex, for those of us that are unfamiliar and haven't got a clue or
have never spent time in a Montessori classroom, explain to us what
Montessori education is and really how is it different from a traditional
classroom or a traditional teaching?
Sure.
So, when you think of a traditional classroom, you typically think of a
teacher who's kind of in charge of the learning and she plans lessons
or he plans lessons each day.
And every day you show up and there's a scheduled time block
that you have a math activity or a language lesson or a science lesson.
And, um, back in the early, like, early 1800s, a woman named Maria Montessori Um,
spent some time, uh, she was a scientist in Italy, actually, and she was one of
the first women scientists ever in Italy.
And because of that, she was actually placed in a, like what they referred
to at the time as like a mental asylum to work with children who
are essentially outcasts of society.
They did not fit the general mold of the traditional education
system in Italy at the time.
And during her time there, she observed that when children were able to work
with tactile materials and spend time.
playing games and learning through games and play and going at their own pace and
choosing what they get to do each day.
They were more likely to learn because they were in charge of their learning.
So through a very long period of time of her observation, she was able to develop
this huge method where the children are essentially the leaders of the classroom.
And so that method is carried on today.
She has.
completely taken over the education world all over the world.
These schools popped up from Italy, and then they just exploded.
So they've all made it in almost every continent at this point.
And essentially it is the complete opposite of a traditional school.
So you take everything you've ever learned in a traditional school, throw it all out
the window and completely level it down.
Which is what I had to do because I did get my degree in Um, traditional
education before I entered Montessori.
So I literally threw everything away that I knew and started all the way over.
And when you think of how a traditional school day is run, when the children
enter in a Montessori classroom, they go immediately right to what they want to do.
Right away when they walk in the door and it's what they want to do essentially
with freedom within limits all day long with me acting as a simple guide.
So we actually are not even called teachers in the Montessori world.
They call us guides.
And my job is to simply connect the child to the materials in the
room based on who they are as a person and what I observe in them.
And I just guide them in their learning.
They are the, they are the bosses.
They're in charge.
I just kind of find the things that meet the needs of where
they're at in their life.
And I, I kind of step by step, bring them around through a
full curriculum in the room.
Okay.
So now.
The first question I'm having is I'm thinking about what teachers are
thinking in a traditional setting or parents who send kids to traditional
settings, and they're thinking, well, how do they meet curriculum outcomes?
If kids are just playing and doing their own thing, and you're there
as a guide, helping them with the materials, for example, how are
you going to meet the outcomes?
Because Montessori, I think, goes, Well, I guess it depends on the location or
the school, but they do go right through to the end of high school, don't they?
Mine actually does, yes.
So we have all the way up through high school in mine.
So how would, how would you explain that to parents or other teachers?
Is, how do you then meet your curriculum outcomes, um, if kids
are just free ranging, so to speak?
So some people might think, well, that's just free range learning.
Yeah, we often get the, uh, the stigma that we're just like a bunch of
essentially hippies, you know, that just kind of let our kids do whatever we want.
But, um, the heavy hitting point is that there are, there is freedom
and the children really are free to do whatever they want within
a very strict series of limits.
And the room itself provides a deep range of limits.
Whether it's just simply where things go on the shelf and how you return
everything to the shelf Every shelf has an order and the order is sequential
from top to bottom left to right and everything builds on itself in the shelf
Um, my job is to ensure that they aren't goofing off and are actually doing
what they should be doing So I need to have a deep understanding of just
pedagogy in general and like academic standards in general um, and then The
whole, the whole layout of the room is almost to trick the child into learning.
So when you think of traditional education standards, my job is to give
them those standards and teach them in a way where they almost don't realize.
that they're learning because we are just having fun, whether we're playing a game
and we're learning letters, whether I'm coloring with them and we're learning
numbers, there's just a series of ways that I can present a lesson to a child
just to make sure that I'm keeping them on track and exactly where they should be.
We follow all the state standards in my, in my state personally,
which align standards almost across the globe, like universally.
Um, and all of the materials in every classroom always start about a
half year lower than what the child would be when they enter the room.
So we have materials that that could potentially meet the needs
of a two and a half year old child.
And then the lot like the upper end of a room like mine would
go all the way to first grade.
So it's awesome that a child can go as far as they want or as slow as they want.
And we keep them on track, but at the pace that kind of meets them
the best, if that makes sense.
And then we fill in the gaps where necessary.
So if I notice that a child is only doing anything in the
math for two days straight.
I'm going to guide them into language on that third day to make sure that
they're meeting the language area.
And then maybe we'll head towards geography that fourth day so that by
the full whole five day week, they will have hit every subject area by the
time they walk out the door on Friday.
If that makes sense.
Okay.
So the other thing I want to then ask is, um, do children ever do whole group
or do you ever do whole group lessons like a math session, for example, or a
phonics session to the whole class, or, or is it just following the individual
children as they're going through their learning at their own pace?
Developmentally, the, the child before about the age of six.
If you really look at who they are as a person, that's when you start hearing
like, that's mine, like, and they don't like to share, so they care a lot
about how the world pertains to them.
So I'm going to structure the majority of my lessons, just me one
on one with an individual child.
As they get older, they start Clipping a plane of development and
then they start caring about the whole, how can we collectively come
to a conclusion about something?
How can we work together?
So when that, when I get a, like a late five year old, early six year
old child in the room, I will start teaching lessons to those children as
a small group, but I will never do a massive phonics lesson to the whole.
The whole group of kids, just because a six year old child is genuinely very
different than a three year old child, and they're, they have different needs.
We do do a group time in the middle of the day.
Um, we just do calendar, and we check the weather, and we sing songs.
If there's a concert coming up, we might practice songs for the concert coming up.
Um, but when it comes to the academic lessons, There's really not a whole
lot that we do in a whole group.
Right now we're actually studying the continent of North America and we have a
grandma who, um, is from Mexico actually.
She was born and raised in Mexico and she made Mexican, like this Mexican
dessert for us and she brought us in toys.
So we had this whole group lesson about what it was like to grow up in Mexico.
And so sometimes when it's a cultural thing and we can learn about
the culture that's beneficial to anyone of any age group everywhere.
And so those kind of things I love to do whole group because it's.
It's very cool to just experience that as a community, but when it
comes to like math lessons and language lessons and geography and
art and all that stuff, typically it's going to be more one on one.
Okay.
That's interesting.
And so I know that the Montessori is also, and you've just mentioned it,
Montessori places this very big emphasis on preparing the environment and you
were talking a lot about your materials.
So what is the design that goes into the classroom and How does that then
contribute to the child's learning?
If you ever set foot in a Montessori classroom, you'll notice that there
is literally nothing, even on the walls, placed above the child's height.
picture frame, every table, every chair, everything is going to be
sitting lower or at the child's height, except for maybe two chairs in the
room that I can sit in to observe.
Um, so even when the child walks in the door, it's their home and they already
feel like Everything is at their height.
They never have to reach for anything.
They never have to go out of their way to go into this crazy
location to find something.
And everything on the shelves are always fully prepared for them.
So let's say it's an art lesson and they're going to need glue and scissors.
The tray is going to be already prepared with glue and scissors and
the paper they might need to glue it.
So they're never going to need to come and find me.
To help like have me go search out a glue stick that I've hidden way at the
top of a cupboard way up high So they know that when they go to choose to
do something in the room, it's already ready for them It's ready to go.
There is no need to ask a teacher to intervene which gives them this deep
sense of like independence and I can Do it and she trusts that I can do
it, which puts this huge weight on the child to do it correctly like that.
I am trusting them.
They know I'm trusting them.
I'm trusting 'em with a pair of scissors to use it correctly.
Mm-hmm.
That's a pretty big deal to a 3-year-old.
So when when you have the weight of that responsibility, you're gonna find that.
That just in and of that, they're going to want to use the material correctly
or they're going to lose it, you know, I'm not going to put out scissors if
they're going to cut their friend's hair.
Simple as that.
So there's like, you know, freedom within limits.
They can have the scissors.
You just can't go in the corner and cut your friend's hair or you can't cut.
You know, the plants apart or whatever it is.
Um, we also use a lot of natural materials.
So you'll, you'll notice there's a lot of wood and a lot of
glass and very minimal plastic.
Um, which is kind of where the whole like beige thing comes in.
I don't know if you've ever heard that stigma.
There's a lot of color, but it's not a lot of plastic color.
Um, and so when you're working with glass or ceramics or
anything breakable, especially with like a three year old child.
If it drops, it's going to shatter.
It's not a plastic sippy cup.
If you're running and you're not being careful and you're carrying
a glass vase and you slip and fall because you made the choice to run.
It's going to shatter all over the floor.
And guess what?
Every child is now turning their head to look at the child who's dropped
the vase which can be kind of an embarrassing experience for that child.
But it's also self correcting in that it makes them not want to
run the next time or not want to carry the thing with one hand.
And next time they're going to use two.
So there's just a lot of like little things that I can put into the room
where Where it's that thing doing all the correcting and so it's not just me
nagging them like you need to use walking feet like instead of me saying that.
They just know to use walking feet because they're carrying something
that could shatter when they drop it.
And it's really cool to watch like a three year old child.
After that, every three year old child is going to shatter something.
It's inevitable.
We do break glass.
It happens.
But after about a month and a half into the school year, after all
the glass has kind of broken and we all fell to the floor, it is
the coolest thing in the world.
To watch the most rowdy three year old child choose to walk slowly
while they carry something breakable.
It's like the coolest thing to watch and most people don't even believe that
it's possible, but it's really cool.
So just in and of itself, like how the room is laid out, like I will structure
the shelves, so I like prevent a racetrack in the room, so they have to walk
or they're going to run into a shelf.
I make sure that I structure like the way that the sunlight hits certain
tables so that it's not blinding the child so they choose to work over there.
There's just like a ridiculous amount of floor plan that will go into
how I lay out the room and where I put the materials also matter.
It's it's pretty cool.
It sounds really cool.
So it sounds also to me like your biggest job as a teacher
is actually your pre teaching.
It's your it's your planning of how of the materials you're going to
use, how you're going to display them, where you're going to put them.
Uh, and you obviously.
Thinking about your curriculum and your materials that you're
using or that are accessible to children linked to the curriculum.
So it sounds to me that it's just flipped from a traditional classroom setting.
Although teachers in traditional settings also obviously have to plan,
also obviously have to plan and prepare.
But there's also a big emphasis on the actual teaching in the moment, you know,
you've got your big class teaching, your group teaching and all that kind of stuff.
But I think there's more emphasis by what I can pick up here from you is
your pre teaching, your, your planning behind because your environment plays
such a massive role in the teaching.
So that's super, super interesting.
And also what I liked what you've just said is that.
In the good old days before the invention of plastic kids actually ate off
the same plates and drank out of the same cups and glasses as adults did.
And there wasn't this thing of, you have to have a sippy cup and a plastic
plate and all this kind of thing.
So I think it actually is a respect for the child and also it teaches the child.
Responsibility, because they've got the same responsibility in taking care of
things and using things as an adult has.
So I think that that
is really powerful, to be honest.
Yeah, we also, we have a whole curriculum area, actually, that's
just called care of the environment.
And it is just that, like sweeping, mopping, washing the tables,
washing the floors, watering the plants, dusting the shelves.
There is just an entire shelf that exists in my room.
So that they can take care of the space they live in.
Like we have mops, I have brooms, I have watering cans, like anything that could
be cleaned, they have the ability to clean it so they know that this space is theirs
and it's theirs also to take care of.
It's not just my job, it's our job as a community.
We do laundry, we do the dishes, like it's their job to take care of
everything just as much as it is my job.
So how do you organize eating and food times then?
Do children still bring their own food in?
And then do you, I saw on one of your, one of your videos on Instagram,
actually, you were talking about how you actually sit with your
children and eat in the classroom.
So you eat at the tables where you're learning and they've obviously
bringing in food from home, but you're talking about doing the dishes.
So you're talking about if you.
Did something, were you preparing a food, for example, as part of a lesson that
kids clean up that after themselves?
Yeah, so there's multiple food aspects.
Kids love food.
Don't forget,
Montessori is Italian, so of course, I mean, Italian and food
automatically goes together, right?
You wouldn't be able to separate the two at all.
I've
actually never put that together before.
That is so true.
Um, so we actually have a whole curriculum that's just dedicated
to learning how to prepare food.
We call it food preparation.
So it's just a sequence of activities that the children can learn, like
banana cutting, apple cutting, slicing, peeling, what you name it.
The sky's the limit.
I've made pizza with the kids.
We've made muffins, smoothies, oatmeal, like the sky is essentially the limit.
I did eggs, hard boiled eggs.
Like it just depends on the allergies in the class and what you can provide.
Right now I'm able to do peanuts.
So they're learning how to crack peanuts because we do not have a
single peanut allergy in the whole school this year, which is so cool.
That is
lucky.
I've been able to do that before.
So this is my first time ever learning, having them learn how
to like crack open a peanut.
It's awesome.
Um, so they have that and that's available to them and that
changes as the year goes on.
I, I'll switch out the trays.
It'll get increasingly harder, more multi steps.
They're responsible for cleaning all of that afterwards as well.
We also have a, um, a grant from the United States government that provides
us with like fresh fruit and vegetables.
every week Um, so whatever is seasonal, the whole goal is that
the kids, they want the children to try new fruits and veggies.
So we try to follow the seasonal pattern of what's in season right now.
Um, and that's what we eat for snack.
And so they're able to eat snack at any point in the morning or the
afternoon, whenever their body is hungry.
They can just choose to eat.
There's like a designated table in my classroom that's It's the only circle
table in my room and it only has two chairs and there's one waiting chair.
So only two friends can actually be eating at a time.
But if the snack table is open or if the waiting chair is open, they are free.
If their stomach is growling, they can just stand up from
what they're doing and go eat.
So there is not like a structured, like.
Everybody gets their snack from their backpack and we all sit down and eat it.
But they can definitely bring their own snack.
And a lot of children do choose to bring extra food if they're like hungry or going
through a growing spurt or whatever it is.
Um, so they can eat snack whenever.
They can also do food prep whenever in the morning or the afternoon.
And then when it comes time for lunch.
We do have, like, actual adult sized ceramic plates, juice cups, and then,
like, bowls and forks and spoons and knives that you would see in a home, just,
like, literally I bought them at Walmart, so they are as natural and real and
authentic to a home as they would come.
They're responsible for setting their own table spot up at lunch.
They get a placemat that they have to lay down below it.
They learn where the fork goes, the knife and the spoon, how the plate sits on the
placemat, where the cup and the bowl go.
Um, then they can serve themselves lunch.
If they do choose to eat lunch, at my school at least, they can have
like the school provided lunch.
We have a full time cook and an assistant cook and they make.
An assortment of also lovely things for the school.
Um, so they can choose the hot lunch option or they can bring their own lunch
if they do not like the hot lunch option, but they're ha still having school lunch.
They can get a pb and j as the substitute out for the protein.
So it's a pretty healthy mixture of who brings their own lunch.
Who eats hot lunch and who chooses the p, d and J?
It's almost like, like 33% split across the board right now for this.
For this specific group of kids, every year is different.
And then we do eat at those tables that we've been working on all morning.
So we sit down, we eat there.
At the end of lunch, when it's time to be dismissed from lunch, they are
responsible for cleaning everything.
So their placemat needs to go back into the laundry bin, because we're going
to do laundry at the end of the day.
I do have a washer and dryer that are in my classroom, so we do
laundry at the end of the day.
It's a job, so two children are assigned to learn.
Oh
my gosh.
Load the soap up, put the laundry in, start the washer and dryer.
Man, are they experts at that.
They love doing the washer and dryer.
They're so good at it.
Um, for like legal reasons, even though we wash our dishes in dish
buckets with soap and like water, like a rinse bucket, they're still not
legally clean because they're children.
So we do have to load them up and actually send them to the kitchen
where the kitchen like actually runs them through the dishwasher.
More of a process over product thing.
They do incredible at it.
It's just not, it's not legally correct, which is fine.
And then once the kitchen actually washes them legally, they'll send them back down.
And another job at the end of our day is to actually unload the dish cart.
So put all the dishes back on the dish cabinet for the, like the following day.
Um, so yeah, it's really cool to like watch how the routine of like.
I can totally step back and I do not help them clean up from lunch one bit.
And even my little two and a half year old that I have this year
can do everything all by herself.
They are rock stars at it by now.
And you know, this just comes back to the thing that I always say is
that we do not trust children enough.
We don't give them enough credit because they are actually really, really capable.
It does my head in.
I cannot tell you how infuriating I find it when I see a parent carrying a
child's backpack because I'm thinking.
What message are you giving your child?
You're telling your child that they're not capable of carrying their own backpack.
You can't do that, sweetie.
You're not, you're not strong enough.
You're not capable enough.
It drives me insane.
Or even carrying them into school.
I have always been interested by when a parent carries the kid into school.
You've now made the choice for the child to enter the building.
That's the one I've always been interested in.
Let them walk.
Let them choose to enter the building.
It's their, it's their school.
Let them choose to, like, you let them choose.
I
find it just so great, so amazing that In your school, and I'm sure
it's probably in every Montessori school would be the same, right?
Well, you'd hope so anyway, that you really do give children that
credit, that they are capable beings.
They're capable of chopping up their food.
They're capable of cleaning up.
They're capable of looking after themselves or following a routine.
And you really are instilling the sense of independence and this can
do attitude in them, which I think a lot of children at some point.
I always get frustrated because sometimes you have a feeling that
they think that it's your job to just top them up, that they don't have any
responsibility in their own learning.
And so I think this kind of strategy and this methodology is really
important in giving children that message that you are a capable being.
We respect you and we, and we believe in you that you are capable
of doing these things on your own.
And I think that is an amazing message.
And I think that more schools need to do that.
And I love so much how you, how the kids set tables and sit and eat at tables.
That is just so amazing because I don't know how much input
you have with the families.
But one of the things that I've seen and you read a lot about now
is that kids don't sit together and eat as a family anymore.
That whole family time's disappearing.
So at least then they don't get that at home, which is
incredibly sad if they're not.
At least they get it at school and they learn that, you know, this is how you
sit properly, this is how you have, you know, your cutlery, where it goes.
This, I think those are really important things and that we're losing.
But I think with ways of what you guys are doing in Montessori, and I
wish that all schools would do that.
I think you give that back to children, which I think is so special.
I really do.
That is so special.
And I say that as a mum as well, you know, that's always been something
really important in our family, is that.
We have always, always, always sat at the table and had dinner together.
There are times like maybe on a Friday night when the kids were
younger, we'd have family movie night and we'd have a pizza or whatever,
um, in front of the television, but that is a very rare occurrence.
But I think that sitting together as a family at a dinner
table is really important.
And I think that's also important in a school setting.
Um, and I think that beats any day having kids just sit on the floor.
Opening their lunch boxes and eating their lunch, because I think that's
just pretty gross, but I understand that that's also a space thing and
they aren't, the setup isn't, I guess.
in some schools like you guys have it there.
I want to talk to you because you've mentioned a few times you have things,
uh, children from you said two and a half year old right through to six year old.
How does, how your mixed age classrooms, how do they function
and, and what have you seen?
How does that benefit all age children having being in that mixed age?
environment
I
think my biggest argument for mixed age classrooms is like a workplace.
No workplaces are just straight everybody's the same age.
They're all multi age.
We can all learn something from somebody younger than us, somebody the same
age as us, and somebody older than us.
And, I will never forget my very first observation in a Montessori
environment watching multi age kids because it's so easy to pick out
the older ones and the younger ones, not just based on their size alone,
but you can see it and who they are.
And the older ones just become this like matriarch or
patriarch of the, of the room.
And if they have been in that room for the full time, like when they
started as a three year old, then they were there as a four year old
and a five year old, and then they turn six, the rules never change.
I never change.
The room hasn't changed.
Like they are experts.
Like they've got it down pat.
You are hardly recorrecting them minimally, of course, because
there's always the goofing off.
But for the most part, they've got it down.
And they just become a helper.
So they go out of their way to make sure that the little ones are seen and heard
and helped and understood and doing the right thing and staying on track.
And sometimes they'll like show them a lesson because they're so proud of
something they've already mastered.
That's not like way below their age level now.
And some of the best friendships I've personally witnessed in children.
Are a six year old child and like a three or four year old
child, specifically in the girls.
I see it a lot with the girls.
Man, are those six year old girls just like angelic to the three year olds?
And it's always fascinating when I have a three year old who's just really
struggling being at school, whether they start the year and they're crying and they
have separation anxiety or whatever it is.
When they become a six year old and they've moved past a separation and
they come in the door, no problem.
And it's an easy peasy transition.
they start to see those little three year olds who do struggle and they're
immediately their buddy because they like see the past version of themselves in that
child and they know how to help them and they know what they need because that's
what they needed when they were their age and it is just man is it like the most
beautiful thing there's like hardly ever any problems i have lots of siblings in
the room so i'll have the older sibling and the younger sibling because of the
multi ages and for the most part it's It is just, it is the coolest thing.
It's so cool because they just know that what a three year old needs
is not what a six year old needs.
And everybody just knows and they understand that.
And it's, it's really cool to watch.
And listen, Alex, I just had a thought, um, so do those children stay with you
until they're six and then they move on to another classroom or another teacher?
So some of those kids could be with you for three years.
And so in terms of your materials and stuff.
I guess then the materials would be, some of them would be for younger
age children and some of them would be for older age children.
I think you probably mentioned that, possibly you've touched
on that before earlier.
Um, so when they're younger, they could still have access to all the materials.
So are they repeating things?
You know, I'm just thinking from someone who's not a Montessori person might say.
Would they get bored being in the same environment for three years doing the
same things with the same materials?
How does that work?
Just explain that maybe.
So for me personally, I can't really speak to other Montessori teachers,
but what I've personally done to just make sure that that isn't a problem
is how you cycle the shelves out.
So there are some staple like core materials that are not going anywhere.
Like I, I know that like when you think of Montessori or at least Hopefully when
you do think of Montessori, you think of the little pink tower that Maria
designed, and hopefully that's a picture that you've seen and are familiar with.
That's part of a sensorial curriculum.
That's the name of the curriculum.
That curriculum and those like three or four shelves that I have,
they're never going to change.
They were designed and built by Maria herself, and they are very deeply
rooted in like a million different, you can do language and geography
and art and all sorts of other stuff with just those shelves alone.
And there's many different ways to dive into just one material on that shelf.
Language, there's a couple staple core materials in the language area,
like how we teach initial letter presentations and then the movable.
alphabet And there's just a couple things that are never,
ever going to leave the room.
And then the math curriculum is pretty locked down.
Like, there are just some things and some shelves that will
never, ever get rearranged.
But the geography and the art and the fine motor and the cultural and the, um, Like
seasonal materials, they're all going to change and they change every three years.
So something like, for instance, North America, which is what we are.
We've been learning for all of September and most of
actually all of October as well.
It's going away in a couple weeks that won't come back
out for another three years.
Which is a, there is stuff on that shelf that will meet a three year
old's needs and a six year old's needs on the entire shelf of North America.
And then we're going to move on and we're going to study South America.
And South America has not been out for three years, so none of the children
in this room have encountered South America yet, if that makes sense.
And I just put out solar system, and the solar system shelf has
not been out for three years.
So I try to keep everything on a three year cycle, so that at some
point throughout the children's lives in their time in my room,
they're going to get everything
if that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense.
So, What are some common misconceptions about Montessori
education that you often encounter?
Um,
I think one of the biggest ones we've already touched
on is just the free for all.
And I literally think, and there are genuinely people out there, I think, who
think that the children just walk in the door and it's just It's absolute chaos for
eight hours a day, and then I send them home, which is just so far from the truth.
Um, and the other, the other one you've already touched on of just how, like, how
on earth are we able to even meet academic standards if they are a free for all?
Like, how does that work?
Um, not really so much of a misconception, but just something that is really
hard for people to wrap their minds around is how it's possible for me
to sit down with a child one on one.
And just let the other 23 kids go free.
That's a really hard concept for people to wrap their minds around.
They don't quite understand how it's possible to fully remove
myself from the situation.
That is something you just genuinely have to see in action.
It is almost near.
I've tried to explain it in a million different ways in a
million different videos online.
And I just think it's something if you, if that is where you're stuck on.
Go observe a Montessori classroom and watch her or him just sit
down and pull themselves away from everything and watch the kids just
keep going as if nothing is going on.
It's totally normal to them.
Um, and then I think the other misconception is just
based on the fact that.
Maria was asked to patent her method and she ultimately chose not to.
So essentially, there is no quote right way and wrong way to do things.
So you are going to find, um, some Montessori schools aren't
necessarily Montessori schools.
Essentially, anybody can take the name Montessori, slap it on the side of a
building, put wooden materials out on the shelf and say, look, you're Montessori.
Yes, it worries me, yeah.
Yeah.
Um, so there's just some vetting that might need to happen if.
If you are, if it is someone who's genuinely looking at either teaching
in one or just sending their children to one, there's a lot of back, like,
behind the scenes work that might need to happen on that end, just to
make sure you're actually choosing one that is something that if Maria
was still alive, she would approve of.
So yeah, those would be my big ones.
I think I would be wary of that because I've seen it even where I, I live, you
know, you'd see a building come up and it's a new, it's a new childcare center
and then they'd have Montessori on the side and I'm thinking, yeah, I don't know
if you really are Montessori, you know, and I think you're right for parents.
And you've just touched on this now because I was going to say to you, what
advice would you give parents and teachers who are considering Montessori education?
I guess one of the things that you would consider is to check out whether they
truly are aligned with Montessori values and whether they really have the actual
Montessori materials, because I know Montessori has very specific materials
in terms of teaching various things.
It's You know, whereas in other schools or non Montessori you can basically use
anything, but Montessori is very strict on the type of materials that they use.
Uh, I think I'm right on that, right?
Tell me if I'm wrong.
Um, if you,
oh, what was I was going to say now?
Um, uh, Montessori, thank God for editing.
Um, I can't remember my train, I, I, I stopped my own train of thought there.
Um,
Is there anything else, Alex, that you think is really important for people
listening to this episode that they should really know about Montessori?
That's something that, because I can see that you feel so
passionate about Montessori.
Is there anything that you want to say to people about Montessori that you
think that they should know if they want to bring their kids there, if they
want to teach in a Montessori school?
Anything, what else do you want to, this is your plug for Montessori, so to speak.
I
think my biggest takeaway that I, if anyone could take anything away,
it's just to not be, don't be so close minded and, and be open minded.
Um, there is a lot of like, Misconceptions and a lot of weird stigmas about
it from, for whatever reason, and about a hundred of them are false.
And, um, I learned that myself at one point or another, and I've
witnessed other people realize, Oh, so this is what you do.
And they're There is just so many misconceptions and a lot of them can go
away by just scheduling an observation So if you do find a school in your
area That is genuinely montessori and they are doing everything they can to
uphold what maria would have thought Would have been true and right and
just ask them call them up say hey I'm interested whether it's for being a
teacher or sending your children there.
Let them know what you're interested in and just ask for an observation.
And almost every one of them will allow you to come in.
They'll allow you to sit in a chair with a clipboard and a piece of paper, and they
will just allow you to take it all in.
And there is truly no better way to actually understand what on earth
goes on in a Montessori classroom than just sitting in a chair.
It was, I hold on to that very first observation I ever, I ever witnessed.
I cling to that one.
It was, One of the most beautiful things I've ever witnessed, and if
it wasn't for that I don't think I'd still, like, I'd be here today.
So you would be shocked at what you'll see and what the children are capable of if
you just sit in a chair and take notes.
It's wonderful.
And Alex, is that moment, is that what made you want to be a Montessori teacher?
Originally a traditional, I just say a traditional, you know, a non
Montessori teacher, traditional teacher.
You were originally, that's where you started, right?
So what was it that made you change to Montessori?
Um, so I was studied at a four year college to be a traditional.
teacher And that's what I thought I was going to do my whole life.
I thought I was going to be like a second or a third grade teacher.
That sounded like the dream.
Um, and in America, we get placed to student teach for like six to eight weeks
or sometimes 12 weeks, depending on your major, um, right before you graduate.
And so I got the letter for my student teaching placement and in the letter,
it said the name of the school and it just said kindergarten on it.
And I was like, okay, sweet.
This is great.
But I did not go to college in the same town I was from.
And so I mentioned it to a friend who was born and raised in that town.
And I said, Hey, this is the school I got placed at.
What do you know about it?
And I just remember the look on their face and they were like, Oh, you know,
that's a Montessori school, right?
Like I'll never forget the look on his face.
And I was like, Oh no.
And I was.
furious like in that moment I was so mad that my traditional college
would place me to student teach in a Montessori school without telling me
and without preparing me for it and I was to this day I was the only The only
one that I know of that they place like to student teach there, which baffles
me to this day, somehow providential.
Yeah, and I just sent an email to my teacher that was my cooperating teacher
and I expressed my concern and I said, Hey, like, I'm not really a mom, like I
know nothing about the montessori method.
I'm so sorry that I got placed with you.
What do you want me to do to make sure I'm prepared?
And she was so kind and she just emailed back and was like, Oh my gosh, no worries.
Like come in and observe.
Like, so I observed in December before my January term started and she actually
had me observe for three straight hours.
They get to work for three straight hours in the morning and normal
observations for anybody else would be probably about an hour.
But, um, I sat in that chair And I can think of three kids off the top
of my head who I was just in shock.
They were like three and they were not once did she even say like she
didn't, she didn't talk to them because they were functioning so.
independently.
for three straight hours.
They did not need help.
They did not need guidance.
They did not need redirection.
They just knew exactly what to do and they did it.
And it was unreal.
I can see those kids to this day.
It was, I'm pretty sure I teared up in that moment because I had
never seen anything like it before.
And I had just done a practicum in like a third grade classroom where I still
had third graders that would come up to me and be like, So what do I do next?
Like they just couldn't problem solve of like what came next and I
watched this three year old child know exactly what to do next and
then do it and it was mind blowing.
Oh my gosh, I missed out Alex.
I really want to go to the Montessori school.
Oh, it sounds so wonderful.
Uh, listen, Alex, before we go, um, it's been amazing.
It's been just so, so wonderful and enlightening to listen to you.
And it's also just made me feel really sad that I don't have a
Montessori, um, education and I don't have a Montessori training.
Because I think it would have just been lovely to teach in a Montessori school.
Tell people where they can find you.
Uh, what do you tell people where they can find you?
Because I also know that you offer things in terms of Montessori training to people.
Is that correct?
So tell people where they can get hold of you and how you can help them.
Sure, my handle's just missnearingsmontessori.
It's on TikTok and on Instagram.
It's also a website, so the same website.
If there are any questions or any concerns or any problems that you see and you
just want a couple minutes spent with me walking you through something, there is
a link on that website for just like, A little time with me on a zoom call just
asking or answering questions or working through a frustration It i've worked
with a whole bunch of people who either are montessori teachers and they're
struggling with something or who want to send their kids to montessori and
want to know how to prepare them or just struggle or have kids in the montessori
school and are struggling with them and there's all sorts of walks of life and
so it's really cool to be able to walk through all of those with everyone.
But yeah.
That's amazing and we will put,
I will put links to all your, to your website and your Instagram handle.
I'll put all that.
in the show notes for anybody listening, so you don't have to worry about that.
Alex, thanks so much for being here today and sharing your vast
knowledge about Montessori and your passion with everybody.
It's so much appreciated and so welcome as well at this time where
I think there's so much going on in education and people are concerned.
So I think Montessori is an Just fabulous way to address anybody's problems.
So I just love the idea of Montessori and thank you so much for sharing
your passion with us today.
Thank you for having me.
I really loved this.
Anytime.
And I'm really looking forward to maybe in the future we'll have you on again.
Who knows?
So I'm just going to stop the recording.
Or two.
Today on Blooming Curious, I am super excited to welcome Alex Peterson.
Alex is a Montessori teacher dedicated to fostering a love
of learning in young children.
Under the handle Miss Nearing's Montessori, Alex creates
engaging educational content.
on tiktok and Instagram, sharing creative teaching strategies, hands
on activities, and insights into the Montessori approach through her content.
Alex connects with parents and educators, making learning
accessible and fun for everyone.
She holds a bachelor's degree in early childhood and elementary education, and
has a background in special education.
She holds her AMS primary three to six certificate from the Montessori education
center of the Rockies in beautiful.
Denver, Colorado.
Welcome to Blooming Curious, Alex.
Thank you for having me.
It's such a pleasure.
I am so excited.
Um, for anybody listening who doesn't know, I found Alex on Instagram
and Alex is a prolific creator.
And every day there's some very cheerful.
Teaching going on about the Montessori and what the children
in her Montessori class are doing.
So this is what drew me in and I just thought this is amazing.
This is exactly what Blooming Curious is about.
It's about curiosity and learning and children loving what they're doing.
So I'm very excited.
So Alex, for those of us that are unfamiliar and haven't got a clue or
have never spent time in a Montessori classroom, explain to us what
Montessori education is and really how is it different from a traditional
classroom or a traditional teaching?
Sure.
So, when you think of a traditional classroom, you typically think of a
teacher who's kind of in charge of the learning and she plans lessons
or he plans lessons each day.
And every day you show up and there's a scheduled time block
that you have a math activity or a language lesson or a science lesson.
And, um, back in the early, like, early 1800s, a woman named Maria Montessori Um,
spent some time, uh, she was a scientist in Italy, actually, and she was one of
the first women scientists ever in Italy.
And because of that, she was actually placed in a, like what they referred
to at the time as like a mental asylum to work with children who
are essentially outcasts of society.
They did not fit the general mold of the traditional education
system in Italy at the time.
And during her time there, she observed that when children were able to work
with tactile materials and spend time.
playing games and learning through games and play and going at their own pace and
choosing what they get to do each day.
They were more likely to learn because they were in charge of their learning.
So through a very long period of time of her observation, she was able to develop
this huge method where the children are essentially the leaders of the classroom.
And so that method is carried on today.
She has.
completely taken over the education world all over the world.
These schools popped up from Italy, and then they just exploded.
So they've all made it in almost every continent at this point.
And essentially it is the complete opposite of a traditional school.
So you take everything you've ever learned in a traditional school, throw it all out
the window and completely level it down.
Which is what I had to do because I did get my degree in Um, traditional
education before I entered Montessori.
So I literally threw everything away that I knew and started all the way over.
And when you think of how a traditional school day is run, when the children
enter in a Montessori classroom, they go immediately right to what they want to do.
Right away when they walk in the door and it's what they want to do essentially
with freedom within limits all day long with me acting as a simple guide.
So we actually are not even called teachers in the Montessori world.
They call us guides.
And my job is to simply connect the child to the materials in the
room based on who they are as a person and what I observe in them.
And I just guide them in their learning.
They are the, they are the bosses.
They're in charge.
I just kind of find the things that meet the needs of where
they're at in their life.
And I, I kind of step by step, bring them around through a
full curriculum in the room.
Okay.
So now.
The first question I'm having is I'm thinking about what teachers are
thinking in a traditional setting or parents who send kids to traditional
settings, and they're thinking, well, how do they meet curriculum outcomes?
If kids are just playing and doing their own thing, and you're there
as a guide, helping them with the materials, for example, how are
you going to meet the outcomes?
Because Montessori, I think, goes, Well, I guess it depends on the location or
the school, but they do go right through to the end of high school, don't they?
Mine actually does, yes.
So we have all the way up through high school in mine.
So how would, how would you explain that to parents or other teachers?
Is, how do you then meet your curriculum outcomes, um, if kids
are just free ranging, so to speak?
So some people might think, well, that's just free range learning.
Yeah, we often get the, uh, the stigma that we're just like a bunch of
essentially hippies, you know, that just kind of let our kids do whatever we want.
But, um, the heavy hitting point is that there are, there is freedom
and the children really are free to do whatever they want within
a very strict series of limits.
And the room itself provides a deep range of limits.
Whether it's just simply where things go on the shelf and how you return
everything to the shelf Every shelf has an order and the order is sequential
from top to bottom left to right and everything builds on itself in the shelf
Um, my job is to ensure that they aren't goofing off and are actually doing
what they should be doing So I need to have a deep understanding of just
pedagogy in general and like academic standards in general um, and then The
whole, the whole layout of the room is almost to trick the child into learning.
So when you think of traditional education standards, my job is to give
them those standards and teach them in a way where they almost don't realize.
that they're learning because we are just having fun, whether we're playing a game
and we're learning letters, whether I'm coloring with them and we're learning
numbers, there's just a series of ways that I can present a lesson to a child
just to make sure that I'm keeping them on track and exactly where they should be.
We follow all the state standards in my, in my state personally,
which align standards almost across the globe, like universally.
Um, and all of the materials in every classroom always start about a
half year lower than what the child would be when they enter the room.
So we have materials that that could potentially meet the needs
of a two and a half year old child.
And then the lot like the upper end of a room like mine would
go all the way to first grade.
So it's awesome that a child can go as far as they want or as slow as they want.
And we keep them on track, but at the pace that kind of meets them
the best, if that makes sense.
And then we fill in the gaps where necessary.
So if I notice that a child is only doing anything in the
math for two days straight.
I'm going to guide them into language on that third day to make sure that
they're meeting the language area.
And then maybe we'll head towards geography that fourth day so that by
the full whole five day week, they will have hit every subject area by the
time they walk out the door on Friday.
If that makes sense.
Okay.
So the other thing I want to then ask is, um, do children ever do whole group
or do you ever do whole group lessons like a math session, for example, or a
phonics session to the whole class, or, or is it just following the individual
children as they're going through their learning at their own pace?
Developmentally, the, the child before about the age of six.
If you really look at who they are as a person, that's when you start hearing
like, that's mine, like, and they don't like to share, so they care a lot
about how the world pertains to them.
So I'm going to structure the majority of my lessons, just me one
on one with an individual child.
As they get older, they start Clipping a plane of development and
then they start caring about the whole, how can we collectively come
to a conclusion about something?
How can we work together?
So when that, when I get a, like a late five year old, early six year
old child in the room, I will start teaching lessons to those children as
a small group, but I will never do a massive phonics lesson to the whole.
The whole group of kids, just because a six year old child is genuinely very
different than a three year old child, and they're, they have different needs.
We do do a group time in the middle of the day.
Um, we just do calendar, and we check the weather, and we sing songs.
If there's a concert coming up, we might practice songs for the concert coming up.
Um, but when it comes to the academic lessons, There's really not a whole
lot that we do in a whole group.
Right now we're actually studying the continent of North America and we have a
grandma who, um, is from Mexico actually.
She was born and raised in Mexico and she made Mexican, like this Mexican
dessert for us and she brought us in toys.
So we had this whole group lesson about what it was like to grow up in Mexico.
And so sometimes when it's a cultural thing and we can learn about
the culture that's beneficial to anyone of any age group everywhere.
And so those kind of things I love to do whole group because it's.
It's very cool to just experience that as a community, but when it
comes to like math lessons and language lessons and geography and
art and all that stuff, typically it's going to be more one on one.
Okay.
That's interesting.
And so I know that the Montessori is also, and you've just mentioned it,
Montessori places this very big emphasis on preparing the environment and you
were talking a lot about your materials.
So what is the design that goes into the classroom and How does that then
contribute to the child's learning?
If you ever set foot in a Montessori classroom, you'll notice that there
is literally nothing, even on the walls, placed above the child's height.
picture frame, every table, every chair, everything is going to be
sitting lower or at the child's height, except for maybe two chairs in the
room that I can sit in to observe.
Um, so even when the child walks in the door, it's their home and they already
feel like Everything is at their height.
They never have to reach for anything.
They never have to go out of their way to go into this crazy
location to find something.
And everything on the shelves are always fully prepared for them.
So let's say it's an art lesson and they're going to need glue and scissors.
The tray is going to be already prepared with glue and scissors and
the paper they might need to glue it.
So they're never going to need to come and find me.
To help like have me go search out a glue stick that I've hidden way at the
top of a cupboard way up high So they know that when they go to choose to
do something in the room, it's already ready for them It's ready to go.
There is no need to ask a teacher to intervene which gives them this deep
sense of like independence and I can Do it and she trusts that I can do
it, which puts this huge weight on the child to do it correctly like that.
I am trusting them.
They know I'm trusting them.
I'm trusting 'em with a pair of scissors to use it correctly.
Mm-hmm.
That's a pretty big deal to a 3-year-old.
So when when you have the weight of that responsibility, you're gonna find that.
That just in and of that, they're going to want to use the material correctly
or they're going to lose it, you know, I'm not going to put out scissors if
they're going to cut their friend's hair.
Simple as that.
So there's like, you know, freedom within limits.
They can have the scissors.
You just can't go in the corner and cut your friend's hair or you can't cut.
You know, the plants apart or whatever it is.
Um, we also use a lot of natural materials.
So you'll, you'll notice there's a lot of wood and a lot of
glass and very minimal plastic.
Um, which is kind of where the whole like beige thing comes in.
I don't know if you've ever heard that stigma.
There's a lot of color, but it's not a lot of plastic color.
Um, and so when you're working with glass or ceramics or
anything breakable, especially with like a three year old child.
If it drops, it's going to shatter.
It's not a plastic sippy cup.
If you're running and you're not being careful and you're carrying
a glass vase and you slip and fall because you made the choice to run.
It's going to shatter all over the floor.
And guess what?
Every child is now turning their head to look at the child who's dropped
the vase which can be kind of an embarrassing experience for that child.
But it's also self correcting in that it makes them not want to
run the next time or not want to carry the thing with one hand.
And next time they're going to use two.
So there's just a lot of like little things that I can put into the room
where Where it's that thing doing all the correcting and so it's not just me
nagging them like you need to use walking feet like instead of me saying that.
They just know to use walking feet because they're carrying something
that could shatter when they drop it.
And it's really cool to watch like a three year old child.
After that, every three year old child is going to shatter something.
It's inevitable.
We do break glass.
It happens.
But after about a month and a half into the school year, after all
the glass has kind of broken and we all fell to the floor, it is
the coolest thing in the world.
To watch the most rowdy three year old child choose to walk slowly
while they carry something breakable.
It's like the coolest thing to watch and most people don't even believe that
it's possible, but it's really cool.
So just in and of itself, like how the room is laid out, like I will structure
the shelves, so I like prevent a racetrack in the room, so they have to walk.
or they're going to run into a shelf.
I make sure that I structure like the way that the sunlight hits certain
tables so that it's not blinding the child so they choose to work over there.
There's just like a ridiculous amount of floor plan that will go into
how I lay out the room and where I put the materials also matter.
It's it's pretty cool.
It sounds really cool.
So it sounds also to me like your biggest job as a teacher
is actually your pre teaching.
It's your it's your planning of how of the materials you're going to
use, how you're going to display them, where you're going to put them.
Uh, and you obviously.
Thinking about your curriculum and your materials that you're
using or that are accessible to children linked to the curriculum.
So it sounds to me that it's just flipped from a traditional classroom setting.
Although teachers in traditional settings also obviously have to plan,
also obviously have to plan and prepare.
But there's also a big emphasis on the actual teaching in the moment, you know,
you've got your big class teaching, your group teaching and all that kind of stuff.
But I think there's more emphasis by what I can pick up here from you is
your pre teaching, your, your planning behind because your environment plays
such a massive role in the teaching.
So that's super, super interesting.
And also what I liked what you've just said is that.
In the good old days before the invention of plastic kids actually ate off
the same plates and drank out of the same cups and glasses as adults did.
And there wasn't this thing of, you have to have a sippy cup and a plastic
plate and all this kind of thing.
So I think it actually is a respect for the child and also it teaches the child.
Responsibility, because they've got the same responsibility in taking care of
things and using things as an adult has.
So I think that that
is really powerful, to be honest.
Yeah, we also, we have a whole curriculum area, actually, that's
just called care of the environment.
And it is just that, like sweeping, mopping, washing the tables,
washing the floors, watering the plants, dusting the shelves.
There is just an entire shelf that exists in my room.
So that they can take care of the space they live in.
Like we have mops, I have brooms, I have watering cans, like anything that could
be cleaned, they have the ability to clean it so they know that this space is theirs
and it's theirs also to take care of.
It's not just my job, it's our job as a community.
We do laundry, we do the dishes, like it's their job to take care of
everything just as much as it is my job.
So how do you organize eating and food times then?
Do children still bring their own food in?
And then do you, I saw on one of your, one of your videos on Instagram,
actually, you were talking about how you actually sit with your
children and eat in the classroom.
So you eat at the tables where you're learning and they've obviously
bringing in food from home, but you're talking about doing the dishes.
So you're talking about if you.
Did something, were you preparing a food, for example, as part of a lesson that
kids clean up that after themselves?
Yeah, so there's multiple food aspects.
Kids love food.
Don't forget,
Montessori is Italian, so of course, I mean, Italian and food
automatically goes together, right?
You wouldn't be able to separate the two at all.
I've
actually never put that together before.
That is so true.
Um, so we actually have a whole curriculum that's just dedicated
to learning how to prepare food.
We call it food preparation.
So it's just a sequence of activities that the children can learn, like
banana cutting, apple cutting, slicing, peeling, what you name it.
The sky's the limit.
I've made pizza with the kids.
We've made muffins, smoothies, oatmeal, like the sky is essentially the limit.
I did eggs, hard boiled eggs.
Like it just depends on the allergies in the class and what you can provide.
Right now I'm able to do peanuts.
So they're learning how to crack peanuts because we do not have a
single peanut allergy in the whole school this year, which is so cool.
That is
lucky.
I've been able to do that before.
So this is my first time ever learning, having them learn how
to like crack open a peanut.
It's awesome.
Um, so they have that and that's available to them and that
changes as the year goes on.
I, I'll switch out the trays.
It'll get increasingly harder, more multi steps.
They're responsible for cleaning all of that afterwards as well.
We also have a, um, a grant from the United States government that provides
us with like fresh fruit and vegetables.
every week Um, so whatever is seasonal, the whole goal is that
the kids, they want the children to try new fruits and veggies.
So we try to follow the seasonal pattern of what's in season right now.
Um, and that's what we eat for snack.
And so they're able to eat snack at any point in the morning or the
afternoon, whenever their body is hungry.
They can just choose to eat.
There's like a designated table in my classroom that's It's the only circle
table in my room and it only has two chairs and there's one waiting chair.
So only two friends can actually be eating at a time.
But if the snack table is open or if the waiting chair is open, they are free.
If their stomach is growling, they can just stand up from
what they're doing and go eat.
So there is not like a structured, like.
Everybody gets their snack from their backpack and we all sit down and eat it.
But they can definitely bring their own snack.
And a lot of children do choose to bring extra food if they're like hungry or going
through a growing spurt or whatever it is.
Um, so they can eat snack whenever.
They can also do food prep whenever in the morning or the afternoon.
And then when it comes time for lunch.
We do have, like, actual adult sized ceramic plates, juice cups, and then,
like, bowls and forks and spoons and knives that you would see in a home, just,
like, literally I bought them at Walmart, so they are as natural and real and
authentic to a home as they would come.
They're responsible for setting their own table spot up at lunch.
They get a placemat that they have to lay down below it.
They learn where the fork goes, the knife and the spoon, how the plate sits on the
placemat, where the cup and the bowl go.
Um, then they can serve themselves lunch.
If they do choose to eat lunch, at my school at least, they can have
like the school provided lunch.
We have a full time cook and an assistant cook and they make.
An assortment of also lovely things for the school.
Um, so they can choose the hot lunch option or they can bring their own lunch
if they do not like the hot lunch option, but they're ha still having school lunch.
They can get a pb and j as the substitute out for the protein.
So it's a pretty healthy mixture of who brings their own lunch.
Who eats hot lunch and who chooses the p, d and J?
It's almost like, like 33% split across the board right now for this.
For this specific group of kids, every year is different.
And then we do eat at those tables that we've been working on all morning.
So we sit down, we eat there.
At the end of lunch, when it's time to be dismissed from lunch, they are
responsible for cleaning everything.
So their placemat needs to go back into the laundry bin, because we're going
to do laundry at the end of the day.
I do have a washer and dryer that are in my classroom, so we do
laundry at the end of the day.
It's a job, so two children are assigned to learn.
Oh
my gosh.
Load the soap up, put the laundry in, start the washer and dryer.
Man, are they experts at that.
They love doing the washer and dryer.
They're so good at it.
Um, for like legal reasons, even though we wash our dishes in dish
buckets with soap and like water, like a rinse bucket, they're still not
legally clean because they're children.
So we do have to load them up and actually send them to the kitchen
where the kitchen like actually runs them through the dishwasher.
More of a process over product thing.
They do incredible at it.
It's just not, it's not legally correct, which is fine.
And then once the kitchen actually washes them legally, they'll send them back down.
And another job at the end of our day is to actually unload the dish cart.
So put all the dishes back on the dish cabinet for the, like the following day.
Um, so yeah, it's really cool to like watch how the routine of like.
I can totally step back and I do not help them clean up from lunch one bit.
And even my little two and a half year old that I have this year
can do everything all by herself.
They are rock stars at it by now.
And you know, this just comes back to the thing that I always say is
that we do not trust children enough.
We don't give them enough credit because they are actually really, really capable.
It does my head in.
I cannot tell you how infuriating I find it when I see a parent carrying a
child's backpack because I'm thinking.
What message are you giving your child?
You're telling your child that they're not capable of carrying their own backpack.
You can't do that, sweetie.
You're not, you're not strong enough.
You're not capable enough.
It drives me insane.
Or even carrying them into school.
I have always been interested by when a parent carries the kid into school.
You've now made the choice for the child to enter the building.
That's the one I've always been interested in.
Let them walk.
Let them choose to enter the building.
It's their, it's their school.
Let them choose to, like, you let them choose.
I
find it just so great, so amazing that In your school, and I'm sure
it's probably in every Montessori school would be the same, right?
Well, you'd hope so anyway, that you really do give children that
credit, that they are capable beings.
They're capable of chopping up their food.
They're capable of cleaning up.
They're capable of looking after themselves or following a routine.
And you really are instilling the sense of independence and this can
do attitude in them, which I think a lot of children at some point.
I always get frustrated because sometimes you have a feeling that
they think that it's your job to just top them up, that they don't have any
responsibility in their own learning.
And so I think this kind of strategy and this methodology is really
important in giving children that message that you are a capable being.
We respect you and we, and we believe in you that you are capable
of doing these things on your own.
And I think that is an amazing message.
And I think that more schools need to do that.
And I love so much how you, how the kids set tables and sit and eat at tables.
That is just so amazing because I don't know how much input
you have with the families.
But one of the things that I've seen and you read a lot about now
is that kids don't sit together and eat as a family anymore.
That whole family time's disappearing.
So at least then they don't get that at home, which is
incredibly sad if they're not.
At least they get it at school and they learn that, you know, this is how you
sit properly, this is how you have, you know, your cutlery, where it goes.
This, I think those are really important things and that we're losing.
But I think with ways of what you guys are doing in Montessori, and I
wish that all schools would do that.
I think you give that back to children, which I think is so special.
I really do.
That is so special.
And I say that as a mum as well, you know, that's always been something
really important in our family, is that.
We have always, always, always sat at the table and had dinner together.
There are times like maybe on a Friday night when the kids were
younger, we'd have family movie night and we'd have a pizza or whatever,
um, in front of the television, but that is a very rare occurrence.
But I think that sitting together as a family at a dinner
table is really important.
And I think that's also important in a school setting.
Um, and I think that beats any day having kids just sit on the floor.
Opening their lunch boxes and eating their lunch, because I think that's
just pretty gross, but I understand that that's also a space thing and
they aren't, the setup isn't, I guess.
in some schools like you guys have it there.
I want to talk to you because you've mentioned a few times you have things,
uh, children from you said two and a half year old right through to six year old.
How does, how your mixed age classrooms, how do they function
and, and what have you seen?
How does that benefit all age children having being in that mixed age?
environment
I
think my biggest argument for mixed age classrooms is like a workplace.
No workplaces are just straight everybody's the same age.
They're all multi age.
We can all learn something from somebody younger than us, somebody the same
age as us, and somebody older than us.
And, I will never forget my very first observation in a Montessori
environment watching multi age kids because it's so easy to pick out
the older ones and the younger ones, not just based on their size alone,
but you can see it and who they are.
And the older ones just become this like matriarch or
patriarch of the, of the room.
And if they have been in that room for the full time, like when they
started as a three year old, then they were there as a four year old
and a five year old, and then they turn six, the rules never change.
I never change.
The room hasn't changed.
Like they are experts.
Like they've got it down pat.
You are hardly recorrecting them minimally, of course, because
there's always the goofing off.
But for the most part, they've got it down.
And they just become a helper.
So they go out of their way to make sure that the little ones are seen and heard
and helped and understood and doing the right thing and staying on track.
And sometimes they'll like show them a lesson because they're so proud of
something they've already mastered.
That's not like way below their age level now.
And some of the best friendships I've personally witnessed in children.
Are a six year old child and like a three or four year old
child, specifically in the girls.
I see it a lot with the girls.
Man, are those six year old girls just like angelic to the three year olds?
And it's always fascinating when I have a three year old who's just really
struggling being at school, whether they start the year and they're crying and they
have separation anxiety or whatever it is.
When they become a six year old and they've moved past a separation and
they come in the door, no problem.
And it's an easy peasy transition.
they start to see those little three year olds who do struggle and they're
immediately their buddy because they like see the past version of themselves in that
child and they know how to help them and they know what they need because that's
what they needed when they were their age and it is just man is it like the most
beautiful thing there's like hardly ever any problems i have lots of siblings in
the room so i'll have the older sibling and the younger sibling because of the
multi ages and for the most part it's It is just, it is the coolest thing.
It's so cool because they just know that what a three year old needs
is not what a six year old needs.
And everybody just knows and they understand that.
And it's, it's really cool to watch.
And listen, Alex, I just had a thought, um, so do those children stay with you
until they're six and then they move on to another classroom or another teacher?
So some of those kids could be with you for three years.
And so in terms of your materials and stuff.
I guess then the materials would be, some of them would be for younger
age children and some of them would be for older age children.
I think you probably mentioned that, possibly you've touched
on that before earlier.
Um, so when they're younger, they could still have access to all the materials.
So are they repeating things?
You know, I'm just thinking from someone who's not a Montessori person might say.
Would they get bored being in the same environment for three years doing the
same things with the same materials?
How does that work?
Just explain that maybe.
So for me personally, I can't really speak to other Montessori teachers,
but what I've personally done to just make sure that that isn't a problem
is how you cycle the shelves out.
So there are some staple like core materials that are not going anywhere.
Like I, I know that like when you think of Montessori or at least Hopefully when
you do think of Montessori, you think of the little pink tower that Maria
designed, and hopefully that's a picture that you've seen and are familiar with.
That's part of a sensorial curriculum.
That's the name of the curriculum.
That curriculum and those like three or four shelves that I have,
they're never going to change.
They were designed and built by Maria herself, and they are very deeply
rooted in like a million different, you can do language and geography
and art and all sorts of other stuff with just those shelves alone.
And there's many different ways to dive into just one material on that shelf.
Language, there's a couple staple core materials in the language area,
like how we teach initial letter presentations and then the movable.
alphabet And there's just a couple things that are never,
ever going to leave the room.
And then the math curriculum is pretty locked down.
Like, there are just some things and some shelves that will
never, ever get rearranged.
But the geography and the art and the fine motor and the cultural and the, um, Like
seasonal materials, they're all going to change and they change every three years.
So something like, for instance, North America, which is what we are.
We've been learning for all of September and most of
actually all of October as well.
It's going away in a couple weeks that won't come back
out for another three years.
Which is a, there is stuff on that shelf that will meet a three year
old's needs and a six year old's needs on the entire shelf of North America.
And then we're going to move on and we're going to study South America.
And South America has not been out for three years, so none of the children
in this room have encountered South America yet, if that makes sense.
And I just put out solar system, and the solar system shelf has
not been out for three years.
So I try to keep everything on a three year cycle, so that at some
point throughout the children's lives in their time in my room,
they're going to get everything
if that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense.
So, What are some common misconceptions about Montessori
education that you often encounter?
Um,
I think one of the biggest ones we've already touched
on is just the free for all.
And I literally think, and there are genuinely people out there, I think, who
think that the children just walk in the door and it's just It's absolute chaos for
eight hours a day, and then I send them home, which is just so far from the truth.
Um, and the other, the other one you've already touched on of just how, like, how
on earth are we able to even meet academic standards if they are a free for all?
Like, how does that work?
Um, not really so much of a misconception, but just something that is really
hard for people to wrap their minds around is how it's possible for me
to sit down with a child one on one.
And just let the other 23 kids go free.
That's a really hard concept for people to wrap their minds around.
They don't quite understand how it's possible to fully remove
myself from the situation.
That is something you just genuinely have to see in action.
It is almost near.
I've tried to explain it in a million different ways in a
million different videos online.
And I just think it's something if you, if that is where you're stuck on.
Go observe a Montessori classroom and watch her or him just sit
down and pull themselves away from everything and watch the kids just
keep going as if nothing is going on.
It's totally normal to them.
Um, and then I think the other misconception is just
based on the fact that.
Maria was asked to patent her method and she ultimately chose not to.
So essentially, there is no quote right way and wrong way to do things.
So you are going to find, um, some Montessori schools aren't
necessarily Montessori schools.
Essentially, anybody can take the name Montessori, slap it on the side of a
building, put wooden materials out on the shelf and say, look, you're Montessori.
Yes, it worries me, yeah.
Yeah.
Um, so there's just some vetting that might need to happen if.
If you are, if it is someone who's genuinely looking at either teaching
in one or just sending their children to one, there's a lot of back, like,
behind the scenes work that might need to happen on that end, just to
make sure you're actually choosing one that is something that if Maria
was still alive, she would approve of.
So yeah, those would be my big ones.
I think I would be wary of that because I've seen it even where I, I live, you
know, you'd see a building come up and it's a new, it's a new childcare center
and then they'd have Montessori on the side and I'm thinking, yeah, I don't know
if you really are Montessori, you know, and I think you're right for parents.
And you've just touched on this now because I was going to say to you, what
advice would you give parents and teachers who are considering Montessori education?
I guess one of the things that you would consider is to check out whether they
truly are aligned with Montessori values and whether they really have the actual
Montessori materials, because I know Montessori has very specific materials
in terms of teaching various things.
It's You know, whereas in other schools or non Montessori you can basically use
anything, but Montessori is very strict on the type of materials that they use.
Uh, I think I'm right on that, right?
Tell me if I'm wrong.
Um, if you,
oh, what was I was going to say now?
Um, uh, Montessori, thank God for editing.
Um, I can't remember my train, I, I, I stopped my own train of thought there.
Um,
Is there anything else, Alex, that you think is really important for people
listening to this episode that they should really know about Montessori?
That's something that, because I can see that you feel so
passionate about Montessori.
Is there anything that you want to say to people about Montessori that you
think that they should know if they want to bring their kids there, if they
want to teach in a Montessori school?
Anything, what else do you want to, this is your plug for Montessori, so to speak.
I
think my biggest takeaway that I, if anyone could take anything away,
it's just to not be, don't be so close minded and, and be open minded.
Um, there is a lot of like, Misconceptions and a lot of weird stigmas about
it from, for whatever reason, and about a hundred of them are false.
And, um, I learned that myself at one point or another, and I've
witnessed other people realize, Oh, so this is what you do.
And they're There is just so many misconceptions and a lot of them can go
away by just scheduling an observation So if you do find a school in your
area That is genuinely montessori and they are doing everything they can to
uphold what maria would have thought Would have been true and right and
just ask them call them up say hey I'm interested whether it's for being a
teacher or sending your children there.
Let them know what you're interested in and just ask for an observation.
And almost every one of them will allow you to come in.
They'll allow you to sit in a chair with a clipboard and a piece of paper, and they
will just allow you to take it all in.
And there is truly no better way to actually understand what on earth
goes on in a Montessori classroom than just sitting in a chair.
It was, I hold on to that very first observation I ever, I ever witnessed.
I cling to that one.
It was, One of the most beautiful things I've ever witnessed, and if
it wasn't for that I don't think I'd still, like, I'd be here today.
So you would be shocked at what you'll see and what the children are capable of if
you just sit in a chair and take notes.
It's wonderful.
And Alex, is that moment, is that what made you want to be a Montessori teacher?
Originally a traditional, I just say a traditional, you know, a non
Montessori teacher, traditional teacher.
You were originally, that's where you started, right?
So what was it that made you change to Montessori?
Um, so I was studied at a four year college to be a traditional.
teacher And that's what I thought I was going to do my whole life.
I thought I was going to be like a second or a third grade teacher.
That sounded like the dream.
Um, and in America, we get placed to student teach for like six to eight weeks
or sometimes 12 weeks, depending on your major, um, right before you graduate.
And so I got the letter for my student teaching placement and in the letter,
it said the name of the school and it just said kindergarten on it.
And I was like, okay, sweet.
This is great.
But I did not go to college in the same town I was from.
And so I mentioned it to a friend who was born and raised in that town.
And I said, Hey, this is the school I got placed at.
What do you know about it?
And I just remember the look on their face and they were like, Oh, you know,
that's a Montessori school, right?
Like I'll never forget the look on his face.
And I was like, Oh no.
And I was.
furious like in that moment I was so mad that my traditional college
would place me to student teach in a Montessori school without telling me
and without preparing me for it and I was to this day I was the only The only
one that I know of that they place like to student teach there, which baffles
me to this day, somehow providential.
Yeah, and I just sent an email to my teacher that was my cooperating teacher
and I expressed my concern and I said, Hey, like, I'm not really a mom, like I
know nothing about the montessori method.
I'm so sorry that I got placed with you.
What do you want me to do to make sure I'm prepared?
And she was so kind and she just emailed back and was like, Oh my gosh, no worries.
Like come in and observe.
Like, so I observed in December before my January term started and she actually
had me observe for three straight hours.
They get to work for three straight hours in the morning and normal
observations for anybody else would be probably about an hour.
But, um, I sat in that chair And I can think of three kids off the top
of my head who I was just in shock.
They were like three and they were not once did she even say like she
didn't, she didn't talk to them because they were functioning so.
independently.
for three straight hours.
They did not need help.
They did not need guidance.
They did not need redirection.
They just knew exactly what to do and they did it.
And it was unreal.
I can see those kids to this day.
It was, I'm pretty sure I teared up in that moment because I had
never seen anything like it before.
And I had just done a practicum in like a third grade classroom where I still
had third graders that would come up to me and be like, So what do I do next?
Like they just couldn't problem solve of like what came next and I
watched this three year old child know exactly what to do next and
then do it and it was mind blowing.
Oh my gosh, I missed out Alex.
I really want to go to the Montessori school.
Oh, it sounds so wonderful.
Uh, listen, Alex, before we go, um, it's been amazing.
It's been just so, so wonderful and enlightening to listen to you.
And it's also just made me feel really sad that I don't have a
Montessori, um, education and I don't have a Montessori training.
Because I think it would have just been lovely to teach in a Montessori school.
Tell people where they can find you.
Uh, what do you tell people where they can find you?
Because I also know that you offer things in terms of Montessori training to people.
Is that correct?
So tell people where they can get hold of you and how you can help them.
Sure, my handle's just missnearingsmontessori.
It's on TikTok and on Instagram.
It's also a website, so the same website.
If there are any questions or any concerns or any problems that you see and you
just want a couple minutes spent with me walking you through something, there is
a link on that website for just like, A little time with me on a zoom call just
asking or answering questions or working through a frustration It i've worked
with a whole bunch of people who either are montessori teachers and they're
struggling with something or who want to send their kids to montessori and
want to know how to prepare them or just struggle or have kids in the montessori
school and are struggling with them and there's all sorts of walks of life and
so it's really cool to be able to walk through all of those with everyone.
But yeah.
That's amazing and we will put,
I will put links to all your, to your website and your Instagram handle.
I'll put all that.
in the show notes for anybody listening, so you don't have to worry about that.
Alex, thanks so much for being here today and sharing your vast
knowledge about Montessori and your passion with everybody.
It's so much appreciated and so welcome as well at this time where
I think there's so much going on in education and people are concerned.
So I think Montessori is an Just fabulous way to address anybody's problems.
So I just love the idea of Montessori and thank you so much for sharing
your passion with us today.
Thank you for having me.
I really loved this.
Anytime.
And I'm really looking forward to maybe in the future we'll have you on again.
Who knows?
So I'm just going to stop the recording.
And,, back in the early, like, early 1800s, a woman named Maria Montessori
spent some time, uh, she was a scientist in Italy, actually, and she was one of
the first women scientists ever in Italy.
And because of that, she was actually placed in a, like what they referred
to at the time as like a mental asylum to work with children who
are essentially outcasts of society.
They did not fit the general mold of the traditional education
system in Italy at the time.
And during her time there, she observed that when children were able to work
with tactile materials and spend time.
playing games and learning through games and play and going at their own pace and
choosing what they get to do each day.
They were more likely to learn because they were in charge of their learning.
So through a very long period of time of her observation, she was able to develop
this huge method where the children are essentially the leaders of the classroom.
And so that method is carried on today.
She has completely taken over the education world all over the world.
These schools popped up from Italy, and then they just exploded.
So they've all made it in almost every continent at this point.
And essentially it is the complete opposite of a traditional school.
So you take everything you've ever learned in a traditional school, throw it all out
the window and completely level it down.
Which is what I had to do because I did get my degree in traditional
education before I entered Montessori.
So I literally threw everything away that I knew and started all the way over.
And when you think of how a traditional school day is run, when the children
enter in a Montessori classroom, they go immediately right to what they want to do.
Right away when they walk in the door and it's what they want to do essentially
with freedom within limits all day long with me acting as a simple guide.
So we actually are not even called teachers in the Montessori world.
They call us guides.
And my job is to simply connect the child to the materials in the
room based on who they are as a person and what I observe in them.
And I just guide them in their learning.
They are the, they are the bosses.
They're in charge.
I just kind of find the things that meet the needs of where
they're at in their life.
And I, I kind of step by step, bring them around through a
full curriculum in the room.
Okay.
So now.
The first question I'm having is I'm thinking about what teachers are
thinking in a traditional setting or parents who send kids to traditional
settings, and they're thinking, well, how do they meet curriculum outcomes?
If kids are just playing and doing their own thing, and you're there
as a guide, helping them with the materials, for example, how are
you going to meet the outcomes?
Because Montessori, I guess it depends on the location or the school,
but they do go right through to the end of high school, don't they?
Mine actually does, yes.
So we have all the way up through high school in mine.
So how would, how would you explain that to parents or other teachers?
Is, how do you then meet your curriculum outcomes, if kids are
just free ranging, so to speak?
So some people might think, well, that's just free range learning.
Yeah, we often get the, the stigma that we're just like a bunch of essentially
hippies, you know, that just kind of let our kids do whatever we want.
But, the heavy hitting point is that there is freedom and the children
really are free to do whatever they want within a very strict series of limits.
And the room itself provides a deep range of limits.
Whether it's just simply where things go on the shelf and how you return
everything to the shelf Every shelf has an order and the order is sequential
from top to bottom left to right and everything builds on itself in the shelf
Um, my job is to ensure that they aren't goofing off and are actually doing
what they should be doing So I need to have a deep understanding of just
pedagogy in general and like academic standards in general . And then the
whole, the whole layout of the room is almost to trick the child into learning.
So when you think of traditional education standards, my job is to give them those
standards and teach them in a way where they almost don't realize that they're
learning because we are just having fun, whether we're playing a game and we're
learning letters, whether I'm coloring with them and we're learning numbers,
there's just a series of ways that I can present a lesson to a child just
to make sure that I'm keeping them on track and exactly where they should be.
We follow all the state standards , in my state personally, which align standards
almost across the globe, like universally.
And all of the materials in every classroom always start about a
half year lower than what the child would be when they enter the room.
So we have materials that could potentially meet the needs of a
two and a half year old child.
And then the lot like the upper end of a room like mine would
go all the way to first grade.
So it's awesome that a child can go as far as they want or as slow as they want.
And we keep them on track, but at the pace that kind of meets them
the best, if that makes sense.
And then we fill in the gaps where necessary.
So if I notice that a child is only doing anything in the
math for two days straight.
I'm going to guide them into language on that third day to make sure that
they're meeting the language area.
And then maybe we'll head towards geography that fourth day so that by
the full whole five day week, they will have hit every subject area by the
time they walk out the door on Friday.
If that makes sense.
Okay.
So the other thing I want to then ask is, do children ever do whole group
or do you ever do whole group lessons like a math session, for example, or a
phonics session to the whole class, or is it just following the individual
children as they're going through their learning at their own pace?
Developmentally, the child before about the age of six.
If you really look at who they are as a person, that's when you start hearing
like, that's mine, like, and they don't like to share, so they care a lot
about how the world pertains to them.
So I'm going to structure the majority of my lessons, just me one
on one with an individual child.
As they get older, they start clipping a plane of development and
then they start caring about the whole, how can we collectively come
to a conclusion about something?
How can we work together?
So when that, when I get a, like a late five year old, early six year old child
in the room, I will start teaching lessons to those children as a small group, but I
will never do a massive phonics lesson to
the whole group of kids, just because a six year old child is genuinely very
different than a three year old child, and they're, they have different needs.
We do do a group time in the middle of the day.
We just do calendar, and we check the weather, and we sing songs.
If there's a concert coming up, we might practice songs for the concert coming up.
But when it comes to the academic lessons, There's really not a whole
lot that we do in a whole group.
Right now we're actually studying the continent of North America and we have
a grandma who, is from Mexico actually.
She was born and raised in Mexico and she made like this Mexican dessert
for us and she brought us in toys.
So we had this whole group lesson about what it was like to grow up in Mexico.
And so sometimes when it's a cultural thing and we can learn about
the culture that's beneficial to anyone of any age group everywhere.
And so those kind of things I love to do whole group because it's very cool
to just experience that as a community, but when it comes to like math lessons
and language lessons and geography and art and all that stuff, typically
it's going to be more one on one.
That's interesting.
And so I know that Montessori places this very big emphasis on
preparing the environment and you were talking a lot about your materials.
So what is the design that goes into the classroom and how does that then
contribute to the child's learning?
If you ever set foot in a Montessori classroom, you'll notice that there
is literally nothing, even on the walls, placed above the child's height.
picture frame, every table, every chair, everything is going to be
sitting lower or at the child's height, except for maybe two chairs in the
room that I can sit in to observe.
So even when the child walks in the door, it's their home and they already
feel like everything is at their height.
They never have to reach for anything.
They never have to go out of their way to go into this crazy
location to find something.
And everything on the shelves are always fully prepared for them.
So let's say it's an art lesson and they're going to need glue and scissors.
The tray is going to be already prepared with glue and scissors and
the paper they might need to glue it.
So they're never going to need to come and find me.
To help like have me go search out a glue stick that I've hidden way at the
top of a cupboard way up high So they know that when they go to choose to
do something in the room, it's already ready for them It's ready to go.
There is no need to ask a teacher to intervene which gives them this deep
sense of like independence and I can do it and she trusts that I can do
it, which puts this huge weight on the child to do it correctly like that.
I am trusting them.
They know I'm trusting them.
I'm trusting 'em with a pair of scissors to use it correctly.
. That's a pretty big deal to a 3-year-old.
So when when you have the weight of that responsibility, you're gonna find that
that just in and of that, they're going to want to use the material correctly
or they're going to lose it, you know, I'm not going to put out scissors if
they're going to cut their friend's hair.
Simple as that.
So there's like, you know, freedom within limits.
They can have the scissors.
You just can't go in the corner and cut your friend's hair or you can't cut you
know, the plants apart or whatever it is.
We also use a lot of natural materials.
So you'll notice there's a lot of wood and a lot of glass
and very minimal plastic.
Which is kind of where the whole like beige thing comes in.
I don't know if you've ever heard that stigma.
There's a lot of color, but it's not a lot of plastic color.
And so when you're working with glass or ceramics or anything breakable,
especially with like a three year old child if it drops, it's going to shatter.
It's not a plastic sippy cup.
If you're running and you're not being careful and you're carrying a glass
vase and you slip and fall because you made the choice to run, it's
going to shatter all over the floor.
And guess what?
Every child is now turning their head to look at the child who's dropped
the vase, which can be kind of an embarrassing experience for that child.
But it's also self correcting in that it makes them not want to
run the next time or not want to carry the thing with one hand.
And next time they're going to use two.
So there's just a lot of like little things that I can put into the room
where it's that thing doing all the correcting and so it's not just me
nagging them like you need to use walking feet like instead of me saying that,
they just know to use walking feet because they're carrying something
that could shatter when they drop it.
And it's really cool to watch like a three year old child.
After that, every three year old child is going to shatter something.
It's inevitable.
We do break glass.
It happens.
But after about a month and a half into the school year, after
all the glass has kind of broken and we all fell to the floor, it
is the coolest thing in the world
to watch the most rowdy three year old child choose to walk slowly
while they carry something breakable.
It's like the coolest thing to watch and most people don't even believe that
it's possible, but it's really cool.
So just in and of itself, like how the room is laid out, like I will structure
the shelves, so I like prevent a racetrack in the room, so they have to walk
or they're going to run into a shelf.
I make sure that I structure like the way that the sunlight hits certain
tables so that it's not blinding the child so they choose to work over there.
There's just like a ridiculous amount of floor plan that will go into
how I lay out the room and where I put the materials also matter.
It's it's pretty cool.
It sounds really cool.
So it sounds also to me like your biggest job as a teacher
is actually your pre teaching.
It's your it's your planning of how of the materials you're going to
use, how you're going to display them, where you're going to put them.
Uh, and you obviously thinking about your curriculum and your materials that
you're using or that are accessible to children linked to the curriculum.
So it sounds to me that it's just flipped from a traditional classroom setting.
Although teachers in traditional settings also obviously have to plan and prepare.
But there's also a big emphasis on the actual teaching in the moment, you know,
you've got your big class teaching, your group teaching and all that kind of stuff.
But I think there's more emphasis by what I can pick up here from you is
your pre teaching, your, your planning behind because your environment plays
such a massive role in the teaching.
So that's super, super interesting.
And also what I liked what you've just said is that in the good old days before
the invention of plastic, kids actually ate off the same plates and drank out of
the same cups and glasses as adults did.
And there wasn't this thing of, you have to have a sippy cup and a plastic
plate and all this kind of thing.
So I think it actually is a respect for the child and also it teaches the child
responsibility, because they've got the same responsibility in taking care of
things and using things as an adult has.
So I think that that
is really powerful, to be honest.
Yeah, we also, we have a whole curriculum area, actually, that's
just called care of the environment.
And it is just that, like sweeping, mopping, washing the tables,
washing the floors, watering the plants, dusting the shelves.
There is just an entire shelf that exists in my room
so that they can take care of the space they live in.
Like we have mops, I have brooms, I have watering cans, like anything that could
be cleaned, they have the ability to clean it so they know that this space is theirs
and it's theirs also to take care of.
It's not just my job, it's our job as a community.
We do laundry, we do the dishes, like it's their job to take care of
everything just as much as it is my job.
So how do you organize eating and food times then?
Do children still bring their own food in?
And then do you, I saw on one of your, one of your videos on Instagram,
actually, you were talking about how you actually sit with your
children and eat in the classroom.
So you eat at the tables where you're learning and they've obviously
bringing in food from home, but you're talking about doing the dishes.
So you're talking about if you did something, were you preparing a food,
for example, as part of a lesson that kids clean up themselves?
Yeah, so there's multiple food aspects.
Kids love food.
Don't forget,
Montessori is Italian, so of course, I mean, Italian and food
automatically goes together, right?
You wouldn't be able to separate the two at all.
I've
actually never put that together before.
That is so true.
Um, so we actually have a whole curriculum that's just dedicated
to learning how to prepare food.
We call it food preparation.
So it's just a sequence of activities that the children can learn, like
banana cutting, apple cutting, slicing, peeling, what you name it.
The sky's the limit.
I've made pizza with the kids.
We've made muffins, smoothies, oatmeal, like the sky is essentially the limit.
I did eggs, hard boiled eggs.
Like it just depends on the allergies in the class and what you can provide.
Right now I'm able to do peanuts.
So they're learning how to crack peanuts because we do not have a
single peanut allergy in the whole school this year, which is so cool.
That is lucky.
I've been able to do that before.
So this is my first time ever learning, having them learn how
to like crack open a peanut.
It's awesome.
So they have that and that's available to them and that changes as the year goes on.
I, I'll switch out the trays.
It'll get increasingly harder, more multi steps.
They're responsible for cleaning all of that afterwards as well.
We also have a, a grant from the United States government that provides us
with like fresh fruit and vegetables
every week um, so whatever is seasonal, the whole goal is that
the kids, they want the children to try new fruits and veggies.
So we try to follow the seasonal pattern of what's in season right
now, and that's what we eat for snack.
And so they're able to eat snack at any point in the morning or the
afternoon, whenever their body is hungry.
They can just choose to eat.
There's like a designated table in my classroom that's It's the only circle
table in my room and it only has two chairs and there's one waiting chair.
So only two friends can actually be eating at a time.
But if the snack table is open or if the waiting chair is open, they are free.
If their stomach is growling, they can just stand up from
what they're doing and go eat.
So there is not like a structured, like everybody gets their snack from their
backpack and we all sit down and eat it.
But they can definitely bring their own snack.
And a lot of children do choose to bring extra food if they're like hungry or going
through a growing spurt or whatever it is.
Um, so they can eat snack whenever.
They can also do food prep whenever in the morning or the afternoon.
And then when it comes time for lunch.
We do have, like, actual adult sized ceramic plates, juice cups, and then,
like, bowls and forks and spoons and knives that you would see in a home, just,
like, literally I bought them at Walmart, so they are as natural and real and
authentic to a home as they would come.
They're responsible for setting their own table spot up at lunch.
They get a placemat that they have to lay down below it.
They learn where the fork goes, the knife and the spoon, how the plate sits on the
placemat, where the cup and the bowl go.
Um, then they can serve themselves lunch.
If they do choose to eat lunch, at my school at least, they can have
like the school provided lunch.
We have a full time cook and an assistant cook and they make an assortment of
also lovely things for the school.
So they can choose the hot lunch option or they can bring their own lunch if they
do not like the hot lunch option, but they're ha still having school lunch.
They can get a pb and j as the substitute out for the protein.
So it's a pretty healthy mixture of who brings their own lunch.
Who eats hot lunch and who chooses the p, d and J?
It's almost like, like 33% split across the board right now for this.
For this specific group of kids, every year is different.
And then we do eat at those tables that we've been working on all morning.
So we sit down, we eat there.
At the end of lunch, when it's time to be dismissed from lunch, they are
responsible for cleaning everything.
So their placemat needs to go back into the laundry bin, because we're going
to do laundry at the end of the day.
I do have a washer and dryer that are in my classroom, so we do
laundry at the end of the day.
It's a job, so two children are assigned to learn.
Oh my gosh.
Load the soap up, put the laundry in, start the washer and dryer.
Man, are they experts at that.
They love doing the washer and dryer.
They're so good at it.
For like legal reasons, even though we wash our dishes in dish buckets
with soap and like water, like a rinse bucket, they're still not legally
clean because they're children.
So we do have to load them up and actually send them to the kitchen
where the kitchen like actually runs them through the dishwasher.
More of a process over product thing.
They do incredible at it.
It's just not, it's not legally correct, which is fine.
And then once the kitchen actually washes them legally, they'll send them back down.
And another job at the end of our day is to actually unload the dish cart.
So put all the dishes back on the dish cabinet for the, like the following day.
Um, so yeah, it's really cool to like watch how the routine of like I can
totally step back and I do not help them clean up from lunch one bit.
And even my little two and a half year old that I have this year
can do everything all by herself.
They are rock stars at it by now.
And you know, this just comes back to the thing that I always say is
that we do not trust children enough.
We don't give them enough credit because they are actually really, really capable.
It does my head in.
I cannot tell you how infuriating I find it when I see a parent carrying a
child's backpack because I'm thinking
what message are you giving your child?
You're telling your child that they're not capable of carrying their own backpack.
You can't do that, sweetie.
You're not, you're not strong enough.
You're not capable enough.
It drives me insane.
Or even carrying them into school.
I have always been interested by when a parent carries the kid into school.
You've now made the choice for the child to enter the building.
That's the one I've always been interested in.
Let them walk.
Let them choose to enter the building.
It's their school.
Let them choose to, like, you let them choose.
I find it just so great, so amazing that In your school, and I'm sure
it's probably in every Montessori school would be the same, right?
Well, you'd hope so anyway, that you really do give children that
credit, that they are capable beings.
They're capable of chopping up their food.
They're capable of cleaning up.
They're capable of looking after themselves or following a routine.
And you really are instilling the sense of independence and this can
do attitude in them, which I think a lot of children at some point,
I always get frustrated because sometimes you have a feeling that
they think that it's your job to just top them up, that they don't have any
responsibility in their own learning.
And so I think this kind of strategy and this methodology is really
important in giving children that message that you are a capable being.
We respect you and we believe in you that you are capable of
doing these things on your own.
And I think that is an amazing message.
And I think that more schools need to do that.
And I love so much how you, how the kids set tables and sit and eat at tables.
I think those are really important things and that we're losing.
But I think what you guys are doing in Montessori, and I wish
that all schools would do that.
I think you give that back to children, which I think is so special.
I really do.
That is so special.
And I say that as a mum as well, you know, that's always been something
really important in our family, I think that sitting together as a family
at a dinner table is really important.
I want to talk to you because you've mentioned a few times you have children
from you said two and a half year old right through to six year old.
How does, your mixed age classrooms, how do they function and what have you seen?
How does that benefit all children being in that mixed age environment?
I think my biggest argument for mixed age classrooms is like a workplace.
No workplaces are just straight everybody's the same age.
They're all multi age.
We can all learn something from somebody younger than us, somebody the same
age as us, and somebody older than us.
And, I will never forget my very first observation in a Montessori
environment watching multi age kids because it's so easy to pick out
the older ones and the younger ones, not just based on their size alone,
but you can see it and who they are.
And the older ones just become this like matriarch or patriarch , of the room.
And if they have been in that room for the full time, like when they
started as a three year old, then they were there as a four year old
and a five year old, and then they turn six, the rules never change.
I never change.
The room hasn't changed.
Like they are experts.
Like they've got it down pat.
You are hardly recorrecting them minimally, of course, because
there's always the goofing off.
But for the most part, they've got it down.
And they just become a helper.
So they go out of their way to make sure that the little ones are seen and heard
and helped and understood and doing the right thing and staying on track.
And sometimes they'll like show them a lesson because they're so proud of
something they've already mastered.
That's not like way below their age level now.
And some of the best friendships I've personally witnessed in
children, are a six year old child and like a three or four year old
child, specifically in the girls.
I see it a lot with the girls.
Man, are those six year old girls just like angelic to the three year olds?
And it's always fascinating when I have a three year old who's just really
struggling being at school, whether they start the year and they're crying and they
have separation anxiety or whatever it is.
When they become a six year old and they've moved past a separation and
they come in the door, no problem.
And it's an easy peasy transition.
they start to see those little three year olds who do struggle and they're
immediately their buddy because they like see the past version of themselves
in that child and they know how to help them and they know what they need
because that's what they needed when they were their age and it is just man
is it like the most beautiful thing there's like hardly ever any problems.
I have lots of siblings in the room so i'll have the older sibling and
the younger sibling because of the multi ages and for the most part it's
it is just, it is the coolest thing.
It's so cool because they just know that what a three year old needs
is not what a six year old needs.
And everybody just knows and they understand that.
And it's, it's really cool to watch.
And listen, Alex, I just had a thought, so do those children stay with you until
they're six and then they move on to another classroom or another teacher?
So some of those kids could be with you for three years.
And so in terms of your materials and stuff.
I guess then the materials would be, some of them would be for younger
age children and some of them would be for older age children.
I think you probably mentioned that, possibly you've touched
on that before earlier.
So when they're younger, they could still have access to all the materials.
So are they repeating things?
I'm just thinking from someone who's not a Montessori person might say.
Would they get bored being in the same environment for three years doing the
same things with the same materials?
How does that work?
Just explain that maybe.
So for me personally, I can't really speak to other Montessori teachers,
but what I've personally done to just make sure that that isn't a problem
is how you cycle the shelves out.
So there are some staple like core materials that are not going anywhere.
Like I, I know that like when you think of Montessori or at least hopefully when
you do think of Montessori, you think of the little pink tower that Maria
designed, and hopefully that's a picture that you've seen and are familiar with.
That's part of a sensorial curriculum.
That's the name of the curriculum.
That curriculum and those like three or four shelves that I have,
they're never going to change.
They were designed and built by Maria herself, and they are very deeply
rooted in like a million different, you can do language and geography
and art and all sorts of other stuff with just those shelves alone.
And there's many different ways to dive into just one material on that shelf.
Language, there's a couple staple core materials in the language area, like how
we teach initial letter presentations and then the movable alphabet and
there's just a couple things that are never, ever going to leave the room.
And then the math curriculum is pretty locked down.
Like, there are just some things and some shelves that will
never, ever get rearranged.
But the geography and the art and the fine motor and the cultural and the, like
seasonal materials, they're all going to change and they change every three years.
So something like, for instance, North America, which is what
we've been learning for all of September and most of
actually all of October as well.
It's going away in a couple weeks that won't come back
out for another three years.
Which is a, there is stuff on that shelf that will meet a three year
old's needs and a six year old's needs on the entire shelf of North America.
And then we're going to move on and we're going to study South America.
And South America has not been out for three years, so none of the children
in this room have encountered South America yet, if that makes sense.
And I just put out solar system, and the solar system shelf has
not been out for three years.
So I try to keep everything on a three year cycle, so that at some
point throughout the children's lives in their time in my room,
they're going to get everything
if that makes sense.
That makes perfect sense.
So, What are some common misconceptions about Montessori
education that you often encounter?
I think one of the biggest ones we've already touched
on is just the free for all.
And I literally think, and there are genuinely people out there, I think, who
think that the children just walk in the door and it's just It's absolute chaos for
eight hours a day, and then I send them home, which is just so far from the truth.
And the other, the other one you've already touched on of just how, like, how
on earth are we able to even meet academic standards if they are a free for all?
Like, how does that work?
Um, not really so much of a misconception, but just something that is really
hard for people to wrap their minds around is how it's possible for me
to sit down with a child one on one.
And just let the other 23 kids go free.
That's a really hard concept for people to wrap their minds around.
They don't quite understand how it's possible to fully remove
myself from the situation.
That is something you just genuinely have to see in action.
I've tried to explain it in a million different ways in a
million different videos online.
And I just think it's something if you, if that is where you're stuck on.
Go observe a Montessori classroom and watch her or him just sit
down and pull themselves away from everything and watch the kids just
keep going as if nothing is going on.
It's totally normal to them.
Um, and then I think the other misconception is
just based on the fact that
Maria was asked to patent her method and she ultimately chose not to.
So essentially, there is no quote right way and wrong way to do things.
So you are going to find, um, some Montessori schools aren't
necessarily Montessori schools.
Essentially, anybody can take the name Montessori, slap it on the side of a
building, put wooden materials out on the shelf and say, look, you're Montessori.
Yes, it worries me, yeah.
Yeah.
Um, So there's just some vetting that might need to happen if it is someone
who's genuinely looking at either teaching in one or just sending their
children to one, there's a lot of back, like, behind the scenes work that
might need to happen on that end, just to make sure you're actually choosing
one that is something that if Maria was still alive, she would approve of.
So yeah, those would be my big ones.
I think I would be wary of that because I've seen it even where I
live, you'd see a building come up and it's a new childcare center and
then they'd have Montessori on the side and I'm thinking, yeah, I don't
know if you really are Montessori.
And I think you're right for parents,
and you've just touched on this now because I was going to say to you, what
advice would you give parents and teachers who are considering Montessori education,
I guess one of the things that you would consider is to check out whether they
truly are aligned with Montessori values and whether they really have the actual
Montessori materials, because I know Montessori has very specific materials
in terms of teaching various things.
Whereas in other schools or non Montessori you can basically use
anything, but Montessori is very strict on the type of materials that they use.
Is there anything else, Alex, that you think is really important for
people listening to this episode that they should really know about
Montessori, because I can see that you feel so passionate about Montessori.
Is there anything that you want to say to people about Montessori this is
your plug for Montessori, so to speak.
I think my biggest takeaway that I, if anyone could take anything away,
it's just to not be, don't be so close minded and, and be open minded.
There is a lot of like, misconceptions and a lot of weird stigmas about
it from, for whatever reason, and about a hundred of them are false.
And, I learned that myself at one point or another, and I've
witnessed other people realize, Oh, so this is what you do.
There is just so many misconceptions and a lot of them can go away by just scheduling
an observation So if you do find a school in your area that is genuinely
montessori and they are doing everything they can to uphold what Maria would have
thought would have been true and right and just ask them call them up say hey
I'm interested whether it's for being a teacher or sending your children there.
Let them know what you're interested in and just ask for an observation.
And almost every one of them will allow you to come in.
They'll allow you to sit in a chair with a clipboard and a piece of paper, and they
will just allow you to take it all in.
And there is truly no better way to actually understand what on earth
goes on in a Montessori classroom than just sitting in a chair.
I hold on to that very first observation I ever witnessed.
I cling to that one.
It was, one of the most beautiful things I've ever witnessed, and
if it wasn't for that I don't think I'd still, be here today.
So you would be shocked at what you'll see and what the children are capable of if
you just sit in a chair and take notes.
It's wonderful.
And Alex, is that moment, is that what made you want to be a Montessori teacher?
So I was studied at a four year college to be a traditional teacher and that's
what I thought I was going to do my whole life I thought I was going to be
like a second or a third grade teacher.
That sounded like the dream.
And in America, we get placed to student teach for like six to eight weeks or
sometimes 12 weeks, depending on your major,, right before you graduate.
And so I got the letter for my student teaching placement and in the letter,
it said the name of the school and it just said kindergarten on it.
And I was like, okay, sweet.
This is great.
But I did not go to college in the same town I was from.
And so I mentioned it to a friend who was born and raised in that town.
And I said, Hey, this is the school I got placed at.
What do you know about it?
And I just remember the look on their face and they were like, Oh, you know,
that's a Montessori school, right?
Like I'll never forget the look on his face.
And I was like, Oh no.
And I was.
furious like in that moment I was so mad that my traditional college would place
me to student teach in a Montessori school without telling me and without preparing
me for it and I was to this day I was the only one that I know of that they place
like to student teach there, which baffles me to this day, somehow providential.
Yeah, and I just sent an email to my teacher that was my cooperating
teacher and I expressed my concern and I said, Hey, like, I know
nothing about the montessori method.
I'm so sorry that I got placed with you.
What do you want me to do to make sure I'm prepared?
And she was so kind and she just emailed back and was like, Oh my gosh, no worries.
Like come in and observe.
Like, so I observed in December before my January term started and she actually
had me observe for three straight hours.
They get to work for three straight hours in the morning and normal
observations for anybody else would be probably about an hour.
But, um, I sat in that chair And I can think of three kids off the top
of my head who I was just in shock.
They were like three and they were not once did she even say like she
didn't talk to them because they were functioning so independently
for three straight hours.
They did not need help.
They did not need guidance.
They did not need redirection.
They just knew exactly what to do and they did it.
And it was unreal.
I can see those kids to this day.
It was, I'm pretty sure I teared up in that moment because I had
never seen anything like it before.
And I had just done a practicum in like a third grade classroom where I still
had third graders that would come up to me and be like, So what do I do next?
Like they just couldn't problem solve of like what came next and I
watched this three year old child know exactly what to do next and
then do it and it was mind blowing.
Oh my gosh, I missed out Alex.
I really want to go to the Montessori school.
Oh, it sounds so wonderful.
Uh, listen, Alex, before we go, it's been amazing.
It's been just so wonderful and enlightening to listen to you.
And it's also just made me feel really sad that I don't have a Montessori training.
Because I think it would have just been lovely to teach in a Montessori school.
Tell people where they can find you.
Because I also know that you offer things in terms of Montessori training to people.
Is that correct?
So tell people where they can get hold of you and how you can help them.
Sure, my handle's just missnearingsmontessori.
It's on TikTok and on Instagram.
It's also a website, so the same website.
If there are any questions or any concerns or any problems that you see
and you just want a couple minutes spent with me walking you through something,
there is a link on that website for just like a little time with me on a zoom
call just asking or answering questions or working through a frustration.
i've worked with a whole bunch of people who either are montessori teachers and
they're struggling with something or who want to send their kids to montessori and
want to know how to prepare them or just struggle or have kids in the montessori
school and are struggling with them and there's all sorts of walks of life and
so it's really cool to be able to walk through all of those with everyone.
I will put links to your website and your Instagram handle.
I'll put all that.
in the show notes for anybody listening, so you don't have to worry about that.
Alex, thanks so much for being here today and sharing your vast knowledge about
Montessori and your passion with everybody
it's so much appreciated and so welcome as well at this time where
I think there's so much going on in education and people are concerned.
So I think Montessori is an just fabulous way to address anybody's problems.
So I just love the idea of Montessori and thank you so much for sharing
your passion with us today.
Thank you for having me.
I really loved this.
Or two.
Today on Blooming Curious, I am super excited to welcome Alex Peterson.
Alex is a Montessori teacher dedicated to fostering a love
of learning in young children.
Under the handle Miss Nearing's Montessori, Alex creates
engaging educational content.
on tiktok and Instagram, sharing creative teaching strategies, hands
on activities, and insights into the Montessori approach through her content.
Alex connects with parents and educators, making learning
accessible and fun for everyone.
She holds a bachelor's degree in early childhood and elementary education, and
has a background in special education.
She holds her AMS primary three to six certificate from the Montessori education
center of the Rockies in beautiful.
Denver, Colorado.
Welcome to Blooming Curious, Alex.
Thank you for having me.
It's such a pleasure.
I am so excited.
Um, for anybody listening who doesn't know, I found Alex on Instagram
and Alex is a prolific creator.
And every day there's some very cheerful.
Teaching going on about the Montessori and what the children
in her Montessori class are doing.
So this is what drew me in and I just thought this is amazing.
This is exactly what Blooming Curious is about.
It's about curiosity and learning and children loving what they're doing.
So I'm very excited.
So Alex, for those of us that are unfamiliar and haven't got a clue or
have never spent time in a Montessori classroom, explain to us what
Montessori education is and really how is it different from a traditional
classroom or a traditional teaching?
Sure.
So, when you think of a traditional classroom, you typically think of a
teacher who's kind of in charge of the learning and she plans lessons
or he plans lessons each day.
And every day you show up and there's a scheduled time block
that you have a math activity or a language lesson or a science lesson.
And, um, back in the early, like, early 1800s, a woman named Maria Montessori Um,
spent some time, uh, she was a scientist in Italy, actually, and she was one of
the first women scientists ever in Italy.
And because of that, she was actually placed in a, like what they referred
to at the time as like a mental asylum to work with children who
are essentially outcasts of society.
They did not fit the general mold of the traditional education
system in Italy at the time.
And during her time there, she observed that when children were able to work
with tactile materials and spend time.
playing games and learning through games and play and going at their own pace and
choosing what they get to do each day.
They were more likely to learn because they were in charge of their learning.
So through a very long period of time of her observation, she was able to develop
this huge method where the children are essentially the leaders of the classroom.
And so that method is carried on today.
She has.
completely taken over the education world all over the world.
These schools popped up from Italy, and then they just exploded.
So they've all made it in almost every continent at this point.
And essentially it is the complete opposite of a traditional school.
So you take everything you've ever learned in a traditional school, throw it all out
the window and completely level it down.
Which is what I had to do because I did get my degree in Um, traditional
education before I entered Montessori.
So I literally threw everything away that I knew and started all the way over.
And when you think of how a traditional school day is run, when the children
enter in a Montessori classroom, they go immediately right to what they want to do.
Right away when they walk in the door and it's what they want to do essentially
with freedom within limits all day long with me acting as a simple guide.
So we actually are not even called teachers in the Montessori world.
They call us guides.
And my job is to simply connect the child to the materials in the
room based on who they are as a person and what I observe in them.
And I just guide them in their learning.
They are the, they are the bosses.
They're in charge.
I just kind of find the things that meet the needs of where
they're at in their life.
And I, I kind of step by step, bring them around through a
full curriculum in the room.
Okay.
So now.
The first question I'm having is I'm thinking about what teachers are
thinking in a traditional setting or parents who send kids to traditional
settings, and they're thinking, well, how do they meet curriculum outcomes?
If kids are just playing and doing their own thing, and you're there
as a guide, helping them with the materials, for example, how are
you going to meet the outcomes?
Because Montessori, I think, goes, Well, I guess it depends on the location or
the school, but they do go right through to the end of high school, don't they?
Mine actually does, yes.
So we have all the way up through high school in mine.
So how would, how would you explain that to parents or other teachers?
Is, how do you then meet your curriculum outcomes, um, if kids
are just free ranging, so to speak?
So some people might think, well, that's just free range learning.
Yeah, we often get the, uh, the stigma that we're just like a bunch of
essentially hippies, you know, that just kind of let our kids do whatever we want.
But, um, the heavy hitting point is that there are, there is freedom
and the children really are free to do whatever they want within
a very strict series of limits.
And the room itself provides a deep range of limits.
Whether it's just simply where things go on the shelf and how you return
everything to the shelf Every shelf has an order and the order is sequential
from top to bottom left to right and everything builds on itself in the shelf
Um, my job is to ensure that they aren't goofing off and are actually doing
what they should be doing So I need to have a deep understanding of just
pedagogy in general and like academic standards in general um, and then The
whole, the whole layout of the room is almost to trick the child into learning.
So when you think of traditional education standards, my job is to give
them those standards and teach them in a way where they almost don't realize.
that they're learning because we are just having fun, whether we're playing a game
and we're learning letters, whether I'm coloring with them and we're learning
numbers, there's just a series of ways that I can present a lesson to a child
just to make sure that I'm keeping them on track and exactly where they should be.
We follow all the state standards in my, in my state personally,
which align standards almost across the globe, like universally.
Um, and all of the materials in every classroom always start about a
half year lower than what the child would be when they enter the room.
So we have materials that that could potentially meet the needs
of a two and a half year old child.
And then the lot like the upper end of a room like mine would
go all the way to first grade.
So it's awesome that a child can go as far as they want or as slow as they want.
And we keep them on track, but at the pace that kind of meets them
the best, if that makes sense.
And then we fill in the gaps where necessary.
So if I notice that a child is only doing anything in the
math for two days straight.
I'm going to guide them into language on that third day to make sure that
they're meeting the language area.
And then maybe we'll head towards geography that fourth day so that by
the full whole five day week, they will have hit every subject area by the
time they walk out the door on Friday.
If that makes sense.
Okay.
So the other thing I want to then ask is, um, do children ever do whole group
or do you ever do whole group lessons like a math session, for example, or a
phonics session to the whole class, or, or is it just following the individual
children as they're going through their learning at their own pace?
Developmentally, the, the child before about the age of six.
If you really look at who they are as a person, that's when you start hearing
like, that's mine, like, and they don't like to share, so they care a lot
about how the world pertains to them.
So I'm going to structure the majority of my lessons, just me one
on one with an individual child.
As they get older, they start Clipping a plane of development and
then they start caring about the whole, how can we collectively come
to a conclusion about something?
How can we work together?
So when that, when I get a, like a late five year old, early six year
old child in the room, I will start teaching lessons to those children as
a small group, but I will never do a massive phonics lesson to the whole.
The whole group of kids, just because a six year old child is genuinely very
different than a three year old child, and they're, they have different needs.
We do do a group time in the middle of the day.
Um, we just do calendar, and we check the weather, and we sing songs.
If there's a concert coming up, we might practice songs for the concert coming up.
Um, but when it comes to the academic lessons, There's really not a whole
lot that we do in a whole group.
Right now we're actually studying the continent of North America and we have a
grandma who, um, is from Mexico actually.
She was born and raised in Mexico and she made Mexican, like this Mexican
dessert for us and she brought us in toys.
So we had this whole group lesson about what it was like to grow up in Mexico.
And so sometimes when it's a cultural thing and we can learn about
the culture that's beneficial to anyone of any age group everywhere.
And so those kind of things I love to do whole group because it's.
It's very cool to just experience that as a community, but when it
comes to like math lessons and language lessons and geography and
art and all that stuff, typically it's going to be more one on one.
Okay.
That's interesting.
And so I know that the Montessori is also, and you've just mentioned it,
Montessori places this very big emphasis on preparing the environment and you
were talking a lot about your materials.
So what is the design that goes into the classroom and How does that then
contribute to the child's learning?
If you ever set foot in a Montessori classroom, you'll notice that there
is literally nothing, even on the walls, placed above the child's height.
picture frame, every table, every chair, everything is going to be
sitting lower or at the child's height, except for maybe two chairs in the
room that I can sit in to observe.
Um, so even when the child walks in the door, it's their home and they already
feel like Everything is at their height.
They never have to reach for anything.
They never have to go out of their way to go into this crazy
location to find something.
And everything on the shelves are always fully prepared for them.
So let's say it's an art lesson and they're going to need glue and scissors.
The tray is going to be already prepared with glue and scissors and
the paper they might need to glue it.
So they're never going to need to come and find me.
To help like have me go search out a glue stick that I've hidden way at the
top of a cupboard way up high So they know that when they go to choose to
do something in the room, it's already ready for them It's ready to go.
There is no need to ask a teacher to intervene which gives them this deep
sense of like independence and I can Do it and she trusts that I can do
it, which puts this huge weight on the child to do it correctly like that.
I am trusting them.
They know I'm trusting them.
I'm trusting 'em with a pair of scissors to use it correctly.
Mm-hmm.
That's a pretty big deal to a 3-year-old.
So when when you have the weight of that responsibility, you're gonna find that.
That just in and of that, they're going to want to use the material correctly
or they're going to lose it, you know, I'm not going to put out scissors if
they're going to cut their friend's hair.
Simple as that.
So there's like, you know, freedom within limits.
They can have the scissors.
You just can't go in the corner and cut your friend's hair or you can't cut.
You know, the plants apart or whatever it is.
Um, we also use a lot of natural materials.
So you'll, you'll notice there's a lot of wood and a lot of
glass and very minimal plastic.
Um, which is kind of where the whole like beige thing comes in.
I don't know if you've ever heard that stigma.
There's a lot of color, but it's not a lot of plastic color.
Um, and so when you're working with glass or ceramics or
anything breakable, especially with like a three year old child.
If it drops, it's going to shatter.
It's not a plastic sippy cup.
If you're running and you're not being careful and you're carrying
a glass vase and you slip and fall because you made the choice to run.
It's going to shatter all over the floor.
And guess what?
Every child is now turning their head to look at the child who's dropped
the vase which can be kind of an embarrassing experience for that child.
But it's also self correcting in that it makes them not want to
run the next time or not want to carry the thing with one hand.
And next time they're going to use two.
So there's just a lot of like little things that I can put into the room
where Where it's that thing doing all the correcting and so it's not just me
nagging them like you need to use walking feet like instead of me saying that.
They just know to use walking feet because they're carrying something
that could shatter when they drop it.
And it's really cool to watch like a three year old child.
After that, every three year old child is going to shatter something.
It's inevitable.
We do break glass.
It happens.
But after about a month and a half into the school year, after all
the glass has kind of broken and we all fell to the floor, it is
the coolest thing in the world.
To watch the most rowdy three year old child choose to walk slowly
while they carry something breakable.
It's like the coolest thing to watch and most people don't even believe that
it's possible, but it's really cool.
So just in and of itself, like how the room is laid out, like I will structure
the shelves, so I like prevent a racetrack in the room, so they have to walk.
or they're going to run into a shelf.
I make sure that I structure like the way that the sunlight hits certain
tables so that it's not blinding the child so they choose to work over there.
There's just like a ridiculous amount of floor plan that will go into
how I lay out the room and where I put the materials also matter.
It's it's pretty cool.
It sounds really cool.
So it sounds also to me like your biggest job as a teacher
is actually your pre teaching.
It's your it's your planning of how of the materials you're going to
use, how you're going to display them, where you're going to put them.
Uh, and you obviously.
Thinking about your curriculum and your materials that you're
using or that are accessible to children linked to the curriculum.
So it sounds to me that it's just flipped from a traditional classroom setting.
Although teachers in traditional settings also obviously have to plan,
also obviously have to plan and prepare.
But there's also a big emphasis on the actual teaching in the moment, you know,
you've got your big class teaching, your group teaching and all that kind of stuff.
But I think there's more emphasis by what I can pick up here from you is
your pre teaching, your, your planning behind because your environment plays
such a massive role in the teaching.
So that's super, super interesting.
And also what I liked what you've just said is that.
In the good old days before the invention of plastic kids actually ate off
the same plates and drank out of the same cups and glasses as adults did.
And there wasn't this thing of, you have to have a sippy cup and a plastic
plate and all this kind of thing.
So I think it actually is a respect for the child and also it teaches the child.
Responsibility, because they've got the same responsibility in taking care of
things and using things as an adult has.
So I think that that
is really powerful, to be honest.
Yeah, we also, we have a whole curriculum area, actually, that's
just called care of the environment.
And it is just that, like sweeping, mopping, washing the tables,
washing the floors, watering the plants, dusting the shelves.
There is just an entire shelf that exists in my room.
So that they can take care of the space they live in.
Like we have mops, I have brooms, I have watering cans, like anything that could
be cleaned, they have the ability to clean it so they know that this space is theirs
and it's theirs also to take care of.
It's not just my job, it's our job as a community.
We do laundry, we do the dishes, like it's their job to take care of
everything just as much as it is my job.
So how do you organize eating and food times then?
Do children still bring their own food in?
And then do you, I saw on one of your, one of your videos on Instagram,
actually, you were talking about how you actually sit with your
children and eat in the classroom.
So you eat at the tables where you're learning and they've obviously
bringing in food from home, but you're talking about doing the dishes.
So you're talking about if you.
Did something, were you preparing a food, for example, as part of a lesson that
kids clean up that after themselves?
Yeah, so there's multiple food aspects.
Kids love food.
Don't forget,
Montessori is Italian, so of course, I mean, Italian and food
automatically goes together, right?
You wouldn't be able to separate the two at all.
I've
actually never put that together before.
That is so true.
Um, so we actually have a whole curriculum that's just dedicated
to learning how to prepare food.
We call it food preparation.
So it's just a sequence of activities that the children can learn, like
banana cutting, apple cutting, slicing, peeling, what you name it.
The sky's the limit.
I've made pizza with the kids.
We've made muffins, smoothies, oatmeal, like the sky is essentially the limit.
I did eggs, hard boiled eggs.
Like it just depends on the allergies in the class and what you can provide.
Right now I'm able to do peanuts.
So they're learning how to crack peanuts because we do not have a
single peanut allergy in the whole school this year, which is so cool.
That is
lucky.
I've been able to do that before.
So this is my first time ever learning, having them learn how
to like crack open a peanut.
It's awesome.
Um, so they have that and that's available to them and that
changes as the year goes on.
I, I'll switch out the trays.
It'll get increasingly harder, more multi steps.
They're responsible for cleaning all of that afterwards as well.
We also have a, um, a grant from the United States government that provides
us with like fresh fruit and vegetables.
every week Um, so whatever is seasonal, the whole goal is that
the kids, they want the children to try new fruits and veggies.
So we try to follow the seasonal pattern of what's in season right now.
Um, and that's what we eat for snack.
And so they're able to eat snack at any point in the morning or the
afternoon, whenever their body is hungry.
They can just choose to eat.
There's like a designated table in my classroom that's It's the only circle
table in my room and it only has two chairs and there's one waiting chair.
So only two friends can actually be eating at a time.
But if the snack table is open or if the waiting chair is open, they are free.
If their stomach is growling, they can just stand up from
what they're doing and go eat.
So there is not like a structured, like.
Everybody gets their snack from their backpack and we all sit down and eat it.
But they can definitely bring their own snack.
And a lot of children do choose to bring extra food if they're like hungry or going
through a growing spurt or whatever it is.
Um, so they can eat snack whenever.
They can also do food prep whenever in the morning or the afternoon.
And then when it comes time for lunch.
We do have, like, actual adult sized ceramic plates, juice cups, and then,
like, bowls and forks and spoons and knives that you would see in a home, just,
like, literally I bought them at Walmart, so they are as natural and real and
authentic to a home as they would come.
They're responsible for setting their own table spot up at lunch.
They get a placemat that they have to lay down below it.
They learn where the fork goes, the knife and the spoon, how the plate sits on the
placemat, where the cup and the bowl go.
Um, then they can serve themselves lunch.
If they do choose to eat lunch, at my school at least, they can have
like the school provided lunch.
We have a full time cook and an assistant cook and they make.
An assortment of also lovely things for the school.
Um, so they can choose the hot lunch option or they can bring their own lunch
if they do not like the hot lunch option, but they're ha still having school lunch.
They can get a pb and j as the substitute out for the protein.
So it's a pretty healthy mixture of who brings their own lunch.
Who eats hot lunch and who chooses the p, d and J?
It's almost like, like 33% split across the board right now for this.
For this specific group of kids, every year is different.
And then we do eat at those tables that we've been working on all morning.
So we sit down, we eat there.
At the end of lunch, when it's time to be dismissed from lunch, they are
responsible for cleaning everything.
So their placemat needs to go back into the laundry bin, because we're going
to do laundry at the end of the day.
I do have a washer and dryer that are in my classroom, so we do
laundry at the end of the day.
It's a job, so two children are assigned to learn.
Oh
my gosh.
Load the soap up, put the laundry in, start the washer and dryer.
Man, are they experts at that.
They love doing the washer and dryer.
They're so good at it.
Um, for like legal reasons, even though we wash our dishes in dish
buckets with soap and like water, like a rinse bucket, they're still not
legally clean because they're children.
So we do have to load them up and actually send them to the kitchen
where the kitchen like actually runs them through the dishwasher.
More of a process over product thing.
They do incredible at it.
It's just not, it's not legally correct, which is fine.
And then once the kitchen actually washes them legally, they'll send them back down.
And another job at the end of our day is to actually unload the dish cart.
So put all the dishes back on the dish cabinet for the, like the following day.
Um, so yeah, it's really cool to like watch how the routine of like.
I can totally step back and I do not help them clean up from lunch one bit.
And even my little two and a half year old that I have this year
can do everything all by herself.
They are rock stars at it by now.
And you know, this just comes back to the thing that I always say is
that we do not trust children enough.
We don't give them enough credit because they are actually really, really capable.
It does my head in.
I cannot tell you how infuriating I find it when I see a parent carrying a
child's backpack because I'm thinking.
What message are you giving your child?
You're telling your child that they're not capable of carrying their own backpack.
You can't do that, sweetie.
You're not, you're not strong enough.
You're not capable enough.
It drives me insane.
Or even carrying them into school.
I have always been interested by when a parent carries the kid into school.
You've now made the choice for the child to enter the building.
That's the one I've always been interested in.
Let them walk.
Let them choose to enter the building.
It's their, it's their school.
Let them choose to, like, you let them choose.
I
find it just so great, so amazing that In your school, and I'm sure
it's probably in every Montessori school would be the same, right?
Well, you'd hope so anyway, that you really do give children that
credit, that they are capable beings.
They're capable of chopping up their food.
They're capable of cleaning up.
They're capable of looking after themselves or following a routine.
And you really are instilling the sense of independence and this can
do attitude in them, which I think a lot of children at some point.
I always get frustrated because sometimes you have a feeling that
they think that it's your job to just top them up, that they don't have any
responsibility in their own learning.
And so I think this kind of strategy and this methodology is really
important in giving children that message that you are a capable being.
We respect you and we, and we believe in you that you are capable
of doing these things on your own.
And I think that is an amazing message.
And I think that more schools need to do that.
And I love so much how you, how the kids set tables and sit and eat at tables.
That is just so amazing because I don't know how much input
you have with the families.
But one of the things that I've seen and you read a lot about now
is that kids don't sit together and eat as a family anymore.
That whole family time's disappearing.
So at least then they don't get that at home, which is
incredibly sad if they're not.
At least they get it at school and they learn that, you know, this is how you
sit properly, this is how you have, you know, your cutlery, where it goes.
This, I think those are really important things and that we're losing.
But I think with ways of what you guys are doing in Montessori, and I
wish that all schools would do that.
I think you give that back to children, which I think is so special.
I really do.
That is so special.
And I say that as a mum as well, you know, that's always been something
really important in our family, is that.
We have always, always, always sat at the table and had dinner together.
There are times like maybe on a Friday night when the kids were
younger, we'd have family movie night and we'd have a pizza or whatever,
um, in front of the television, but that is a very rare occurrence.
But I think that sitting together as a family at a dinner
table is really important.
And I think that's also important in a school setting.
Um, and I think that beats any day having kids just sit on the floor.
Opening their lunch boxes and eating their lunch, because I think that's
just pretty gross, but I understand that that's also a space thing and
they aren't, the setup isn't, I guess.
in some schools like you guys have it there.
I want to talk to you because you've mentioned a few times you have things,
uh, children from you said two and a half year old right through to six year old.
How does, how your mixed age classrooms, how do they function
and, and what have you seen?
How does that benefit all age children having being in that mixed age?
environment
I
think my biggest argument for mixed age classrooms is like a workplace.
No workplaces are just straight everybody's the same age.
They're all multi age.
We can all learn something from somebody younger than us, somebody the same
age as us, and somebody older than us.
And, I will never forget my very first observation in a Montessori
environment watching multi age kids because it's so easy to pick out
the older ones and the younger ones, not just based on their size alone,
but you can see it and who they are.
And the older ones just become this like matriarch or
patriarch of the, of the room.
And if they have been in that room for the full time, like when they
started as a three year old, then they were there as a four year old
and a five year old, and then they turn six, the rules never change.
I never change.
The room hasn't changed.
Like they are experts.
Like they've got it down pat.
You are hardly recorrecting them minimally, of course, because
there's always the goofing off.
But for the most part, they've got it down.
And they just become a helper.
So they go out of their way to make sure that the little ones are seen and heard
and helped and understood and doing the right thing and staying on track.
And sometimes they'll like show them a lesson because they're so proud of
something they've already mastered.
That's not like way below their age level now.
And some of the best friendships I've personally witnessed in children.
Are a six year old child and like a three or four year old
child, specifically in the girls.
I see it a lot with the girls.
Man, are those six year old girls just like angelic to the three year olds?
And it's always fascinating when I have a three year old who's just really
struggling being at school, whether they start the year and they're crying and they
have separation anxiety or whatever it is.
When they become a six year old and they've moved past a separation and
they come in the door, no problem.
And it's an easy peasy transition.
they start to see those little three year olds who do struggle and they're
immediately their buddy because they like see the past version of themselves in that
child and they know how to help them and they know what they need because that's
what they needed when they were their age and it is just man is it like the most
beautiful thing there's like hardly ever any problems i have lots of siblings in
the room so i'll have the older sibling and the younger sibling because of the
multi ages and for the most part it's It is just, it is the coolest thing.
It's so cool because they just know that what a three year old needs
is not what a six year old needs.
And everybody just knows and they understand that.
And it's, it's really cool to watch.
And listen, Alex, I just had a thought, um, so do those children stay with you
until they're six and then they move on to another classroom or another teacher?
So some of those kids could be with you for three years.
And so in terms of your materials and stuff.
I guess then the materials would be, some of them would be for younger
age children and some of them would be for older age children.
I think you probably mentioned that, possibly you've touched
on that before earlier.
Um, so when they're younger, they could still have access to all the materials.
So are they repeating things?
You know, I'm just thinking from someone who's not a Montessori person might say.
Would they get bored being in the same environment for three years doing the
same things with the same materials?
How does that work?
Just explain that maybe.
So for me personally, I can't really speak to other Montessori teachers,
but what I've personally done to just make sure that that isn't a problem
is how you cycle the shelves out.
So there are some staple like core materials that are not going anywhere.
Like I, I know that like when you think of Montessori or at least Hopefully when
you do think of Montessori, you think of the little pink tower that Maria
designed, and hopefully that's a picture that you've seen and are familiar with.
That's part of a sensorial curriculum.
That's the name of the curriculum.
That curriculum and those like three or four shelves that I have,
they're never going to change.
They were designed and built by Maria herself, and they are very deeply
rooted in like a million different, you can do language and geography
and art and all sorts of other stuff with just those shelves alone.
And there's many different ways to dive into just one material on that shelf.
Language, there's a couple staple core materials in the language area,
like how we teach initial letter presentations and then the movable.
alphabet And there's just a couple things that are never,
ever going to leave the room.
And then the math curriculum is pretty locked down.
Like, there are just some things and some shelves that will
never, ever get rearranged.
But the geography and the art and the fine motor and the cultural and the, um, Like
seasonal materials, they're all going to change and they change every three years.
So something like, for instance, North America, which is what we are.
We've been learning for all of September and most of
actually all of October as well.
It's going away in a couple weeks that won't come back
out for another three years.
Which is a, there is stuff on that shelf that will meet a three year
old's needs and a six year old's needs on the entire shelf of North America.
And then we're going to move on and we're going to study South America.
And South America has not been out for three years, so none of the children
in this room have encountered South America yet, if that makes sense.
And I just put out solar system, and the solar system shelf has
not been out for three years.
So I try to keep everything on a three year cycle, so that at some
point throughout the children's lives in their time in my room,
they're going to get everything
if that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense.
So, What are some common misconceptions about Montessori
education that you often encounter?
Um,
I think one of the biggest ones we've already touched
on is just the free for all.
And I literally think, and there are genuinely people out there, I think, who
think that the children just walk in the door and it's just It's absolute chaos for
eight hours a day, and then I send them home, which is just so far from the truth.
Um, and the other, the other one you've already touched on of just how, like, how
on earth are we able to even meet academic standards if they are a free for all?
Like, how does that work?
Um, not really so much of a misconception, but just something that is really
hard for people to wrap their minds around is how it's possible for me
to sit down with a child one on one.
And just let the other 23 kids go free.
That's a really hard concept for people to wrap their minds around.
They don't quite understand how it's possible to fully remove
myself from the situation.
That is something you just genuinely have to see in action.
It is almost near.
I've tried to explain it in a million different ways in a
million different videos online.
And I just think it's something if you, if that is where you're stuck on.
Go observe a Montessori classroom and watch her or him just sit
down and pull themselves away from everything and watch the kids just
keep going as if nothing is going on.
It's totally normal to them.
Um, and then I think the other misconception is just
based on the fact that.
Maria was asked to patent her method and she ultimately chose not to.
So essentially, there is no quote right way and wrong way to do things.
So you are going to find, um, some Montessori schools aren't
necessarily Montessori schools.
Essentially, anybody can take the name Montessori, slap it on the side of a
building, put wooden materials out on the shelf and say, look, you're Montessori.
Yes, it worries me, yeah.
Yeah.
Um, so there's just some vetting that might need to happen if.
If you are, if it is someone who's genuinely looking at either teaching
in one or just sending their children to one, there's a lot of back, like,
behind the scenes work that might need to happen on that end, just to
make sure you're actually choosing one that is something that if Maria
was still alive, she would approve of.
So yeah, those would be my big ones.
I think I would be wary of that because I've seen it even where I, I live, you
know, you'd see a building come up and it's a new, it's a new childcare center
and then they'd have Montessori on the side and I'm thinking, yeah, I don't know
if you really are Montessori, you know, and I think you're right for parents.
And you've just touched on this now because I was going to say to you, what
advice would you give parents and teachers who are considering Montessori education?
I guess one of the things that you would consider is to check out whether they
truly are aligned with Montessori values and whether they really have the actual
Montessori materials, because I know Montessori has very specific materials
in terms of teaching various things.
It's You know, whereas in other schools or non Montessori you can basically use
anything, but Montessori is very strict on the type of materials that they use.
Uh, I think I'm right on that, right?
Tell me if I'm wrong.
Um, if you,
oh, what was I was going to say now?
Um, uh, Montessori, thank God for editing.
Um, I can't remember my train, I, I, I stopped my own train of thought there.
Um,
Is there anything else, Alex, that you think is really important for people
listening to this episode that they should really know about Montessori?
That's something that, because I can see that you feel so
passionate about Montessori.
Is there anything that you want to say to people about Montessori that you
think that they should know if they want to bring their kids there, if they
want to teach in a Montessori school?
Anything, what else do you want to, this is your plug for Montessori, so to speak.
I
think my biggest takeaway that I, if anyone could take anything away,
it's just to not be, don't be so close minded and, and be open minded.
Um, there is a lot of like, Misconceptions and a lot of weird stigmas about
it from, for whatever reason, and about a hundred of them are false.
And, um, I learned that myself at one point or another, and I've
witnessed other people realize, Oh, so this is what you do.
And they're There is just so many misconceptions and a lot of them can go
away by just scheduling an observation So if you do find a school in your
area That is genuinely montessori and they are doing everything they can to
uphold what maria would have thought Would have been true and right and
just ask them call them up say hey I'm interested whether it's for being a
teacher or sending your children there.
Let them know what you're interested in and just ask for an observation.
And almost every one of them will allow you to come in.
They'll allow you to sit in a chair with a clipboard and a piece of paper, and they
will just allow you to take it all in.
And there is truly no better way to actually understand what on earth
goes on in a Montessori classroom than just sitting in a chair.
It was, I hold on to that very first observation I ever, I ever witnessed.
I cling to that one.
It was, One of the most beautiful things I've ever witnessed, and if
it wasn't for that I don't think I'd still, like, I'd be here today.
So you would be shocked at what you'll see and what the children are capable of if
you just sit in a chair and take notes.
It's wonderful.
And Alex, is that moment, is that what made you want to be a Montessori teacher?
Originally a traditional, I just say a traditional, you know, a non
Montessori teacher, traditional teacher.
You were originally, that's where you started, right?
So what was it that made you change to Montessori?
Um, so I was studied at a four year college to be a traditional.
teacher And that's what I thought I was going to do my whole life.
I thought I was going to be like a second or a third grade teacher.
That sounded like the dream.
Um, and in America, we get placed to student teach for like six to eight weeks
or sometimes 12 weeks, depending on your major, um, right before you graduate.
And so I got the letter for my student teaching placement and in the letter,
it said the name of the school and it just said kindergarten on it.
And I was like, okay, sweet.
This is great.
But I did not go to college in the same town I was from.
And so I mentioned it to a friend who was born and raised in that town.
And I said, Hey, this is the school I got placed at.
What do you know about it?
And I just remember the look on their face and they were like, Oh, you know,
that's a Montessori school, right?
Like I'll never forget the look on his face.
And I was like, Oh no.
And I was.
furious like in that moment I was so mad that my traditional college
would place me to student teach in a Montessori school without telling me
and without preparing me for it and I was to this day I was the only The only
one that I know of that they place like to student teach there, which baffles
me to this day, somehow providential.
Yeah, and I just sent an email to my teacher that was my cooperating teacher
and I expressed my concern and I said, Hey, like, I'm not really a mom, like I
know nothing about the montessori method.
I'm so sorry that I got placed with you.
What do you want me to do to make sure I'm prepared?
And she was so kind and she just emailed back and was like, Oh my gosh, no worries.
Like come in and observe.
Like, so I observed in December before my January term started and she actually
had me observe for three straight hours.
They get to work for three straight hours in the morning and normal
observations for anybody else would be probably about an hour.
But, um, I sat in that chair And I can think of three kids off the top
of my head who I was just in shock.
They were like three and they were not once did she even say like she
didn't, she didn't talk to them because they were functioning so.
independently.
for three straight hours.
They did not need help.
They did not need guidance.
They did not need redirection.
They just knew exactly what to do and they did it.
And it was unreal.
I can see those kids to this day.
It was, I'm pretty sure I teared up in that moment because I had
never seen anything like it before.
And I had just done a practicum in like a third grade classroom where I still
had third graders that would come up to me and be like, So what do I do next?
Like they just couldn't problem solve of like what came next and I
watched this three year old child know exactly what to do next and
then do it and it was mind blowing.
Oh my gosh, I missed out Alex.
I really want to go to the Montessori school.
Oh, it sounds so wonderful.
Uh, listen, Alex, before we go, um, it's been amazing.
It's been just so, so wonderful and enlightening to listen to you.
And it's also just made me feel really sad that I don't have a
Montessori, um, education and I don't have a Montessori training.
Because I think it would have just been lovely to teach in a Montessori school.
Tell people where they can find you.
Uh, what do you tell people where they can find you?
Because I also know that you offer things in terms of Montessori training to people.
Is that correct?
So tell people where they can get hold of you and how you can help them.
Sure, my handle's just missnearingsmontessori.
It's on TikTok and on Instagram.
It's also a website, so the same website.
If there are any questions or any concerns or any problems that you see and you
just want a couple minutes spent with me walking you through something, there is
a link on that website for just like, A little time with me on a zoom call just
asking or answering questions or working through a frustration It i've worked
with a whole bunch of people who either are montessori teachers and they're
struggling with something or who want to send their kids to montessori and
want to know how to prepare them or just struggle or have kids in the montessori
school and are struggling with them and there's all sorts of walks of life and
so it's really cool to be able to walk through all of those with everyone.
But yeah.
That's amazing and we will put,
I will put links to all your, to your website and your Instagram handle.
I'll put all that.
in the show notes for anybody listening, so you don't have to worry about that.
Alex, thanks so much for being here today and sharing your vast
knowledge about Montessori and your passion with everybody.
It's so much appreciated and so welcome as well at this time where
I think there's so much going on in education and people are concerned.
So I think Montessori is an Just fabulous way to address anybody's problems.
So I just love the idea of Montessori and thank you so much for sharing
your passion with us today.
Thank you for having me.
I really loved this.
Anytime.
And I'm really looking forward to maybe in the future we'll have you on again.
Who knows?
So I'm just going to stop the recording.
Or two.
Today on Blooming Curious, I am super excited to welcome Alex Peterson.
Alex is a Montessori teacher dedicated to fostering a love
of learning in young children.
Under the handle Miss Nearing's Montessori, Alex creates
engaging educational content.
on tiktok and Instagram, sharing creative teaching strategies, hands
on activities, and insights into the Montessori approach through her content.
Alex connects with parents and educators, making learning
accessible and fun for everyone.
She holds a bachelor's degree in early childhood and elementary education, and
has a background in special education.
She holds her AMS primary three to six certificate from the Montessori education
center of the Rockies in beautiful.
Denver, Colorado.
Welcome to Blooming Curious, Alex.
Thank you for having me.
It's such a pleasure.
I am so excited.
Um, for anybody listening who doesn't know, I found Alex on Instagram
and Alex is a prolific creator.
And every day there's some very cheerful.
Teaching going on about the Montessori and what the children
in her Montessori class are doing.
So this is what drew me in and I just thought this is amazing.
This is exactly what Blooming Curious is about.
It's about curiosity and learning and children loving what they're doing.
So I'm very excited.
So Alex, for those of us that are unfamiliar and haven't got a clue or
have never spent time in a Montessori classroom, explain to us what
Montessori education is and really how is it different from a traditional
classroom or a traditional teaching?
Sure.
So, when you think of a traditional classroom, you typically think of a
teacher who's kind of in charge of the learning and she plans lessons
or he plans lessons each day.
And every day you show up and there's a scheduled time block
that you have a math activity or a language lesson or a science lesson.
And, um, back in the early, like, early 1800s, a woman named Maria Montessori Um,
spent some time, uh, she was a scientist in Italy, actually, and she was one of
the first women scientists ever in Italy.
And because of that, she was actually placed in a, like what they referred
to at the time as like a mental asylum to work with children who
are essentially outcasts of society.
They did not fit the general mold of the traditional education
system in Italy at the time.
And during her time there, she observed that when children were able to work
with tactile materials and spend time.
playing games and learning through games and play and going at their own pace and
choosing what they get to do each day.
They were more likely to learn because they were in charge of their learning.
So through a very long period of time of her observation, she was able to develop
this huge method where the children are essentially the leaders of the classroom.
And so that method is carried on today.
She has.
completely taken over the education world all over the world.
These schools popped up from Italy, and then they just exploded.
So they've all made it in almost every continent at this point.
And essentially it is the complete opposite of a traditional school.
So you take everything you've ever learned in a traditional school, throw it all out
the window and completely level it down.
Which is what I had to do because I did get my degree in Um, traditional
education before I entered Montessori.
So I literally threw everything away that I knew and started all the way over.
And when you think of how a traditional school day is run, when the children
enter in a Montessori classroom, they go immediately right to what they want to do.
Right away when they walk in the door and it's what they want to do essentially
with freedom within limits all day long with me acting as a simple guide.
So we actually are not even called teachers in the Montessori world.
They call us guides.
And my job is to simply connect the child to the materials in the
room based on who they are as a person and what I observe in them.
And I just guide them in their learning.
They are the, they are the bosses.
They're in charge.
I just kind of find the things that meet the needs of where
they're at in their life.
And I, I kind of step by step, bring them around through a
full curriculum in the room.
Okay.
So now.
The first question I'm having is I'm thinking about what teachers are
thinking in a traditional setting or parents who send kids to traditional
settings, and they're thinking, well, how do they meet curriculum outcomes?
If kids are just playing and doing their own thing, and you're there
as a guide, helping them with the materials, for example, how are
you going to meet the outcomes?
Because Montessori, I think, goes, Well, I guess it depends on the location or
the school, but they do go right through to the end of high school, don't they?
Mine actually does, yes.
So we have all the way up through high school in mine.
So how would, how would you explain that to parents or other teachers?
Is, how do you then meet your curriculum outcomes, um, if kids
are just free ranging, so to speak?
So some people might think, well, that's just free range learning.
Yeah, we often get the, uh, the stigma that we're just like a bunch of
essentially hippies, you know, that just kind of let our kids do whatever we want.
But, um, the heavy hitting point is that there are, there is freedom
and the children really are free to do whatever they want within
a very strict series of limits.
And the room itself provides a deep range of limits.
Whether it's just simply where things go on the shelf and how you return
everything to the shelf Every shelf has an order and the order is sequential
from top to bottom left to right and everything builds on itself in the shelf
Um, my job is to ensure that they aren't goofing off and are actually doing
what they should be doing So I need to have a deep understanding of just
pedagogy in general and like academic standards in general um, and then The
whole, the whole layout of the room is almost to trick the child into learning.
So when you think of traditional education standards, my job is to give
them those standards and teach them in a way where they almost don't realize.
that they're learning because we are just having fun, whether we're playing a game
and we're learning letters, whether I'm coloring with them and we're learning
numbers, there's just a series of ways that I can present a lesson to a child
just to make sure that I'm keeping them on track and exactly where they should be.
We follow all the state standards in my, in my state personally,
which align standards almost across the globe, like universally.
Um, and all of the materials in every classroom always start about a
half year lower than what the child would be when they enter the room.
So we have materials that that could potentially meet the needs
of a two and a half year old child.
And then the lot like the upper end of a room like mine would
go all the way to first grade.
So it's awesome that a child can go as far as they want or as slow as they want.
And we keep them on track, but at the pace that kind of meets them
the best, if that makes sense.
And then we fill in the gaps where necessary.
So if I notice that a child is only doing anything in the
math for two days straight.
I'm going to guide them into language on that third day to make sure that
they're meeting the language area.
And then maybe we'll head towards geography that fourth day so that by
the full whole five day week, they will have hit every subject area by the
time they walk out the door on Friday.
If that makes sense.
Okay.
So the other thing I want to then ask is, um, do children ever do whole group
or do you ever do whole group lessons like a math session, for example, or a
phonics session to the whole class, or, or is it just following the individual
children as they're going through their learning at their own pace?
Developmentally, the, the child before about the age of six.
If you really look at who they are as a person, that's when you start hearing
like, that's mine, like, and they don't like to share, so they care a lot
about how the world pertains to them.
So I'm going to structure the majority of my lessons, just me one
on one with an individual child.
As they get older, they start Clipping a plane of development and
then they start caring about the whole, how can we collectively come
to a conclusion about something?
How can we work together?
So when that, when I get a, like a late five year old, early six year
old child in the room, I will start teaching lessons to those children as
a small group, but I will never do a massive phonics lesson to the whole.
The whole group of kids, just because a six year old child is genuinely very
different than a three year old child, and they're, they have different needs.
We do do a group time in the middle of the day.
Um, we just do calendar, and we check the weather, and we sing songs.
If there's a concert coming up, we might practice songs for the concert coming up.
Um, but when it comes to the academic lessons, There's really not a whole
lot that we do in a whole group.
Right now we're actually studying the continent of North America and we have a
grandma who, um, is from Mexico actually.
She was born and raised in Mexico and she made Mexican, like this Mexican
dessert for us and she brought us in toys.
So we had this whole group lesson about what it was like to grow up in Mexico.
And so sometimes when it's a cultural thing and we can learn about
the culture that's beneficial to anyone of any age group everywhere.
And so those kind of things I love to do whole group because it's.
It's very cool to just experience that as a community, but when it
comes to like math lessons and language lessons and geography and
art and all that stuff, typically it's going to be more one on one.
Okay.
That's interesting.
And so I know that the Montessori is also, and you've just mentioned it,
Montessori places this very big emphasis on preparing the environment and you
were talking a lot about your materials.
So what is the design that goes into the classroom and How does that then
contribute to the child's learning?
If you ever set foot in a Montessori classroom, you'll notice that there
is literally nothing, even on the walls, placed above the child's height.
picture frame, every table, every chair, everything is going to be
sitting lower or at the child's height, except for maybe two chairs in the
room that I can sit in to observe.
Um, so even when the child walks in the door, it's their home and they already
feel like Everything is at their height.
They never have to reach for anything.
They never have to go out of their way to go into this crazy
location to find something.
And everything on the shelves are always fully prepared for them.
So let's say it's an art lesson and they're going to need glue and scissors.
The tray is going to be already prepared with glue and scissors and
the paper they might need to glue it.
So they're never going to need to come and find me.
To help like have me go search out a glue stick that I've hidden way at the
top of a cupboard way up high So they know that when they go to choose to
do something in the room, it's already ready for them It's ready to go.
There is no need to ask a teacher to intervene which gives them this deep
sense of like independence and I can Do it and she trusts that I can do
it, which puts this huge weight on the child to do it correctly like that.
I am trusting them.
They know I'm trusting them.
I'm trusting 'em with a pair of scissors to use it correctly.
Mm-hmm.
That's a pretty big deal to a 3-year-old.
So when when you have the weight of that responsibility, you're gonna find that.
That just in and of that, they're going to want to use the material correctly
or they're going to lose it, you know, I'm not going to put out scissors if
they're going to cut their friend's hair.
Simple as that.
So there's like, you know, freedom within limits.
They can have the scissors.
You just can't go in the corner and cut your friend's hair or you can't cut.
You know, the plants apart or whatever it is.
Um, we also use a lot of natural materials.
So you'll, you'll notice there's a lot of wood and a lot of
glass and very minimal plastic.
Um, which is kind of where the whole like beige thing comes in.
I don't know if you've ever heard that stigma.
There's a lot of color, but it's not a lot of plastic color.
Um, and so when you're working with glass or ceramics or
anything breakable, especially with like a three year old child.
If it drops, it's going to shatter.
It's not a plastic sippy cup.
If you're running and you're not being careful and you're carrying
a glass vase and you slip and fall because you made the choice to run.
It's going to shatter all over the floor.
And guess what?
Every child is now turning their head to look at the child who's dropped
the vase which can be kind of an embarrassing experience for that child.
But it's also self correcting in that it makes them not want to
run the next time or not want to carry the thing with one hand.
And next time they're going to use two.
So there's just a lot of like little things that I can put into the room
where Where it's that thing doing all the correcting and so it's not just me
nagging them like you need to use walking feet like instead of me saying that.
They just know to use walking feet because they're carrying something
that could shatter when they drop it.
And it's really cool to watch like a three year old child.
After that, every three year old child is going to shatter something.
It's inevitable.
We do break glass.
It happens.
But after about a month and a half into the school year, after all
the glass has kind of broken and we all fell to the floor, it is
the coolest thing in the world.
To watch the most rowdy three year old child choose to walk slowly
while they carry something breakable.
It's like the coolest thing to watch and most people don't even believe that
it's possible, but it's really cool.
So just in and of itself, like how the room is laid out, like I will structure
the shelves, so I like prevent a racetrack in the room, so they have to walk.
or they're going to run into a shelf.
I make sure that I structure like the way that the sunlight hits certain
tables so that it's not blinding the child so they choose to work over there.
There's just like a ridiculous amount of floor plan that will go into
how I lay out the room and where I put the materials also matter.
It's it's pretty cool.
It sounds really cool.
So it sounds also to me like your biggest job as a teacher
is actually your pre teaching.
It's your it's your planning of how of the materials you're going to
use, how you're going to display them, where you're going to put them.
Uh, and you obviously.
Thinking about your curriculum and your materials that you're
using or that are accessible to children linked to the curriculum.
So it sounds to me that it's just flipped from a traditional classroom setting.
Although teachers in traditional settings also obviously have to plan,
also obviously have to plan and prepare.
But there's also a big emphasis on the actual teaching in the moment, you know,
you've got your big class teaching, your group teaching and all that kind of stuff.
But I think there's more emphasis by what I can pick up here from you is
your pre teaching, your, your planning behind because your environment plays
such a massive role in the teaching.
So that's super, super interesting.
And also what I liked what you've just said is that.
In the good old days before the invention of plastic kids actually ate off
the same plates and drank out of the same cups and glasses as adults did.
And there wasn't this thing of, you have to have a sippy cup and a plastic
plate and all this kind of thing.
So I think it actually is a respect for the child and also it teaches the child.
Responsibility, because they've got the same responsibility in taking care of
things and using things as an adult has.
So I think that that
is really powerful, to be honest.
Yeah, we also, we have a whole curriculum area, actually, that's
just called care of the environment.
And it is just that, like sweeping, mopping, washing the tables,
washing the floors, watering the plants, dusting the shelves.
There is just an entire shelf that exists in my room.
So that they can take care of the space they live in.
Like we have mops, I have brooms, I have watering cans, like anything that could
be cleaned, they have the ability to clean it so they know that this space is theirs
and it's theirs also to take care of.
It's not just my job, it's our job as a community.
We do laundry, we do the dishes, like it's their job to take care of
everything just as much as it is my job.
So how do you organize eating and food times then?
Do children still bring their own food in?
And then do you, I saw on one of your, one of your videos on Instagram,
actually, you were talking about how you actually sit with your
children and eat in the classroom.
So you eat at the tables where you're learning and they've obviously
bringing in food from home, but you're talking about doing the dishes.
So you're talking about if you.
Did something, were you preparing a food, for example, as part of a lesson that
kids clean up that after themselves?
Yeah, so there's multiple food aspects.
Kids love food.
Don't forget,
Montessori is Italian, so of course, I mean, Italian and food
automatically goes together, right?
You wouldn't be able to separate the two at all.
I've
actually never put that together before.
That is so true.
Um, so we actually have a whole curriculum that's just dedicated
to learning how to prepare food.
We call it food preparation.
So it's just a sequence of activities that the children can learn, like
banana cutting, apple cutting, slicing, peeling, what you name it.
The sky's the limit.
I've made pizza with the kids.
We've made muffins, smoothies, oatmeal, like the sky is essentially the limit.
I did eggs, hard boiled eggs.
Like it just depends on the allergies in the class and what you can provide.
Right now I'm able to do peanuts.
So they're learning how to crack peanuts because we do not have a
single peanut allergy in the whole school this year, which is so cool.
That is
lucky.
I've been able to do that before.
So this is my first time ever learning, having them learn how
to like crack open a peanut.
It's awesome.
Um, so they have that and that's available to them and that
changes as the year goes on.
I, I'll switch out the trays.
It'll get increasingly harder, more multi steps.
They're responsible for cleaning all of that afterwards as well.
We also have a, um, a grant from the United States government that provides
us with like fresh fruit and vegetables.
every week Um, so whatever is seasonal, the whole goal is that
the kids, they want the children to try new fruits and veggies.
So we try to follow the seasonal pattern of what's in season right now.
Um, and that's what we eat for snack.
And so they're able to eat snack at any point in the morning or the
afternoon, whenever their body is hungry.
They can just choose to eat.
There's like a designated table in my classroom that's It's the only circle
table in my room and it only has two chairs and there's one waiting chair.
So only two friends can actually be eating at a time.
But if the snack table is open or if the waiting chair is open, they are free.
If their stomach is growling, they can just stand up from
what they're doing and go eat.
So there is not like a structured, like.
Everybody gets their snack from their backpack and we all sit down and eat it.
But they can definitely bring their own snack.
And a lot of children do choose to bring extra food if they're like hungry or going
through a growing spurt or whatever it is.
Um, so they can eat snack whenever.
They can also do food prep whenever in the morning or the afternoon.
And then when it comes time for lunch.
We do have, like, actual adult sized ceramic plates, juice cups, and then,
like, bowls and forks and spoons and knives that you would see in a home, just,
like, literally I bought them at Walmart, so they are as natural and real and
authentic to a home as they would come.
They're responsible for setting their own table spot up at lunch.
They get a placemat that they have to lay down below it.
They learn where the fork goes, the knife and the spoon, how the plate sits on the
placemat, where the cup and the bowl go.
Um, then they can serve themselves lunch.
If they do choose to eat lunch, at my school at least, they can have
like the school provided lunch.
We have a full time cook and an assistant cook and they make.
An assortment of also lovely things for the school.
Um, so they can choose the hot lunch option or they can bring their own lunch
if they do not like the hot lunch option, but they're ha still having school lunch.
They can get a pb and j as the substitute out for the protein.
So it's a pretty healthy mixture of who brings their own lunch.
Who eats hot lunch and who chooses the p, d and J?
It's almost like, like 33% split across the board right now for this.
For this specific group of kids, every year is different.
And then we do eat at those tables that we've been working on all morning.
So we sit down, we eat there.
At the end of lunch, when it's time to be dismissed from lunch, they are
responsible for cleaning everything.
So their placemat needs to go back into the laundry bin, because we're going
to do laundry at the end of the day.
I do have a washer and dryer that are in my classroom, so we do
laundry at the end of the day.
It's a job, so two children are assigned to learn.
Oh
my gosh.
Load the soap up, put the laundry in, start the washer and dryer.
Man, are they experts at that.
They love doing the washer and dryer.
They're so good at it.
Um, for like legal reasons, even though we wash our dishes in dish
buckets with soap and like water, like a rinse bucket, they're still not
legally clean because they're children.
So we do have to load them up and actually send them to the kitchen
where the kitchen like actually runs them through the dishwasher.
More of a process over product thing.
They do incredible at it.
It's just not, it's not legally correct, which is fine.
And then once the kitchen actually washes them legally, they'll send them back down.
And another job at the end of our day is to actually unload the dish cart.
So put all the dishes back on the dish cabinet for the, like the following day.
Um, so yeah, it's really cool to like watch how the routine of like.
I can totally step back and I do not help them clean up from lunch one bit.
And even my little two and a half year old that I have this year
can do everything all by herself.
They are rock stars at it by now.
And you know, this just comes back to the thing that I always say is
that we do not trust children enough.
We don't give them enough credit because they are actually really, really capable.
It does my head in.
I cannot tell you how infuriating I find it when I see a parent carrying a
child's backpack because I'm thinking.
What message are you giving your child?
You're telling your child that they're not capable of carrying their own backpack.
You can't do that, sweetie.
You're not, you're not strong enough.
You're not capable enough.
It drives me insane.
Or even carrying them into school.
I have always been interested by when a parent carries the kid into school.
You've now made the choice for the child to enter the building.
That's the one I've always been interested in.
Let them walk.
Let them choose to enter the building.
It's their, it's their school.
Let them choose to, like, you let them choose.
I
find it just so great, so amazing that In your school, and I'm sure
it's probably in every Montessori school would be the same, right?
Well, you'd hope so anyway, that you really do give children that
credit, that they are capable beings.
They're capable of chopping up their food.
They're capable of cleaning up.
They're capable of looking after themselves or following a routine.
And you really are instilling the sense of independence and this can
do attitude in them, which I think a lot of children at some point.
I always get frustrated because sometimes you have a feeling that
they think that it's your job to just top them up, that they don't have any
responsibility in their own learning.
And so I think this kind of strategy and this methodology is really
important in giving children that message that you are a capable being.
We respect you and we, and we believe in you that you are capable
of doing these things on your own.
And I think that is an amazing message.
And I think that more schools need to do that.
And I love so much how you, how the kids set tables and sit and eat at tables.
That is just so amazing because I don't know how much input
you have with the families.
But one of the things that I've seen and you read a lot about now
is that kids don't sit together and eat as a family anymore.
That whole family time's disappearing.
So at least then they don't get that at home, which is
incredibly sad if they're not.
At least they get it at school and they learn that, you know, this is how you
sit properly, this is how you have, you know, your cutlery, where it goes.
This, I think those are really important things and that we're losing.
But I think with ways of what you guys are doing in Montessori, and I
wish that all schools would do that.
I think you give that back to children, which I think is so special.
I really do.
That is so special.
And I say that as a mum as well, you know, that's always been something
really important in our family, is that.
We have always, always, always sat at the table and had dinner together.
There are times like maybe on a Friday night when the kids were
younger, we'd have family movie night and we'd have a pizza or whatever,
um, in front of the television, but that is a very rare occurrence.
But I think that sitting together as a family at a dinner
table is really important.
And I think that's also important in a school setting.
Um, and I think that beats any day having kids just sit on the floor.
Opening their lunch boxes and eating their lunch, because I think that's
just pretty gross, but I understand that that's also a space thing and
they aren't, the setup isn't, I guess.
in some schools like you guys have it there.
I want to talk to you because you've mentioned a few times you have things,
uh, children from you said two and a half year old right through to six year old.
How does, how your mixed age classrooms, how do they function
and, and what have you seen?
How does that benefit all age children having being in that mixed age?
environment
I
think my biggest argument for mixed age classrooms is like a workplace.
No workplaces are just straight everybody's the same age.
They're all multi age.
We can all learn something from somebody younger than us, somebody the same
age as us, and somebody older than us.
And, I will never forget my very first observation in a Montessori
environment watching multi age kids because it's so easy to pick out
the older ones and the younger ones, not just based on their size alone,
but you can see it and who they are.
And the older ones just become this like matriarch or
patriarch of the, of the room.
And if they have been in that room for the full time, like when they
started as a three year old, then they were there as a four year old
and a five year old, and then they turn six, the rules never change.
I never change.
The room hasn't changed.
Like they are experts.
Like they've got it down pat.
You are hardly recorrecting them minimally, of course, because
there's always the goofing off.
But for the most part, they've got it down.
And they just become a helper.
So they go out of their way to make sure that the little ones are seen and heard
and helped and understood and doing the right thing and staying on track.
And sometimes they'll like show them a lesson because they're so proud of
something they've already mastered.
That's not like way below their age level now.
And some of the best friendships I've personally witnessed in children.
Are a six year old child and like a three or four year old
child, specifically in the girls.
I see it a lot with the girls.
Man, are those six year old girls just like angelic to the three year olds?
And it's always fascinating when I have a three year old who's just really
struggling being at school, whether they start the year and they're crying and they
have separation anxiety or whatever it is.
When they become a six year old and they've moved past a separation and
they come in the door, no problem.
And it's an easy peasy transition.
they start to see those little three year olds who do struggle and they're
immediately their buddy because they like see the past version of themselves in that
child and they know how to help them and they know what they need because that's
what they needed when they were their age and it is just man is it like the most
beautiful thing there's like hardly ever any problems i have lots of siblings in
the room so i'll have the older sibling and the younger sibling because of the
multi ages and for the most part it's It is just, it is the coolest thing.
It's so cool because they just know that what a three year old needs
is not what a six year old needs.
And everybody just knows and they understand that.
And it's, it's really cool to watch.
And listen, Alex, I just had a thought, um, so do those children stay with you
until they're six and then they move on to another classroom or another teacher?
So some of those kids could be with you for three years.
And so in terms of your materials and stuff.
I guess then the materials would be, some of them would be for younger
age children and some of them would be for older age children.
I think you probably mentioned that, possibly you've touched
on that before earlier.
Um, so when they're younger, they could still have access to all the materials.
So are they repeating things?
You know, I'm just thinking from someone who's not a Montessori person might say.
Would they get bored being in the same environment for three years doing the
same things with the same materials?
How does that work?
Just explain that maybe.
So for me personally, I can't really speak to other Montessori teachers,
but what I've personally done to just make sure that that isn't a problem
is how you cycle the shelves out.
So there are some staple like core materials that are not going anywhere.
Like I, I know that like when you think of Montessori or at least Hopefully when
you do think of Montessori, you think of the little pink tower that Maria
designed, and hopefully that's a picture that you've seen and are familiar with.
That's part of a sensorial curriculum.
That's the name of the curriculum.
That curriculum and those like three or four shelves that I have,
they're never going to change.
They were designed and built by Maria herself, and they are very deeply
rooted in like a million different, you can do language and geography
and art and all sorts of other stuff with just those shelves alone.
And there's many different ways to dive into just one material on that shelf.
Language, there's a couple staple core materials in the language area,
like how we teach initial letter presentations and then the movable.
alphabet And there's just a couple things that are never,
ever going to leave the room.
And then the math curriculum is pretty locked down.
Like, there are just some things and some shelves that will
never, ever get rearranged.
But the geography and the art and the fine motor and the cultural and the, um, Like
seasonal materials, they're all going to change and they change every three years.
So something like, for instance, North America, which is what we are.
We've been learning for all of September and most of
actually all of October as well.
It's going away in a couple weeks that won't come back
out for another three years.
Which is a, there is stuff on that shelf that will meet a three year
old's needs and a six year old's needs on the entire shelf of North America.
And then we're going to move on and we're going to study South America.
And South America has not been out for three years, so none of the children
in this room have encountered South America yet, if that makes sense.
And I just put out solar system, and the solar system shelf has
not been out for three years.
So I try to keep everything on a three year cycle, so that at some
point throughout the children's lives in their time in my room,
they're going to get everything
if that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense.
So, What are some common misconceptions about Montessori
education that you often encounter?
Um,
I think one of the biggest ones we've already touched
on is just the free for all.
And I literally think, and there are genuinely people out there, I think, who
think that the children just walk in the door and it's just It's absolute chaos for
eight hours a day, and then I send them home, which is just so far from the truth.
Um, and the other, the other one you've already touched on of just how, like, how
on earth are we able to even meet academic standards if they are a free for all?
Like, how does that work?
Um, not really so much of a misconception, but just something that is really
hard for people to wrap their minds around is how it's possible for me
to sit down with a child one on one.
And just let the other 23 kids go free.
That's a really hard concept for people to wrap their minds around.
They don't quite understand how it's possible to fully remove
myself from the situation.
That is something you just genuinely have to see in action.
It is almost near.
I've tried to explain it in a million different ways in a
million different videos online.
And I just think it's something if you, if that is where you're stuck on.
Go observe a Montessori classroom and watch her or him just sit
down and pull themselves away from everything and watch the kids just
keep going as if nothing is going on.
It's totally normal to them.
Um, and then I think the other misconception is just
based on the fact that.
Maria was asked to patent her method and she ultimately chose not to.
So essentially, there is no quote right way and wrong way to do things.
So you are going to find, um, some Montessori schools aren't
necessarily Montessori schools.
Essentially, anybody can take the name Montessori, slap it on the side of a
building, put wooden materials out on the shelf and say, look, you're Montessori.
Yes, it worries me, yeah.
Yeah.
Um, so there's just some vetting that might need to happen if.
If you are, if it is someone who's genuinely looking at either teaching
in one or just sending their children to one, there's a lot of back, like,
behind the scenes work that might need to happen on that end, just to
make sure you're actually choosing one that is something that if Maria
was still alive, she would approve of.
So yeah, those would be my big ones.
I think I would be wary of that because I've seen it even where I, I live, you
know, you'd see a building come up and it's a new, it's a new childcare center
and then they'd have Montessori on the side and I'm thinking, yeah, I don't know
if you really are Montessori, you know, and I think you're right for parents.
And you've just touched on this now because I was going to say to you, what
advice would you give parents and teachers who are considering Montessori education?
I guess one of the things that you would consider is to check out whether they
truly are aligned with Montessori values and whether they really have the actual
Montessori materials, because I know Montessori has very specific materials
in terms of teaching various things.
It's You know, whereas in other schools or non Montessori you can basically use
anything, but Montessori is very strict on the type of materials that they use.
Uh, I think I'm right on that, right?
Tell me if I'm wrong.
Um, if you,
oh, what was I was going to say now?
Um, uh, Montessori, thank God for editing.
Um, I can't remember my train, I, I, I stopped my own train of thought there.
Um,
Is there anything else, Alex, that you think is really important for people
listening to this episode that they should really know about Montessori?
That's something that, because I can see that you feel so
passionate about Montessori.
Is there anything that you want to say to people about Montessori that you
think that they should know if they want to bring their kids there, if they
want to teach in a Montessori school?
Anything, what else do you want to, this is your plug for Montessori, so to speak.
I
think my biggest takeaway that I, if anyone could take anything away,
it's just to not be, don't be so close minded and, and be open minded.
Um, there is a lot of like, Misconceptions and a lot of weird stigmas about
it from, for whatever reason, and about a hundred of them are false.
And, um, I learned that myself at one point or another, and I've
witnessed other people realize, Oh, so this is what you do.
And they're There is just so many misconceptions and a lot of them can go
away by just scheduling an observation So if you do find a school in your
area That is genuinely montessori and they are doing everything they can to
uphold what maria would have thought Would have been true and right and
just ask them call them up say hey I'm interested whether it's for being a
teacher or sending your children there.
Let them know what you're interested in and just ask for an observation.
And almost every one of them will allow you to come in.
They'll allow you to sit in a chair with a clipboard and a piece of paper, and they
will just allow you to take it all in.
And there is truly no better way to actually understand what on earth
goes on in a Montessori classroom than just sitting in a chair.
It was, I hold on to that very first observation I ever, I ever witnessed.
I cling to that one.
It was, One of the most beautiful things I've ever witnessed, and if
it wasn't for that I don't think I'd still, like, I'd be here today.
So you would be shocked at what you'll see and what the children are capable of if
you just sit in a chair and take notes.
It's wonderful.
And Alex, is that moment, is that what made you want to be a Montessori teacher?
Originally a traditional, I just say a traditional, you know, a non
Montessori teacher, traditional teacher.
You were originally, that's where you started, right?
So what was it that made you change to Montessori?
Um, so I was studied at a four year college to be a traditional.
teacher And that's what I thought I was going to do my whole life.
I thought I was going to be like a second or a third grade teacher.
That sounded like the dream.
Um, and in America, we get placed to student teach for like six to eight weeks
or sometimes 12 weeks, depending on your major, um, right before you graduate.
And so I got the letter for my student teaching placement and in the letter,
it said the name of the school and it just said kindergarten on it.
And I was like, okay, sweet.
This is great.
But I did not go to college in the same town I was from.
And so I mentioned it to a friend who was born and raised in that town.
And I said, Hey, this is the school I got placed at.
What do you know about it?
And I just remember the look on their face and they were like, Oh, you know,
that's a Montessori school, right?
Like I'll never forget the look on his face.
And I was like, Oh no.
And I was.
furious like in that moment I was so mad that my traditional college
would place me to student teach in a Montessori school without telling me
and without preparing me for it and I was to this day I was the only The only
one that I know of that they place like to student teach there, which baffles
me to this day, somehow providential.
Yeah, and I just sent an email to my teacher that was my cooperating teacher
and I expressed my concern and I said, Hey, like, I'm not really a mom, like I
know nothing about the montessori method.
I'm so sorry that I got placed with you.
What do you want me to do to make sure I'm prepared?
And she was so kind and she just emailed back and was like, Oh my gosh, no worries.
Like come in and observe.
Like, so I observed in December before my January term started and she actually
had me observe for three straight hours.
They get to work for three straight hours in the morning and normal
observations for anybody else would be probably about an hour.
But, um, I sat in that chair And I can think of three kids off the top
of my head who I was just in shock.
They were like three and they were not once did she even say like she
didn't, she didn't talk to them because they were functioning so.
independently.
for three straight hours.
They did not need help.
They did not need guidance.
They did not need redirection.
They just knew exactly what to do and they did it.
And it was unreal.
I can see those kids to this day.
It was, I'm pretty sure I teared up in that moment because I had
never seen anything like it before.
And I had just done a practicum in like a third grade classroom where I still
had third graders that would come up to me and be like, So what do I do next?
Like they just couldn't problem solve of like what came next and I
watched this three year old child know exactly what to do next and
then do it and it was mind blowing.
Oh my gosh, I missed out Alex.
I really want to go to the Montessori school.
Oh, it sounds so wonderful.
Uh, listen, Alex, before we go, um, it's been amazing.
It's been just so, so wonderful and enlightening to listen to you.
And it's also just made me feel really sad that I don't have a
Montessori, um, education and I don't have a Montessori training.
Because I think it would have just been lovely to teach in a Montessori school.
Tell people where they can find you.
Uh, what do you tell people where they can find you?
Because I also know that you offer things in terms of Montessori training to people.
Is that correct?
So tell people where they can get hold of you and how you can help them.
Sure, my handle's just missnearingsmontessori.
It's on TikTok and on Instagram.
It's also a website, so the same website.
If there are any questions or any concerns or any problems that you see and you
just want a couple minutes spent with me walking you through something, there is
a link on that website for just like, A little time with me on a zoom call just
asking or answering questions or working through a frustration It i've worked
with a whole bunch of people who either are montessori teachers and they're
struggling with something or who want to send their kids to montessori and
want to know how to prepare them or just struggle or have kids in the montessori
school and are struggling with them and there's all sorts of walks of life and
so it's really cool to be able to walk through all of those with everyone.
But yeah.
That's amazing and we will put,
I will put links to all your, to your website and your Instagram handle.
I'll put all that.
in the show notes for anybody listening, so you don't have to worry about that.
Alex, thanks so much for being here today and sharing your vast
knowledge about Montessori and your passion with everybody.
It's so much appreciated and so welcome as well at this time where
I think there's so much going on in education and people are concerned.
So I think Montessori is an Just fabulous way to address anybody's problems.
So I just love the idea of Montessori and thank you so much for sharing
your passion with us today.
Thank you for having me.
I really loved this.
Anytime.
And I'm really looking forward to maybe in the future we'll have you on again.
Who knows?
So I'm just going to stop the recording.