I received this comment on an earlier post, and I wanted to respond in more depth than a simple reply would allow.
“Thank you, this is a very helpful post. I have an important follow up question, arising from this wise statement you make above, "Our job is to offer the lessons, and then do our best to observe with humility as the children choose what to take from it. Offer lessons, offer opportunities for follow up, and then watch with curiosity, joy, and a sense of adventure!"... what do you suggest when the child is resistant to the offering of the lesson? In my case, it turns out this resistance is to nearly EVERY lesson. Do you ask them to at least let you show them, with the understanding that they may not want to do it on their own afterwards? Or, do you put it away immediately? In my case, that would mean putting nearly everything I've tried to show away, which doesn't quite feel right either.”
This is such a great question. I struggled with this early in my teaching career, and sometimes I still do, though I’m both better at handling it and better at not panicking about it. The most important principle to remember is that lessons are offerings to the children, not demands. You cannot force a child to accept a lesson. You can cajole, negotiate, threaten, or bribe, and probably get a child to come to a lesson, but even then, there is no way to force a child to engage, and the price to your relationship may not be worth paying. Save the demanding for times when you really do need to be on your agenda, not the child’s, as in “we need to leave the house in two minutes and you aren’t dressed yet” moments.
In the classroom, I simply don’t force the child to come to any given lesson, though I do repeat that coming to lessons is an expectation. Instead, I try to give lessons and tell really interesting stories near that child. In my experience, it’s a rare child who won’t start creeping closer and closer, or at least watch out of the corner of their eye. There, lesson given! When this happens, I’m very careful about what I say if that child later goes and pulls out the material. I try to observe discreetly to see how the child is using the material or what work they are doing related to the lesson. From a practical standpoint, once a child is working productively with the material, I can check it off my list for that child, even if they never got an actual “lesson”.
Except for potentially dangerous or exceedingly complicated materials, I don’t believe in the rule that a child can’t touch a material unless they’ve had a lesson on it. This makes the teacher the arbiter of knowledge. Children can learn through observation, through lessons from friends, and in some case, from the material itself. Instead of telling a child “you need to put that away; you haven’t had a lesson on it yet,” I try to observe. if I notice a child struggling with a material, I go back to that child and say something like, “I see you’ve been exploring the such-and-such. May I show you something else about it?”
I trust the other children and the work itself to pull the child in. Eventually, something will capture that child’s interest and become the key to unlock their excitement. Rather that focus on getting the child to lessons, I focus my attention on what may be getting in the way of coming to lessons? Is there a social struggle? Does the child lack academic status in the class and feel that they will be embarrassed in the lesson? Is the environment overwhelming? Does the child have a learning difference or developmental difference that needs support?
I try to remember that the classroom is a laboratory for the children, and my job is to support their research into how the world works. Giving lessons is only one part of this. As guides, we, well, guide; our role is to open up possibilities for the children, both practically (here’s how you can organize those notes) and intellectually (did you know that life existed for billions of years before there were dinosaurs?). Fundamentally, the purpose of lessons is to give the children the tools and information that they can’t be expected to discover for themselves, but if a child has discovered that key some other way, then the lesson is superfluous.
But what about at home? For those of you undertaking the very challenging work of supporting Montessori at home, you are lacking the most powerful tool we have in a classroom, namely, the other children. It’s pretty hard to give a lesson nearby child when there are no other children! So what can you do instead?
Do the work yourself. Sit down, take out the material, and start working with it. Slowly and with great focus, but not in an exaggerated way. You don’t have to say anything at all while you do this. Just watch the child out of the corner of your eye. In my first year of teaching, I learned the hard way not to be too enthusiastic about offering the work to the child. If your child asks what you are doing, tell them, but don’t offer them a turn or give them materials to make their own, unless they specifically ask. Simply finish the work, put it away, and see what happens. You may well see your child working with the material, making their own booklet, or trying out those same art materials a few minutes, hours, or days after.
Observe what your child is doing and pick a time when they seem most amenable to something more guided. Or simply plan a time together. This is more effective for a child who intermittently resists lessons, but probably wouldn’t work for a child who refuses all lessons. Don’t interrupt concentration!
My daughter, showing off her baby concentration.
Keep the lessons really light. Sometimes, I think we Montessorians make a bit too much of the lesson. It becomes a sort of ritual. Of course, we want to create the sense that this is something very special we have for the child, but for some children, that seems to carry too much weight. Particularly for elementary children, you can have a lot of success telling offhand stories or simply exploring together. Montessori supposedly talked about having "conversations" with the children, not lessons, and she often created materials after the fact. For example, she made (or actually, hired someone to make) all the botany nomenclature cards after the children had gone on many nature walks with her son, Mario, and began to ask questions about the plants they saw. (Note for those interested: I am certain this factoid comes from the 2013 NAMTA journal published in connection with the Montessori Congress in Portland, OR, in an interview with Lena Wickramaratne, but I cannot find my copy to check.)
The materials aren't always the most engaging way to introduce a topic. You can tell a brief story. It doesn’t even have to be during “school”; you could tell it over dinner, or in the car. "Did you know...?" is probably the best sentence starter for getting children engaged. "Did you know that 6 is a perfect number...?" "Did you know that mongol women spun yarn while riding horses?" You could even watch an interesting science or history video online. Then you can think of this as the lesson and anything the children do with it as followup work. If your child is interested but not sure what to do, then you might suggest, "Hey, let's make a lego model of life in the Triassic," or "Let's get a drop spindle and learn how to use it." Later, when it’s needed for a child to answer a question they have, then you can say, "hey, we have a material that might help with this. Want to see it?
Remember, the materials are just tools. The goal is self-construction, not marching step-by-step through a sequence of materials and exercises. Trust your child’s development process first, then ask how you might guide or support it. You will not always get it right, and that’s okay. So long as you can avoid getting your ego too involved (“I put all this work into preparing this lesson and now you don’t even want it!”), you can step back, observe, and try again. You can do this!