學習作品

｜TMIS – Atlanta’s Intern Journal at TMIS EP2｜

The journal just began last week. This week, let us see what Atlanta felt when first entering the school.

What is Montessori? Montessori is the most humane education I have ever seen.
No bells, no regular seats, no huge blackboards covering the entire wall. There are teachers at ease, students of free will, and souls full of warm energy.

【Break The Regulations In My Mind】

On my first day in the classroom, I was arranged to sit in the middle of the classroom to observe the working time. At first, I was worried that I might seem out of place. Before long, I found my worries unnecessary. Montessori classroom is an open environment without blocks of walls to cut the space, nor fence and iron windows that separate the classroom from the outside world. Hence, I did not seem strange when joining them.

I was tamed to be a person used to sitting quietly in the past 16 years of education. The first question I had after sitting on the chair to observe for 20 minutes was “Am I really allowed to walk around?”. I was concerned that my presence might interrupt them. But the children kept walking past me, and I seemed out of the place by sitting still. Consequently, I decided to stand up and walk around.

Such subtle struggle showed how the regulations bound my mind. However, when I walked freely in the classroom for observation, I broke the chain and my heart was free.

【Frenpuently Asked Questions】

The children are doing works of their choice in different corners of the classroom in groups or alone. Questions such as “What are you doing?” and “Why do you…” filled the classroom. Other children will come to see what you do, including myself. Soon, children come to ask me what I am doing here.

“I come to learn,” I answered.
“Do you want to be a teacher here in the future?” he asked.
“I have not made up my mind yet.”
“The teachers here are at ease.”
I can feel that.

To do the teaching volunteer work and arrive at the school at around 8:30, I have to get up at 5:30. I do not feel tired at all. I feel endless energy that comes not from over-excited emotions but from the undescribable and peaceful atmosphere. There are no students forced to swallow various knowledge, nor teachers with face written: “I want to go home”. I can feel that the “energy” in the Montessori theory is lead to where it should go.

【Touchable Social Distance】

A child suddenly points at the words “Social Distance” on my shirt and read out loud. I turned around to show him another sentence on my shirt: “If you can see this, it means that you are too close.”
The child immediately backs up several steps and asks, “Is this far enough?”
I say, “Social distance is 1.5 meters long.”
That child turns and runs away. Then he returns with a ruler in his hand. He puts it between himself and the friend standing next to him and says, “Back up a little bit.”
“This is 1.5 meters long,” he turned and smiled at me.
That was a one-meter-long ruler.

Montessori thought that action cannot be separated from recognition. Thus, there are all kinds of teaching tools in the classroom, including the visible one-meter-long ruler and the touchable one million, which help the children to materialize the abstract concepts.

Why are children afraid of math? Because they are required to think abstractly without ample concrete experience; they are not offered adequate opportunities to try over and over again to make their experience abstract. When you have these, you will find that math is not terrifying at all.

#mslamschool #tmis #Atlanta’s Intern Journal at TMIS