Forming Our Children's Souls

2010 AGM of the Montessori in Delta Society

Principal’s Address      September 24, 2010

The summer passed quickly this year, and here we are again, getting back into our routines as the rain and leaves begin to fall along the long rural roads that I take on my drive into school. Fall is traditionally a time of harvest and thanksgiving, of completing one cycle and beginning another. Interestingly, rather than beginning my school year feeling sadness about the summer coming to an end, I found myself looking forward to a new beginning and having deep feeling of appreciation and gratitude for those things that I’ve come to treasure about BBMH. 

My family were actually slow converts to Montessori education. It all started with my own questions about the mainstream school system during university when I did my teaching practicums. Montessori education was mentioned in one lecture during a course I took on Educational Philosophy, but I remember that the explanation seemed, at best, vague and kind of radical at the same time. . . the benefits of Montessori education were never really explained to us, other than it was seen as an “alternative” and somewhat foreign discipline.  I had worked in various capacities teaching and working with children over the years, and had always valued having positive, supportive interactions with them as they learned and developed as individuals. Once I entered the public school system, the expectations attached to my role of teacher seemed to continuously broaden, and at times I felt like I was being asked to step outside the scope of my values around having nurturing and supportive relationships with kids.  Ironically,  or maybe not, our experience with my own children in the public school system made us want to search for something, someplace or someone who could appreciate each of our children’s unique gifts, while supporting the fundamental values that my husband and I had identified as important through our initiation into early parenthood.

After several years of homeschooling for our older daughter and trying out a rather uninspiring preschool for our youngest, a friend mentioned a Montessori preschool program to us and we decided to check it out. It was early summer and the school year had just finished, so the classroom was still set-up with all the materials out and with the resonating glow of children’s forgotten work and worn-out slippers. Despite the void of children’s voices in the school, the classroom attracted both my daughters into what felt like an endless session of hungry exploration. They wanted to look at and try out everything in the room, each child taking their own path through the materials, but feeling attracted to something in every part of the room. The calm attentiveness of the Directress was contagious, so much so that they soon settled and showed the wide-eyed patience of a child receiving their first lesson in an incredibly appealing material. You may have witnessed this in some form. . .the child who sits glued to her seat, hands on her lap in order to keep them from grabbing every beautiful and delicate item on the tray, eyes fixated solely on every precise and calculated motion of the teacher’s hand, so silent that not even a breath from that child can be detected, just waiting for the moment when the Directress gently says, “Now, you try. . .”. And then the freedom and exultation experienced when the child, finally entrusted with the freedom, the well-deserved privilege, and tremendous responsibility of the phrase, “You may now use this material whenever you wish.” Well, my children were enchanted to say the least, and I have to admit, so was I. Suddenly there seemed to be this epiphany around why everything in the world required order, and could be presented as possessing beautiful and simplistic qualities, how everything was connected to everything else in the world and that my children could learn these values and so much more during their elementary education, rather than just having to learn through the trials and errors of the hard knocks of adult life. In a nutshell, it quickly became clear to us that Montessori education fulfilled the quality of education that we had dreamed about for our children. And so the short story is, through a number of symbiotic events, we moved our home, changed careers and ended up here at BBMH. 

But that story isn’t actually what I wanted to talk about tonight, although I did want to give you a little context about where I’ve come from and how I’ve arrived emotionally and spiritually at the beginning of another school year. Also, I think it’s important to point out that after the AGM tonight, when you’re mingling and chatting with all of our Directresses, you will likely find that they have stories that share characteristics with your own family’s story of how you arrived here and why you’ve chosen BBMH, whether you’re a new family or one of our founding families who have had a twenty-year history with the school. And that’s more of what I wanted to talk about this evening. . . about the things that bring our community together, that unite forty or so families in line to achieve a common purpose. . . about the values that we share and the incredible safety net that we have created for each other in a time in the world when everything seems to be trying to move us apart, to make us move faster, more efficiently, more globally, where we are obsessed with fast food, instant gratification, moment-to-moment communication, and quick fixes; a world which gives us less and less opportunity to examine, consider or savour the quality components of our day, or to take time for face-to-face relationships with each other.

 When I thought about our return to BBMH after this summer, it made me think about when I was a kid at about the same age as my own daughters, and about all the ways the community supported me as I grew up. Each summer, we would spend endless hours at the school field playing softball or soccer, not in a league with sponsors, uniforms and coaches, but just pick-up games for fun, with whoever was around. We would set up kool-aid stands, where every adult neighbour who passed by would pay us for a plastic cup full of super-sweet cherry kool-aid, protein-rich with a few blades of grass and the remnants of my mucky hands or drops of the greying dishwater that was hidden in a Rubbermaid tub under the table.  On warm summer nights, all the neighbourhood kids would reflected back to them continuously so that they may turn their strengths both into esteem-building contributions to the community, as well as tools to reach their personal goals. We have a community where the adults take the time to listen to the children, and to each other, as they give their best in their work, their play and their relationships; they explain, and to try to explain again in different ways, to adapt, to adjust, to understand and integrate all the different points of view.

I love that my children are in a place where teachers and parents take the time to learn all the children’s names, thereby making it easier to assist when a child is hurting, and building trust to support the children to work out differences.

I deeply value that parents and extended family members ask how they can help with carpool rides, building furniture, creating beautiful garden spaces, making quality learning materials, cleaning and painting classrooms, trading childcare favours, passing down outgrown clothes, donating for the latest raffle, baking cookies, being each others’ emergency contact or contributing to the latest fundraiser. I am grateful that I am raising my children alongside people who want to teach all of our children to be virtuous, compassionate individuals. Our children have developed a deep sense of compassion, and show their understanding for each others’ strengths and their individual challenges. Often, I’ve heard our students say to each other, “You’re really good at that” or “I like your work - can you show me how to do that?”, and I feel like those children will grow up to make our world a better place.

Most profoundly, I appreciate that our children are safe, emotionally, physically and spiritually. This is shown each time a child comes to teachers or parents with a problem, because they know they will be heard, or when they are pulled aside to address a conflict or misbehaviour, and they readily admit that they made a mistake, and then have suggestions about how to fix the situation. This is also demonstrated when an older child helps a younger child carry his load, lifts her up so she can finally score a basket or zips up the little one’s coat without being asked.

I have a book on my bookshelf at home that talks about what makes a great community, and it tries to convey these qualities in non-academic terms, by describing what a great community looks like, sounds like and feels like.  And our community of BBMH fits the description – our community looks like people knowing each others’ names and looking out for each others’ kids, and families meeting and socializing and joining together to share the work to maintain the community spaces. Our community sounds like children laughing, adults talking to children other than their own, and community members speaking proudly of our youth, regarding both their achievements and the nature of their character. Finally, the BBMH community feels like an inviting place, where families want to be and are welcomed, where they feel connected and cared for, and the children feel supported and safe. What better place could we ask for our children to develop the foundation of their character, and to test the boundaries of their experiences? Nothing can teach our kids patience, kindness, confidence, unconditional love, compassion and courage like creating a strong community. As Maria Montessori once wrote, “The things [the child] sees are not just remembered; they form a part of his soul.”

So as we begin the 2010-2011 school year at BBMH, I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for the contributions you make towards creating our strong community, and forming each part of our children’s souls.