Creating a culture

“At each age one must seek for the opportunity for the greatest effort, and the greatest social experience one can reach actively.” Maria Montessori, Citizen of the World.

Well hello there! It has been a really long time, and I’m so glad you’ve stuck around. There are so many things that I have wanted to write about the past six weeks—the first six weeks of Sage Montessori School of Nashville! But every night, I’m asleep by nine.

We are making our way through our little corner of downtown Nashville, getting to know the best public spaces to play in. Earlier this week, we walked down the alley to the firehouse and played in the yard there. As we walked back, a firemen asked if we wanted a tour of an engine before we went back to school. Each child got to take a turn spraying the hose.

The time between spring break and the end of the school year is my favorite time in the classroom. It might be because spring is my favorite season or because there is a wave of beautiful weather after a cold winter and weeks of rain and gloom. It also might be because it’s a time when the culmination of skills the children have been working so hard to build comes together. Nearly every community member has the classroom routines and rhythm down, and signs of social cohesion are observable. For me, March-May is a time to finish strong. But here I am, at the beginning of May, finally settling into new routines and rhythms. Orientation is a human tendency. I repeat this to myself alot these days.

The past six weeks have been filled with orientation and exploration. We’re getting to know the children, and the children are getting to know us and more importantly, they are getting to know each other. They are all building new skills each day (we have a really young group!) and they are all learning about their importance in their community.

This has posed a new challenge as a Montessori guide—building a classroom culture from scratch. I have always gone into established communities. Stephanie and I were lucky to spend five years together in the same classroom before starting Sage. In those five years, we worked hard to build a classroom culture on the values of joy and belonging. Now, starting with a group of 12 children, we get to build a school culture.

I’ve been going back to Dr. Montessori’s writings about the earliest Children’s House, and her writings about social cohesion. We just received a grant dispersement and will be able to order the rest of our furniture and materials. We need more to do, I keep telling myself. We need the full compliment of Montessori materials, I keep saying. This child needs Golden Beads and that child needs the Movable Alphabet.

But do we? Dr. Montessori didn’t have them when she started her earliest schools—in fact, it would be years before the Children’s House even had Golden Bead materials. Dr. Montessori got started with Practical Life, and not Pinterest-perfect trays with seasonal tonging activities. She started with the real activities of daily life like cooking, cleaning, and caring for your own body, and built many of her developmental theories on what she observed when young children get to participate in these activities in a specially prepared environment.

There are many sweet moments throughout the day at Sage, but my favorite part is when we tidy up at the end of the day. Our school day is long—nine hours. We will work up to a second work cycle, and we are still figuring out afternoon rhythms that work for everyone. We have been getting into a routine of cleaning together each afternoon—the older children start with moving all of the tables and chairs back from lunch. Then we wash all the dishes. We get dishwater. Someone washes, someone rinses. Some days, we mop. Then we pour out the basins of water into a bucket and carry it up the stairs and dump it out into the street. It is a ceremonious part of our day. Some of our youngest community members are just waking up from their naps, and they run out to watch the water get dumped onto the side street that’s just outside our classroom door. “Can I watch you dump the water!?” they shout as they run over excitedly. They take turns carrying the heavy buckets of water up the stairs. Sometimes, one child can manage, but sometimes it takes two of them. It’s the last thing we do before we all head outside to go home. They work together and cheer each other on. It’s a glimpse of social cohesion forming in the community.

Every day, no matter how ruthless the news of the day feels, I see what humanity can be—a society by cohesion. I see children persevering through hard tasks, cleaning up their own messes, and finding joy in their work. I see them working together and helping each other. I’m not experiencing the same kind of May that I’m used to as a Montessori guide, but I am seeing glimpses of normalization and signs of social cohesion.

“When the children find themselves in the environment we have prepared, the social contact with other children begins. [...] One might imagine that the children would fight, but no, the children have solved the problem. We can sum this up by saying that the child leaves the others to be active as long as he also can be active. Each respects the work of the other. This shows that the interest of these individuals is to be active.” Maria Montessori, Citizen of the World