The Moment of Truth

I am happy to have chosen my work.

I go to bed at night, and even on Sundays, excited to wake up and get to school. (Well, I am excited for the kids to arrive--not wet sponges and make bleach water, but so the cookie crumbles.)

I was recently reading another blog I found by a young woman who is blogging about her first year in a Montessori classroom(there must be a lure for all the geeks out there to turn Montessori). She is mentioning a lot lately about how hard it has been for her. She has been writing about handling the new first-years, especially the newly turned three-year olds. She described a scene in which one of her students had an accident and needs to change. To her dismay, she finds him in the bathroom boggled by another accident on the floor. She describes her reaction, ending in tears as she searches for the cleaning woman in her panicky state of not knowing how to handle it. (waaaait! whaaaaat?! a cleaning woman?! unprepared for a toilet accident?!) I suppose the situation was handled, and to the teacher's credit, she does admit that she was unprepared for the young children and envisioned a class of interested, if not fully normalized, older children.

So this brings me to a conclusion I made recently: All Montessori teachers should spend a year (or at least a good deal of time) in the toddler community.

I need to describe my classroom a little bit and then explain my reasoning.

The Star Room is complete with 4 children who turned three after Labor Day (but before October 1st!). So this means that there are 4 children who have newly become official preschoolers, can no longer call themselves toddlers, but are only a few tiny weeks away from that distinction. For most children in a toddler class, the transition happens comfortably admidst rays of Sunshine, the light of a Moonbeam or the flight of a Butterfly (those are the toddler classes at MSC), so the big change into a three year old, which is hard, hard work, is nurtured in a classroom with familiar materials, friends and teachers. But for my 4 little kiddos, the transition is happening amongst big kindergarteners and sandpaper letters.

Children are resilient and never cease to amaze me, however. Though the big work of spending the day with so many older children, turning three (which, I will continually remind you, is hard, hard work!), and discovering all the tempting work around the classroom, is a lot to juggle, these four children have made the classroom their own.

Looking at the kindergarteners and normalized second-years, I can see how the young first-years seem like they have such a way to go. But, interestingly enough, these children are the ones I am most comfortable with. I am not denying the possibilty that this could be because I am knee-deep in training and feel most confident with the work they are choosing, but I feel I benefitted a great deal from the Sunshine room. (As is obvious from most of my blogging and descriptions of Donna-channeling...)

I can see how a primary teacher might lose her patience or understanding for the very young children when she spends so much time with older children and moveable alphabets and golden beads.

After spending time watching how much growth happens between 2 and 3, I can easily speak to those children without judgment and with patience--ideally I always remember those things.

So every day I am excited to see the young ones. Maybe that's what makes the teachers come back again and again. Falling for the young ones and then getting to see them through to kindergarten...