Breaking the Paradigm

How do educators balance the need to critically reflect on our actions with the importance of giving ourselves grace as we grow in our practice as educators? Our work with young people is so important, and I personally know the pressure that we educators put on ourselves to be as prepared as we can. However, despite our preparation, we will make mistakes. It’s a part of our work, and it’s how we c...

How do we awaken to our deepest sense of purpose and connection to our work as guides and teachers? How does discovering ourselves in the context of the cosmos impact the ways in which we work with young people? What does it mean to be a vitally responsive practitioner, and what does it take to get there? The answer is the spiritual preparation of the adult guide. In Montessori educaiton, when we...

Montessori education is designed to be an aid to life. Our goal is to support the positive human development of each student in our care, and to ensure that their fundamental needs are met. Traditional education is designed to imprint upon students certain ideas; to pour them into the “empty” brains of students and test them on their ability to remember said ideas. There is no consideration for th...

What is the purpose of education? For Andrew Kutt, founder of the Oneness-Family Montessori School, the purpose of education is the development of the heart. Over the last 40 years, the United States spent millions of dollars in “education reform” focused on mass standardized testing of discreet, alienated skills and content. This funding has done two things: * The push toward standardization has...

What if we’re focusing on the wrong things in education? I’ve been posing this question lately. I fear that those of us in Montessori, Progressive, Learner-Centered circles are often too focused on the products of education. The stellar paper. The math project. The capstone speech. The microeconomy sale. I won’t argue that these things aren’t important, but they cannot be the most important aspect...

The idea of controlling children is one I hear often in traditional education discourse. The logic goes that we, as adults, know what our young people need, and must control them so that they get it. This is what we call adultism, and it is antithetical to the Montessori approach of following the child. In reality, young people know exactly what they need. We adults must simply be willing to liste...

The most beautiful, and frustrating, aspect of learner-centered education is that there is no “single way” to go about it. Many “edu-celebrities” sell tips and tricks, but often those “active” learning exercises are just rote education dressed up to look fun. We might call those who engage students in active, but teacher-controlled, activities, the “teacher as choreographer.” But if we truly want...

One of the best decisions I made as an educator was to get rid of my desk. My pedagogy and my relationships with students were hugely impacted by this small change. As I think about the key shifts that educators must make in order to enact a learner centered and/or Montessori paradigm, I continue to see how getting rid of the teachers desk is a requirement. I haven’t had a teacher desk in many yea...

The traditional paradigm of education is fundamentally based on compliance and control. Getting students to sit in rows, stand in a straight line, turn in assignments on time, and regurgitate information delivered by a teacher. We know that such environments do not support intrinsic motivation and prohibit deep learning. It is also clear, through recent research, that such environments go against...

As a language and humanities educator, I used to “comfort” students who were “not math people” like me. “It’s ok, not everyone is a ‘math person,’” I would say. This language and attitude, which stemmed from good intentions, ultimately did a disservice to my students and their relationships with math. I had developed a phobia of math because of the traditional way I was taught. The implicit biases...

We need to break the paradigm on math education because it helps our young people unlock a richer understanding of their world and a deeper level of critical thinking. All my life, I’ve described myself as “not a math person.” If we think about this statement, it doesn’t actually make much sense. Math is a symbol system, much like language, that humans have developed to understand the world and th...

What do you picture when you envision a typical classroom? You probably think of desks in rows facing a blackboard or podium, which is reserved for the “sage on the stage” teacher. But what if we were to change the physical environment and invite learners to sit in a circle with the adult facilitator? How would this shift in our prepared environment alter our pedagogy and our view of learners and...

The Montessori paradigm is based on a fundamental principle; one which is so engrained in the method that we often take it for granted. We believe that every human being deserves a prepared environment where their needs are met, and that such conditions will empower each individual to live in equitable interdependence with the human and more-than-human world. This is not something that adults crea...

What does it mean to reimagine education given our current context of chaos and inequity? This is what I discussed with my friend and colleague Wendy Fisher on the first episode of the Breaking the Paradigm podcast. We hear the phrase “reimagine education” everywhere in our public discourse. Yet, “reimagine” is often only a call to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic of traditional education....