If you are thinking of enrolling your children for next year, Montessori schools are an option to consider. Although it is true that not everyone accepts their pedagogical methods, everything will depend on the parents' own choice, and the educational approach you want your children to receive.
Montessori schools they use as you could guess an alternative methodology given the usual shortcomings that exist in the current curricula of many centers. And of course, they have prestige and are currently widespread throughout the world. Both in Spain, as in Europe or in America you will find this type of school that we want to talk to you about in «Mothers Today». We invite you to take note if the topic interests you.
The origin of Montessori schools
María Montessori with her students
Montessori schools They owe their origin to the educator, pedagogue and doctor María Montessori. From his so-called Pedagogy of Responsibility, he began a whole renovation of the educational pillars at the beginning of the XNUMXth century. Living in an Italy where social inequalities were so high, he reformed the guidelines and focus on the treatment and education of children themselves.
His work it started in creatures with social margins or with some impairment. His idea was to integrate them, and endow them with enough skills to feel useful, independent, and at the same time, be useful to society. From these precepts, he managed to provoke a whole revolution of consciences.
We discovered that education and learning is not something that the teacher does, but something that develops spontaneously in the child himself.
Maria Montessori
His educational proposal was based on three basic axes.
- Love as a strategy to ignite the spirit of the child to place it in the world, to give it recognition, strength and security so that it is able to open up to the world.
- Ambient: it is necessary to provide students with an environment full of stimuli from which they can learn what society is like that surrounds them, as well as the world itself.
- Child-environment: this relationship is basic and essential. The child should feel free to explore, to learn. The adult is his guide and his facilitator, but it is the student himself who develops his own strategies to discover and learn.
Basic axes in Montessori schools
The curriculum is integrated
The classroom in a Montessori methods school is a common workspace. In each area of knowledge, all the different curricular modalities are integrated.: motor development, emotional education, initiation to reading, discovery of mathematics ...
Any activity is a discovery from which to promote learning in all areas. The teacher acts as a guide and promotes the acquisition of basic skills.
Individual attention
In the classroom, as we have indicated before, the child's freedom to explore is favored. Now, giving freedom does not exempt the obligation to attend to each child individually to meet their needs.
Montessori pedagogy is based on responsibility but also on love and recognition. It is necessary to point out that the famous pedagogue praised the need to promote a biological and sociological foundation. Namely, the biological development of the child must be attended to, as well as knowing how to integrate it into the world so that it looks useful, and is useful to society itself.
Hence the need for individualized care.
Very close relationship between parents and educators
It is fundamental. Education does not end when you leave Montessori schools or any classroom. A child's education takes place at school, at home, and even in society itself.
Therefore, these centers seek that close relationship between teachers and parents to meet every need of the child, whether academic or emotional.
The value of autonomy
The child must be free to manipulate, explore, acquire responsibilities and be able to assume learning day by day.
The student must be his own architect when it comes to acquiring knowledge and acquiring skills. Motivation is only inspired by giving the child freedom and confidence.
Help me to do it myself.
Maria Montessori
Montessori Schools Philosophy
You may wonder that of ... But how do they learn to multiply? How do they learn reading comprehension and to conjugate verbs? We will give you an example. In many Montessori schools classes begin by reading the newspaper.
Something so simple not only improves reading comprehension, but also It helps them to have a critical sense, to assume values, to give their opinion and to know how to listen to others. That is, any activity can lead to the development of multiple complementary activities where instrumental areas are always going to be worked on, such as language and mathematics, for example.
However, let's now take a closer look at what the Montessori philosophy is based on.
- The joy in the child must be promoted. A happy child feels more free to initiate things, to relate, to attend, imagine and create.
- Teachers act as guides and inducers. They should encourage children to give their best. Effort and responsibility are enhanced.
- To promote the happiness of the child physical freedom is promoted, that they can touch and manipulate. In the classrooms there are areas for physical exercise, plants to take care of, dirt to get dirty with, basins to wash hands, books to pick up and cards with information to discover.
- There are an aspect that is highly emphasized in Montessori schools: concentration, that children focus on their tasks. This can be a complex aspect seen from the outside, since when we hear that of "That they are given freedom" We immediately think that the responsibility and the final object of the task is lost. However, this is not the case, everything is very controlled.
Attention to sensitive periods
In previous articles we already told you about the importance of meet the needs of babies between 6 and 12 months. It is what María Montessori called the sensitive periods and that would especially cover the entire life cycle of the child up to 6 years. It is the so-called magic age, where the little ones are like real sponges eager to learn.
- From 6 to 12 years, sensitive periods continue to exist, but past this age, a child's brain loses part of its potentiality and plasticity. It is therefore an ideal period where all stimulation builds multiple learning.
- In Montessori schools they know this very well and therefore, their work strategy, Its methodology and curriculum is focused on enhancing all areas of intellectual, physical and emotional knowledge of the student. It is therefore a multipurpose approach where the emotional plane is not excluded either.
The pedagogical approach of María Montessori actually has a lot of weight in what we understand today by pedagogy, however, not all centers apply its principles in their purest essence. Keep in mind that there are thousands of centers with this type of line all over the world, and that If you wish, it is an option to take into account in the education of your children.
However, whatever school you choose for your children, do not forget that your role as a mother is always essential, and that also you have the opportunity to apply the Montessori method at home.