the first week

On this first week of training, I'm afraid all I have to give, at this moment, are snippets from my brain, most of which I've already forgotten. I've also got these panoramas I took inside of the L-shaped practice Children's House that we'll be using over the next few weeks, though finding the right spot to capture it was tricky. Believe me when I say the light is amazing, the materials pristine, and our curiosity in that flow of the cycle (as opposed, of course, to ebbing, you see).

:: So much of this would have been helpful to know when I was struggling with whether or not Montessori was right for our children so many years ago. I was such a skeptic! All I need was to observe a classroom though--the hum of industriousness and that thrill of how it all tocks together would have swayed me. I might not have needed the theory lectures, truly, but it helps, to think about things like what's learned in Practical Life and Grace & Courtesy and how that just snowballs into so much else. How it cracks the whole thing open.

:: I'm thinking a bit about a parent engagement night, or a series of nights, where some of that theory can be used to demystify a few things, especially the materials that seem so foreign.

:: We give children real objects because we want to let them know that we respect them. Things break--yes--as they do in life. It makes me think a bit to how we save our "best" clothes for special events--this does make complete sense as we do want to show a kind of reverence for those events, but if those events never come, our favorite dress hangs, collecting dust. We have these beautiful things for a reason. In turn, we give them glass cups instead of sippy plastic things because they need to learn to use them, but also this: they have given us a great deal of trust (we are their sense of time, their clocks, their rhythm of the day, their trust in getting fed and well-rested and what else more), and this is one way we can show that trust is returned.

:: In my own life, my favorite areas are language, the fiber-related aspects and making-by-hand of practical life, but I hadn't realized how much I would enjoy the meditative parts of the classroom work too. At lunch, a small group of us go outside and go through a few simple yoga-based movements, and it's so impressive how it restores me for the rest of the day. Today, we learned what it meant to walk on the line, and it is certainly one of those experiences one must actively participate in in order to understand the absolute restoration it can provide.

:: We've talked a lot about the transformation of the child, but we've also made sure to recognize the transformation, the ongoing always-learning transformation of the adult as well. And already, six days in, I can tell you, great shifts have happened inside of me. Great passion. Great this is right feelings are trickling around inside of my, fluttering against my ribs and thwacking my sternum. Hello! This is right, this is right! Yes.

Yes, this journey is right.