the silence game

Image taken on our Alaskan honeymoon.

So often, in this training, I think, I wish I'd known this before, I wish I'd known this when Maya started.

I said this at a parent night, after spending some time photographing the school for the website, that I had already become a better parent after observing Kai and Juliane in their environments. I found myself slowing down, not speaking so loudly, feeling peace as I interacted with my children who were so easily swept up in heightened feeling--to not immediately react, to take that deep breath, to remember, when they are so small: I am the centering for the storm.

Therefore, I cannot become stormier. I cannot push this storm into some sort of next-level alert.

I wish I could more thoroughly express how much I've learned in these seven days, but I can say this: they have been life changing. Kai knew this as I began the tentative observations I did last winter and spring with Nicole, the woman who led the elementary program before I stepped into the position.

There's so much talk about the transformation of the adult. About the prepared adult.

I know I will always have road in front of me, but I also always have road behind me.

We've practiced some of the things we've explored in the first plane--that is, children who are from birth to approximately age six, children who attend our toddler program and Children's House, or casa, as it is often referred to here. So we've learned How To Carry a Chair and How to Unroll a Working Mat, and the other day--how many days ago was it? I can't even remember now--either yesterday or a hundred days;it must be one of those two--we did two very meditative activities that are designed to thread that mind and body together: Walking On the Line (not to be confused with Johnny Cash, though I understand having that run through your head while reading that phrase) and The Silence Game.

Walking On the Line seemed to me something silly that mainly helped with balance but could be relegated to a gym class. Nothing of true importance--it's just some tape on the floor, right? But then we did it, and I have to say: transformative experience. The peace I felt fall over my body was remarkable. It's done in complete silence and challenges you to be aware of those around you, respecting both your own breath and the breath and pace of those around you.

The Silence Game should not be mistaken for the silent game, in which the frustrated parent throws the request at the hyper-active children to calm them in desperation, but instead a game in which the child becomes fully aware of his or her body in space and in conjunction to others. We didn't do anything terribly complicated--we were to sit silently on one side of the classroom and stay quiet enough to hear our instructor call our name in a whisper from the other. So we had to be still, and we had to hear our own body in movement. After the activity, she read us a book--If You Want to See a Caribou--to raise us out of that space and back into our working selves.

I asked my children if they knew this game as we drove home with their new animals in their carriers in their laps. Maya immediately rested her head on my shoulder, and I returned the gesture, and we were completely still and quiet, whereas Finn kept wiggling and wiggling and when we were done, I asked them: "What does the silence game mean to you?" Maya talked about being completely still and quiet, whereas Finn crouched his body and whispered, "It means you creep around like this" and he grinned wickedly. I'm not sure if this was an adaptation--moving quietly--or if he was just good-naturedly playing along in his own way.

Either way, what a sweet moment: the three of us in the backseat, a guinea pig named Luna and a bearded dragon named Max with us, quiet as bugs.

(Side note: Maya often asks, when we clean things, that we make it "clean as a bug in a bucket.")

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.

today was the first day of training,

... and I'm not sure if I can keep myself upright. As I write this, I am on the back patio, tired from the hour commute, but grateful that I can come home to my family every night. There are parents coming in from Duluth, from Sioux Falls, from Houston Denver and Colombia. My own are just an hour's reasonably paced drive away.

I wish I had the brainspace and energy to unpack today. I could make a list of events: introductions, snacking on fresh fruit on the front lawn, learning a new song, a documentary, a lecture, a game involving balls, some journal-writing, what else? Oh, yes. The silent walkabout in the only Montessori Museum (at all? or in the US?)--here's one of the earliest moveable alphabets.

One question that has rattled around in my mind: Why is Montessori not more well-known? If the studies are correct, if this is such an ideal form of education, why aren't more people learning in this way? There are plenty of off reasons we can list, mainly about misconceptions or lack of awareness, but the one that I think makes the most sense to me is this: there needs to be a transformation, or, as some of the other students put it, a personal connection. It's like the discovery of one of those kitchen tricks or just how buttery those leggings really are, except it's education.

For our family, we opted to send our kids to preschool after a mild discussion (do we invest more in college? do we send them now? do we go with a church-y place or something else? What is Waldorf? What is Montessori? They both like natural things; that's good, right?) and found the only option that felt like it had much to do with education (and it had much to do with education, let me tell you) was Red Cottage. So off Maya went, even though I was mostly skeptical because I wanted her to make friends--the point was social interaction, wasn't it?--and they were teaching her independence. What the what.

All that shifted when I finally got the opportunity to observe. Suddenly, that click, the one that you can hear as some gear falls right into place. Suddenly, it was amazing! miraculous! why on earth was this not happening in every classroom? I became a convert swiftly after that and in this most recent year, when I did some volunteering in the classroom and thus was exposed to more, I found myself coming up with excuses to come in more and more: oh, I'll do gardening with them and oh, let's do a poetry lesson, and yes, I'd be happy to come back again and again to photograph the children at work for the website. What else, tell me what else.

We all need that transformative moment, the one where we finally see what it's all about and step back and say in that small I-just-realized-it-voice: oh. But that OH is HUGE! That oh is all of your skepticism sloughing off, and it's even more special if it's your own son or daughter who hails the arrival of your new view. Hello, parent, this is what's best for my brain and soul--isn't it amazing? All in that one little sound, that oh.