On Closing the Door

 Retirement & Reflection

By Joyce C. Probst

As my career as a Montessori teacher comes to a close, I have been thinking about my experience and the life lessons I’ve learned the past thirty years. There have been some challenges, which shifted over the years, but also many rewards. It has been a journey, one I am happy to say is continuing on, this time without my direct involvement.

The Beginning

My background was in speech therapy and in traditional education methods. I had become very disillusioned with teaching.

My sister had her child enrolled in a Montessori class in Illinois and during a conversation she mentioned that I might be interested in Montessori. She gave me a copy of The Montessori Method. I read it and I was hooked! It made so much sense to me and I knew I had found what I was searching for.

Little did I know that what I read was only the surface of Montessori, that it was not just about how we teach, but how we live our lives. Most people get so excited when they see the materials. I know I did. They think, “this is Montessori and now I have tools (didactic materials) to teach children.” But it is more than that, so much more.

My school, Child’s World Montessori Pre-school, was located in Greenwood, Indiana. I opened the Red Door in September 1976 in a very conservative suburb of Indianapolis, where virtually no one had ever heard of Montessori, let alone knew how to pronounce it. It was a pioneering experience and not always easy.

When I started the school, my goal was to teach and operate a Montessori school that was committed to the philosophy of Dr. Montessori. I planned to keep it small and true to what I believed Montessori exemplified.

The person who helped me to understand what Montessori was all about was Hilda Rothschild. Hilda taught at Xavier University in Cincinnati where I took my training. I would leave home at 5 a.m. and drive to Cincinnati every Saturday morning. I would not have missed her class. Hilda was such an inspiration! It was through her that I realized the depth of what Montessori was telling us.

Life Lessons

Montessori is not a method consisting solely of didactic materials and their manipulation. While technique is important, it is not the essence of Montessori.

Dr. Montessori tells us to prepare ourselves before we go into the classroom to work with children. I believe that means that we should be able to step aside, get rid of preconceived notions of how a child should be, allow the child to be free from our power and control and allow the child to grow in his or her own time, with our guidance.

Somebody once said that our job is not to be a sage on the stage, but a guide on the side. I think this is apropos and a good thing to remember as a Montessori teacher.

Get rid of the ego when it comes to children. I find that this is one of the hardest things for adults in a Montessori classroom (or anywhere else). We are all so sure that we know exactly what that child is doing or thinking. I found that you could learn a lot by just watching (observing, as Montessori tells us). Our judgment might just be wrong (perish the thought). I have seen children squashed by adults who use their own standards (based on their own capabilities) by which to judge the child’s accomplishments.

Thirty years ago, when I opened Child’s World and began teaching, other educators would clamor that children need to play and to quit pressuring them to learn. I would respond that work is the child’s play. Their emphasis was on PLAY and they didn’t seem to connect child’s work and child’s play, they saw them as separate entities.

At the end of my 30 years, I found our roles reversed.

I was telling parents, please allow the child his time and space to grow, please quit pressuring him with early reading, math, computer, soccer, piano lessons, homework, etc.

I am not opposed to children participating in these activities. However, as I told my parents, we are all entitled to one childhood and they have already had theirs. Back off.

Today, the role of the Montessori teacher as I see it is to help parents understand how harmful it is to pressure children to excel and achieve beyond their capabilities and stage of development. We as teachers must also not succumb to these pressures, which in turn are then applied to the children in the classroom.

Teachers need to help parents and administrators understand what Montessori was saying. She was not concerned with early reading, she was concerned with how we can all come together to live harmoniously in this world. She viewed children as our hope to bring about a more peaceful world.

I believe many Montessori schools have bought into this pressure-cooker atmosphere. Look around when you visit a class: do you see much daily living (practical life) activity? This is the foundation of a Montessori classroom and yet, many Montessorians do not view these activities as valuable. In some classrooms these activities are virtually nonexistant.

I remember a prospective parent while standing in the number room asked me what I thought was the most difficult work in the classrooms. I told him the “tying frame.” He was surprised. However, once a child has learned to tie, he believes that he can do anything! From there on it’s a snap!

I have found that children will make themselves work harder driven by their own inner desire than by anything I could ever have imposed upon them. Perhaps we can help by supporting and guiding them, but not by imposing something that they are not ready to take on. It just frightens them, causes them to lose confidence and, in many cases, they just turn off. Children will rise to the occasion and you get what you expect.

Children are amazing!

The End

Over the past five years, I had been looking for someone who I felt would carry on Child’s World with the same commitment to Montessori philosophy that the school expressed. However, due to many different situations, that never became a reality.

I had never really set a date or time for retiring, never gave it real consideration. I just knew I would be doing it probably sooner rather than later. However, while I was driving to school on the Monday after Spring Break, it just flashed through my mind that I didn’t want to do this anymore and from that point on I knew I was finished. To this day, it amazes me how this happened, those funny little messages that flit into our minds that we need to heed. It was so definite a message.

Since I never found a suitable new owner, I believed it was better to close the school than to continue operating it in a way that would not have lived up to its reputation.

However, serendipitous things happen.

A young woman who had worked as my assistant for seven years—who I would have loved to continue the school in Greenwood—had married and moved to Miami. One day she called me and told me that she would be teaching a 3-6 year old class and that her administrator was interested in the materials as well as all the other things—pictures, shelves, etc. We came to an agreement and Child’s World of Greenwood moved to Miami.

Now everything has found a home with wonderful children and a lovely teacher who is committed to Montessori and her philosophy.

Child’s World Montessori Pre-School does have a happy ending. I am totally thrilled.