Social Learning

Fostering Positivity in the Elementary Classroom

By Mark Powell

It is at seven years that one may note the beginning of an orientation toward moral questions, toward the judgment of acts. One of the most curious characteristics to be observed is the interest that occurs in the child when he begins to perceive things which he previously failed to notice.... The great problem of Good and Evil now confronts him.... The seven-to-twelve-year-old period, then, constitutes one of particular importance for moral education. The adult must be aware of the evolution that is occurring in the mind of the child at this time and adapt his methods to conform with it.... To think that the problem of morality only occurs later is to overlook the change that is already going on. Later, the moral problem becomes a good deal more difficult unless the child has been helped during this sensitive period. Social adaptations will become more thorny. It is at this age also that the concept of justice is born, simultaneously with the understanding of the relationship between one’s acts and the needs of others.

Maria Montessori, From Childhood to Adolescence

It’s always so interesting watching a new group of elementary children get comfortable with one another and become conscious of themselves as a group. Encouraging and directing this process is a large part of what we do as Montessori teachers, because a child who is sullen or mad at another child, or one who is feeling left out of an in-group, is not going to be very interested in learning. In the elementary years children’s group process becomes gradually more important until adolescence, when it seems to outweigh everything else.

Learning is the process of making meaning—the more personally useful information is, the more meaningful it will be. One of the most important discoveries to come from brain imaging technologies over the last decade or two is the melting away of distinctions between thinking and feeling. Memory is now believed to be encoded to specific events and linked to the social and emotional situations in which learning occurs. Current research on successful educational programs has shown that fostering healthy social and emotional learning in children is essential not only for academic success, but for children’s personal success in life generally.

Nurturing children’s social and emotional learning at school requires a responsive and empowering classroom atmosphere. The multi-age Montessori classroom is organized in a way that promotes cooperation rather than competition, and the search for commonality among diversity rather than a heightened interest in difference as a relief from homogeneity and sameness. Montessori students live in the same room with some of their peers for one year, others for two years, and those closest in age for three or perhaps even four years. The youngest are mentored by their older peers as much as by their teachers, and eventually themselves grow into the mentoring role as they earn the respect of those younger for their greater experience and competence, and as the oldest children move on.

In the absence of conspicuous and relentless grading, Montessori children are freer to offer and receive the assistance of their fellows, safe from the need to guard their place in a hierarchy of external approval. Formal testing is less necessary in a Montessori setting because teachers keep children longer and so get to know them intimately as individuals. The emphasis on choice given to individual students in managing many aspects of their own learning in an environment that permits social interaction means that each student has the freedom to negotiate with peers and teachers how their projects will be completed to suit their own particular learning style.

A classroom structure that encourages students to take on more of the management of their own learning also frees teachers from some of the more time-consuming elements of large group management, allowing a high level of individualized and personal attention to students who need it. Such an atmosphere of freedom and personal responsibility in the classroom must be built on a firm foundation of social responsibility. For children to work independently and in small cooperatives on different projects, the whole collective must have internalized an awareness of its own members’ interdependence. This shows up in various ways, from self-monitoring of voice tones, to turn-taking with scarce materials, to negotiation for limited work space.

In Montessori elementary classrooms, group interdependence can be fostered through lessons and activities that explicitly teach conflict resolution skills, and through group rituals and processes which foster and model openness and risk-taking. Concrete activities (such as those outlined in the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program K-6 manual and other resources from www.esrnational.org) can be used to introduce children to such concepts as the differences between negotiation, mediation and arbitration, the nature of conflict, the five styles of managing conflict (smoothing, forcing, withdrawing, problem solving and compromising), the various behaviors that can escalate or de-escalate conflicts, the four outcomes of every conflict (win-win, win-lose, lose-win, and lose-lose), the revolutionary idea that cooperation can actually lead to greater gains for both parties than competition, and clean communication skills such as ‘I Messages’ and ‘Active Listening’ (which can be rehearsed spontaneously in ‘fishbowl’ format.) These skills set students up to resolve conflicts effectively using negotiation processes such as C.A.P.S. (Cool Down/Agree to Work it Out/Express Your Point of View using an ‘I Message’/Select a Solution).

Even when children have the skills to speak honestly to one another, their day-to-day lives often don’t present them with the opportunities to use them. Center Circle, a group process outlined by Ruth Charney in her 1992 book Teaching Children to Care, provides a safe and confidential space, among other rituals, for children to acknowledge their appreciation of one another or to air grievances. At each sitting, once a month or so, two or three children take a turn at being in the center of the circle. Holding the gaze of each of their peers in turn as they move around the circle on their knees, the student in the center can either shake the hand of the person in front of them if they experience positive feelings in their body, pound the floor in front of them with their fist if they notice negative feelings, or do nothing and move on. When the person in the middle gets all the way around the circle, those who’ve had their hand shaken or who were ‘pounded’ may ask for an explanation if they wish. But they must listen and cannot respond, a procedure which puts the emphasis on listening and interpreting in the moment what is being said, rather than arguing about the past or ‘saving face’ for the future. The older children get, the harder this is to do. But it’s a skill that’s valued in adults—if rare—and one that must be practiced to be mastered.

The academic curriculum is our immediate agenda, but the social curriculum is theirs. Who likes whom? and Why? are questions that drive the social life of the elementary child (and often our lessons!) As Maria Montessori understood so long ago, it is one of the developmental necessities of the elementary child to try to figure out the “rules” of their classroom social order, whether the adults around them are part of this discussion or not. As teachers we try to raise these questions consciously, not in ways that impose our own values, but in ways that protect, inquire and respect.

Mark Powell is director of an upper elementary classroom at Berkeley Montessori School in Berkeley, CA. He has been in the classroom for thirteen years, eight of those with lower elementary children at Lexington Montessori School in Lexington, MA. Mark is also a faculty member of the Center for Montessori Teacher Education, New York. He holds a Master of Education degree with a specialty in Conflict Resolution and Peaceable Schools from Lesley University, Cambridge MA.