Last week, I wrote about a tool for observing children as a way to give us space between our feelings and our actions, and as a tool for understanding our children’s needs. I talked about the importance of giving ourselves space in order to lead from our wisdom, not our fear. But what do we do when we identify a problem and need to support our children? How do we actually lead from our wisdom?
The answer to this question is the art of teaching, and this is what teachers spend their lives learning to do better. But here are some tools that I find are effective with elementary children.
Have A Calm, Honest Conversation
There is a big difference between “You need to go choose some real work now,” and “I notice you haven't done any follow up on the last three lessons I’ve given you. What’s going on?” Once you have asked a question like this, listen to your child’s answer. This is not an exercise in finding the right moment to “pounce”—it is an exercise in understanding your child’s perspective. At the same time, you can honestly explain your concerns: “I would like you to follow up on those math lessons in a timely way, so that I can give you the next lesson.”
Ask What Is Getting in The Way
If your child isn’t doing some particular school work, talk about what’s making it hard. Trying to understand what’s getting in the way is critical to supporting them. This is where it’s important to try to dig deeper. If a child says some work is boring, is it because the work is too easy, or because it is too hard? Or maybe it really is boring. Maybe we need to help them find a different way to do the work, or actively look for interesting patterns. We can get some idea through silent observation, but the child’s own interpretation can sometimes tell us even more. And it’s important to believe that interpretation: if the interpretation seems odd, we should help the child find their words to express their experience, rather than assume they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Appeal to Their Sense of Responsibility
Children from 6–12 or thereabouts are becoming aware of how society works, and they want to take on the responsibilities required by society. This sense of responsibility is an important key to supporting work in the elementary. We can say to the children, “Here in Montessori, you are lucky to have a great deal of freedom. You can choose how to spend your time and what to learn about, but this also comes with a great responsibility. Our society has decided that all children your age must learn certain things, and so you have a responsibility to learn those. I will help you by giving you the lessons you need and by telling you what those things are, but you are responsible for making sure you learn them.” My friend Annabeth Jensen once told me that she tells children when a lesson is part of the school standards, and therefore follow up is not optional, and I’ve found this to be a very helpful tool. I also give the children an easily understandable version of our state learning standards, so that they can track their own progress towards this goal.
The same sense of responsibility can apply to behavioral norms in the classroom, chores at home, and so on. We can explain to children that we all have a responsibility to take care of our home and everyone contributes. Which jobs would they like to learn how to do? Which jobs will they take responsibility for?
Elevate Their Interests into Work
The scope of Cosmic Education is the entire universe. This means, in theory, anything the child finds interesting is their work. And yet, we know that some experiences and activities offer richer opportunities to learn, to develop ethics, and to become fully aware of the complexities of life. So how to handle this? We can help children elevate their activities into work. This takes time to learn how to do, so go easy on yourself.
In my first year of teaching, I had a group of students who wanted to do nothing all day but make little paper puppets. I let this go on for a while, on the grounds that it might grow into something interesting, but it never did, and eventually, we had to simply shut it down. At that point, I had no idea how to take this work and elevate it into something meaningful.
More recently, as in, a week ago, I had a group of children get excited about making a puppet show via Zoom. I let them talk about it for a bit, while I was working with some other students. Then we went into a Zoom breakout room, and I said, “Okay, let’s figure out how we’re going to make it work. Here are your first steps for your puppet show.” I grabbed a piece of paper and started writing down the steps (which I was literally making up off the top of my head!):
Decide on the elements of your story
Characters
Setting
Plot
How your story will connect to at least one lesson
Get approval from Alexa.
Plan out the most important scenes.
Decide who will write each scene.
At this point, I told them this was plenty of work, and we’d talk about the remaining steps later (this was mostly to buy myself time to invent the rest of the steps). You’ll notice that I explicitly asked the children to connect their work to lessons I’ve given, and I also snuck in a lesson on the elements of story in the course of our conversation. Now we’ve taken a fun project, and without taking away any of the fun, we’ve set the project up to both serve their “school learning” and be a successful puppet show.
Make A Plan Together
A great way to support a child’s independence and sense of responsibility is to make a plan. You can do this over breakfast in the morning. Brainstorm a list of 2–4 work choices the child might like to do during the day and write it down. You can also add any meetings, scheduled lessons, or other events. Then, get out of the way. Don’t ask about the list during the day. Then, in the afternoon, or over dinner (or maybe over lunch, for a child who is really struggling), ask how their day was. You can ask, “Which things from your list did you do?” Then repeat the next day. If they are consistently not doing anything from the list, then you can make a plan to start focusing more specifically.
Take Away Freedoms, But Only to The Extent Absolutely Necessary
Sometimes, we absolutely have to step in and provide more active limits. For example, in most Montessori schools, children are free to leave the classroom to pursue their work, so long as the teacher knows where they are going and the stay focused on their work. But some children aren’t ready for this responsibility, and we have to restrict them to the classroom. In this case, we can say, “I can see that you are having trouble making responsible choices when you are out of the classroom. You can stay in the classroom for now and practice making responsible choices here. When you can choose your work and stay focused on it here in the classroom, then we’ll talk about whether you’re ready to try leaving the classroom again.” When the child does seem ready, then we can make sure to begin with very simple activities and we can practice together first. For example, maybe the first time this child leaves the classroom again, they are only going straight across the hall to borrow a material for a lesson. This way, the child doesn’t have to go far, has a very clear task, and knows you are waiting for their return.
If All Else Fails, Let it Go for A While
No one activity is going to make or break a child’s future. If battles are constantly arising over a particular work, let it go for a bit. Focus on building a better relationship, finding joy in challenging work, and developing interests. Then bring up areas of avoidance and work together on a plan. Pushing harder won’t make a child less resistant.
Give Your Children Time, Give Yourself Grace
Learning to be responsible takes time. An elementary child does not have a fully developed prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain responsible for executive functions like inhibiting impulses), and sometimes they simply cannot live up to their best intentions. We adults may have better executive functioning, but we can be burdened by a lifetime of bad habits and bad models when it comes to guiding our children. At least here in the United States, much of our culture around education is one of dominance and control over children, rather than one of collaboration with children, and the instinct to try to force compliance can be very strong indeed. It takes time to learn a new way of interacting with children that neither tries to enforce dominance nor leaves them without critical guidance. Give yourself grace. You can always apologize to your children. If you do it honestly, they will be remarkably forgiving.