...and sat down beside her.

Jimmy came over and hugged his teacher.

Jimmy?

Quite out of character.

A nine-year-old boy? Also out of character.

Hugged his teacher?

It seems she had given the class as a special Halloween treat zoology lessons on "The parts of a bat" and "The parts of a spider."

Montessori kids are different.

Get down on the floor

Baby Einstein?

Build IQ through video. Or computer use.

Not!


Check it out. Get your refund.

"...getting down on the floor to play with your child is the most educational thing you can do."

Real engagement.

Real experience.

Three dimensional.

Tactile.

Personal.

13 ways of looking at a blackbird

You Tube:

Watch this short video.

The comments remind me that there are 13 ways of looking at a blackbird.

What grabs you from this video?

I love the collaboration that went into this project, the students working together. The creativity. And the engagement.

Not everyone responds to the same ideas.

Some may think that technology is the solution. Of course the video addresses that:

"The inventor of this system deserves to be ranked among the best contributors to learning and science, if not the greatest benefactors of mankind."

What system?

The chalkboard. Go figure.

Technology alone is not the answer. Active engagement in your own education is the key.

Think diffferent

Innovators think different, act different, (even talk different).

And many went to Montessori school. Check out this story in the Harvard Business Review.

Attention!

"Attention is our most essential stepping stone to happiness."

Surprised?

That's Maggie Jackson,author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. You can read a short interview here.

This is the same conclusion reached by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi ("call me Mike") in his book Flow: the psychology of optimal experience -- a book that is one of the landmarks of Positive Psychology.

According to Mike, "The best moments of our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times--although such expeeriences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to achieve them. The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen."

Maria Montessori understood that, too.

She added this: learning the pleasures of concentration actually transforms the personality. The child changes. Becomes a different child.

Well, wouldn't it change you to discover the secret of happiness?