Montessori at home

Parent Map presents "10 Montessori-inspired design ideas for kids' rooms."

Montessori inspired?  Child-sized furniture and tools that help a child with independence.  Dedicated work places.  Floor-bed rather than a crib. Practical life activities such as cooking.  An aesthetic emphasizing simplicity and beauty.  Natural materials (eg., wood vs plastic).

Montessori teachers will cringe at some of these ideas, but I found some good ideas for parents.

Creating Innovators

From an interview with Tony Wagner, author of Creating Innovators:  Raising Young People Who Will Change the World.

 

Wagner: I talked to a very wide range of young innovators in their 20s -- some innovators in the so-called STEM field (science, technology, engineering and math), some who were artists and musicians and some who were social entrepreneurs. It was a demographically [diverse] and representative sample of young innovators out there. Then, as you point out, I talked to all of their parents, and then I asked each one of them -- could they name a teacher or a mentor who had made the greatest difference in their lives in their development of their capacities to innovate? About a third of them could not name any teachers. They all could name at least some adult in their lives -- two-thirds could name a teacher, the other third named mentors.

 

I interviewed each one of those teachers and mentors, trying to see if I could find the patterns of parenting and teaching that contribute the most to the development of a young innovator.
 

What I discovered is that in every single case, the teachers who had the most critical difference in the lives of these young innovators was an outlier in his or her education setting. Elementary school through graduate school, every single one of them was an outlier. What made them outliers were the ways in which they taught, and the ways in which they taught were very consistent with what I saw to be some of the practices in the leading educational institutions that produce innovators. I'm talking about Stanford's d.school, the MIT Media Lab and above all, the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, which I also profile in the book.

 

I came to see that the culture of schooling in America is radically at odds with a learning culture that produces young innovators in five essential respects.

 

Number one: The culture of schooling is all about individual achievement, ranking kids, whereas, the culture of innovation demands collaboration. Every one of these teachers and classes I observed really build teamwork into all of their assignments.

 

Number two: A culture of schooling is all about specialization. While that certainly has a role in innovation, what's very clear in the world of innovation is a problem-based, multidisciplinary approach to learning.

 

Number three: The culture of schooling is risk averse and penalizes failure. The culture of innovation is all about taking risks and learning from mistakes, trial and error.

 

Number four: The culture of schooling is a very passive experience, where people essentially sit all day consuming information and then regurgitating it. The culture of learning for young innovators is all about creating -- not consuming -- real products for real audiences.

 

And lastly, number five: The culture of schooling really relies on extrinsic incentives to motivate learning -- carrots and sticks, As and Fs. But I discovered that these young innovators were far more intrinsically motivated, and when I looked at the pattern of what parents and teachers had both done to encourage intrinsic motivation, I found a kind of remarkable emphasis in the classrooms and among the parents of play, passion and purpose.

in whatever she chooses to do

A message from former Post Oak parent Bev Peters.  So where do "initiative and work ethic" come from?

John,

I just wanted to tell you a little story.  Avery is taking the PSAT this fall.  She isn't terribly concerned with it, although knows tests like that really aren't something she feels comfortable with (which we are both fine with) but also knows this is the world she currently lives in.  She asked if she could get a tutor so she would feel more confident.  

After several sessions he (he's getting his PhD at Rice in some kind of engineering, but was a high school science teacher) talked to me after and said he had been told to expect kids (he's with Rice Tutors) whose parents coddle them and aren't motivated.  

He commented that Avery has more internal motivation than he has seen in quite some time, stating that she will do fine on the tests, but more than that, has the initiative and work ethic to be successful in whatever she chooses to do.  I think I'd like to share the credit for this with POS!

Hope all is well.

Bev

the best Halloween costume

“Our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people. People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-respect, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning. The forces of destruction begin with toddlers – a prize for the best Halloween costume, grades in school, gold stars – and up through university. On the job, people, teams, and divisions are ranked, reward for the top, punishment for the bottom. Management by Objectives, quotas, incentive pay, business plans, put together separately, division by division, cause further loss, unknown and unknowable.”

“We will never transform the prevailing system of management without transforming the prevailing system of education. They are the same system."

– W. Edwards Deming, pioneer of the quality management revolution, in correspondence to Peter Senge. 

(Thanks to Post Oak parent Lana Rigsby for sending this to me.)

Real and lasting success

A variety of current references to schooling, learning, testing, and success.  From Dark Matter to the Rug Rat Race.  From Chinese physics students to "non-cognitive skills."  Is there a sea change at work?

opting out of the 'rug rat race'
American children, especially those who grow up in relative comfort, are, more than ever, shielded from failure as they grow up. They certainly work hard; they often experience a great deal of pressure and stress; but in reality, their path through the education system is easier and smoother than it was for any previous generation. Many of them are able to graduate from college without facing any significant challenges. But if this new research is right, their schools, their families, and their culture may all be doing them a disservice by not giving them more opportunities to struggle. Overcoming adversity is what produces character. And character, even more than IQ, is what leads to real and lasting success.

This American Life with Ira Glass
Ira talks with Paul Tough, author of the new book How Children Succeed, about the traditional ways we measure ability and intelligence in American schools. They talk about the focus on cognitive abilities, conventional "book smarts." They discuss the current emphasis on these kinds of skills in American education, and the emphasis standardized testing, and then turn our attention to a growing body of research that suggests we may be on the verge of a new approach to some of the biggest challenges facing American schools today. Paul Tough discusses how “non-cognitive skills” — qualities like tenacity, resilience, impulse control — are being viewed as increasingly vital in education, and Ira speaks with economist James Heckman, who’s been at the center of this research and this shift.

schooling beyond measure
The reason that standardized-test results tend to be so uninformative and misleading is closely related to the reason that these tests are so popular in the first place....

The common denominator? Our culture's worshipful regard for numbers. Roger Jones, a physicist, called it "the heart of our modern idolatry ... the belief that the quantitative description of things is paramount and even complete in itself."

why some kids succeed
The book takes on what Tough calls the “cognitive hypothesis,” the idea that success hinges on mental processing speed and traditional brainpower. Instead, citing lots of interesting research, Tough shows that “non-cognitive skills” – perseverance, optimism, self-control, and so on – are actually what matter most.

rote learning vs creative thinking
'The results suggest that years of rigorous training of physics knowledge in middle and high schools have made significant impact on Chinese students’ ability in solving physics problems, while such training doesn’t seem to have direct effects on their general ability in scientific reasoning, which was measured to be at the same level as that of the students in USA,

The doorway

From: Thomas, Dawn A.

Dear John,
Last week I visited BR in the library for an orientation.  As I was leaving, a small boy – who had just come through the hallway doors and was heading in my direction – looked up at me, stopped still, then hurried back to the doorway.  I at first assumed that he had forgotten something and was headed back to his classroom.  As it turns out, he was hurrying back to make sure he could open the door for me as wide as it was possible for him to implement.  He spoke no words, but the beaming smile on his face said it all.  To me, it was a heart-warming illustration that even the youngest Montessori child is nurtured in an environment of grace and courtesy.

Best regards,

Dawn

 

From: John Long

Dawn,
What a great story! It reminds me of the request that I got several years ago from Rhonda Durham, Executive Director of ISAS (Independent Schools Association of the SW), asking all member schools to report on how we teach character development. My response was that we do not have a packaged curriculum for such instruction, but rather, it is a part of the warp and weft of daily life at Post Oak: developed thru the way children learn in the classroom, the way they interact with the adults and with each other. Your story wonderfully illustrates not only the development of grace and courtesy, but also personal empowerment. Even that very young child felt that he could offer assistance to you, an adult in his world. Wow!

John

 

From: Thomas, Dawn A.

Yes, as I thanked him, I could sense his joy at not only being able to “do” for himself but also for me. It hurt my heart to observe at the few “traditional” schools to which Bryan and I had been referred – the overall environments clearly were not set up to truly foster empowerment of the child.

age grouping in schools

Post Oak parent Rakesh Agrawal sent me this article:  technology, such as Khan Academy forces us to re-think using student age as a prime organizer of schools.

 

Yes, and while Khan Academy helps to "flip" instruction, there is so much more.  Here's my response to Rakesh:

 

Rakesh,

Thanks for sending this along.  Interesting that the author thinks that high school is where this really begins to matter.  Of course, he's still stuck on content, a la Khan Academy, where there is a mostly linear curriculum and a set body of facts to master in order to move from level one to level two.  When do we begin to deal with a multi-dimensional universe of learning...with darkmatter occupying 85% of everything?

John