It's About People

I have just completed my fifth and final week of the Montessori Adolescent training, an intense and packed experience. I had been wondering for a while now what I would write about for these last few weeks. All I could see was that I had sat and listened to lectures all day every day and spent most of my evenings editing those lectures, and most of my weekends writing essays. Not much there I thought.

Today was the last day for the group together. We began the day with a spontaneous and raucous round of "I had the time of my life" in full male-female duet. I looked around at the room full of 60 adults, from all over the world, that I had just shared 5 weeks with, living, working, eating, learning, experiencing with. I realized what this had been for me.

It's about people.

It's about the power of seeing someone, looking into them and recognizing the self, the unique beauty that exists there, whether you are spending 5 weeks with them, 5 hours, or 5 years. The time is not the critical point, the point is being a part of someone's life (and letting them into yours). It is about the power that comes from embracing each experience, each new connection for what it is. It is about meeting some fellow wanderer on this crazy planet and taking their hand, saying, "I hear you." It is about listening, hearing what someone else is saying, without ego, without agenda. It is about being heard.

It is about going to a vineyard in Ohio on a Wednesday afternoon and playing cornhole ;)

I have always carried with me the fear of losing people who I love, but the truth is that the possession is the illusion. You can't nail love down. The idea of permanence is what we use to soothe that terrible risk that we take each time we look into the eyes of another human and decide to let them in.

This summer has been about people, about all those crazy, smart, impassioned people who are willing to dream, willing to devote their lives to the service of others, willing to spend 5 sweaty, intense, difficult, expensive weeks in Cleveland, Ohio for the sake of this passion.

All of you, this summer, I thank you. You have brought light and love and joy into my life. I will carry that with me as I travel on.

Montessori Training...continued

So here I am, at the end of week 3 of my training. It is still blazingly hot in Cleveland, but I have almost been too busy to notice it!

Most days are lecture-filled...about 5-6 hours worth. The weekends are taken with a 5-10 page essay and 10 words of a lexicon to define and support with quotes. Not to mention a library of Montessori readings. Man, it has been intense.

There have been days of other, more active work and experience. We spent a day traveling out to Hudson, OH to visit a suburban school there with an adolescent program, and we viewed the farm that they use and the little village where the kids have built relationships with the local merchants, historians and governmental agencies.We had the choice of activities that day, and I chose to do photography in the town square (focusing on spirals and concentric circles :) The idea was to see ways to connect the students with the particular place in which there school (and life) is located. To root them in the culture of their particular place and time. Again I was struck by how the act of looking (from an artistic perspective) causes you to connect with a place in a deep and meaningful way that would not otherwise happen.

Another day we spent at the Montessori High School here in Cleveland, and visited some of the locations and institutions where the students can do practical work. I had the chance to go to the Natural History Museum on a behind-the-scenes tour. That was such a fun experience! Not only as an educator (gathering ideas for the future) but also just for me personally. We went to the paleontology department and got to see the huge casts, removed from all around the world, which contained dinosaur fossils. Such fun! We traveled all through the bowels of the museum, coming at one point to a freezer room, which held an enormous collection of stuffed animals (not the plush kind). There was everything from a tiny bird to a giant grizzly bear. I felt like a kid, just filled with amazement.

As it is with any intense period of time away from home, it seems like I have been here MUCH longer than 3 weeks. But the next 2 will be more focused on writing up my own prospectus for an Montessori adolescent program, using the proposed site in Switzerland as a model. This will be interesting and inspiring work, and I am sure the time will fly.

Then on to visit family and friends!

First Week at the Farm School

What an awesome week!

Last week I got to live and work on the farm, at the Hershey Montessori Farm School. My fellow trainees and I lived and worked just as the adolescents there do. We roomed together, cooked meals together, cleaned, cared for the animals and attended classes. It is a really immersive way to get to know the school and the concept of the Erdkinder program.

It was my job a few times to feed the animals in the evenings. I was in heaven! I got to know the goats, who were extremely friendly, and of course spent some time hanging out with the chickens. One evening I volunteered to round up an escapee from the coop, and apparently impressed my colleagues with my chicken wrangling skills. I credit all those long beautiful childhood summers chasing chickens with my brother :)

The farm itself is not too big, just large enough to have a few cows, a few sheep, goats, chickens and a large garden. Everyone worked so well together and there was a real feeling of community built among those of us staying there at the farm. Study sessions were often lively and interactive, and there was more than one "jam session" on the porch in the evenings after "study hall."

This whole experience is reinvigorating me to go back and really apply what I am seeing and experiencing here. It is also refueling the fire I have for teaching in the Montessori way. What I see in the children here is so inspiring, these adolescents have such a sense of calm and confidence and peace about them. They are clearly adolescents, and are giggly and loud and very active, but you can see a spark in them and a self-assuredness that I have never seen before in a group of children this age. They seem satisfied in some way that I have never seen in adolescents.

At the end of the week, we had a chance to see the Montessori school (ages 0-12) that feeds into the adolescent program. They asked us to take a "silent journey" through the classroom environments in developmental order, so we shut our mouths and started in the infant room. We were required to stay 15 minutes in each environment and were permitted to move about and work with any of the materials. It was a beautiful experience, and I have never seen such amazing and well-prepared environments. It was a real treat to see this.

I am having a great experience and looking forward to learning more :)

In the meantime, here is me on the farm!