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!