It’s been almost 10 years since I was with elementary children in the classroom. However, as I reflect on the upcoming holidays and my time with those children, I recognize that some of my favorite memories were made while celebrating the winter solstice.

The fall brings with it so many opportunities: most have settled into a routine in their classrooms, the weather begins to change, and there are wonderful seasonal celebrations and holidays to share with my students. Now, I’ll be honest, I love a holiday celebration I can share with my classroom community and there are more celebrations than days. You name it, there is a day to celebrate it (A Poem in My Pocket Day? Yes please!)! However, I have a deep love for the fall and winter celebrations.

Imagine you arrive at work at 8am, energized and ready to work on a fun but challenging project that will require several hours of your time. You know that to really get the project on solid footing and make sense of its complexity, you need several hours of uninterrupted focus. You sit down at your desk, fire up your computer, and start organizing your thoughts. Suddenly, a reminder pops up on your computer screen:

‘In the light of the moon a little egg lay on a leaf,’ so begins The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Some words just remain etched in our memories from reading picture books growing up or being read to growing up. The book never ceases to amaze young children who despite knowing the lines well enough to repeat, still love the surprise ending.

“The Earth is what we all have in common.” It is an important message that Wendell Berry has echoed since the early days of the environmental movement. It implies that if we can become one as a community and work together, we will better preserve and conserve our environment.

Hi, it’s nice to meet you. My name is Alex, and I have the pleasure of serving as a Speech-Language Pathologist in a local public school district. And, I love my job! While education is a never-changing field that often feels like a roller coaster, the commitment of special education staff to the development of children in all stages of life continues to delight me. These are the seven things I wish every parent or caregiver with a child in special education knew.

If there was one silver lining to the mess of the pandemic it had to be the stronger connections I, and many other educators I imagine, made with our class families. I may not have realized it at first as I was going out of my mind trying to figure out just how we were going to survive this new adventure, but I was giving them just a little bit of a glimpse of what we do day in and day out—and I know how curious they were.

My son's second birthday is around the corner, and there is a term that I have been told multiple times referring to his age… the infamous ¨terrible twos¨. I have never liked this derogative term, I worked for many years with toddlers, and ¨terrible¨ does not describe the magic of being around those fantastic tiny humans, not even close. Toddlers go through many physical and emotional changes; their language explosion usually coincides with this stage of their life, and their development of will and ego is at its peak.

There is no surprise this time is such an important and exciting one for them! So why do many adults find the transition from babyhood to childhood overwhelming and even undesirable? Perhaps, if we understand the abilities and developmental needs of the toddler in front of us, we will have realistic expectations and support our child better, from a place of love, respect, and even joy.

It has been my experience that communication, early and often, between families and guides can nurture a safe environment of support and accountability both at home and in the classroom. This partnership should be based on trust and respect with the common goal of the child’s best interests. Are things happening at home that could be impeding the child’s workflow and concentration? Has the child finally mastered a challenging work or shown great social-emotional support to their peers in the classroom? Sharing these anecdotal stories can provide crucial information to provide a united front of support. This breadth of support will help the child to feel safe in their mistakes, encouraged during their struggles, and confident in their independence.

Who is in your community? Is it your close friends? Is it co-workers or employees? Is it neighbors? Is it family? This could be a conversation between you and your co-workers, between you and your administration, between you and the parents of your students. Your community is who you spend your time with, your own personal team. Whoever it is, whatever it looks like, you’re part of a community.

We're nearing the end of this year. As we become busier with the holidays and wrapping up the semester, retailers and shipping companies urge us to get our holiday shopping started now. I want to urge you to start thinking about how to lean into cultivating your community, now.

I have often stated that “teachers shouldn’t view themselves as the only experts within the classroom learning environment.” As families carry out their daily lived experiences, children learn who they are, whose they are, and how to respond to others based on these daily lived experiences. Ultimately, they acquire “expert knowledge” for their family’s routines, traditions, languages, racial identities, and overall ways of living and learning that can serve as a scaffold for the classroom curriculum in all subject content. However, if what children learn at home is never mentioned or, worse, is considered strange by other children and teachers, children may refuse to speak their home language, eat certain foods, wear certain clothes, and follow certain religious practices (Gonzalez-Mena & Pulido-Tobiassen, 2021).

What does a bilingual environment look like? Let us define the environment. In Montessori pedagogy, we are taught that humans are by-products, or better yet, co-creators with their environments. Children acquire the knowledge and skills to live in a particular community by being immersed in that environment. Children use their senses and the power of the absorbent mind to acquire all they need to know to function in the time and place where they were born. Children absorb the language, culture, values, mannerisms of their environments naturally by being exposed to them.

Montessori students build confidence through competence. Three-year-olds who walk across a crowded classroom carrying a tray of breakable vases, four-year-olds who embroider with real needles, five-year-olds who help younger children button their jackets—these children feel the pride of knowing that they are capable and resourceful. Resilience requires having faith in your own abilities.

Cultural diversity and responsiveness can have a place in the prepared environment. Nurturing cultural diversity is also highly relevant in today’s age. Research has shown that young children who engage in culturally responsive educational experiences build self-confidence skills and increase awareness, appreciation, as well as inclusion of diverse beliefs and cultures. Through the beauty of the Montessori curriculum, we can practice the art of respecting all cultures and impart an appreciation for diversity.

Nature inspires awe and wonder in children. It provides infinite opportunities for children to see, hear, touch, and smell what is around them. It helps spark so many wonderful conversations and opportunities for play. Research suggests that spending time outdoors is very beneficial for the minds and bodies of children. It provides a real setting for children to explore their environment while taking appropriate risks, engage in collaborative endeavors with their peers, and promotes physical fitness among many other benefits. According to Dr. Montessori, “There is no description, no image in any book that is capable of replacing the sight of real trees, and all the life to be found around them, in a real forest. Something emanates from those trees which speak to the soul, something no book, no museum is capable of giving.”

Montessori teachers truly embrace and enjoy working within the Montessori environment because it allows students to grow academically, socially, and emotionally at their own pace. The classroom environment teaches order since all objects and activities that are presented guide children to independently place everything in a specific order. The students develop independence because they guide the activities throughout the day. Children work at tasks for the joy of work.

Welcome them, fall in educational love with them, assume they have potential, believe in them, expect success, honor their history and culture, protect them, respect them, assume they possess the innocence that is expected for their age, appreciate their differences, acknowledge their presence, intellect, and contributions in the life of the classroom, listen to them, hear them, appreciate their outer and inner beauty and differences, invest your professional time and energy in them and their families, celebrate with them, mourn with them, and appreciate their culture. Finally, recognize and fully accept their humanity. When this is accomplished, they will thrive.

So much of what is happening is out of our control, but our time with our children is something we can control, and how we choose to spend our time has the power to transform our days, weeks, and our months into moments of joy and meaning. It’s a simple truth that I find myself sometimes forgetting and so I have made it a point that each morning I make a promise to myself to do my best to actively dedicate time towards being present with my children regardless of how little that time is because little by little a little becomes a lot.

Most children don’t have the privilege of this [Montessori] approach, being trapped in the mechanics of an archaic education system which treats children with widget efficiency, a system where children leave disenfranchised. It is a sad irony that her schools are synonymous with affluence when Dr. Montessori’s first attempts with developmentally normal children were in a community so dire that even the police were intimidated by it. People around the world were so amazed by what the children accomplished in this school that there was eagerness to expand on her experiment. She was enthralled and continued observing the children around the world, letting them guide her on what they really needed. One could say that this was education for the children by the children because that is how it evolved.