Our Quest to Standardize Customization
Happy Friday everyone,
Of the many ways that Maria Montessori’s genius can be expressed, one is that she created a method in education to standardize customization. Whereas many forms of standardized education abstract away from the particular, unique humanity of the individual child, Maria Montessori’s method achieves the opposite—it systematically heightens and heralds the things that make each child a singular, wholly individual being. By identifying and respecting our common humanity, by focusing on what is universally true of the human being as such, Montessori figured out how best to honor the ways in which we each self-create an irreplaceably unique self.
Montessori’s ability to standard customization is evident in the educational movement that is the outcome of her work. Across the world, there are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of Montessori classrooms that implement Montessori principles with fidelity. What we see when we observe these classrooms is somewhat paradoxical: on the one hand, we see communities that are incredibly consistent in their practices. Similar prepared environments and learning materials, similar trainings and adult preparation, similar cultures of deep work ethic and truth-seeking activity, similar customs and traditions around grace and courtesy, similar expressions of goodwill and order and respect for human dignity.
And yet, on the other hand, these communities do not feel “cookie cutter”. They do not convey a dystopian sense of sameness or conformity or top-down rigidity. On the contrary, we see communities that are profoundly unique. They are each of them infused with the particular personalities of their guides, children, families, and cultures. We see communities that are entirely local, entirely individual, and entirely one-of-a-kind. This combination of universalization and respect for the individual, of standardization and customization, is the hallmark of the Montessori insight into human development. We are all common in our human capacity to self-create, and as such are all wholly unique in our individual expressions of that common humanity.
Our quest at Higher Ground education is to extend this Montessori ideal into our work of opening schools and educational programs. We want to achieve at the level of the school community what Montessori achieved at the level of the classroom community. Just as she honors the individuality of each child in each classroom by articulating and implementing a method that serves “the child”, so we seek to honor the individuality of the Montessori adult—the Montessori guide, the Montessori entrepreneur, the Montessori leader—by creating a prepared environment that allows adult educators to do their individual work in service of the children whose self-development they work to support.
It turns out, such a quest is not easy. Freedom within structure is a worthy ideal, but not one whose implementation is obvious. We’ve made some progress at our organization, but our advances have not consisted of a straight line forward. We’ve made mistakes, fallen short, learned lessons; we’ve calibrated and recalibrated, we’ve adapted to changing circumstances, and we’ve evolved as we’ve grown.
Last week, we took another step in our journey. We recently came to the realization that we needed to rethink the structure of our organization. To fully support our school leaders and guides, we needed to shift to a more regionalized model, one that empowers local teams to pursue our shared mission together. Rather than have large centralized teams that support schools across the network in certain functions, we will emphasize regional teams that try to offer integrated, holistic support to local school communities.
Looking backwards, Higher Ground’s growth and success have been in large part the result of our willingness to invest in strong central teams organized by function. The programs team, the operations team, the marketing team, the talent team, the compliance team, etc. have all worked to create a “prepared environment” that supports school leaders. That approach has served us well in growing our network of schools, and in ensuring that we enable schools to achieve high standards of quality. But we have also realized that as we’ve grown, it has stopped working as well as we’d like. The support we provide to school leaders and guides is starting to become too siloed and separated, and increasingly disjointed in how we enable problem-solving.
We realized we needed to shift to a different approach, one in which local teams are much more closely connected to the schools they serve—teams that visit classrooms a lot, that get to deeply know the community, and that can offer holistic support that takes into consideration the totality of factors impacting a school community. So recognizing our need to evolve, we restructured into a more regionally structured organization. One that still has smaller, more nimble central departments providing systems, processes, training, and control of error, but one that places greater emphasis on regional teams that are working much more closely with our school communities. The new structure is optimized to standardize the customized local support we want to offer to schools. We made this major organizational change last week, and will be fully implementing it over the coming months.
As part of this change, we had to disrupt many departments. A lot of our central team members had their role eliminated, and many have made the shift into a regional role. In some cases, with great sadness we had to say goodbye to staff members whose department was regionalized or reduced in the shift in structure. Change, even when necessary to growth, is no less painful when it involves parting ways with those you’ve worked with side by side. We wish the best to our departed colleagues, and know they’ll go on to do their great work in a different form.
To our school leaders and guides, my hope is that in the coming months, you’ll start noticing the effects of our new regionalized structure. I believe we are well-positioned to offer you more support, more resources, and more encouragement in doing the great work of helping children grow into their best selves.
Maria Montessori’s ideal, which I have expressed here as standardized customization, is a human ideal. It is an ideal that speaks both to our common humanity, and to our unique individuality. It is the ideal that guides us at Higher Ground, and with our shift to a fundamentally regionalized structure, I hope we’ve taken another step towards achieving it in practice.
Ray Girn
Founder and CEO, Higher Ground Education