Despite the passing years, I remember that day with absolute clarity. Firsts are often like that. My husband and I had been planning it for almost two years. It was the day we would open the doors of our first Montessori school.
And nothing had turned out the way we expected.
After months of training, raising money, running open houses and navigating zoning and health department obstacles, the final building and licensing inspections were delayed over the questionable status of a plumbing standpipe. Such a small thing, but one that stood in the way of opening on schedule. And, as things often go with schools, there was an uncertain timeline of how that would get resolved. The school was completely set up--every material prepared just so. All the building needed was its children. And a slip of paper from the village.
The days progressed closer and closer to September. Finally, we made the tough decision to open the school with eighteen children in the basement of our home, with hopes that the building issue would be resolved soon. We dismantled part of the school and moved it over. I still remember the smell of the fresh paint on the materials and how every metal and glass object gleamed. We rolled the work mats and placed them in the basket. We prepared snack, excited to give a lesson on peeling a banana. The next morning the children began to arrive…it was just plain magical.
Until it wasn’t. Let’s just say that more than a few materials were broken or lost (or taken home in pockets) that day. There was actually a food fight at lunch that permanently stained the ceiling of our dining room. Eventually, when the school finally moved out of our house three months later, our basement toilet was inoperable because the children had thrown materials in and plugged it that first day. Four o’clock came, and my husband and I sat down on the floor in the middle of the wreck of our basement and cried. Nothing had turned out the way we dreamed. We suddenly questioned everything. Had we really sold our accounting business to do this work? Were we even cut out to show up tomorrow and do this all again? It was devastating.
Well…
Fast forward eighteen years and we are still here doing this work. Of course, we did show up the next day. In the midst of our breakdown, we called one of our Montessori trainers who gave us the kind of advice I think about today. She came over to our house and boxed up half of the materials on the shelves and put them away for later. She said, “Tomorrow we aren’t just going to pressure ourselves to present lessons. We are also going to observe.”
In one moment, Jody had reframed everything. In our excitement to get started with the children and maximize our first day, we had forgotten that it wasn’t all about us. We had been so busy that day that we hadn’t even given ourselves the chance to get to know the children. And if we were to turn this disordered bunch around, it was going to take the power of solving the right problem.
Over the next days and weeks, we discovered a lot about those children through our observations. A little at a time we came to understand how to set appropriate limits, when to introduce novelty, how to support their independence, what it meant for normalization and work to evolve. The problem we needed to solve was how to prepare the environment for eighteen children new to this kind of experience. They, and we, needed training wheels. Jody helped mentor us through our launch to free-ride.
Solving the Right Problem with Children
The often-related story of Montessori’s discovery of children organizing crumbs on the floor of the orthophrenic school where she first worked and realizing that they needed sensory stimulation is another “right problem” story. Where others approached those children many times with scarcity, she observed and discovered their true need. These children’s “problem” would only be solved with more stimulation, not less. Montessori was the first to truly observe them enough to discover the right problem and propose the right solution. And the rest is history. She posited from the beginning that in her method:
“The vision of the teacher should be at once precise like that of the scientist, and spiritual like that of the saint. The preparation for science and the preparation for sanctity should form a new soul, for the attitude of the teacher should be at once positive, scientific and spiritual. Positive and scientific, because she has an exact task to perform, and it is necessary that she should put herself into immediate relation with the truth by means of rigorous observation...Spiritual, because it is to man that his powers of observation are to be applied, and because the characteristics of the creature who is to be his particular subject of observation are spiritual.”
For Montessori, observation was not just a key to her pedagogy but to the truth. Pausing, gathering evidence and consideration before action often leads one to see the layers of a problem not initially visible. Another similarly legendary story from Montessori’s early work with children that I have found extremely interesting is the problem of “false fatigue.” She noted that during a cycle of work, a child may seem to have dips in concentration between activities. A typical adult response when seeing this “problem” of disorder is to approach the child and to “solve” the disorder by directing the child. Yet, often, the problem is not the disorder itself, but in the child’s lack of concentration that builds as work becomes a habit. Therefore, in interrupting and directing the child during these moments of “false fatigue” the adult actually prolongs the occurrence of disruptive cycles. The adult can choose to observe through the disruption, rather than intervene.
Solving the Right Problem in Schools and Organizations
All of the above may sound as if it relates particularly to the guide and her work with children in the classroom, but it equally applies to our work at the school and organizational levels. Adult needs, just as those of children, are not always obvious- and jumping to conclusions, assuming we know what is driving a guide, or a parent, or a team member or colleague, is just as ineffective for our work cultures as it is for classrooms. Montessori’s system of education requires learning about the user (the child) and designing a learning experience that fits their needs. She was an early pioneer of design or UX/US thinking, and those of us doing product design work have an opportunity to adopt a similar style of thinking in our work with adults. The first step is pausing to observe before rushing to act.
Last month I was asked to serve as interim head in one of our Guidepost schools that was experiencing a leadership change. Over the past weeks, I have been keeping a journal of my daily thoughts and observations as I engage with guides, families and children. Several times a day I walk through the building and write things down. I keep data counts. What are the patterns of this school? How often do guides call out sick? How often do they volunteer to help one another? What is their daily communication with parents? Are lessons recorded and presented in Transparent Classroom? Do I see laughter? Do guides seem to have time to work on their environments? Do parents stop to chat in the morning with me? Are there particular days that seem especially disorganized?
Patterns emerge. With identifying patterns comes a proposed problem, a possible experiment, further observations. One thing that surprised me, even though it has been almost universally true of past school challenges I have experienced…the observations I collected on day one did not reveal the true problem. If I had simply acted based on what I saw then, it would have been a short-term solution. It wasn’t until several weeks in that the true and deep challenges emerged. Each experiment, each observation, has become an invitation for members of the school community to come along and try. By beginning with observation, I am able to bring each member of the community into the experiment, into the work of solving the school’s problems. This is what Montessori called the scientific and spiritual work of the guide, and for all who lead in our organization it is just as relevant.
Incorporating Observation in One’s Everyday Work
One thing I have found particularly gratifying about acting as a scientist, especially in such a charged and emotional profession as education, is that it keeps one focused on the mission. My work is my profession: it is a reflection of me, of my hard work, of my skills and talents. And the measure of that work is the outcomes achieved by the children, or the performance of the guides I train, or the efficacy of the projects my team builds.
Sometime in my fourth or fifth year as an elementary guide I experienced the overwhelm of being my own child’s guide. My son, a strong and charismatic fourth-year, somehow had a way of setting off in the exact opposite direction every time I set a plan in motion for our community. We would get into these dramatic power struggles that left me in tears in the car driving home every day. It was such a dark time, especially since I had all of these failure feelings as both his parent and guide. Fortunately, we had a wonderful friend and mentor working in our school who taught me almost everything I now know about observation. YC offered to lean in and gather some data about what was happening. At the time, I remember feeling quite doubtful!
What he observed was fascinating. Each time, right before my son and I would experience a power struggle, YC observed there was first a long interval in which my son would approach me to seek some kind of positive interaction. In that moment, I would often either respond neutrally or not at all. (Upon later reflection I realized this was part of my desire to appear as if I was not giving him special attention for being my child.)
YC proposed an interesting experiment. In order to preempt the power struggles, and to sensitize myself to my son’s prompts for interaction, I would set an interval timer that I carried in my pocket for five minutes. Each time the timer vibrated I would find a reason to look at him and smile, to ask him a question, to walk near him or to engage with him in some way. Within days it was a complete turn-around—one that I could not begin to believe. I had somehow, in my quest to treat him like every other child, forgotten that he was his own self. He needed these small essential interactions just like other children needed something else.
This last week I found myself setting a timer on the hour to walk around the Guidepost school in which I am working. Is it not the same thing? I heard from guides that they felt the previous leadership would often seem removed in their office. In an effort to connect to their work, I decided to begin making walk-through hallway observations throughout the day to begin to understand the school’s ecology. There are fascinating moments waiting to be observed in hallways and through doorways—not just in formal observations. Dr. Kim Marshall, a Harvard professor who is known for his groundbreaking research on formal teacher observation, always makes the point that it is far better to observe often for minutes than rarely for hours.
Upon reflection, I realized that what I had learned from wearing that interval timer years ago had fundamentally changed me. I had learned a point about how relationships break down that can be repaired by a kind of preemptive positive action…not just for one child but for people. That is the power of the Montessori observation process. It is more than simply the way we gather data. It is the way we ensure that we are solving the right problem.
Wishing you much problem-solving strength of your own this week,
Rivkah
This was excellent advice and wonderful to hear your voice!
Your story is inspiring. Thank you.