As I look out my window and see this mature, mangled olive tree, I wish that, for the tree’s sake, someone had given a lesson to the tree’s pruners on the branching and budding patterns of fruiting trees. This was a lesson that most of the eight-year-olds in my classroom enjoyed and were proud they knew how to properly prune a plant.
Education as a help to life. It’s a concept that we implement in Montessori education. When we can put knowledge and action together in meaningful ways, such as explaining branching and budding patterns, and then pruning a plant, we become a help to life.
The olive tree across the street would have benefited with that kind of help to life.
As teachers and parents, how often do we step back and ask, “Is this a help or a hindrance to this person’s development? Is this activity going to make life better for this person, as well as for everything around this person?”
The question hangs there: how do we prepare a place where children and adults can learn what they need to be a help to life?
The natural world along with innate curiosity creates situations for powerful learning.
Learning from the natural environment surrounding you used to be so commonplace that it’s potential for modern learning is often overlooked.
Our assumptions in today’s world tend towards learning being relegated to the classroom, or the computer.
Dr. Montessori talked about the Supranatura, the human system of ideas and tools constructed over nature. Even if we go out into nature with no tools, by the end of the day, we would have created some tool—a walking stick, a rock pile to mark our path, a campfire.
Nature and the Supranatura form our environments, and when we become aware of how the interplay of these two forces help us define our humanity, our choices for how to live also become clearer.
Today the Supranatura encircles our Earth with over 9,000 satellites, as well as millions of cell-towers, making the natural world seem only a backdrop for our technology.
In the midst of all this technology, how should we prepare places for us to live and learn? How can we be a help to life?
Yes, we’ve inherited a superstructure that encompasses past generations’ ideas of how to go about this business of being a human being.
What are the key components for being a help to life? What can we do better?
Some factors to consider:
· Safety
· Freedom of movement
· Exploration
· Rich and meaningful language experiences
· Creation of order
· Freedom within limits (autonomy and choice)
· Development of independence
· Opportunities for true contribution (real work and purpose)
· Time for deep uninterrupted activity
· Emotional awareness through emotional literacy
· Understand developmental needs at all ages
· Supportive relationships and community
· Understand sleep and nutrition
· Connection to nature
This list offers a beginning insight into the myriads of human needs we should consider when designing places to live and learn.
In my opinion and experience, when we can play with these ideas, with all their intricacies, we will be able to conceive and create places for humans to thrive in a world dominated by technology.
It’s time to play with those ideas.
Join me for a complimentary mini-workshop
