Public Montessori Morning: Primary [Pre-K 3 and 4, Kindergarten], Dallas, Texas; Johnny Boucher

Montessori Primary Ages 3 - 6: A Dallas ISD PK-K Classroom. Eduardo Mata Montessori School is an open-enrollment neighborhood school with no academic screening for entry. At the time of filming, we were in our fifth year open as a Montessori school. Guide, Jeannot R. Jonte Boucher (Johnny Boucher), M.Ed. Montessori, AMI.

Population Notes: All videography releases have been obtained. This classroom is inclusive of English language learners around 20% (Spanish native speakers). Learning disabilities and differences comprise about 25% of the class. Our school is around 60-70% free and reduced lunch, reduced from 98% following the re-opening as Montessori; families who might otherwise not have chosen the public sector returned. The school is majority Hispanic at around 60%, around 30% white, and 10% a mix of two or more races, African American, Asian, and Native American. There are 21 students, one guide (teacher) and one Montessori assistant (paraprofessional). There are similar numbers of students at each grade level, staying in the same environment for three years. The age of this classroom (number of years continuously cycling children in three year periods) is five years.

Video aside: You may see two girls putting coffee beans in their bead chain work. This was a way they decided to solve the problem of a lost ticket-- by placing a bean to mark their space for me to see when I passed by. It is their purposeful work-around that might not be apparent otherwise. You will see we only use cursive, except for music notation and printed-material.

Instructional notes regarding the Montessori context:
In a Montessori setting, a child may experience repose after a period of concentration, where walking through the room observing and orienting oneself is appropriate. (Although you may see some walking through the room which is because of curiosity about cameras and multiple camera operators.) Movement practice with purposeful grace is also a work choice. Each child has their own series of planned presentations after mastery is observed; in effect, their own lesson plan. Most presentations are made in small groups or 1-1.

Social language for grace and courtesy, as well as extending discoveries, is encouraged and not considered off-task. Students have full freedom of movement and select their own work from presentations they have received, sometimes developing spontaneous conceptual extensions. We have a few 'waiting chairs' for when a child needs assistance or a toilet currently in use, which may be out of view. Standing watching another child's work can be considered the work of Observation.

Since everyone's work cycle will be different, with no two children completing exactly the same work, formative assessment is built into the material, which is called the Direct Aim and Indirect Aim. We say the targeted learning occurs not when the presentation and initial practice take place-- but through repeated practice and discovery of isolations of difficulty embedded into the material.

Montessori is not a curriculum; it is a total, radically different pedagogy from infancy to adolescence. We hold developmental rather than didactic aims. It is an education in patterns of thought and movement, in offering the tools for the child's own development at the sensitive periods. That includes instructional goals, but focusing on executive function and discovery, each instructional goal presents itself with more depth.

There are four main areas of the environment: Practical Life, Sensorial, Language, and Math. The guide will make notes of observations at the end of an uninterrupted three-hour work cycle. Each child has a Montessori Master Recordkeeping folder with a list of most possible presentations to include in a three-year period, and the guide makes notes there. The guide would be documenting what is mastered and by whom, what was done with great interest or concentration, is in progress, is ready for the next presentation in the form of extension, and identifying which presentation would be ideal for the next interaction.

In this public sector format, grades come from calendars we make of intellectual conquests which would be expected by a certain point developmentally, not from the work the child has necessarily completed that week. These calendars make explicit correlations to state standards, to assure mandatory content for the public sector is included. In the public sector, mastery of standards-linked progress goals would then determine grades: E/S/N for excellent, satisfactory, and not satisfactory would translate to Mastered, Progressing, Not yet developed. However, putting Montessori at the forefront, those objectives can fit seamlessly into a high-integrity Montessori model.