Updates from Beechworth Montessori Adolescent Program

Remembering There Will be Beauty and Opportunity for Adolescents

Orientation graduate Laureen Barnard shares a reflection of the shift to eLearning at Beechworth Montessori Adolescent Program in Victoria, Australia!

I joked lightheartedly that when we headed off on our hike it was somewhat like "Tomorrow when the war began," a novel many of our adolescents had studied the previous year. We all laughed, and I was scoffed at heartily by quite a few. It was early days of COVID19, it was happening "somewhere else," and despite the fact that toilet paper had become a scarce commodity (and I was taking 26 adolescents camping in the bush with minimal supplies of it!), there was little else of note impacting our lives - background noise, mild panic from distant lands...nothing to worry about too much. We could not have known how the world would change in those two days - and what we would return to.

We sought ideas from our adolescent community about how we could continue to uphold our current projects and continue learning and - more importantly - supporting our community, if we were to go into a lockdown situation.

The pleasures of a great hike, campfires and a serene bush escape quickly vanished from our minds on the afternoon we returned, as we were called into a full school briefing about protocols for shutdowns and new procedures for hygiene and social distancing. Was this for real? Was this an over-reaction? Is *this* why everyone wanted toilet paper? The emergency folder I then held in my hand with the clear instructions about procedures to implement during a pandemic and shutdown helped it hit home. I would have preferred a Douglas Adams' version with the words "Don't Panic" inscribed in large friendly letters on the front of it - arguably the best advice ever given to humanity.

Australia was 22.5 days behind Italy in terms of the first case, so similar to the US, we had the advantage of a short time to plan mitigating strategies. We discussed the data and developments clearly and openly with our adolescents and dispelled the myths to help ease the growing anxiety some were feeling. Early on, this resource from the Washington Post was brilliant in helping explain what "flattening the curve" really meant https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/ and many great discussions ensued. 

We sought ideas from our adolescent community about how we could continue to uphold our current projects and continue learning and - more importantly - supporting our community, if we were to go into a lockdown situation. Together, we decided on a few useful online tools and platforms, and we set about getting everyone logged on and testing them. The staff across the school were run ragged, still running their classes (all while trying to social distance at 4m² each!) and preparing online content at the same time. There was an urgency to the mission, and everyone was focused on what "may" lie ahead. We had briefings twice a day, morning and afternoon, to pass on relevant information to the adolescent community with any changes that affected them. Every day was malleable and ended with a seemingly more serious, foreboding tone than the way it had started. It was a slippery slope and became clear that this virus was not going to be stopped and we were going to be locked down at home. It was not "if" but "when." We repeated the mantra "alert, not alarmed," but we knew the world was about to change forever.

Our adolescents through it all were stoic and remained wholly curious: "Is it really going to affect me?" "How does the virus react to weather? it's cooling down now." "Can I be a carrier?" "What if I go visit my grandma?" "How can we make hand sanitiser and masks?" "Can we have Zoom lessons every day?" "Will they upgrade my internet for online learning?" "It is going to help climate change." "Will school ever be the same again?"  

There were LOTS of questions, and we did our best to answer the ones we could, yet many answers were and still are beyond us all.

With the Easter break looming, our Premier called an early finish to the term for schools - much to the relief of everyone. On Monday 23rd March, we bid our adolescents farewell with our new "social distance" elbow and foot bumps, instead of our ritual handshakes, and watched them head home with a skip in their step because they were getting an extra week of holidays... but they could not mask the doubt deep behind their eyes. 

I cried softly after they had all left, my heart heavy and my smile exhausted. While I hold much faith in them as amazing, rugged individuals, there is still so much unknown. For all the questions we had tried to answer, we all knew there were yet more to be asked, more that our world would throw at them, and we hoped with all our hearts that they would stay connected and have the resilience to weather this unscathed.

But where to since then?

And while the urge is to rush and make sure there are no gaps in their "education," we need to feel assured (and reassure parents) that there will be beauty and opportunity in the silences, in the downtime, in boredom, in the real work and hum around them, in the simple moments spent with family... the stirrings of peace within... and perhaps, idealistically, peace without. 

Staff officially work from home for the most part, hook in for meetings (challenged by rural internet inconsistency!) and planning to integrate their work as much as possible while staying true to our guiding tenets of Montessori adolescent education: growing independence, social connection, and valorisation. What a challenge! As flexible and independent learners, I know our students will be well placed to manage the intricacies to come - all they need is the right environment. This realization crystallized my most immediate task. I set about writing a guide for parents about the Montessori prepared environment... or rather how to help them create that at home, how to "help" with work and how to get out of the way of the adolescent! All the while balancing work for head and hands.

The three period learning cycle certainly comes into its own when helping us to prepare; engage with experiential offerings and key lessons, promote choice and independent research, and then create a way to share. It is paramount to emphasise the social dimension to help our adolescents make meaning of any lessons and work we are presenting for their consideration. We must keep our focus on the use of collaboration tools for each period that could help replicate this over the internet; while a second fiddle to face-to-face interaction, it can still be a meaningful community experience; the sharing in the third period never more critical.I have also been keeping close at heart the principles of permaculture for our beautiful land children: Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share. Has there been a time when these touchstones have seemed more vital to human existence, let alone to the future of the next generation? And while the urge is to rush and make sure there are no gaps in their "education," we need to feel assured (and reassure parents) that there will be beauty and opportunity in the silences, in the downtime, in boredom, in the real work and hum around them, in the simple moments spent with family... the stirrings of peace within... and perhaps, idealistically, peace without. 

At a very philosophical level, the way this pandemic calls us to examine politics, policy, value, motivation and the human condition presents an extraordinary opportunity for our adolescents to appreciate what really matters. To connect with the natural world while social distancing, to understand direct physical and mental care for their fellow human beings and to observe re-imagining of wealth, health and equity.

Laureen Barnard
BSC Montessori Adolescent Program
Beechworth, Australia.

Resources:

I have been working with a dear friend and colleague I met at the 2014 Orientation, Katherine Shearer, who is from Canada but is now living and working in Bali. Ever grateful for the ability to leverage "Supranature" from our disparate locations, we've set up a Google drive folder (Digital Erdkinder) with a host of units plans and lesson ideas. We've invited Montessori adolescent practitioners from all over to share in these resources and contribute to the smorgasbord of ideas. Essentially, this is how some of us are setting up the online experience for our adolescents too - a smorgasbord with a wide mix of guided and independent choices. Anyone else who might be interested can send an email to Katherine  or myself . Steve French from Templestowe College also has an awesome concept for collaboration between students being set up as daily challenges that you can find out more about by contacting him directly. The traffic on the Montessori Adolescent Programs and the Secondary Montessori Idea Exchange Facebook groups has naturally been much higher, with guides and administrators looking for support and inspiration in these uncertain and uncharted waters. It has been so heartening to see the ways in which this has mobilsed our shared humanity... a silver lining! Peace education comes into focus and Dr Montessori's words never more poignant and relevant - "We shall walk together on this path of life, for all the things are part of the universe, and are connected with each other to form one unity."