When Time Stands Still
By Susan Holmes Glazier,
IMTI Team Member, Practitioner Support
I walked into the classroom today to turn the lights off before lunch. To my surprise and delight, there was a spontaneous math lesson going on. A ninth-year student had taken it upon himself to explain to a seventh-year student about the different types of fractions and how one adds, subtracts, multiplies, and divides fractions. The context was solving an algebraic inequality, but the older student had spotted that there was a piece of underlying knowledge, working with fractions, that was shaky. The two of them were deep in conversation, and the whiteboard was covered with calculations and definitions. Let’s be clear, it was lunch time. And there was pizza waiting on plates in the kitchen. Pizza!
Before long another seventh-year student wandered in, thought it looked interesting, and joined in the lesson. I could hear other students outside throwing snowballs, laughing, and finishing their pizza lunches, but on the lesson went. It was a moment. The kind of moment Montessori guides live for. I just sat down at the table in the back of the room and observed so as not to break their concentration or to make them feel self-conscious. But I really wanted to stay and listen! They acknowledged my presence with a glance, but that was all.
I saw in this interaction so many aspects of Montessori at work. First, multi-age environments. We can try to craft opportunities for peer mentoring, but the best moments are when things are cooking along, there are students doing a variety of activities, and they naturally ask questions or offer help. It is a moment of valorization for the peer teacher (in this case the older student) who realizes he is an expert in something and recognizes that he can meet a real need for the younger student. It is also an indication that the environment supports asking for help, that it is ok to not understand how to do something, and that the community values hard work and perseverance. I mean, there was pizza! But time ticked on. I actually took photos of the clock to prove to myself that this was happening.
12:15…12:20…12:35. I observed the trust the younger student had in the older student, the willingness to say, “I don’t get it.” I watched the older student patiently observe and help the younger student come to his own realization without just telling him the answer. I saw the older student refining his own knowledge - he used an incorrect vocabulary word at first, then noticed it part way through, changed it, and commented, “That’s it! I knew that wasn’t quite right.” This was spontaneous effort freely chosen, so of course they were in their flow and willing to expend all kinds of time and effort. Also, it was in the context of the social life of the community. Voila! So much learning for everyone involved. At one point, the second student who had joined had such an “aha!” moment, she gasped audibly and scrambled to write down her idea on paper.
And then they were done. Learning cycle complete, they came back to the present moment with that refreshed look that comes from deep concentration and effort. Their stomachs took over and they sprinted down the stairs and out the door to eat lunch. I sat at the table a minute longer to savor the gift of getting to observe the moment.
