I have been teaching various ages of montessori for almost half my life. My mother has been a montessori teacher since I was in 1st grade and I grew up helping out at her school as a general assistant, then assistant teacher progressing to lead teacher at schools in Indianapolis and Kansas City. For ten years of working in a montessori environment I went through ages; infant, one-year, preschool, kindergarten and lower elementary and had more than one opportunity to move into a two year old classroom but always passed. Last fall I was offered a toddler room at a school very close to my house where my daughter was already attending. I accepted with a smile on my face and terror in my gut. I had a few months to get used to the idea before I started and came to the conclusion of how closed-minded I was being and worked to change my uneasiness and apprehension into an open-minded optimism of a new challenge.
My issues with two a two year old classroom was not just the awful "terrible twos" stereotype it was that I had seen two year old classes in a few montessori schools and they were terrifying. Red rods brandished as billy clubs, pink towers with chew marks, practical life all but thrown aside for risk of choking and replaced by a colored on, naked baby doll in a tub that is never filled with water and contains no scrub brush (twinge). For me, being raised in montessori the disrespect shown to the classroom, its materials and the montessori curriculum that was shown by the students and teachers in these classrooms was abhorrent. Upon further analysis I found what I had missed (ashamedly) all those years; The classroom is a direct result of the teacher. The classroom's functionality or dysfunctionality is a direct result of the teacher and his/her willingness to set up a clean and orderly prepared environment, have a consistent routine and prepared lessons which will engage (not a complete list but the three glaring points omitted from the classrooms I had previously observed).
Here I'm documenting what I'm learning about teaching toddlers in a montessori environment in the hopes that I can show others what amazing things these developing people are capable of. To start with, here's a photo of my fantastic two year old doing a plant watering work in class last year:
