Breaking the Paradigm

Which of these have you heard before?

* “My teacher trainer told me to do X when I did my Montessori diploma, and that’s how I’ve been doing it ever since”

* “I presented this lesson the same way for 15 years and it’s “worked” every time”

* “If a child is not becoming adapted to my environment, it must be that they’re not a good fit for it.”

I would wager a guess that any Montessori guide, and perhaps most educators, have said, thought, or heard these, and many more, over the course of their careers. Yet these phrases, of “Monte-assumptions” as my guest Jon Wolff calls them, are things we must be diligent to look out for.

Montessori called upon educators to study “until death,” meaning that we must always be looking to better understand human development and how to support it. In order to do this, we must make sure we don’t go on “autopilot” in our practice. We must continue to challenge ever our most basic “Monte-assumptions.”

In this provocative episode, Jon and I dig into some of the worst offenders of “Monte-assumptions” and how we can reframe our own practice to truly live Montessori’s ideal of enacting the scientific pedagogy.

Thanks, Jon, for an incredible conversation!

Thanks for Stopping By!

If this work resonates with you, I invite you to become a paid subscriber. It is a great way to support this work so I can continue to bring thoughtful interviews and blogs to you all year long! Thank you so much for your continued support!

Paid subscribers have access to video recordings of our podcasts, as well as other expanded perks to be announced soon!

Breaking the Paradigm is a division of Developing Education, which is on a mission to transform education globally to foster human development and flourishing for all people.

First Intention: Curriculum and pedagogy support for Montessori adolescent practitioners, specifically with math and language across the prepared environment.

The Enlightened Educator Project: Supporting educators with mindfulness and resiliency through professional development and downloadable resources.

What is your emotional response to students “cheating” using technology?

The New York Times recently published an article titled “Everyone is Cheating Their Way Through College.” In it, the prospect of students using AI to complete assignments is seen as a largely negative phenomenon.

In response to a similar article, I saw a commenter on LinkedIn write that she “requires all work be hand written in class, without any technology use at all.” In her mind, this was the only way to prevent “cheating.”

But what if there’s another way to think about emerging technologies in our classroom settings?

What if the problem isn’t ChatGPT, but the reality that most assignments given in traditional school are meaningless outside of the schooling apparatus?

I would argue that banning technology to the degree that many are is the same as requiring students to work by candlelight. Such a response would not prepare our young people to exist in the new world that is emerging before us.

What would it look like to be responsive, rather than reactive, to these changes in a way that supports our young people to make healthy choices around their own technology use, both in and out of school?

On this episode of Breaking the Paradigm, I had a great conversation with Dana Anderson, an expert in Digital Citizenship and Montessori education.

Dana argues that the best way to help our young people develop digital citizenship is to center them in the conversation about how, when, and why it’s used. We should be having conversations with students about the challenges and opportunities of new technology, and to learn alongside them.

Along the way, we may realize that some things we’ve been doing actually aren’t as meaningful as we thought they were. And we must be prepared to give those up in service of a meaningful education.

Thanks, Dana for a great conversation!

Thanks for Stopping By!

If this work resonates with you, I invite you to become a paid subscriber. It is a great way to support this work so I can continue to bring thoughtful interviews and blogs to you all year long! Thank you so much for your continued support!

Paid subscribers have access to video recordings of our podcasts, as well as other expanded perks to be announced soon!

Breaking the Paradigm is a division of Developing Education, which is on a mission to transform education globally to foster human development and flourishing for all people.

First Intention: Curriculum and pedagogy support for Montessori adolescent practitioners, specifically with math and language across the prepared environment.

The Enlightened Educator Project: Supporting educators with mindfulness and resiliency through professional development and downloadable resources.

We live in an era where the term “education innovation” is thrown around constantly. New tools, techniques, apps, and trends are nearly abundant.

Yet, despite all of these “innovations,” we don’t see the actual system of schooling changing in meaningful ways.

The reality is, new tools or technologies won’t change the status quo of schooling which is fundamentally hurting our children; we have to change the structure and the grammar of schooling entirely, especially as we consider how new emerging trends and technology can help, or hinder, those efforts.

This is a very special podcast episode with my friend Dr. Sabba Quidwai, who is a world-renowned expert in education transformation, design thinking, and artificial intelligence.

What was so powerful about our conversation for me is the takeaway that it’s really not about the technologies we choose to adopt (or not), but about the types of learning environments we’re building:

Are we leveraging technology to support autonomy, independence, and meaningful engagement?

Or are we using technology to force children to “learn more stuff” faster?

All of this and more, on this episode of Breaking the Paradigm!

If you haven’t checked out Sabba’s book, Designing Schools, or her Designing Schools Podcast, I highly recommend them. Thanks, Sabba, for a great conversation!

Thanks for Stopping By!

If this work resonates with you, I invite you to become a paid subscriber. It is a great way to support this work so I can continue to bring thoughtful interviews and blogs to you all year long! Thank you so much for your continued support!

Paid subscribers have access to video recordings of our podcasts, as well as other expanded perks to be announced soon!

Breaking the Paradigm is a division of Developing Education, which is on a mission to transform education globally to foster human development and flourishing for all people.

First Intention: Curriculum and pedagogy support for Montessori adolescent practitioners, specifically with math and language across the prepared environment.

The Enlightened Educator Project: Supporting educators with mindfulness and resiliency through professional development and downloadable resources.

In Montessori education, it’s commonplace to discuss how to support young people toward independence.

We prepare environments that are designed to for children and adolescents to experiment, to try and fail as they learn about themselves and the world. Through this process, young people also become integrated into into their classroom communities in a meaningful way.

What if we also built these environments for adults?

How can school leaders build a culture of growth and reflective practice to help adults self-actualize like our children?

I was grateful to have such a thoughtful conversation on this topic with Sue Pritzker, whose experience in Montessori leadership and developing strong teams spans decades. Our conversation started with Sue’s path as a Montessorian to lessons that all schools and school leaders can learn about transformational leadership.

For all Montessori adults, it is truly a “must listen!” Thanks, Sue for a great conversation as always!

Thanks for Stopping By!

If this work resonates with you, I invite you to become a paid subscriber. It is a great way to support this work so I can continue to bring thoughtful interviews and blogs to you all year long! Thank you so much for your continued support!

Paid subscribers have access to video recordings of our podcasts, as well as other expanded perks to be announced soon!

Breaking the Paradigm is a division of Developing Education, which is on a mission to transform education globally to foster human development and flourishing for all people.

First Intention: Curriculum and pedagogy support for Montessori adolescent practitioners, specifically with math and language across the prepared environment.

The Enlightened Educator Project: Supporting educators with mindfulness and resiliency through professional development and downloadable resources.

I’ve spoken and written at length on this Substack about how Montessori cannot be separated from social justice.

Montessori herself was a social revolutionary. She believed that if we fostered positive human development that our natural human tendency to live in interdependence with one another would flourish.

Montessori believed that human unity already existed, but that we merely socialized ourselves to forget our interdependence. She wrote about this at length in her book Education and Peace, and it is a theme across nearly all of her writings.

It’s important to remember that Montessori’s method of education arose out of her theory of the cosmos. She did not create a method, and then a theory of human existence to support it. She started with our natural human tendencies and from there built her method.

So when Montessorians say that it is our natural human tendency to live in equitable interdependence, we aren’t making that up; in fact, modern research in Self-Determination Theory has uncovered the same findings that Montessori wrote about in the early 1900’s.

To put it another way, engaging in social justice so we can live in equitable interdependence is not a new idea. It’s our human nature.

Yet in our modern political world, we are in a time where the values of social justice and DEI are hotly debated.

After the recording of this podcast, but before it was published, I came across a post on LinkedIn which claimed that Montessori pedagogy was antithetical to social justice. This individual claimed, on her website, that social justice is a form of “Marxism” and that it “placed the group over the individual” and therefore was “harmful” to development.

Quite literally everything from that definition is incorrect, and it’s so obvious that this person has not seriously read Montessori or Marx, so I won’t go into the details here. Upon review of her website, it was clear that she took quotes from Montessori and Ayn Rand so out of context that they would appear to someone who is not well read in this area to believe that her idea is supported. However, anyone who has seriously read Montessori would know otherwise.

I bring this anecdote up for a reason.

We are living in a time where anyone with an internet connection can spread misinformation, knowingly or unknowingly, and influence others, particularly those whose ideas are based in fear.

If you’re curious, I did respond to this person and asked her how she reconciled her ideas against Montessori’s broad base of work which disproves her ideas.

The response?

Buy the “book” (which was self-published and not peer reviewed) and find out.

Those of us who are serious about education and human development, who have read Montessori with a critical and honest eye, must call out this behavior and these ideas. Anyone can cherry pick quotes from any author to justify a particular position; we must be steadfast in our uplifting of diverse voices while also not tolerating those based in hate, misinformation, or simply a blind desire to push a particular opinion.

In this latest podcast episode, my guest Hannah Richardson, Founder of Montessori Maker’s Group, did a beautiful job of explaining how social justice is inherent to Montessori education and painted a vision for the equitable and interdependent future that Montessori herself described over 100 years ago.

Hannah does incredible with with Montessori Makers Group, and has a podcast of her own, so definitely check out her work! Her latest episode, Social Responsibility for Belonging: The Heart of Montessori Justice, digs even further into this topic!

So if you’re looking to truly understand the relationship between Montessori and social justice, this is a great place to start.

I would also recommend looking into Montessori for Social Justice and Embracing Equity, two stellar organizations doing important work for social justice and DEI in these times.

Thanks for Stopping By!

If this work resonates with you, I invite you to become a paid subscriber. It is a great way to support this work so I can continue to bring thoughtful interviews and blogs to you all year long! Thank you so much for your continued support!

Paid subscribers have access to video recordings of our podcasts, as well as other expanded perks to be announced soon!

Breaking the Paradigm is a division of Developing Education, which is on a mission to transform education globally to foster human development and flourishing for all people.

First Intention: Curriculum and pedagogy support for Montessori adolescent practitioners, specifically with math and language across the prepared environment.

The Enlightened Educator Project: Supporting educators with mindfulness and resiliency through professional development and downloadable resources.

We are in a time where issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion are seen as “divisive” and “harmful,” and teachers and students across the country are being persecuted for engaging in DEI work.

It’s why, in this moment, those of us with privilege, who have the safety to speak without the repercussions that many others face, need to speak up on the importance of DEI in our schools and our society.

I was honored to have my colleague Jen Cort on Breaking the Paradigm to discuss the imperative of DEI in schools, and in particular, a new project she created to help school administrators do a DEI audit of their “non-teaching” infrastructure.

We discuss what it means to be on a journey of encompassing diversity, equity, and inclusion in schools, and some common pitfalls that institutions fall into. Ultimately, our goal is to call every educator up to seeing how DEI initiatives help every student feel safe, seen, and to thrive.

Because if you’re in education, and you’re not doing everything it takes to make the student experience positive for every student, why are you in this work?

You can check out Jen’s podcast, Third Space, here, and learn more about Jen at www.jencort.com.

Thanks, Jen for being an excellent guest!

Exciting News for Breaking the Paradigm!

This episode is unique because we not only have an audio recording, but a video recording as well! So if you’d like to watch my conversation with Jen, you can do so below.

Moving forward, podcast video recordings will be a perk for paid subscribers, along with many other perks that will soon be released!

Thanks for Stopping By!

If this work resonates with you, I invite you to become a paid subscriber. It is a great way to support this work so I can continue to bring thoughtful interviews and blogs to you all year long! Thank you so much for your continued support!

We will soon be launching more perks for paid subscribers, so stay tuned for that!

Breaking the Paradigm is a division of Developing Education, which is on a mission to transform education globally to foster human development and flourishing for all people.

First Intention: Curriculum and pedagogy support for Montessori adolescent practitioners, specifically with math and language across the prepared environment.

The Enlightened Educator Project: Supporting educators with mindfulness and resiliency through professional development and downloadable resources.

In The Absorbent Mind, Maria Montessori wrote the following:

“Love, like that which we feel for the child, must exist potentially between man and man, because human unity does exist and there is no unity without love.”

When Montessori describes love, she’s not talking about a feeling.

She’s talking about a cosmic force that pulls humans toward interdependence. The force which would give us the ability to realize our human unity.

We’ve had a previous podcast on the concept of love in Montessori environments, but Tammy Oesting, in her second Breaking the Paradigm episode, tied Montessori’s concept of love to other contemporaries of her time and to the concept of syntropy.

Montessori education is so much more than materials in the classroom. It is a movement for social revolution which empowers us toward our natural state of interdependence and unity.

Thanks to Tammy and Kelly for a thoughtful conversation, as always!

Want to learn more about love in Montessori environments? Check out these previous posts!

Thanks for Stopping By!

If this work resonates with you, I invite you to become a paid subscriber. It is a great way to support this work so I can continue to bring thoughtful interviews and blogs to you all year long! Thank you so much for your continued support!

We will soon be launching perks for paid subscribers, so stay tuned for that!

Breaking the Paradigm is a division of Developing Education, which is on a mission to transform education globally to foster human development and flourishing for all people.

First Intention: Curriculum and pedagogy support for Montessori adolescent practitioners, specifically with math and language across the prepared environment.

The Enlightened Educator Project: Supporting educators with mindfulness and resiliency through professional development and downloadable resources.

When you observe your students, do you react or respond?

This is not just a semantic difference.

When we react to our students, we engage on impulse. We are not considering the impact of our actions outside of the specific moment in which they occur.

When we respond to our students, we often start with a pause to ask ourselves the following: How does this student action make me feel? How can I respond in a way that is supportive of my students and their overall trajectory?

While it may sound simple, in practice, it’s not easy to do. It is part of my continued work to stop myself before reacting so I can fully respond.

In this episode of Breaking the Paradigm, I discussed how a practice of mindfulness can support teachers in being able to respond to students. Because the truth is, unless health and safety is at risk, things we think need our reaction usually do not.

Thanks for Stopping By!

If this work resonates with you, I invite you to become a paid subscriber. It is a great way to support this work so I can continue to bring thoughtful interviews and blogs to you all year long! Thank you so much for your continued support!

Breaking the Paradigm is a division of Developing Education, which is on a mission to transform education globally to foster human development and flourishing for all people.

First Intention: Curriculum and pedagogy support for Montessori adolescent practitioners, specifically with math and language across the prepared environment.

The Enlightened Educator Project: Supporting educators with mindfulness and resiliency through professional development and downloadable resources.

What do parents really want to know about their child’s Montessori education?

As a Montessori practitioner, I could talk about the importance of a developmental education for hours, but I doubt parents would want to listen to that.

In my recent conversation with Kelly Jonelis and Isabella Cai, founder of Y Montessori, we examined the question of what parents really want to know through the lens of new data curated by Isabella and her team.

Isabella started her work as a Montessori parent, asking the question “what’s going on in my child’s Montessori classroom?” This question led her to interview parents across California to support local Montessori schools in creating opportunities for parent communication and education that families actually want to attend; and she’s just getting started!

Whether you’re a parent, practitioner, or school leader, this podcast episode is sure to shed light on how to curate your communication with parents so they are best informed about Montessori education and their children’s progress. Thanks, Isabella for sharing your work with us!

Thanks for Stopping By!

If this work resonates with you, I invite you to consider becoming a paid subscriber. It is a great way to support this work so I can continue to bring thoughtful interviews and blogs to you all year long! Thank you so much for your continued support!

Breaking the Paradigm is a division of Developing Education, which is on a mission to transform education globally to foster human development and flourishing for all people.

First Intention: Curriculum and pedagogy support for Montessori adolescent practitioners, specifically with math and language across the prepared environment.

The Enlightened Educator Project: Supporting educators with mindfulness and resiliency through professional development and downloadable resources.

When you look at the history of educational reform in the United States, it feels like we’ve tried everything:

* No Child Left Behind

* Race to the Top

* Common Core State Standards

* The “science of” fads (which aren’t as scientific as they claim)

The one thing we haven’t tried?

Giving meaningful autonomy to young people.

I was honored to bring Dr. Mike Nicholson on my podcast to discuss why we must give students autonomy in our schools. This is not a “nice to have” or something that works for only some students.

We have a mental health crisis among our young people because schools rob them of their psychological fundamental needs: Autonomy, purpose, and relatedness. In the podcast, Mike and I dig into these three needs, what the research says about giving students autonomy, and practical suggestions for schools, administrators, and teachers to give students power NOW!

If you want to learn more about Mike and his organization, LearningInspired, you can visit their website at www.learninginspired.org.

How are you giving more autonomy to students in your settings?

Thanks for Stopping By!

If this work resonates with you, I invite you to consider becoming a paid subscriber. It is a great way to support this work so I can continue to bring thoughtful interviews and blogs to you all year long! Thank you so much for your continued support!

Breaking the Paradigm is a division of Developing Education, which is on a mission to transform education globally to foster human development and flourishing for all people.

First Intention: Curriculum and pedagogy support for Montessori adolescent practitioners, specifically with math and language across the prepared environment.

The Enlightened Educator Project: Supporting educators with mindfulness and resiliency through professional development and downloadable resources.