Kindness

Dear Families,

I am grateful every day for the old age handicaps I am suffering so obviously here at our
school, for without fail some one or other of our children takes notice and immediately is
moved personally and comes running over to help me. Their caring is not only a sign of
their love but most importantly also living proof that we the parents and educators
are succeeding in creating with our children a learning community that is aflame with
personal kindness – a Twenty-First Century Shangri-La right here and now!

Sure, because of our students’ high skill scores on the standardized tests, we are known
in town as a Class A academic school, but love trumps mere schooling every time and a
school without such expressed kindness would be unnatural -- a chilly place – not right
for human beings. I am happy that our community has developed home-like, individually
responsive learning environments wherein beings are beloved be they young or old. And
I as one of your elders know at long last that doing such is what life is meant to be– the
creation of a beloved community is our very purpose of being.

Every other day in the morning I am now presenting a philosophy seminar to a merry
band of middle school seekers of wisdom. I send them out into our school community on
a quest to solve the basic query that is the foundation of a successful life here on earth:
What is my purpose? Why have I been given my existence as a Person? Who am I?
What am I here for? In what ways do I matter? Following the advice of one of my own
mentors (Paul of Tarsus), to help these young Socrates discover themselves and to find
their surprising personal connections within this our beloved community, I then told them
to shine their lights on whatever they find around their present lives that is true, noble,
right, pure, lovely, admirable – and to meditate on whatsoever they perceive that is so
excellent, or praiseworthy. Take it all in! I urge them. It is food for your soul – and as I
learned a long time ago, you are what you eat.

Finally, I explain that when such nourishment becomes the stuff of their daily diet,
there will be developing deep inside them the Three C’s necessary for the kind of heroic
life required of them if they are to build a “New World” – courage, compassion, and
creativity. This then is their solemn purpose: bravely and caringly help create a world that
is based on the most divine virtue: Kindness.

Peace,
Paul

September 22, 2011 ¡ admin ¡ 

Providing Liberty

Dear Families,

    I am a stickler about our using the correct nomenclature when describing the key aspects of our Montessori school. For example, here we are committed to developing “self-directed learners” not merely to managing “pupils.” The root meaning of the word pupils suggests lifeless wooden puppets whose strings are being pulled to get some teacher desired performance. The meaning of the word learners indicates a profoundly personal life-function, a deeper knowing which happens from the inside out in order to become fulfilled.

    When you ask a Montessori child “who taught you to read?” she will answer with joyful eyes sparkling: “Nobody taught me. I learned to read all by myself.” And she is telling the truth because in Montessori there are no “teachers” (the word “teacher” comes from the root taecan which means to point out something directly with your index finger). Because she is in a Montessori school she has “educators” (that word comes from the ancient root educere which describes mid-wifery – the work of one who is assisting at the bringing out into life of a new born child).

    Just so, Montessori education is natural, personal, individual life learning – is learning not for tomorrow’s quiz but for life. This is also why I insist that Montessorians do not amass children narrowly into single age “graded classrooms” for direct instruction, but rather gather them within inter-aged “learning environments” for indirect personalized work on learning opportunities which cover all they must learn to be well-educated.

  • The factory mass schooling model is one large building filled with small graded boxes of immobile silent pupils all being taught the same lesson for a forty five minute period by an adult standing behind a big desk.
  • The authentic Montessori school is a village of small learning communities wherein multi-age children go about the work of learning all their academic skills naturally – respecting each other while developing their communal moral life together. The adults with them function as guides within their midst – as caring mentors presenting them with opportunities to master all of the basic human skills of our society.
  • Traditional schooling is a fixed and regulated following of packaged plans taken from a folder pulled out of a drawer by the teacher who then dictates the same lessons for every pupil placed in that grade.
  • Montessori educating is always a work in progress because the educator is committed to following each individual child, every single one a unique person who is ever new as he or she develops natural potentialities.
  • The “purpose” of a factory school is to produce well trained products: clone-like pupils.
  • The “soul” of a Montessori school is to develop liberated children: independent, self directed learners.
  • Well trained pupils study hard because they want to gain the rewards of good grades.
  • Self-directed learners work hard because they feel an inner personal responsibility – a conscience to become all that one is meant to be as a knowledgeable and creative human being within a world of ever new possibilities.

    To sum things up: for children to become really well-educated, moral and free human beings, they need to be provided liberty in their schools so they may study and work within small learning communities in which they may create with good conscience their own personal kind relationships and their own academic accomplishments. Is not that what America is all about? We do not want to produce merely skilled capable citizens. We want to raise up men and women who are as virtuous as they are learned – each a “flame at the tip of a candle.”

Peace,
Paul

July 25, 2011 ¡ Paul Czaja ¡ 

We Shall Prevail

Although my brother and I were born and raised city boys, our father had the wisdom to send us when we had just become teenagers to work on a dairy farm upstate for the summer. He told us then that he thought it would be good for us both to learn what it is to work. He was right. Our hands very soon became calloused and we discovered muscles we never knew we had. But I also learned much more than manual labor.

I saw before me that whether a plant would wilt or thrive depended directly on the good dirt of the garden and on the attentive care of the gardeners. I very quickly became aware of all the natural wonder existing in the realness of agriculture, and that discovery in time became the foundation of my becoming a philosopher and then especially a Montessori educator.

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May 22, 2011 ¡ admin ¡ 

The Heart of the Matter

musicheart    I can see now more than ever before the humbling truth first revealed to me fifty years ago at the very beginning of my training to become a Montessori educator and parent: the foundation of all true learning for children is our respecting and nurturing their innate power to experience reality intensely. 

    And so, fundamental to the academic learning of “readin’ and ‘riting and ‘rithmetic,” you and I as a priority need to provide our children 1) with the presentation of the many sensorial materials that will refine all their senses and 2) with the opportunity to practice the practical life skills common to their culture and 3) with the culminating glory gained by developing personal abilities in art and music.

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March 2, 2011 ¡ admin ¡ 

Nine

9stop    For the longest time now my work-a-day days have been happily interrupted by a child coming to my office with a big smile and a cupcake in hand proclaiming some such declaration as: “It’s my birthday today! I am nine years old!” “Great!” I reply. “I am glad you were born – and aren’t you glad you were born a human person and not a frog?” We laugh together in that moment of joy – and deep inside of my heart-mind-soul I feel inspired by this sweet celebration wondrously.

    Oh, if only I could be still such a child so full of beans – so bright eyed and just brim-filled with hope and goodness! I say to this happy young celebrant as she begins to leave me, “Stay nine years old now! Don’t get any older – being nine years old is the best age of all – stay nine!” She looks at me with a slightly puzzled smile not understanding – not knowing what I know.

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January 31, 2011 ¡ admin ¡ 

Entering Into Newness

    Well here we go again – entering into newness. Together with our children we are stepping into a new year and a new decade of this new century -- welcome 2011! Traditionally it is fitting time for us to take a look back, make some resolutions, and then with some wisdom and with our arms linked as colleagues bravely step forward into tomorrow’s tomorrows. My job is to develop the wisdom needed by you, the parents, children, and educators, to live the life given us successfully, happily, productively. I am the resident philosopher committed to present you with the Montessori principles that have shaped and refined our school as a learning environment fitting the developmental needs of children who are preparing themselves for a meaningful personal life within the 21st century.

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January 3, 2011 ¡ Paul Czaja ¡ 

The Three C’s

Paul    To inspire me every day now to continue on this my life’s journey as a caring servant of every child whose company I share, I have placed on my desk a photograph of me at the peak of my career. It shows my very beginning as a person smiling in the spring sunshine of the Bronx. My twin brother, Peter, and I are sitting with our Mom there on a small bench placed before the small hedged garden right in front of our red brick home. Sunshine and shadows dance on our three happy smiling faces.

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November 23, 2010 ¡ Paul Czaja ¡ 

Teacher or Educator?

    The best way for you or me to meet Maria Montessori today is not by doing a Google search on her name or by checking out what they have about her on WIKIPEDIA or even by reading some of her many books – no, the best way to meet Maria today is in the personal discovering of this child – in comforting, reassuring, nurturing this boy or girl here and now before us. Having been a Montessorian for fifty years, I am convinced that my vocation as parent and as educator has been and still is to truly recognize the dignity, the individuality, the unique value of every child in my care there for me to love and serve in this here, in this very now.


    Teacher or Educator? Does it really matter which? I believe so. Read the rest of this entry »

October 13, 2010 ¡ Paul Czaja ¡