What are the classroom management devices inherent in the Cosmic Curriculum?
In order to answer this question fully, one must examine closely the background and relationships between all the elements that make up this equation. The question assumes that the implementation of the cosmic curriculum also tackles classroom management. According to The Glossary of Education Reform, classroom management is defined as “skills and techniques that teachers use to keep students organised, focused, attentive, on task and academically productive during class”. Transposing this concept into our question, we can make the following statement:
The Cosmic Curriculum provides the means for students to get organised, stay engaged and productive at school.
Here, we will examine how the implementation of the Cosmic Curriculum takes class management out of the teachers’ hands and allows students to self-manage in intrinsic and authentic ways.
Traditionally, classroom management is extrinsic in nature – the teacher dictates more or less what, when and how students are going to accomplish a task or routine. Often, this strategy is coupled with extrinsic rewards such as stickers, points or praise. Students learn to do things not because they believe it is the right thing to do, but because an adult in a position of power decides or because desired behaviours bring special rewards. I will argue that, through the Cosmic Curriculum, students learn to self-regulate, achieving higher levels of focus, concentration and productivity than traditional methods. Maria Montessori named this state normalisation.
Montessori argued adamantly that adults’ role is to remove obstacles that impede the child’s development, but often we become that obstacle. It takes tremendous self-restraint to sit back and watch as a child struggles to tie his shoelaces or takes a painstakingly long time to perfectly arrange books on the shelf. These situations present real and serious conflicts between the adults’ expectations and the child’s drive to follow his inner guide. In Montessori terms, this inner guide can be described in terms of human tendencies – a calling to engage with an area of profound interest. Additionally, Montessori discovered that children have sensitive periods for developing different aspects of themselves. Conflicts arise when a child or group of students are propelled by these inner guides into behaviours and actions that interfere with the adults’ plan and expectations. However, the Cosmic Curriculum is designed to support children’s tendencies and sensitive periods, effectively removing the need to exert authority and apply incentives to achieve the desired outcome – concentration and productivity. According to Montessori theory, these are in fact human tendencies. Although, naturally present in all of us, we cannot be compelled or coerced to exhibit these at a desired time or situation.
Rinalde Montessori said that “since our inception, our species has pursued knowledge and understanding powered by fascination, by obsessive tenacity, by awe, reverence and wonder, but fundamentally by the urge to learn which is perhaps the strongest of all human drives.” She goes on to explain that when a child is born, he brings with him nothing but this fundamental drive to learn and goes to develop an intimate relationship with his environment described by love and responsibility. This can be explained as children falling in love with the environment that gives them opportunities to tap into “life force, vital energy – the inner teacher that directs him towards the actualisation of all his potentialities through self-construction”, thus will take responsibility to appreciate it and protect it. In this statement, I have just identified three key aspects of learning in a Montessori classroom:
An environment that gives opportunities to deeply engage
Children who need to satisfy an incessant need to gain knowledge and understanding – or learn
Individuals who will take responsibility – or appreciate and protect the environment
This model acts like a cycle where the children constantly come back to the environment to look for what it has to offer so that they can engage with it and learn from it. As adults in the environment, we have little influence over the level of engagement and even learning that a student does. We can demand that they take responsibility but we may see students mimicking that they think we want to see or hear. The only true control we have is over the environment and ourselves.
The Montessori environment is made up of the physical space, the materials and the adults. The purpose of the adult it to connect the child to the environment so that the child may be enticed to engage with it and be lured by it into that deep level of concentration and productivity. The means by which an adult can achieve this in an elementary classroom is through the Cosmic Curriculum. When the perfect balance is stuck, discipline is achieved. The word discipline has negative connotations in our society, implying exerting of authority and force. However, discipline comes from the word disciple or follower, therefore, discipline is the ability to follow rules. In our classrooms, we discuss at length self-discipline which we understand as an active state of awareness that much like the universe follows rules to avoid chaos, so must we follow rules to maintain our freedom to make choices. Self-discipline is the ultimate goal of Montessori education and completely eliminates the need for employing classroom management techniques. However, there is a price to pay – freedom. According to Maria Montessori, children must be allowed choice and freedom to experiment and develop both a sense of responsibility and self-discipline.
So far, we learned that the environment, the Cosmic Curriculum and the adult work together to help the child develop self-discipline. In the next part, I will explain what it looks like and how it happens.
The Environment
The physical environment is warm, inviting and beautiful. There is order and flow, it is free from clutter and unnecessary materials. The aim is that when a child walks in, he feels at peace, he feels at home and he begins to appreciate and love the space. Once the bond between the child and environment is formed, he begins to look after it, protect it and even make improvements – also known as taking responsibility. The word responsibility comes from the Latin word respondere – to answer, to offer in return. In other words, the child, who has been nurtured by the environment will in return nurture the environment.
In my experience, the strength of the bond between the environment and students vary widely due to many factors and different levels of self-discipline each student possesses. But this is where the social environment plays a significant role. When older children and children who are natural leaders exhibit a caring and nurturing attitude towards the environment, others will follow.
The Adult
The main role of the teacher is to two-fold – to follow the child and to connect the child to the curriculum. Following the child has a very strict meaning that is often misinterpreted by eager parents and teachers who seek the approval of the child. To follow the child in the Montessori context is to get to know the child intimately through observation and reflection and respond to his needs by acting on the environment and accessing the curriculum in a way that is meaningful and authentic to the child.
During my time in the classroom, I have come to understand that the behaviour of the child is a symptom of something beyond his control. As parents and educators, we try to address behaviours by going directly to the source – the child, and impose on him our expectations and rules. Instead, a Montessori teacher should examine the circumstances and triggers of the undesired behaviours and act on those instead.
Through observation, regular and meaningful interactions with the students, a teacher learns about their passions and interests. She uses these as hooks to arouse the child’s curiosity and bring to him lessons that encourage him to engage in work productively. For example, if a child is interested in dinosaurs, his teacher might present to him history lessons such as the Clock of the Eras, zoology lessons such as Bird Anatomy, math lessons such as the Large Bead Frame subtractions to calculate time spans, language lessons such as Word Families. The limit is only the teacher’s own imagination.
The Cosmic Curriculum
The elementary curriculum was developed to appeal to the second plane child – his characteristics and human tendencies. To use the analogy of a baby bird, the elementary child is the fledgling sitting on the edge of the nest, spreading his wings with eyes fixed in the distance. He can see how far his world spreads, can sense the thrill and can imagine himself soaring high into the sky. Before that, he will still need his parents to guide him, feed him and keep him out of trouble.
The Cosmic Curriculum to the elementary aged child holds the same alluring quality as the sky and distance holds for the fledgling. The child can sense the potential and the excitement, the depth and breadth of the cosmos waiting to be explored and within it, his own potential. It appeals to his imagination. At this age, children are fascinated by big things – big ideas, big projects, big numbers, big words. They can imagine billions of years into past and light years away. They can imagine far reaching consequences of their actions and choices and evaluate outcomes. If we offer learning experiences that limit them, they become restless or ‘bored’ and will resort to other means of satisfying their need.
Every material and story told in the elementary classroom emphasises the rules and laws of our universe from its beginning to current times. Students begin to understand that all things follow a pattern and can be categorised according to rules. This appeal greatly to their moral sense. At this age, they are preoccupied almost obsessively by ideas of fairness and justice. The curriculum requires the child to examine the subject closely, devise and test rules but mostly understand why they are in place and appreciate the intricate dance - the interconnectedness - of all things in our world. In my experience, if the teacher allows the children to discover the rules and the patterns for themselves, they are more engaged and more productive. If the rule is given to them, all they want to do is break it so that they may discover what happens as a result. The understanding is related to what happens when it is broken as opposed to why it exists.
The elementary child is an extremely social being. They are of an age when they are developing social skills as part of a community. It is rare that any lesson is given to individual children and the Great Lessons are intended for the entire class. The reason is that children of this age will choose to work with others more often than not. They will seek out other children with shared interests and will co-construct learning together. A simple lesson on fungi might inspire a group to start a project together such as growing mushrooms. This is the true value of the Cosmic Curriculum – the potential of every lesson to become a big project brimming with big ideas.
Like the fledgling perched on the edge of his nest, the elementary child is ready to explore the world beyond the classroom. Through Going Out experiences, the child is propelled into the community where he makes meaningful connections with places and individuals. He begins to understand and appreciate his own place and influence in the community. He can practice responsibility through Grace and Courtesy which contributes to the development of self-discipline.
Lets examine what we have learned so far:
We discovered that freedom and responsibility can lead to the development of self-discipline in a Montessori classroom effectively removing the teacher from the position of enforcer of rules. We also revealed that the Cosmic Curriculum appeals directly to the needs of a child in the second plane of development by engaging the imagination, moral sense, social development and creating links to the community and the world. Learning through the Cosmic Curriculum, a child forms relationships with his environment – physical, social and cultural – grows to appreciate it, his own role within it and the interconnectedness of all things. From there stems a profound sense of responsibility – a need to nurture and contribute the environment in positive ways. Furthermore, the nature of work required of the child learning through the Cosmic Curriculum is profound because it links the child’s interests, inspires big work, it is authentic and meaningful, but most importantly, the child has the ability to choose his work.
We understand that children have it in them to work productively, concentrate and are inherently good. Issues arise when adults and environments place obstacles that make it difficult for them to attend to their inner drive to learn and discover. In the Montessori classroom, the adult acts on the environment to remove obstacles and connect the child to the curriculum so that the child remains constantly in communication with his inner teacher. With obstacles removed, there is no need for the child to seek disruptive ways to satisfy his need for activity and thus we can say that classroom management is inherent in the Cosmic Curriculum.