Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/as-if-i-did-not-exist/5021781/
VIGNETTE:It was 3:30 pm and I was attending supervisor/leadership training. I was sneaking looks at my watch and trying to stay awake. The trainer was quickly covering major education theorists: Piaget, Vygotsky, Dewey. . . . Then a quote attributed to Maria Montessori leapt out at me: “The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say “the children are now working as if I did not exist.’’ At that moment, it all clicked for me. If Montessori, one of the true pioneers of early childhood education, believed that it was a sign of success that children could work independently, shouldn’t I be granting the staff I supervise the same privilege?
END BOX
Maria Montessori, born in Italy in 1879, was initially trained to be a doctor. One of her first professional jobs was to visit insane asylums and select patients for treatment. An extremely intelligent woman and an acute observer, Montessori quickly recognized that the problems of many of the children observed were not in the children themselves, but in the environment and approaches of those around them. She took these thoughts and ideas and by 1907 began working with typically-developing children at Casa dei Bambini (Children’s House) ...