Today’s blog is a continuation of last week’s topic of attending mindfully to transitions that are about to happen for our children. Last week we looked at practices that preserve normalization in our classrooms as we begin to lose a significant portion of our community. This week we address the other end of the transition: practices focused on children who will be joining our community in the fall. Spending time consciously preparing for this eventuality is not an act of altruism – it is mindfully taking the first steps on the path towards normalization of next year’s community.
Most children anticipate changing classrooms with a mixture of excitement and dread. The balance of the two emotions will be different for every child, and may even vary from one circumstance to the next for a given child. Behaviors that arise from either end of this emotional spectrum can be frustrating for everyone. Our goal is to preclude these frustrations by working as a community towards two goals: helping newcomers feel welcome, and helping new members understand the social and behavioral norms of their new community.
Feeling Welcome
Consider your first day of Montessori training. Did you feel as though you had just landed on another planet? If you are like most, you had that same mix of excitement and worry that your new children will be experiencing. “It is so good to be here! I have really been looking forward to this! I can’t wait to learn everything! Who is this new group of people? Who looks like they would be willing to be with me? Will I fit in? What about the academic expectations? Can I do this?”
Spend a moment reconnecting with those feelings. When we take time to build empathetic feelings towards the newcomers, we will be more tolerant of unexpected choices that they might make.
We want to create space for that same intentional empathy in the hearts of the students who will be the class role models in the fall. When we craft opportunities for the returning students to actively nurture and coach those who are arriving, practicing radical hospitality, we begin the process. Doing so now, in May, has several advantages over waiting until fall. It establishes a mindset in both populations of children, helping them see themselves in the new roles that they will fill. This is the mindset that they carry through the summer and bring with them into the classroom next fall, promoting a smoother start to the year. An additional benefit is that any hospitality activities undertaken at this time of the year are self-limiting; the younger children will only stay for a portion of the day and then will return to their own classrooms. If something goes awry, it won’t last long, and there will be time and space for everyone to consider how to make it better next time.
Understanding the social/behavioral norms of their new community.
There are social and behavioral norms that are perfectly acceptable at one level that are poorly received at the next. Children who are moving up have been “king of the hill” for a whole year. They are about to go back to being the younglings of the group. Children who are accustomed to leading and directing their peers must now remember how to follow. Moving to a new level in Montessori also brings with it expectations for greater functional independence. With that new freedom comes new responsibility. Some of our newcomers will take to that new responsibility more gracefully than others. We can prepare our classroom leaders for the fact that newcomers won’t always act as anticipated and won’t always know how to cope with their new-found independence and responsibility. When we do this and arm our role-models with kind and firm ways to redirect the newcomers, we promote the maturation of our leaders just as we lay a foundation on which we will build towards normalization.
Implementation
The goals of helping newcomers feel welcome can best be accomplished by actually interacting with the newcomers. Many schools already have a tradition of visiting between classrooms just prior to transitioning. If not, perhaps this year will be the first; offer to send ambassadors to visit with children who are moving up and/or to receive transitioning children for a short visit in the coming weeks.
There can be no doubt that classroom visits take a little time to plan and implement at a point in the year when there is little time to spare; however, this is not time lost – it is an investment that will pay dividends both this year and next. The more the children participate in planning and implementation the visits, the greater their ownership of the process of accepting and mentoring new members, and the stronger the community becomes.
The first step in implementation is establishing that there is a community need and that all have a role in meeting that need. This begins with a class discussion. Ideally, participants in the discussion will be limited to those who will remain in the community in the fall. These are the people who will play the greatest role in this “project hospitality” AND it is their first official opportunity to practice their leadership of the community. (Perhaps the departing children will use this time to work on some culminating activity of their own.)
Some potential prompts for this discussion are listed below, in the Reflection for Children. Be sure to assign someone the job of recorder (or take on the task yourself) for this brainstorming session! Following that, in the Reflection for Adults, are prompts for planning for visitors or ambassadors.
Reflection for Children: There will be some new members of our class soon! Think about when you were moving into our classroom. Take a few moments to remember how you felt and what you thought. Note: as children brainstorm answers to these questions, ask them to refrain from naming names. We want this discussion to be about how our experiences shape the future. When we name names, we can get bogged down in the past.
- What were you excited about?
- Which of the things that you were excited about really happened?
- Was there anything that you wished had happened that didn’t?
- What were you worried about or scared of?
- Which of your worries never happened?
- Which of your worries came true? Is there anything that could have changed the outcome if you had just known about it?
- Was there anything that the class or a person did that made you feel especially welcome?
- What in or about the classroom made you feel like this was a place you would belong? (Familiar materials, familiar people, seeing your name on a nametag…)
- What do you wish had been different?
- What do you hope will be the same for our new class members?
Based on the responses of the children, discuss options for things to say and do and things to avoid that will help incoming children feel comfortable and welcome. Be sure that part of the discussion includes items like:
- how to talk to moving-up children about the class in ways that will inspire excitement and diminish concerns
- how to share things that are fun or exciting in the class without making it sound like an amusement park
- how to share tips for first visits / first days
- how to help children who are acting in a way that doesn’t work in our classroom – “In our classroom, here is how we do it…” or “Do you need help to choose some work?”
If visits are part of the plan, there are additional items to discuss. These might take place in the same meeting or at a time closer to visiting day. Here are a few:
- Buddying up – describe the process of getting a buddy so that there are no surprises.
- The goal of buddying – help the visitor feel comfortable and learn as much about him/her as possible. That often means listening to what they have to say!
- How to greet visitors in general, and your buddy in specific.
- How to give a classroom tour.
- Good conversation starters – ask about them rather than tell about you!
- What to do when you don’t know what to do with your buddy.
Reflection for Adults: This reflection takes place in response to the children’s brainstorming.
- Anticipating the visit, is there a project that could be placed on the practical life shelf now that involves making some kind of welcoming gift for each visitor – something simple that has the visitor’s name on it, something that they will be proud to take home to share with their parents?
- When the visitors arrive, what simple and quick name-game can you use to break the ice?
- What activities can you suggest to the host children: giving a classroom tour, asking their buddy to show a favorite work that seems familiar, showing the buddy a favorite work?
- What whole-group lesson can you give while the visitors are present that will have a big WOW factor – something that children can talk excitedly about with classmates and parents after the visit?
- After the visit, give each child a notecard to write down what they learned about their buddy – favorite food, pets at home, brothers and sisters, favorite work, fears, and excitements. These notecards can be really valuable during phase-in week next fall!
- If children are being sent as ambassadors, will they go before or after visiting day? How will the ambassadors be chosen so as to preserve the goodwill of the community? Will individuals be chosen from the community at large or from those who volunteer? Will there be qualifications to be met, such as asking that all volunteers be sure that they have adequate time to dedicate to preparing for and carrying out this activity? Will all be from next year’s oldest group, all be children who transitioned most recently or a mix? Who will ultimately do the choosing: you or the children?
- What further preparation needs to be made for hosts and/or ambassadors?
I wish you a successful, smooth transition season, with many joyful arrivals and departures!
Image by WikiImages from Pixabay
“Hospitality means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend…”
Henri J.M. Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life