As a trained Montessori teacher, I know that the first job of the teacher is to “follow the child”. If we act as guides, children will use the Montessori materials found in the prepared environment to guide their own open-ended research and follow their individual interests.
Montessori also said that:
We cannot know the consequences of suppressing a child's spontaneity when he is just beginning to be active. We may even suffocate life itself. That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendor during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.
Being a Montessori trained teacher and believing in the Montessori method, made it challenging for me to be the parent of a Montessori student.
