A Little Montessori for Traditional Teachers that Worked
In I 1979 was hired to bring Montessori to a private British-Peruvian girls’ school in Lima. There were no Montessori materials, and the curriculum was set to meet the highest standards of both the British and Peruvian governments. Below are some quotes from the chapter describing this experience as recorded in the book Aid to Life, Montessori Beyond the Classroom:
One of the stories we had heard was about a Montessori teacher who was traveling, with her entire family and a large group of adults and children, from one part of Asia to another, migrations caused by the partition of British India into two countries in 1947. Each night as the travel stopped and camp was set up this woman gathered the children and included them, in all of the necessary and important practical life of the group. They had a purpose, value to their community, a way of learning new skills that distracted them from the sadness of their journey. This was authentic Montessori.
“Well,” I thought to myself, “if this woman could create Montessori in such dire circumstances, I should be able to do something valuable for the students in a beautiful girl’s school in one of the world’s capital cities.”
