In 1993 eleven of us trained in a small church hall in South Melbourne. We were to complete an AMI diploma for teaching 3 to 6 year olds in the year we spent with the late Patricia Hilson, AMI trainer. We were not to know that we were to be her last students and that this was the last course to be offered by the Montessori Teacher's College, ten years after the college was founded. 

This was to be an experience of learning quite unlike any experience I had through my years of schooling and my arts degree at university. Many of us took time to adjust to the fact that there were no marks for our assessment. Instead, it was assumed that we were here to do our best which we were. Also it was assumed that we had within ourselves a means of seeing our own progress, of developing deeper and broader levels of understanding as we attempted to translate into our own words the theories and works of Montessori and as we worked each afternoon with the materials of the classroom. 

A miracle was occurring not unlike the tiny miracles of the Children's House. We were learning to forget the numbers and letters we had been given by all our teachers before now. We were learning to read the brief comments Pat put at the end of our assignments and to hear in them the love and attention she had given to us, the listening ear, the attention to detail and passion for the precision of meaning and language. This was the love of a teacher and not unlike the love we were being asked to give the children in our care in the classrooms we were to inherit or to set up when we completed our training. 

How precious this time was, this opportunity. I have the memories of my own schooling. The dreaded red pen marks scored across my work. The eyes racing to the end of the page to find the mark. The child sitting next to me always wanted to know 'What did you get?' At the end of twelve years of schooling, I can remember looking at my 'Anderson Score' - the number given to me that was to determine my tertiary study options and it seemed, my future itself, and thinking; 'Is that all?' All these numbers and letters and scores to erase from memory. We need to forget these numbers so that we can let go of the 'right' and 'wrong' so many of us grew up with. We are to forget so that we can learn to see the true potential of each child. We can watch each child unfolding according to the plan unique to each of us, not a blueprint from the files of an education ministry but something far more wonderful and mysterious.

How funny we must have looked, strange and awkward, looming large over the Pink Tower and the cabinets of materials! How to turn us into Directresses with grace and gentleness? Only love and patience could support such a transformation. So many things to remember; to put our chairs in, to walk and talk softly, to carry the Broad Stair one prism at a time. Montessori's plea for softness, grace and enticement. To forget the hardness of our own schooling, the 'shoulds' and 'musts' of another way of making children learn; 'bringing the horses to water and making them drink from it'. Pat would speak with us about the ideas and values behind Montessori's methods. Such a new way to be 'teachers'. Only when we truly have it inside ourselves, can we give it away because this is the only way that a three year old can learn; through imitation. 

Pat was our example. Pat taught us through her example and I regard this as her finest gift and her greatest act of love. I believe this is why so many of us who studied with her can continue to have conversations with her in our heads. Something of her, we were able to internalize. Many times I waited for her to pull me up for something I forgot or was careless with. This was what I had come to expect in a teacher! It took me time to rcalise that here was somebody who could wait for me to see my error in my own time. Finally seeing this filled me with remorse and a deeper sense of my own responsibility to learn. The responsibility lies with me to do it because it has become important to me, not in order to please somebody else. We need to learn to wait with such patience for our own three year old who builds the red rods out of sequence. 

In this tiny hall there was a sense of something within us being nurtured, incubated, and a sense that we had this precious time to learn and practice before we were to move on and to get swept up in the daily torrent of school records, running noses, the various needs of the children, parents, assistants and school committees ... Here was a time to ask questions and try to get right to the heart of the philosophy and vision of Montessori, to taste the spiritual essence of it before getting caught up in every day concerns of a Directrcss. 

Speaking with many of her former students, I know that even on a daily basis many of us ask ourselves in our classrooms 'Now what would Pat do in this situation?' A picture of someone who took care with her movements, with her words and actions and always returned to her principles to 'Listen to the child' comes to our minds and we recall our training to the best of our abilities. 

While the training required for the classroom is precise and exact, Montessori is not just a 'method', it is, at its core, a 'vision' and a way of life. Like the three year old, we need to be allowed to team with the body, mind and soul. It is not enough just to tell me: tell me, then let me see how it is done. Let me take it in; let me repeat it many times; let me make mistakes and learn what I truly need to know in order to move beyond. Like this small child, we have needed to be shown such patience with this first most crucial and time-consuming phase of our development. 

The opportunity to have spent time with a trainer of the calibre of Pat Hilson is such a gift. Our training does not end here. This is understood as we go out into the classroom and face the daily situations, carrying within us experiences on which to build our own well-eamed wisdom.

Thank you, Pat.

 

By Megan Isaac
BA GradDip Early Childhood (AMI 3-6)