Irish Montessori Education Board - Bord Oideachais Montessori Eireann
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"Our work as adults does not consist in teaching
but in helping the child's mind in its work of development"
Maria Montessori
The role of the teacher
A Montessori teacher is truly a child advocate who respects the child's total being. Montessori believed that the carefully prepared classroom or environment is the framework within which the child's full potential is developed and that the teacher becomes the keeper and custodian of the environment.
The teacher creates an atmosphere of calm, order, care, warmth and joy in the classroom. Within this carefully prepared environment the teacher supports, nurtures and guides the children. Based on detailed systematic observation of the children the teacher demonstrates the use of materials according to individual needs and interests. The children progress at their own pace and rhythm, according to their individual capabilities.
The three-year age grouping of the Montessori classroom allows the teacher to gain an in-depth knowledge of the unique personality of each child. To introduce new curriculum the teacher presents demonstration lessons at the point when individual or small group indicate a readiness to advance in the sequence of self-correcting materials in areas of practical life, sensorial, mathematics, language, science, geography, art and music.
The teacher's goal is to assist the children in self-directed activities allowing them develop confidence and self-discipline and to be free to respond to their natural tendency to work individually or in small groups.
"Our aim
therefore is not merely to make the child understand,
and still less to force him/her to memorise,
but so to touch his
imagination as to enthuse him to his inmost core"
Maria Montessori