Three new starters (children), one assessor for one member of staff (approx three hour visit!), one film crew (two hour visit) and two car accidents (parents delayed on way to pick up. No they didn’t bump into each other).
So it’s been a funny old day – from starting with three new children this morning, to having to ignore the cameras this afternoon while trying to pretend it’s a normal day (doesn’t feel normal when you say “thank you for keeping our classroom tidy!” and the woman with the microphone says “that was lovely, could you say it again?” Child looked at me very funny when I did that 😉 )
And after all that I then stayed back a while to go through some of the materials that at least one of the new starters is probably ready for and I’ve brought the file home tonight so that I can go through it all again. It’s one thing to look at the materials when they are sitting all pristine on the shelf, it’s another thing entirely when children are desperate to get hands on and they start grabbing at stuff left right and centre.
The filming was for a training dvd on good practise within the nursery environment 🙂 They seemed to really like us, and we’ll get copies of both the unedited footage and the finished product, so that should be interesting. Everyone else turned up in new tops today – I went in the cardy I’ve been wearing throughout, as I didn’t manage to get to Marks with the vouchers I found at t’other house yet 🙁 Ah well, I was hoping to stay out of the line of view, but they loved the cleaning up spills activity, so we were filmed doing that. Aargh, bet I look terrible in it!
The thing that is most annoying though is the interruptions – children were working with materials, and the film crew kept interrupting them to ask what they were doing. You *don’t* interrupt a child’s work. And you don’t talk through a presentation. And Montessori is so much more than just the materials, there is a whole ethos in the classroom that certainly I never approached at home. The group environment, taking care of the group as well as the materials, keeping ppl safe, it’s all very carefully stressed. Staff don’t raise their voices (I’m still pretty good at pitching to carry – think the whole group were the quietest I’ve ever seen them when I was reading stories before lunch 😉 ) and everybody walks in the classroom. It’s beautiful to see a 3 year old helping an older child simply because he’s been with us (weeks) longer and she is new and doesn’t know how we do things yet, and the community is encouraged to form in that way. The staff direct rather than lead, and it’s all very low key.
Can you tell I enjoy it? I’m really enjoying it. I’m stressed to the hilt with the two houses, finances and the world in general, but during the day at work, I’m doing an awful lot of smiling. And that pretty much makes it worth it I think. 🙂
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